“I’ve got the baby here,” Imogene barked at the Wise Men. “Don touch him! I named him Jesus.” ? Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

It has happened once again. For those who find a home of one ilk or another in the Christian household, a certain experience that comes around is the inevitability of the yearly Christmas pageant. Today, in the faith community in which I have planted myself marked that day when the children and youth gather in various costumes and characters to tell the ancient story of the birth of Jesus. Depending on who is doing the telling, the various characters can be decked out in costumes simple and ordinary…think a bathrobe and a dishtowel for a head piece…to more lush and lovely gowns of blue(Mary) and white(angels)…and of course wings. Throw in a crown or two or three and Magi can be imagined traveling from the East. Yet the costumes are insignificant in many ways to the actual telling of the story. 

Those who have spent any time in Sunday School can tell you who the players are and what those players are meant to do, meant to be. It may appear that the lead characters…Mary, Joseph, the Baby Jesus…are all that is important. But tell that to those playing shepherds, angels, the innkeeper, the Wise Ones. They know that without them the story cannot be fully told. Which is the true joy of telling this story over every year. Those who once played a shepherd may in a couple of years grow into portraying Joesph or Mary. Someone who wore the ears and tail of a sheep may graduate to be an astronomer following a bright star.

Every year as I watch this pageant unfolding I am struck with the fact that we never, year to year, hear this story in the same way. Each year we carry with us our very lives and all that the world has dished up for us. While one year we may hear the telling of Mary’s being told by an angel that she is going to have a child with a certain innocent detachment. And yet if a baby has been recently born or is coming into a family, we see, we hear Mary’s story with different ears. We sense her vulnerability, her fear, her overwhelming joy and anticipation. We can embrace a greater empathy for dear Joseph and his confusion and deep sense of responsibility at the surprise of this child.

In Jan Richardson’s Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas she writes: “Any story can be told innumerable ways, not simply according to who does the telling but to where that person is on the journey. As my life unfolds and my perspective changes, I realize that each telling of a story reveals part of the whole, but does not contain the whole story in itself. The stories I tell are continually shaped by my changing understanding of events, conversations, feelings, influences, the people around me, and my own self.”

This year as I am present to this story, one of the anchors that holds the larger faith story I’ve hitched my heart to, I cannot encounter it or hold it without thinking of the scenes that happen after the Star bathed image in a humble stable…how the Wise Ones were warned to go home by a different way as they feared the tyrant king Herod. And how in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ parents are told in a dream to flee with their child because this same king was searching for them and would kill the baby. What fear must have gripped them. How they must have known they would do anything, anything, in their power to get him to safety. 

This year I am reminded again that this story told through the innocence of children’s voices is both ancient and new, is being lived out by so many in our world. A story filled with hope of birth, miracle and wonder, joy and promise. And also fear of those who would do even the smallest and weakest harm. Fear that sends people into hiding and fleeing for safety.

It is an ancient story. It is a present story. May we see it with new eyes once again.

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness…

These are candle lighting days and nights. Darkness comes in late afternoon and lingers till the coffee is cold and the breakfast consumed. It is Advent and each Sunday we light one more candle to affirm that, though the people may walk in darkness, a light is emerging. It is balm on these now cold, snow covered times.

Recently at a women’s retreat I attended, one young mother told of how her family lights a candle at night and does bedtime stories in the light of candles. I have thought of that often over these last days. The warmth and ritual of it. The beauty of light streaming on the faces of mother and child. (I mean, doesn’t everyone look lovely in candlelight?) Surely this is something this wee one will carry within for a very long time…may even repeat when they have children of their own. 

Every morning while the coffee is brewing I light a candle to begin my morning. Its light means much…the day is beginning…the darkness will recede…the Spirit of All Light is present…a connection with ancestors who gathered around fire…a recognition of the beauty and power of that fire. And so, the morning begins. Whatever happens that day it began in the flicker of hopeful light.

In Advent waiting we are reminded of the longing that rests at our very core. We retell the story of a world filled with injustice and those who traveled to be named, to be counted, to give birth in humility and peace surrounded by strangers who offered sanctuary. It doesn’t take long for the realization that this story is still played out, is being played out, in our world, in our country, in our city, in our neighborhoods. The waiting and longing still stir and our hearts are still hungry. 

