On the morning after the election of Donald Trump to presidency in the United States I experienced my world as if in stunned silence. Everything appeared to be in the kind of stillness that one finds in the forest when a predator is in the area...a silence prevails that is chilling and unwieldy for the conscious mind. Since then in the last week I have been stirred and touched and inspired and concerned for all the voices that are now making themselves heard in our midst. I hear the depth of emotion that is pervading our world. I can feel the field we live in is fraught with fear and defeat and despair..I hear voices that want to give up and give over and throw in the towel. AND I also hear voices of great wisdom and burgeoning leadership and new and courageous vision…louder now than ever! And in places where people once held their tongues in regards to politics and even emotion, now truths are being shared…personal truths that inspire and give food for thought. I am offered hope by how many people are waking up now to our dilemma globally, and I sit strangely now in a place of calm and hope.
It is an extremely edgy moment in history. Things seem destined to slide into a disastrous swamp of inequity, but perhaps there is a possibility that it could go either way. I tend to lean into the wisdom that is coming forth from the many underdogs, and amazingly the once dismissed voices for love and respect, now are being heard. We are on the skinny branches..danger lies below, but one might consider that perhaps…just maybe, we are being given an opening for a collective transformational journey of sorts. A journey from which we can take flight and rise again as a nation.
But this takes time and an inordinate amount of courage.
I have always felt the unsettling, dismantling power of fear…and what I know is that my biggest fear is fear itself…it is contagious and insidious and a force that can imprison us. But if we remember that courage has everything to do with heart, we can indeed choose love over fear and work together towards change. Just because Hillary did not win the presidency does NOT mean that we cannot still be stronger together.
We Are!!!
Again and again the wisdom of Joanna Macy, a wise elder in our midst, comes to me. She has suggested that it is NOT during times of “business as usual” that we will make great change, but the “great turning” will happen when things get really bad…when the world begins to break apart…when it’s bad enough that people pay attention and demand change.
People are paying attention now!
We must find our way to attend to what is here now, unfolding before our very eyes.
We MUST do what we can, whether it is to do our very personal inner work, our peace making in our families and communities or in taking strong, peaceful and rational stands in the political realms. We must grow up now and be adults in a world that insists we mature even if our leaders are not.
It is not a time to bring our anger and hatred forward towards others, or to drown in the incapacitation of their waters… for then we are no better a force for good than Mr. Trump himself. Yes, feel the feelings, but do not allow them to steal your goodness or strangle your actions. We MUST bring our love, our kindness, our wisdom, our perspective forward and we MUST reach out to one another, (as scary as it can be) and listen deeply to what is driving the world towards such insanity. In all my years of guiding, what I see is that we are all so very vulnerably human, no matter where we stand in the world. We all have wounds and we all have love and we all care and we all want to care for our people, and be cared for in return. Sometimes these things are covered over by pain or are masked by layers and layers of subtle or extreme fears and lack of confidence, but they exist and each of us can relate to them.
Let us be a force of sanity and kindness now in a world that is going a bit mad.
Can we turn toward, not away from?
Can we sustain our vision when hatred is thrown at us?
Can we trust that there is a bigger story unfolding in front of us that needs us to participate thoughtfully?
Can we each trust that when we bring our greatest super powers to the fore in favor of Earth and humanity’s innate goodness, that we all win, AND our powers grow and are unified with a force far stronger than us alone?
In the past I would not have chosen to write about politics but this is no longer simple politics, as in something I or any of us can separate ourselves from and claim not to be a part of. This is our life…this is about our home planet and all its residents…this is about living in a just and sane and caring world and it affects every single one of us. So I am here writing what is in my heart and asking each of you to consider BEING A STAND FOR LOVE IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW…
You matter.
You can make change.
Let your heart lead.
A chilling breeze is seeping in and the leaves are falling towards earth…
laying a blanket for a fertile future.
By Rainer Maria Rilke
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers' sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
--Translated by Robert Bly