Tag: hope

When Humans Are Just Too Awful For Words

It is not that I don’t think about evil—
I do.  Often.

It is more that I will not let it have the last word.

Horrible things happen
in every part of this world
every day, and
if I allowed myself to feel all the pain there is
I would be paralyzed
and that would do no one
any good
at all.

So I choose a different way.

I know I cannot solve everything—
save the children from sexual slavery
get clean water to every person
remove all the plastic from the oceans
and somehow get rid of this strutting emperor
who dismisses reports of his nakedness
as fake news
while inciting acts so heinous
that we will be ashamed for generations to come—
and it is not that I do not feel angry.

It is more that
I prefer to think about the way,
every spring, even in dry years,
the bright poppies bloom
on the green hills
under the blue sky,
and the shore birds fly up
in vast murmurations,
flashing first white and then gray
and then silver
in the shafts of sunlight
that pierce the soft spring clouds.

It is more that
I prefer to think about the way
the children are rising up in the streets
to remind their elders of their proper work
which is not to sit and wring our hands
and feel helpless,
but to act
and to create
new ways of doing everything.

Life is more powerful than evil
and we are part of it
and must act on our own behalf.

“No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless,”
said Dorothy Day,
“There is too much work to do.”

Think of how much work it is
and how hard
for a baby bird to hatch from an egg;

Think of how much work it is
and how hard
for a tree to grow through a boulder;

And yet they do it all the time.

If the flowers can bloom
and the children can rise up

If the birds can hatch and then they can fly
and if trees can grow through stone

then, certainly—
certainly!—
we have the strength
to overcome evil.
To outgrow it,
to create something different
and more interesting.

Let us hatch
and let us fly
and let us grow
and let us bloom
and together let us
create something beautiful
and new.

 

 

 

 

Let It Shine

Sometimes despair creeps in during the night and I wake to a world from which all hope and possibility have vanished.  It feels as if the sky is roiling with clouds that blot out all light.  At those times I long to pray to the God of my childhood, that omnipotent deity who could make everything better if only He chose, if only enough of us prayed hard enough to move His heart.  I long to say, “Dear God in Heaven, help us.  Won’t you help us, please, our world is coming apart.  The people in power have something wrong with them and they are destroying everything.”

I long for a ray of light to suddenly come down through the clouds in response, moving across the face of the earth and healing and repairing everything it touches: the burned hills, the war zones, the polluted waters, the dying animals, the shriveled hearts of the people who have brought us to this pass, the broken hearts and bodies of the people whom they have harmed.  In its wake the light would leave green meadows and trees and whole mountains, clear rushing streams and lakes and rivers, plentiful singing whales and smiling turtles and giraffes and polar bears, laughing children with their loving parents, leaders of all genders who nurture and protect life, humans of all shapes and sizes and colors dancing together and singing.

Oh, how I long for this with every fiber of my being.  Yet the only way such repair can occur is if we ourselves take charge of it.  We are the ones whose hearts must be moved.  We ourselves must be God’s hands; we ourselves must beam God’s light out into the world to heal it.

This is a lot to ask of people who are weary and sad and afraid.  It is a lot to ask of people who can see how very many things are wrong and how very little each one of us can do.

But we are not alone, because God is not somewhere far away.  God is not an omnipotent being who is separate from us. God is the force of life that moves in and through us and in all beings, which we feel in our hearts as love, and which calls us, always, toward healing.

The force of life is so powerful that a tiny seed can sprout into a shoot that grows right through pavement and becomes a plant that breaks the pavement as if it were nothing at all. Love is so powerful that it can survive anything, even death.  All we need do is align ourselves with life and with love.  All we need do is let God move in us and through us, and God’s light will shine from us, and we will indeed heal the world.

I Could Do No Less

Decades from now
when they ask how I survived
and where I got the strength
to help overthrow the regime,
I will say:

I walked among the poppies
on the hillsides above the river
in the company of lupines and redbuds
and butterflies that sipped from lilies.