And so we light a candle…or many candles…to remind us that one light added to another, as the Advent candles teach, bring greater light and lead us toward some better, brighter place of hope and wholeness, a place where love leads the way. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” spoke Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In the Twin Cities area, I am witnessing human candles standing up and shedding light on the dark path that been shed over our Somali neighbors and others who are being targeted by hate and injustice. With voice and body and action, people are saying “A Light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.” 

The Advent waiting continues. The expectation quivers within. The hope remains bathed in the light of each of our candles…those with wicks and hands and feet and hearts hungry for a time when Love leads the way.

Like many people I have been watching The American Revolution created by Ken Burns on public television. His work always stuns me with his creativity and deep-dive history all laced together with heart. This depiction of how our country formed is more layered than anything we ever learned in the history classes of our schools. The inclusion of all the people who walked the Earth and helped give birth to our nation is eye opening and carries a sadness of what has been omitted in the past tellings.  There is so much to unpack about that. But what grabs me about this sweeping swim into the history of how our nation was born was something Burns said to Stephen Colbert in an interview. He remarked that it is important, especially at times like we are living right now, to remember our origin story. 

Our origin story. Where did we come from? What shaped us? Why did we challenge and fight for some values and not others? How did that give rise to how we see the world, ourselves, our past, present and future?

Eighteen years ago, I began this blog at the beginning of the season of Advent. Advent…those days and weeks leading up to the celebration of Christmas. I began it for all sorts of reasons. But one of those reasons is that this season in the Christian household holds a special place in my origin story. And over the years that season has evolved as I have evolved shedding some things and grasping onto others that now live deep in my spirit. Origin stories are like that…they light the fire and then see where that flame will grow or sputter out. The Advent light comes in the darkest of days for those of us in the northern hemisphere and brings with it waiting, anticipation, resting, hope. It offers a counter-cultural gift. In the midst of what is held out by advertising and consumerism, Advent says, “Hold on a minute. Quiet down. Be present.Something is being born.” There are such lessons in that. 

At the beginning of some Advent season, I wrote the following poem:

The days grow dark.
The nights grow darker.
Yet the Promise sets our feet once again 
on the cusp of a new year.

Calling through the ages,
stirring up the dust of all the unjust acts
that have scattered helter skelter around us,
swaying our spirits, threatening to break our fragile lives.

From the shadows, a gentle Breath pushes our eyes heavenward.
Sun, Moon, twinkling Stars tell of a  steadfast beauty.
Earth, seas, and running waves hold us in cosmic tether
to the Ground of All Being.

Ever-evolving One, awaken us to the New Creation
that is always present
lovingly inviting us to birth 
like the rising, brilliant freshness of the day.

Again
and again
and again.

With Advent as a part of the origin story that is woven within, I am clinging to the promise of what light might be fanned into flame. In my heart. In my life. In our country. In our world.

She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.

I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.

If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,

I hope I am greeted 
with the same kind
of mercy.
~Rudy Francisco

Mercy. I have been thinking about mercy over the last days. Perhaps it started when I began to notice that the preacher at the church I attend had used the word multiple times in her sermon on a recent Sunday morning. Mercy. It is a word that doesn’t come up in daily conversation much. Those of us who have hung around churches for a good part of our lives have heard it read, maybe even memorized phrases that contain this five letter word that calls for ‘a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion.’ That is, according to Merriam-Webster.  Many of us were encouraged to memorize from the Hebrew scriptures, Psalm 23, which ends with: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” Or from what is known as the Beatitudes, some of the most beautiful phrases ever spoken: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” The texts we name as sacred have the word mercy peppered throughout its many pages. 

Yet, we don’t say it very often these days. Oh, I can still remember my Mother’s voice from another room saying, “Mercy me!” It was mostly used as a sigh of exasperation or frustration. Something had not gone quite as planned. So a call for mercy was issued. You probably have to be of a certain generation or from a particular part of the country to hear something like this today. 

