Holding Both Grief and Hope
December 5, 2024 By 12 Comments

Holding Both Grief and Hope

This column is more political than my usual offerings. I can’t talk about spirituality as if it exists in a vacuum. Many of my readers will resonate with my thoughts and feelings. Others may not. But I must do what is mine to do.

I began writing this column in September, when I woke up thinking “hope.” Feeling hope. While that may not seem surprising, it was for me. In the middle of election season, I had been living with dread and fear about the future. No matter how deep it’s pushed down or how purposely ignored, fear sucks hope right out of a person. That was me.  

What allowed me to throw fear out and embrace hope instead? The Democratic National Convention. Instead of the vengeful rhetoric espoused by some Republican candidates aimed at stirring up fear and keeping us down and apart, there was hope. There was a positive view of the future that included everyone. No hateful misinformation about the transgender community. No disparaging remarks about immigrants or calling for mass deportation. No whitewashing the part race and slavery played (and plays) in U.S. history.

When the cameras scanned the crowd, diversity was everywhere. It was celebrated by those who spoke and in what they said. It seemed possible that this country could embrace compassion and love of neighbor. It seemed possible that we could, together, move in a more positive way through the challenges and tragedies of our world. Perhaps we could believe that we are, indeed, more alike than we are different.

When I woke up on November 6, fear and anger again had replaced my hope, and dread for the future was taking over. The vision of inclusion, respect and moving forward together was replaced by one of negativity, revenge, and disrespect of “other.” The highjacking of “Christianity,” putting it into service of an approach that seems anything but Christian, continues to sweep the country. Efforts to enshrine Evangelical White Christian Nationalism as the official religion of the U.S. is grossly un-American.

I wasn’t alone in my “morning after” despair.  Many concerned with climate change heard “Drill, baby drill,” with disbelief. Many concerned with women’s rights heard “Your body, my choice,” with dismay. And basic human rights? Democratic institutions?

Struggling with all this, I listen to many wisdom voices, past and present: my faith and spiritual/wisdom teachers of many traditions; civil rights leaders; psychologists and counselors; poets; good friends. In addition to eating well and incorporating exercise into the day, here are thoughts on getting through these difficult times:

Grieve Alone and Together

Recognize feelings and emotions. Experience them. Feel sorrow, anger, fear, and despair. Weep. Rant. Vent. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with friends who can hold your tears and love you when you’re a mess. Find communities where you can share your grief. When one member has no hope, someone there will. Remember, grief isn’t once and done.

Who are the people, the communities that can hold you, support you, love you? Who are those who share your sorrow? Who are those with whom you can both grieve and find hope?

Find a Place Where Grace Flows

The week after the election found me on Chincoteague Island with my daughter. The ocean draws me into a contemplative space, opening my soul to release emotions – joy, gratitude, grief, sorrow – as well as to receive grace of healing, wonder, and gratitude.

My salty tears mingled with salty air. I rejoiced at the birds’ antics and wondered at shells at my feet. I laughed, prayed, and sang into to the pounding of wave after wave on the sand. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with my daughter. Together we watched the Supermoon rise, the king tide flood the marshlands, and herons wait patiently along the banks until the water receded and they could resume their mindful-walking fishing practice.

My ocean visits are few and precious. I have other Grace places: a small, neighborhood woods; a local café where I go to write; art museums; a friend’s kitchen table; my favorite chair flanked with a handmade table that holds a mug of tea and a stack of books.

What are your ordinary as well as extraordinary places where Grace flows? As Robert Lax would advise, go there often.

Establish a Grounding Practice

page of nature journal painting of shell litter people walking beach wrirtint
Nature Journal page

Take time for spirit-nourishing practices.

At the beach condo, my daughter set up a long table filled with art and journaling supplies. Every day we showed up there, like pilgrims to a holy place. She painted. I created page after page in my nature journal: mosaics of small drawings, paintings, and words.

Journaling/Art

For some, journaling and creative arts are prayerful, centering activities. While on Chincoteague I didn’t work on my current book project. I didn’t write this long overdue column. Now, back home, those projects call for my attention along with piles of laundry, dishes, and routine chores. While I can’t give hours every day to nature journaling, I’ll try for one day a week. And I can be faithful to my regular journaling practice.

