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Love and active hope
Halcyon Westall writes that while it’s easy to despair these days, “we can also see evidence that more and more people are interested in a building a new way.”
The work of leading this change is to expand our sense of “We” so that it reaches beyond what is comfortable and easy. My identities, and the privilege embedded within many of them, allow me to work within the establishment. My responsibility in this system is to listen to marginalized voices and amplify their experience especially when it is is different than the experiences I am having. This requires me to see beyond my own perspective and find ways to be an accomplice to our collective liberation. (for this most amazing day, 2.8.19)
Nancy McDonald Ladd has been thinking—and writing—about human nature.
Purity is something you can never get back.
Perfection is something you can never achieve.
Possibility is something that never lets you go – no matter what. (Facebook, 2.7.19)
David Miller asks, “When we say ‘resist’ what are we resisting? Is it the people or the disease that has taken over their souls?”
Those people who I have grown to despise as a monolith could easily literally be my neighbors or the person who just smiled at me as I held open the door for them at the cleaners. I am grateful for the reminders that bring me back as often as possible, especially in these days, to my need to stay centered in love, in active hope, in non-realistic faith and the understanding if we are truly going to change the world, at some point, we will have to stop fearing and hating each other. (Facebook, 2.9.19)
Netted together
David Breeden observes Darwin’s birthday, celebrating the great interdependence Darwin imagined.
Materialism often gets contrasted with spirit or spirituality and gets the raw end of that comparison. Yet the greatest wonder is that from the simple materials available in our universe wondrous things come. A materialist, naturalist viewpoint tells us that everything is everything; there isn’t anything else. Everything is “netted together.” (Medium, 2.14.19)
Karen Hering, shivering in the Upper Midwest, longs for paradise—and not just one with warmer weather.
Many stories about paradise describe an eco-system in fine working balance, a garden untroubled by pests and harvested without labor in a sustainable ecology of being. Abundance is gleaned with neither harness nor shackle, in a proper alignment of each to all and all to each, humans and creatures, earth and plant life all held in right relationship with one another.
Even more than the temperate weather promised by paradise, I long for this relational balance seemingly so different from the world we live in now. . . . [Is] it possible to foster and experience some of it right here and right now, in the frigid winter season and in the broken trust of our own times? (Karen Hering, 2.10.19)
That perspective thing
James Ford suggests five pointers for getting over yourself.
You have a brain. And it is no different than your heart. Not one, not two. Learn to use it wisely. One good way is to regularly sit down, shut up, and pay attention. Oh, and be decent today. If you can’t do anything more, just don’t be a jerk. If you can, do something positive for someone or some part of the planet. It helps with that perspective thing. (Monkey Mind, 2.8.19)
Aaron White says that “far from morbid, remembering that you are going to die is a call to love life deepl y while you have it.”
There will be a finite number of everything I encounter. Not a number I know yet, but a number. How many cups of good coffee will I have? How many sunrises? How many times will my children fall asleep on my shoulder (a number I can already see dwindling as they get older)? How many times will someone hold my hands? How many nights in a warm bed? How many times will someone say, “I love you.” Death tells me to wake up, hear words of love with grace and speak them often, breathe and see the people in front of me as finite and fragile creatures. It says to love as much as I can while I can. (Possibility Conspiracy, 2.9.19)