Coming across this poem by Rudy Francisco titled simply, ‘Mercy’, I began to feel an even deeper desire for mercy for not only that spider but all the people…men, women, children, especially the children, whose lives may be caught in ‘the wrong place at the wrong time’ these days. And it has become more and more difficult for many to know what those places, what that time is. Every day we see more and more of our fellow humans being taken to places that strike fear and uncertainty, all while they are mostly just ‘being alive, not bothering anyone.’ Mercy. I wonder for them: Where is mercy to be found? I wonder for us all: How can we offer mercy in the face of all this?

In those familiar words of Psalm 23, words often known by people who do not consider themselves ‘church people’, the writer paints a pastoral picture of a shepherd tending a flock of sheep. These sheep rest in a field that is green, a stream of water running through it. Beautiful. Gentle. The writer urges against fear and evil with an image of being held and cared for, fed from a table extended for all. Comfort. Belonging. And then offers that reminder that surely…surely…mercy will follow… Oh, how I pray for this kind of comfort and beauty, this kind of gentleness and compassion for all these people caught in what seems impossible situations.

Most of us cannot imagine that we would ever see the kinds of acts happening in our country, in our world, that we are seeing now on a daily basis.  We had always thought we were better than this. And I truly believe we are. We were born to hold out mercy to one another…blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. We were doused with the blessing of ‘mercy and goodness’ following us all our days. And so we are called to reach for the most peaceful weapons we can find…a cup, a napkin, a kind word, a phone call, a letter written, a sign held in protest, voices raised and feet planted in resistance, prayer upon prayer lifted as we breathe together “Mercy…mercy…mercy…”

Consider the tulip,
how long ago
someone’s hands planted a bulb
and gave to this place
a living scrap of beauty,
how it rises every spring
out of the same soil,which is, of course,
not at all the same soil,
but new.

Consider the six red petals,
the yellow at the center,
the soft green rubber of the stem,
how it bows to the world.
How, the longer you set beside the tulip,
the more you want to bow, too.

It is this way with kindness:
someone plants in someone else
a bit of beauty-
a kind word, perhaps, or a touch,
the gift of their time or their smile.
And years later, in that inner soil,
that beauty emerges again,
pushing aside the dead leaves,
insisting on loveliness,
celebration of the one who planted it,
the one who perceives it, and
the fertile place where it has grown.

~Rosemary Wahtola Trimmer

So many interactions we have every day come to us through no effort of our own. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. In our individualistic culture it is easy to forget that we are intricately connected to a whole web of unseen, unknown actors who make our lives move and flow. Right now I am sitting at my car dealership while people who know ‘stuff’ are servicing my car, something I know nothing about and cannot do on my own. Every time I enjoy a meal at a restaurant, I may have a human encounter with my server but the people who actually cook and plate my food with an attention to ingredients and visual appeal are behind the scenes. I know nothing of their lives. They know nothing of mine. Yet, in the work they do we are connected through their skill, their labor. This truth is repeated over and over again in all the moments and days of living. Those highway workers who are repaving a road in the hot, humid weather. The people working now to restore power to those homes affected by outages from a recent storm. Once you begin to think about all the various lives that make our lives more livable, it becomes a tsunami of shadows. So many. So many.

I have been thinking about this so much not because of people necessarily. I have been thinking about it because of my garden. While the tulips that are mentioned in the poem above are long gone, other miraculous blooms have taken their place. Mostly, I did nothing to bring about their beauty. While I was likely complaining about the cold a few moths ago, these plants have been silently waiting to spring back to life once again. Bee balm. Phlox. Joe Pie Weed. Hostas. Waiting underground to dazzle me with beauty and connection to something I had very little do with. This connection with, not only the unseen people that grace my life, but with Creation itself always stops me in my tracks. As I watch the various bees…pollinators all…busily drinking nectar to carry on to other plants feeding, perhaps the food I will eat, grown by a farmer who is invisible to me helps me to feel a part of the vastness of the Universe. All the while I am stunned by color and fragrance and breathtaking beauty. 