Quiet Time/Prayer

During information overload, refrain from too much news consumption and social media scrolling. Make time for quiet. I’m reestablishing a morning routine of sipping tea, twenty minutes of quiet prayer, and reading.Throughout the day I take a few moments, breathe deeply and remember that I live and move in the Presence of the Sacred, no matter what I’m doing.

Quiet walks around the neighborhood or in a park can provide mental and spiritual spaciousness.

Give yourself the gift of time to engage in practices that help ground you and sink deep into your center. Encounter the Sacred that dwells there. The Goodness that cannot be overcome.

Move Forward

In a New York Times opinion piece “How Not to Fall Into Despair,” Brad Stulberg quotes Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl and uses his term “tragic optimism.” It involves acknowledging pain and hardship and in the face of it, moving forward in a positive way.

It’s the “both/and” stance central to many religions, including Christianity. Jesus lived acknowledging and confronting the evils of his day while still finding room in his heart to hold love, forgiveness, and hope.

He lived compassionate engagement, hanging out with the marginalized and calling his followers to care for the poor, widows, and orphans. Love God and your neighbor as yourself, he said. He didn’t list exclusions. He didn’t ignore the oppressors in power but didn’t let fear paralyze him.

What is mine to do?

One friend said she was taking the “left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot” approach. Not looking into the future but being present to the moment and to what she could do where she was, to put kindness and compassion into the world. Another is concentrating on volunteering for organizations that serve others in her city. Both are claiming agency rather than helplessness.

It involves what Stulberg calls “wise hope and wise action.” Not hope born of denial, thinking that if we just wait long enough, things will get better, but seeing things for what they are and still taking action.

In his final written message published in the New York Times after his death, the great civil rights activist John Lewis charged us to do that. To stand up and speak out when we see something that isn’t right. “Democracy is not a state.” He said. “It is an act.”

I am overwhelmed by what is happening. I feel helpless. But I’m not. I can do what I can do where I am. I can write. I can be kind to strangers and the marginalized. I can donate to organizations that support causes I believe in, especially those that serve targeted populations threatened by the wave of “othering” spreading across the country. I can stay informed, write to Congressional representatives. I can speak up to representatives in my state government when they propose and pass legislation that demonizes and oppresses monitories.

Darkness doesn’t have to win in the long run. Not when enough people inject the light of love and compassion into the night.

What is yours to do? How can you claim agency and move forward?

The Long View

looking out over ocean. Dark cloudy day with sun peeking through

Recently I stood with a woman on the beach, both of us looking across the ocean. “Stay connected to nature,” she said. “It will help with the long view. It will give you strength. It endures.”

Sitting in the National Gallery of Art in front of two van Gogh masterpieces I remembered that people suffering in all kinds of ways throughout history have been able to see beauty and hope through their grief and found ways to share it with the world.

In dark times, I find it difficult to believe that the moral arch indeed bends toward justice. But Viktor Frankl, John Lewis, and countless others, known and unknown, did. And they knew the truth of that saying depends on individual action. They lived holding both grief and hope in their hearts and found courage to move on.

Jesus did. Those who strive to imitate his life, to follow his Way, will too. It’s not a “Christianity” that storms the Capitol with violence when things don’t go your way. It’s not a “Christianity” that sees some people as expendable and deserving of disrespect. It strives to serve the common good. It’s a both/and faith. It’s a grief/hope faith. It doesn’t deny pain, oppression, and suffering. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. But he kept on going, living with compassion.

May it be so.

Sources

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation by John Lewis

How Not to Fall Into Despair by Brad Stulberg

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Gardening and Other Ways to Heal the World
June 6, 2022 By 10 Comments

Gardening and Other Ways to Heal the World

I walked earlier than usual today, aware that the temperature would rise and that the sun would be unfiltered by clouds later in the day. Approaching the buttery yellow house two blocks from my apartment, I scanned the large flower garden that borders the sidewalk and wends its way along the property line on one side and the driveway on the other, framing the green lawn. I’m not a lawn enthusiast (that could be another column), but I always enjoy flowers.

In the stretch close to the driveway, someone was on their knees, earnestly working at putting something into the ground or perhaps cleaning out a space for a new plant.

“So much time to spend on flowers,” I thought to myself. “To keep such a garden must take hours almost daily.” I didn’t think “wasted” exactly, but the notion that time could be spent on more significant endeavors did, for a second, flit around the edges of consciousness. Embarrassing to admit. A one-time flower gardener myself, I know better.