I looked at new oak leaves showing tender green
against the passionate blue of the sky
and I listened to birdsong in the morning
and frogsong at night.

I noticed pairs of lizards
chasing each other
up and down tree trunks,
squirrels leaping wildly about
like kittens,
and a pair of hummingbirds
rising up together
in their mating flight.

And I then I walked with a toddler
who squatted in fascination
at the edge of a puddle.
She found a stick close at hand
and picked it up and poked it
into the water
then watched, enthralled,
as ripples moved outward
from the point of contact.

Then she vigorously stirred
the water into mud
and threw various items in
to see what would happen:
a pine cone, a stick, a leaf, a rock—

and finally,
her whole self.

And I could do no less.

Gathered Here In One Strong Body

If you notice one thing, notice this:
they are not alone.

They stand surrounded by their friends.
Their hands are intertwined.
Their arms are around one another.
They are crowded together,
all different kinds:
some girls and some boys
and some who are in between
and some who are none of the above
and they stand body to body.

When one speaks,
the others stay close.
They hold each other up.
They are all together.
They have gathered here
and they are strong
and they are bringing change
and this is how God moves
in this world.

(Photo from JustJared)

To Do What is Needed

Great Spirit of Life:

My heart is sore today, and I am lonely.
For lo, these many years I have been failing you.

This blue-green ball
that you have given us to live on,
Your sacred body,
this miracle of interwoven cycles
of water, air, earth, fire,
is heating up.

One by one we are killing our relatives:
tigers, grizzlies, elephants, oaks, otters,
whales, salmon, grasses, butterflies,
gorillas, orchids, lorikeets.

Thousand by thousand we are killing ourselves:
women and children first.

My voice is small
a whisper lost in the wind
Those who hear it laugh at me
and tell me how impractical I am
to want to find a way to live here
in love.

But please,
please:
help me not give up.
Help me receive Your gifts
and use them to save us all.

Grant me the presence of a mountain
implacable and unarguable
Grant me hope that grows like tiny tendrils of grass
after just one rain
Let me be rooted deeply and reach high, like the pine tree
flexible enough to weather the storm
Let me be as persistent as water
wearing away resistance one molecule at a time
Let me be as fierce as a grizzly bear
that I might protect all of the earth’s young
Grant me the endurance of the salmon,
the instinct to keep swimming upstream.
Grant me the vision of the hawk,
that I might see what to do next
Let me keep the wonder of a tiny child
and the joy of a baby’s belly laugh

Great Spirit,
the Web of Life is torn.
I place myself in your hands,
that you might use me to mend it.
Keep my heart full of the love that will sustain me
that I might find a way to sustain You.

Thank you for all you have given me.

Blessed Be
Amen

Prayer for Hope and Dread

Spirit of life, you who body forth
as this starry universe
and our shimmering blue-green planet:

Now at last the sun has come out
and the sky is a glorious clear blue
and the oak leaves
are such a tender new green
that it seems all the world
is poised in hope!

Fresh north winds blow
and the pines sing
and the hummingbirds
return to the feeders.

And yet the news each day
is filled with such terrible things
that dread rises like a tide in our hearts.
Some of us can’t help but wonder
how long this world can last.

Spirit of life, immense ocean of love,
help us give ourselves over to you.
Help us know that in all of our
fear and anger and grief,
we are held.
In all of our amazement and joy and wonder,
we are held.
In all of the changes that are coming our way,
we are ever safely held
in love.

Blessed be.

 

A Break in the Clouds

For weeks the rain has been falling
and the wind has been blowing
and everything has been coming apart.

We humans think we’re so smart:
we build roads along steep canyons,
houses in floodplains,
levees to hold rivers in place.

Then comes a winter like this one
and it

all

washes

away.

 

But yesterday, there were:

a break in the clouds
a frog outside the window
and buds on the dogwood on the slope.