And of all the many things I did not do, there is the sunflower. Back again this summer growing to a little over eight feet now, it waves its leaves and blossoms outside my kitchen window sometimes startling me. Is someone looking in my window? Oh, no. It is simply this brilliant yellow gift from an unknown, unseen spirit. I planted no seeds yet there it is. The honeybees have been visiting it and now the goldfinches devouring its seeds, singing mightily a song of joy at finding a gift so beautiful, so welcoming. If I could sing as sweetly, I would.

It is so easy for me to walk through my days single-focused on all the things I need to do, must accomplish. Some of them are within my ability. But most of the wheels that keep my life moving are spinning through nothing I did or have the ability to do. So I must do as the poet says the tulip does. I must bow to the world. And then bow again…and again…and again.

My Mother’s voice echoes in my head and my heart: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” She said this to me many times over my growing up years. When I was ranting about a teacher who I felt was unfair. When a friend perhaps was not seeing things the way I did. When there was a situation that caused me to wear my self-righteousness like a cloak. All these years, these words are still imprinted in some deep place within me.

Which is why I have had difficulty coming to these pages and why I can find myself biting my tongue or just feeling exhausted is certain conversations. The state of the world and what is happening in our country offends, insults, assaults, angers and leaves me with an ability to say anything ‘nice.’ I have found I don’t trust myself to be the voice of civility that I long to be and about which I would want to rail against so many others. 

In saying all this, I want to be clear that I think there are definitely times to say things that are not too ‘nice.’ There are times when it is important to stand up against a bully, against unkindness, against injustice. My Mother’s words, I believe, were meant to cause me to pause and be reflective as to what might be the wisest choice of words. I simply find those difficult to give birth to these days.

But then I realized that it is April, a month designated as National Poetry Month. Poetry. Over the years I have come to believe that poetry is a healing balm, that its sparseness has the ability to cut through all the rhetoric and pompous speech that can slash the soul. While the words, the ‘nice’ words that are more difficult to conjure may be living in some dark corner of my spirit, the poets will almost always come through. 

So, here is a poem by James Crews from a lovely little book entitled The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy.

Some days it feels like a foreign language
I’m asked to practice, with new words
for happiness, work, and love. I’m still learning
how to say:a cup of tea for no reason,
what to call the extra honey I drizzle in,
how to label the relentless urge to do more
and more as useless.And how to translate
the heart’s pounding message when it comes:
enough, enough. This morning, I search for words
to capture the glimmering sun as it lifts
above the mountains, clouds already closing in
as fat droplets of rain darken the deck.
I’m learning to call this stillness self-care too,
just standing here, as goldfinches scatter up
from around the feeder like broken pieces
of bright yellow stained-glass, reassembling
in the sheltering arms of a maple.

If your heart is also crying ‘enough, enough,’ perhaps turning to poetry might be the antidote you have longed for. There are no goldfinches at the feeder yet but gazing on the color yellow might also do the trick. In the meantime, Happy Poetry Month!

For the last several years, on or about February 1st, I have engaged in a ritual that holds me throughout the unfolding weeks. February 1st is the first day of spring in the Celtic calendar and on this day I bring out several vases and some colored stones, filling the various containers with the stones and paper white bulbs. I then place them in a window and fill them with water and begin to watch as the shoots emerge. The temperatures outside may be frigid and the ground may be covered deep in snow but inside…inside…a growing has begun. I probably have recognized this act as the ritual it is in other years but this February it really came to rest in me in a new, deeper way. There is much in the world over which I have no control, much that, frankly, breaks my heart. But in the coming together of container, color, water and the promise of growth I saw a truth that breaks through.

We all have rituals simple and ordinary. The morning cup of coffee for instance. I have a friend whose act of making her morning cup is pure ritual, one she carries with her from her home to wherever she travels. The coffee grounds, the pot, the water, the fire to boil, the cup that will receive it. Each step taken with precision and a certain attention that is somewhat sacred. As I observe, it seems to me that the action of making the coffee is nearly as important, nearly as enjoyable, as the actual drinking.

And then there are the rituals we have around holidays. Birthdays, Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, all hold certain acts we do over and over sometimes without thinking…unless we leave out a step. Then flags go up! Often it is the children in our families who call us task. And we realize the importance of these movements, these actions that go deeper than we know in our conscious mind and how we have implanted them in the next generation.