In years before divorce moved me from a home with lots of outdoor space to an apartment with little, I tended flower beds. Well, “tended” may be misleading. My gardens were on the wild side. Dark red poppies were the showstoppers, but bachelor buttons, coreopsis, larkspur, pinks, snapdragons, marigolds, zinnias – Not my favorite; their leaves always molded, but they were reliable germinators – grew big and wild.  Anything I could enjoy outside and cut for bouquets inside was welcome. The lavender plant had grown into a hedge; herbs grew among flowers near the kitchen door, and of course, there were weeds.

Over the past eleven years, how much joy I have taken in countless walks by the yellow-house garden, mentally thanking the couple who lives there for their work. Early spring into fall, even with winter’s interesting plant “skeletons,” it draws the eye and lightens the spirit. Already this year, I have stopped, struck still by the extravagant, peachy peony blooms and clusters of Virginia bluebells.

Flowers are pleasing in the moment and can be memory whisperers: The garden’s peonies carried me back to my childhood home where I watched big, black ants clambering over peony buds that would open and explode into stunning masses of fragrant pink, white, and magenta blooms along the side of our house. The bluebells transported me back to a spring day at a Trappist monastery along the Shenandoah River where my family was visiting a long-time friend, Father Maurice. A wide swath of bluebells ran along both sides of the river, edging it with a tumble of deep blue and spring green, Hildegard’s viriditas, both an expression and an agent of Holy Presence.

peony bush covered in large pink blooms

My neighborhood gardeners’ work is a gift to me and all who walk by.

It reminds me of a friend who is, among many other things, an accomplished writer, publisher, photographer, presently a seminary student, and a dedicated gardener. On her newly launched website, Urban Gaia, she describes herself as a person sempre in restauro, always under restoration, and helps people find healing and experience the divine through gardening.

Know it or not, we human beings, along with the rest of creation, are interconnected parts of one reality. As Paul writes in his letter to the folks at Corinth, unity springs from variety working together, one Source, many gifts. That’s a good thing. Gardens are wonderful, but we aren’t all gardeners.

Last month, my daughter delighted in the sale of two of her paintings exhibited in a student art show. A first for her, but not the reason she paints. Like the gardener who plants and tends out of an interior stirring or call, she paints because that is part of who she is. She began around 5 or 6 when she fell in love with Monet, set up an easel in the basement, and used a new set of oils to try her hand at waterlilies. Always an artist, she now relishes the thought that her work hangs somewhere in two homes and brings joy to those who see them.

And me? I write. Like my daughter, I started writing as a child and never stopped. Books. Articles. Columns. Songs. Poetry. Published some. Nothing on the best sellers list. Still, I keep going. People may look at me and wonder why I spend so much time writing words that few will read. (I confess to wondering this myself sometimes!) What can I say?

I’m a writer. The couple down the street are gardeners. My daughter is a painter. The list of “gifts,” of interior “callings,” is endless. At our best, we listen to what stirs in our hearts and follow its direction. We do our work, becoming more and more who we are made to be.  We put it out there. We trust it will do what it needs do. Sometimes that’s simply attuning the ear of our hearts more keenly to the interior Presence that guides us.

Still, it’s easy to feel like we are not enough. Not talented enough, smart enough, creative enough, (you fill in the blank) enough to make a difference.

No wonder. The world is overwhelming. Weekly mass shootings in the U.S. continue with legislators beholden to the fear-mongering NRA unable to pass meaningful gun control legislation. Our fragile democracy is threatened from within. Violence is disproportionately perpetrated against Black Americans, people of color, women, LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants, and anyone who can be labeled “other.” Wars ravage the earth as unscrupulous autocrats and dictators grab for power and wealth. Ukraine, presently the most visible, is one of many. The planet itself groans beneath the weight of human abuse. Numerous commentators spew fear and hate on popular media, and disinformation abounds. What can one person do?

Nothing? The culture of celebrity, power, and consumerism feeds that lie. Media sources hold up people of wealth, possessions, and fame as paragons of success. They, the news outlets tell us, are the “influencers,” “thought leaders,” and “game changers.” The important ones.

Don’t you believe it. Let me retell a story I heard last weekend on Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast. It was told by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., whose focus on healing not just curing, sharing stories, and being genuinely present to the patient challenged and influenced the medical profession.

