“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” 
? Michelle Obama, Becoming

It is my first memory. Me. Hanging upside down from the limb of a tree in my grandparent’s backyard. This is how I would answer that question, the one that sometimes is posed in a getting-to-know-you setting or a meeting or retreat. I am never really sure about these ‘first memories’, whether they are true or fueled by a photo pressed at the back of an album or family story told over a dinner table. But, if asked the question, this is how I would answer. 

I love this memory for many reasons. I was not a real tree-climber. In fact, I am quite sure my very cautious parents would have discouraged a girl, their girl, climbing a tree. This memory also is complete with me doing this in a skirt…in a time before leggings were a thing…and would not have been considered ‘lady-like’ as my skirt slipped more toward my head than my knees. But most of all what accompanies this memory is the power and strength I felt. There was something wild and dangerous about hanging upside down from the limb of that tree on a warm summer day. It is freedom and a certain experience of power that surrounds this image in a kind of deep breath aura. 

Over the last days I have thought about this memory so many times as I have watched the acts being taken by our new President and those who surround him. Why? Because so many of the people who are being lifted up to leadership are also people who have threatened and demeaned women…women who were once young girls. As these people are being given power and authority to alter the lives of so many vulnerable people, the example they exhibit becomes norm. Young girls will now be confronted openly by the very people their parents warned them against, people they were cautioned about. What will this mean to their growing?

All these thoughts were streaming through my head when I went to church this past Sunday. It was a special day in which the women of the church were in leadership and were celebrating many of the important and good works they had completed over the year. One such project included making dresses for young girls in Africa. These dresses were sewn by the women of the church so girls can have the proper clothing to attend school, to learn to read and write to find their own voices. As a group of the young girls modeled the dresses…each brightly patterned and complete with pockets for all the things a girl might need to carry…I watched them and my heart filled with joy at their spirits which were both shy and exuberant. These girls from a world away were wearing dresses soon to be worn by others who would likely look quite different in their new clothes. Yet, the sweet vulnerability of their young lives shared so much. I ached for the thought that they would be treated with anything other than respect, honor and love for who they are and their future yet to be imagined.

I am unsure what to do with all this. “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” A wiser person that me spoke these words. All I know is that within me there burns the fire of the young girl who felt her power and strength hanging upside down from the limb of a tree. And I will hold fast to that inner wisdom as I find ways to protect and shield the young girls around me from the forces that would do them harm. This is my solemn vow.

Sometimes a word just visits you and you are unsure where it came from or why. Does this ever happen to you? Over the last few days I have been visited by the word ‘endure‘. Endure. It is a strange word that keeps floating just below the surface of my mind and periodically swimming up for air inviting me to ponder. In searching for its definition I saw what could, at first glance, be conflicting meanings. The first: endure…to suffer(something painful or difficult) patiently. The second: endure…to remain in existence; to last. My brow is furrowing just writing those words. 

The presence of endure came to me at first while I was reflecting on the beauty of a frozen Minnesota lake while experiencing some mighty cold temperatures. Bone chilling, mind numbing, motor stopping cold. In the early morning, I watched as the Sun was rising creating a kind of Monet-like, foggy wash over the distant trees. It was a magical scene. As the Sun rose over the trees the fog seemed to evaporate and a long shaft of rainbow-hued light shot down over the trees. It was almost as if there were two suns rising. The rainbow hovered over the lake for some time until it was eventually outshone by the ever-brighter Sun. 

Seeing this, a message pierced my mind: “This is what endures.” I have no idea where the message came from or why. All I know is that ‘hearing’ it brought an overwhelming feeling of connection with something Greater. I felt my body ground itself, realizing the depth to which I had been holding myself in tension as I anticipated the inauguration on Monday and all that might mean. Standing and looking out at that body of water that had become solid,so solid, on which I had walked the day before as the ice crystals formed on my eyelashes, a deep sense of peace washed over me. 

This experience helped me to begin to think about all that truly does endure…all that stands throughout changing and difficult times…all that holds when the world seems to be unraveling. No matter the number of years we have walked the Earth, we have all known the experience of having change that threatens to undo us. Change brought on by loss and sorrow and injustice and uncertainty. Change from which we often think we will not survive. This is perhaps where that other definition of endure comes takes shape. We all have had times of ‘suffering’ that can only be done with patience. 

