On this day, hundreds of thousands of our siblings are standing up to say ‘Hands Off’ our democracy, our beloved vulnerable friends, and our sacred planet.

It is important to remember how to stay centered while never giving up on our work toward a more just and equitable culture.

Of course, this week’s blog from Richard Rohr, once again, nails it:

“It may not be in our power to determine how things will unfold, but it is in our power to decide how we respond. It is in our power to hold on to the practices that nourish us, inform us, and give us courage.”
—Adam Bucko 

“The exterior work of social justice is only as strong as the interior work that births and fuels it. Storytelling, listening, movement, and music all represent the gentle, interior healing necessary to empower the hard work of social change.”
—Liz Walker 

“Somehow our occupation and vocation as believers must be to first restore the Divine Center by holding it and fully occupying it ourselves.”
—Richard Rohr 

Recommended Practice

Resting Back and Trusting the Unknown

Buddhist teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo offers an embodied meditation to calm our nervous systems in times of stress and unknowing:  

In a sense, our culture, our society is dissolving. We are collectively entering the chrysalis, and structures we have come to rely on and identify with are breaking down. We are in the cocoon and we don’t know what the next phase will be like. Learning to surrender to the unknown in our own lives is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown. 

To begin the practice, find a comfortable position, sitting, standing, or lying. Connect with your body and how it’s making contact with the chair or the floor. Allow yourself to rest back in some way and really feel the support of whatever is holding you.… Every time you breathe out, let your body rest even more into the support of the Earth. 

Allow your face to soften, releasing the forehead, the muscles around the eyes, the jaw … 
Let the tongue rest in the mouth … 
Be aware of the shoulders and as you breathe out, let the shoulders soften … 
Bring attention to the chest and belly, allow them to release and soften on the next exhale … 
Notice your arms and hands, with the next exhale let them grow a little heavier, releasing tension … 
Feel your legs and feet, as you exhale release, soften, and let go … 
Feel your whole body now as you inhale and exhale, allowing the whole body to soften and release its weight even more onto the Earth.… 

You can bring this quality of resting back into your daily life. When you notice yourself leaning into the future, tensing up, trying to predict what will happen, straining to figure out what to do, whether on your own or with others, see if you can actually physically rest back. Open up the front of your chest, let your arms hang by your sides, and lean backwards slightly. This can support your mind to rest back, release, and let be, even for a short moment and to whatever degree you are able. 

When I first wrote this, I decided to stop blogging for a while. It was just too bleak. But with the help of friends, I found a way to present it that feels gentler and appropriate.

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Brilliant thinkers have described modernity as being in hospice, but having worked in hospice myself; I wonder if it is possible that our culture isn’t in hospice but in the throes of active dying. A part of me now believes that radical acceptance means acknowledging the imminent end of our current systems, our established norms, and our sense of security.

When I look back at my life as an activist and, indeed, decades of my activist ancestors’ struggles, it seems we have made little actual progress. Yes, Martin Luther King spoke of an arc bending toward justice, but today, we seem to be spiraling into destruction.

We have reached a point where we are no longer in control. We watch helplessly as climate change accelerates, species vanish, and democratic institutions crumble. Many of us are at a banquet table, laden with privilege, while beneath us roils the darkness of suffering: refugee crises, immigrant abuse, systemic racism, and environmental destruction.

Those who lead us and promise to keep us at the table offer only false promises and fear. They demand our loyalty and compliance while the abyss pulls at our feet. Even those who strive for justice, who crawl beneath the table to offer aid, still partake in the feast. We are all complicit, all feeling the pull of oblivion.

The obvious responses to this are despair, anger, fear, and sadness, and those are absolutely appropriate responses.

But maybe, as part of radical acceptance, we can simply admit that we have failed. And maybe that’s the way it has to be.

In her newest book, the amazing, brilliant Sofie Strand speaks to how entities have come together in an effort to create and failed miserably throughout biological history. The destruction that arises from that inability to digest each other has sometimes been the catalyst for something new to arise. I think she is pointing out that this failure we are experiencing is the impetus we need to birth something new.

We witness the rumbling sound beneath the table, our food bumping and skittering and sliding toward the abyss, and all that we treasured sliding away. Yet in the chaos and terror, there is also a gift.

So, can we live with that? Can we take one step at a time? Can we put one foot in front of the other and lead with love, to quote Melanie Demore?

What else can we do?

I depend upon what I’ve heard called intrinsic hope. The hope intrinsic in the seeds trembling in the ground at the beginning of spring. The hope that is intrinsic in the salmon battling upstream to lay its eggs and die. The hope that is intrinsic in stardust. The hope that is intrinsic in the vibrations of every molecule in every cell of everything that exists. Intrinsic because, somehow, something we cannot imagine will continue.