Creating my little February altar of bulbs caused me to think about the importance of ritual in our lives. What do rituals actually do for us, to us? I think of the rituals of our religious traditions. Candle lighting. Memorized prayers. Familiar scriptures spoken in certain settings. Kneeling. Sitting in silence with one another. Lifting our voices in song. They all remind us of the long line of ancient ones who have done the same things, said the same words. It connects us to not only what we name as holy but all those who did something similar. It grounds us and reminds us of our connections. Every time I recite Psalm 23 I am reminded of the thousands of years, the thousands of people who have said these same words. Their meaning may be as different as the lives of those who are speaking yet there is that invisible line of connection that holds fast. 

The poet Mary Oliver had a morning ritual which led to so many of the beautiful, inspiring poems we treasure now. She walked. With a notebook and pen in her hand, paying attention. Which is another thing ritual helps us to do…pay attention. 

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.

The bulbs have now begun the important work of reaching up toward the light. They have also done the equally important work of reaching down, taking root, grounding themselves among water and stone. Reaching to earth and toward heaven. It is a ritual that brings life, one that allows me to rest in the ‘beautiful lessons’. In this fractured world, ‘who knows what will finally happen or where we will be sent.’ 

Yet there is something in this yearly ritual that has me ‘slowly learning’.

“Tantrum…and uncontrolled outburst of anger and frustration, typically in a young child.”
Webster’s Dictionary

Earlier in the week I was at a meeting at church. The church building also houses a day care center. Wafting up the stairway and down the hall into the room where I was, was the sound of a child having a tantrum. And it was a doozy! While I couldn’t see the child, I could imagine their face, pulsing red with tears streaming down their face. From someplace in my memory, I could see the contorted little body fighting against some inward emotion that was filling them with raw emotion and finding form in the world. The sound was like a wave…rising and falling with renewed energy and force that subsided for a moment but rebuilt with some push that came from somewhere deep inside them. No words were understandable except one…’home.’ Having dropped two toddlers off at preschool and seeing the meltdown that could sometimes happen, I heard the overwhelming desire of this little one. Home.

As I thought back about that experience I began to think that it seems to me that our country is engaged in a kind of tantrum right now. There is a rollercoaster of outbursts that keep us all on edge.  As we watch the fallout of what happens when revenge drives action, when bullies are given more power than is wise, there is a trigger response that wants to click. The potential to engage in tantrum behavior is tempting. Yet, any parent or teacher who has ever tried to counteract a tantrum with their own ‘uncontrolled anger and frustration’ knows that this never ends well. 

Instead, the adult who is witness to a child’s tantrum knows the best thing to do is remain calm. Most of the time the tantrum is caused by hunger, being tired, feeling ignored, wanting something that is not possible at the moment, frustrated to be without language for their deep feelings. In these cases, a snack, a place to rest, a patient, caring presence, a quiet, metered explanation can go a long way. It is not easy. it is often not pretty. But no tantrum lasts forever. 

The distraught child I heard kept saying, ‘home’. Clearly they wanted to be someplace that was not where they were. Home. In Meg Wheatley’s book So Far from Home she writes:

“As we let our hearts be tenderized by this sorrow-filled world, we discover that joy and sadness are one, that we can’t always distinguish between the two. Perhaps you have had this experience, of feeling tender and overwhelmed, heart wide-open, vulnerable, overcome by tears of joy that also felt like sadness. In these moments of deep emotion, it doesn’t matter that we can’t define the feeling in simple words. We are inside the heart of a profound human experience very different from every day emotions…opening to the world as it is, not flinching from what we see, keeping our eyes and hearts open-this is true warrior’s work. And what we see will always break our heart.”

The child I heard, for whatever reason, had a broken heart at that moment. Their response was a tantrum and a cry for home. This broken-heartedness is an experience many are sharing right now yet pitting tantrum against tantrum is never the best path. Perhaps we would be wise to practice what any mature caregiver knows to do. Take time for a snack, rest often, find a quiet place, listen deeply to those around, be patient, be caring, show compassion. In this we may just help someone find ‘home’ and we might find it ourselves. As the teacher Ram Dass has said: “We’re all just walking each other home.”

“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.