And so it is that those of us who are walking into these next weeks and months and years with a trepidation that pulls at our spirits might begin to pay attention to what ‘remains in existence’ to what ‘lasts’. Certainly the incredible beauty and strength and power of Creation gives us cues. And the relationships that lift us up and remind us that we are mostly miracle and that love and kindness always win. Being on the lookout for what endures seems to me to be an intention I can give myself to as I seek to be the best human I can be in a world that aches for our noticing. 

We are in for some difficult and terrible days, I fear. Yet all around us there are glimpses of what endures. We need only open our eyes and our hearts to do the work that needs to be done. As wise and wonderful Mary Oliver wrote:

“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”

May we be about the work of holding onto what endures with all our might. With all our broken yet beating hearts.

If I carry my father
I hope it is a little more
than color of hair
or the dimple or cheekbones
if he’s ever here in the space I inhabit
the room I walk in
the boundaries and peripheries
I hope it’s some kindness he believed in
living on in cell or bone
maybe some word or action
will float close to the surface
with my reach
some good will rise when I need it
a hard dense insoluble shard
will show up
and carry on.
~ Marjorie Saiser

It is the middle of January, 2025. I fear the year started with not much fanfare and is rolling along with some speed. The Christmas decorations are tucked away for another year. Bulb gardens are appearing in nurseries. Books received as gifts have been opened and stories are unfolding in imaginations. Children have returned to school and the winter is holding us in the way winter does.

In the midst of all this I am sitting with a word in my hand. Each year on the Sunday of Epiphany, the faith community where I find a home offers ‘star words.’ These little cards are gems that we are invited to choose with a word that might be a guide for us for the year to come. Truth be told it seems to me that the word usually chooses the person. This year my word is a doozy…’goodness.’ Walking away from the table where they were arranged and turning the card over, there it was, eight letters to ponder, question, pray, argue and wrestle with, ignore, accept. For a year.

Since that day I have kept the card front and center on my kitchen table. I have told people about my word. Some folks lift their eyebrows in wonderment.There have been scowls. I have heard things like “Wow! That’s a lot of responsibility.” One friend told me that recently she had been trying to say “Oh, my goodness!” instead of “Oh, my god.” I wondered if it might not be the same thing.

Anyway, this word, ‘goodness’, is mine now and I am trying to explore what it means. I don’t feel the responsibility of trying to be goodness in the world though I’d like to think I sometimes do. I have come to think that perhaps it is more about being awake to goodness, noticing it when it is present. This seems a good place to start for now. After all, I do have more than 340 some days to mine its other attributes.

Watching the evolving wild fires in California and the devastation that is happening every day, I have also been aware of the goodness. People helping feed, clothe, house others. Folks helping neighbors and complete strangers. Humans with few resources and those with many sharing with whomever is standing right in front of them at the moment. States and countries sending firefighters and first responders to fight the immensity of flames that seem untamable. So much goodness.

If our only lens on the world is the nightly news or what we read on social media it is easy to miss the goodness of the ordinary. Every day there are teachers walking alongside students who are struggling with reading, with life. People are holding doors and shoveling sidewalks. Healers are healing, helping. Others are visiting with the those who are ill, elderly, lonely. Someone is bringing flowers to a person they know needs a pick-me-up. Another is taking a moment to pen a quick note to a friend or relative…just because. Someone is listening, really listening. So much goodness.

Over the last few weeks I have experienced the goodness of a few people who have helped me with this website and blog. I have been trying to migrate it all from the church’s website where I first started writing to managing it myself. It has been a complicated process and along the way several people have shown up and tried to help. Finally, after many emails, texts and phone calls, a former employee solved the puzzle. He didn’t have to do this. None of those who tried did. But they gave of their time and expertise. So much goodness.

Side note: For those of you who received the Winter Solstice post this past week, this was a result of all that technology being moved and shoved around. Hopefully its arrival on the day of the Full Wolf Moon game you a chuckle.

Perhaps the goodness we carry and bring to birth in the world is placed there by some relative, an ancestor that has gone before as the poet says above. Whatever its genesis, I will be on the lookout. Today. Tomorrow. Until 2025 draws to a close. 

Which begs the question…where are you seeing ‘goodness’?