Maybe we have squandered our opportunity this time to create the paradise that was our gift. For that sin, we will suffer, and that’s what needs to happen. This antichrist-would-be king did not arise out of nowhere. All of us have birthed this monster. And now we have no choice but to move on in any way we can.

In the end, all we have is the bursting buds of springtime, the water flowing, the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and all our human and more than human beloveds.

So, let us weep, mourn, and then rise again, not with illusions of control but with a fierce commitment to love and service. And let us do it in community and ritual and make it sacred. Because finally, I have to believe that there is nothing that is not sacred, not even failure.

Friends, I’m taking a break for a few reasons.

1. It sometimes seems like there are enough (or even too many) words.
2. Many times they seem redundant and unnecessary.
3. I’m considering what part of my ego is attached to the idea that my words actually add any value.
4. My heart is struggling and I won’t subject you dear reader, to despair (I heard Matthew Fox say, the worst sin is spreading despair).
5. And finally, other than a few sweet and loyal folks who regularly respond, I’m not convinced anyone (or at least not very many) are listening.

It’s not a bad thing and maybe it’s just a rest.

For the most part my despair and exhaustion with the world leaves me in deep surrender, acceptance and wonder. I’m sincerely curious about what will rise from the ashes of our crumbling culture.

And I’m blessed with the realization that all I can do is laugh, sing, love, and serve in my little circles of influence.

Alhamdulillah.

Bye bye for now. ❤️😎🙏💕

And then one day you find
Ten years have gone behind you…

The sun is the same in a relative way
But you’re older
Shorter of breath
And one day closer to death
~ Pink Floyd’s ‘Time’ by Richard Wright and David Gilmore

Time has been on my mind lately. Some days seem to fly by, while some minutes seem to last forever. But in every case, we are only gifted a limited time on this beautiful planet.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
~ Mary Oliver

A book I’m reading by physicist Carlo Rovelli called “The Order of Time” reminds us that what we think of as the marking of time is a creation of our culture. He notes that not that long ago, we didn’t bother to monitor and manage time with clocks and time zones. Those inventions only came about when we moved another step away from the natural rhythms of dark and light, the travel of the moon, stars, and sun across the sky. They were created in another of our misguided efforts to tame nature. Only when machines began to move us rapidly across the land did we need to agree on it being the same time here as it was there.

So, if time is a mental construct, what would it look like to fall back into the arms of the beloved earth and spend moments outside that construct?

Why do I find this compelling right now? Because we are at the mercy of the passing of the past into the future. There can be no such thing as now because it is already gone. We may remember the past (more and more vaguely possibly), and we envision a future that is, in fact, only a dream.

It begins to sink in that we are foolish to “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way” (Pink Floyd again). Since we only have now and now is already gone, what is our motivation and passion that compels us to get up each day, to sing, to dance, to pray, and to work?

This is our practice this week. Invoke the assistance of the Divine and the Ancestors. Aspire with all your heart to know “the purpose that [divine] wisdom chooses.” (paraphrased from the prayer Saum gifted to us by Hazrat Inayat Khan). Vigilantly open to the best possible use of every wild and precious moment of the limited time we are gifted.

And don’t forget to be thankful when you hear the answer to your prayer. This is the blessed and beautiful experience of “God” that Hazrat Inayat Khan speaks to when he says, “The time comes when the belief in God is replaced by the experience of God.”

And as a final gift to all of you, my beloveds, here is the rest of St Mary Oliver’s wild and precious poem, “The Summer Day.”

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

It seems essential to continue to examine wonder. We spend our days working to overcome despair and fear. We take time to meditate, be in nature, and hold our beloveds. Maybe, as we spoke of in another blog post, we even take time to weep and wail.

But Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan notes, “Concentration and contemplation are great things, but no contemplation is greater than the life we have about us every day.”

In the end, no matter how well we manage to hold our balance, ground ourselves, and be there for each other, we can become identified with all of that work and practice and forget to be amazed by the life all around us.

Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . to get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

I can imagine holding that wild wonder and that radical amazement and how that would change how I walk through the world.

Like the child in the picture above, all I behold blows my mind! Walking in the rain today, the incredible art of the drops of water hitting puddles on the concrete. The mist wrapping all the sharp edges in its soft blanket. The metallic smell of the damp air in my nostrils. Umbrellas with smiling humans beneath them brush against each other intimately. The silver gray of the Salish Sea melds nearly seamlessly into the darker textured gray of the overcast. Every single drop, every unique scent, every inadvertent brush, every shade of color or lack thereof is totally and forever amazing.

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
― Mary Oliver

There it is. St Mary captures everything I’m trying to relate in three short instructions.

So, there’s your work for this week (and beyond). In radical wild wonder, pay attention, be astonished, and tell us all about it.

In her most recent book, Ordinary Mysticism, Mirabai Starr speaks to the ways we can all notice and live our lives as mystics in these times.

In a prayer from Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Kahn, we notice, “Thy light is in all forms, thy love in all beings.”

It takes only the sense that no matter where you are or what you are experiencing, you are in the presence of the Oneness that unifies all of us to be a mystic. If you aspire to spend each moment in wonder at and gratitude for everything you come into contact with, even the challenging and frightening things. You will experience life as a mystic.

“The sacred is always brimming from the heart of everything. If what it means to be a mystic is to walk through this world looking through the eyes of love, then anything and everything that we do with the intention and attention on the sacred, including our most difficult experiences, counts and belongs.”
—Mirabai Starr

“Public mystics are leaders who embody the ineffable while attending to the ordinary, those who host the transcendent, the mystical, and the mundane while engaged in pragmatic justice-seeking acts.”
—Barbara Holmes

As a practice, sit quietly and notice your breath. Send your roots down into the mycelial network and notice your connection to every being. Then stand and (if you’re not already outside) walk in nature, or if you’re in a city, walk noticing nature. And experience every being, sound, feeling, smell, or face as the manifestation of the Divine Oneness. Notice the wind on your skin, the scent of the forest or city street, and the sounds of birds, humans, and pets. Thank them all, and hold them in your heart with love, appreciation, and light.

This is the actual state of things. Our self-protective filters tend to distract us and help us forget this reality. In fact, no one, no matter how confused or cruel, doesn’t have this part of the Divine inside them somewhere.

By acknowledging, practicing, and spreading this reality, you become a light that reminds everyone, “Thy light is in ALL forms, thy love in ALL beings…”

Thank you.

This week, compelling writing and counsel have inspired me to consider deeply how we work with our sense of anger, despair, futility, and suffering in these extremely challenging times.

As we witness the imminent and ongoing compromise of our living planet and its beings, both human and more than human; as we watch our democracy purposely thrown into chaos by greed and fear; as we fear for the safety of those most vulnerable, the well of grief and fear cannot help but grow and crush on our ability to stay present and grounded.

We all know the need to acknowledge and be with our grieving. This poem from David Whyte says it well:

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The well of grief

Those who will not slip beneath
    the still surface on the well of grief,

turning down through its black water
    to the place we cannot breathe,

will never know the source from which we drink,
    the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering,
    the small round coins,
          thrown by those who wished for something else.

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I know that even with all the tools I have to practice surrender, acceptance, and presence, even with the underlying knowledge that the Divine Oneness is always there, even with knowing that the grace of love, compassion, and caring has never and will never dissipate… that deep, dark well of grief can be overwhelming and exhausting.

My dear friend Kathleen wrote about anger in her recent blog, I Lean Liminal. It was a good reminder that even though many of us have been traumatized into pushing that emotion away, it doesn’t ever really go away. Like the grief and despair we feel, anger must be acknowledged and processed to direct it toward more positive actions.

This week, in a spiritual companionship session, we discussed how a well of despair can become a dark, almost solid weight on our souls. It often manifests as a painful tightness throughout my body.

My dear friend and spiritual guide noticed that we take time for our meditation practice, our work or social justice actions, exercise, and time with our beloveds. But when do we actually dedicate time to simply allowing ourselves to weep, scream, pound the pillows, or express our pain in any committed way?

In that session, we tested this idea of micro-dosing despair. It was a profound release of tears, moans, shouts, curses, and halting breaths. Ultimately, I felt like every cell in my body had been opened, split apart, and cleansed, becoming a more brilliant light.

But there were some important learnings.

• Don’t do this alone – have a trusted and capable friend or loved one to hold presence. They don’t have to say or fix anything; their simple presence might be enough. Or, if necessary, they might support you physically or with words of comfort if it becomes too intense. This could be a virtual companion, but better a three dimensional warm body.
• Put boundaries around this practice – ensure you are in a safe place and that someone will keep you safe from self-harm, interruption, or simply going too deep into the intensity of your grief.
• Have time boundaries as well. This is micro-dosing, so five or ten minutes might be all you need.
• Make time for this regularly. It is not intended as a cure-all. If we are paying attention, those atrocities and sorrows will invade our hearts again. Keep doing all your other practices to stay present, grounded, and guided to the work that needs doing. But, if this resonates for you – micro-dose your despair as a cleansing practice as often as necessary and appropriate.

As Kathleen notes about anger – noticing, accepting, and surrendering to these emotions is vital to self-care. We must include robust, sustainable, and formidable tools if we hope to survive and remain resilient and effective in resisting these dark powers.

This is hard, my dear ones. But there have been and are even more challenging times. Together, we can and will make it through. May it be so.