Her rabbi grandfather, whom she described as a “flaming mystic,” was a profound influence in her life. On her fourth birthday, he made a gift to her of this ancient story. (While much of this language is her’s, I paraphrase. You can click the link below to hear Dr. Remen tell the story herself in the interview.)

In the beginning, he said, all was holy darkness, the source of life. At some point, the world came bursting out of the center of that holy darkness as a great ray of light. Later, the result of an accident, the vessels that held the grand light, the wholeness of the world, shattered into thousands of pieces. They fell into all people and events where they remain hidden even today.

Credit: ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium

Her grandfather told her that humanity is a response to this accident, We are created with the ability to see those bits of light in people and things and to bring them to the surface, making the world whole again.

Of course, accomplishing this great task will take every person – past, present, and to come – working together. In this story, everyone has a part to play. Everyone is enough. Everyone has just what they need. Everyone makes a difference.

” … we heal the world one heart at a time,” Dr. Remen continued. “And this task is called tikkun olam, in Hebrew – ‘restoring the world.'”

Fred Rogers used those words in a public service spot when he addressed parents about how to be with their children after the attack of 9/11: “No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be tikkun olam, repairers of creation.” 

So, next time you are tempted to think that what you are doing when you follow your heart—whether it puts a roof over your head and food on your table or is something you do part-time as you’re able—when you think you’re not making a difference or that you are “not enough” to matter, remember the wisdom of this ancient story. It is echoed in other wisdom teachings.

Do what is yours to do. Take care of who or what comes across your path. Love, connection, kindness, listening. These things always matter. They always make a difference.

 Like drops that feed the lake or seeds that sprout and flourish, our contributions, however small, become light that pushes through cracks and gives hope. This healing takes time. It won’t be as swift as we’d like. We won’t see its completion in our lifetimes, much as we long for it.

This is where trust comes in, trust that being our true selves, responding the the stirrings of Divine Presence within, heals the world and those who live in it, one heart at a time. In the end, Love will prevail.

Resources

Hildegard von Bingen Viriditas

Missy Greenleaf Finn’s new website:    Urban Gaia

On Being with Krista Tippett  Rachel Naomi Remen: How We Live With Loss

Rachel Naomi Remen has written a children’s book that will be published in September, 2022: The Birthday of the World: A Story About Finding Light in Everyone and Everything

YouTube Mr. Rogers: Tikkun olma

Response to gun violence

Write and call your Senators and House Representatives. Let them know you want sensible gun legislation passed now (e.g., universal background checks, assault weapons ban, red flag laws, increased funding for mental health)

Senators’ contact info: Find your Senator

House Representatives’ info: Find your Representative

Donate:

Moms Demand Action

Everytown for Gun Safety

Photos: Unless otherwise indicated, by Mary van Balen

Feature photo: A local gardener who has cultivated his patch in the community gardens for 43 years.

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Hope in Quiet Places
July 29, 2021 By 8 Comments

Hope in Quiet Places

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. John 6: 1-1-2

Before the hungry crowd followed Jesus up the mountain, he’d been busy walking with his disciples back and forth from Jerusalem to Judea to Galilee. Teaching. Surprising a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. He preached the kingdom of God, but stories of healings and other signs often took center stage.

People are attracted to the spectacular. The crowds wanted to see Jesus and if they were lucky, maybe something wondrous. Despite the long walk and needing to eat, they were excited. Who knew what this man might do or say?

Even today, people often look for hope outside themselves. They look for it in miracles, in charismatic leaders. They listen for what someone can do for them personally or for the community. They want someone with power to fix the big things. But hope is elusive.

Today natural and human-made realities threaten the well-being not only of individuals, groups, cities, and nations, but of the planet itself. Information – false as well as true – travels at lightning speed around the globe while genuine connection between people, parties, or factions, becomes more and more difficult.

Watching testimony given by four Capitol police about their harrowing experiences during the January 6 insurrection is illustrative. With emotion and passion, these men shared the horror that unfolded as they were trying to protect those within the Capitol. While they were addressing the select committee, six Republican House members gathered in front of the Department of Justice. One, Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ), referred to the insurgents as mistreated political prisoners. “These are not unruly or dangerous, violent criminals.”

Hope is difficult to hold on to.

While cases of the Covid-19 Delta variant are soaring, many people still question the reality of the virus and its threat, refusing to be vaccinated or to wear masks. Attempts by governments, businesses, or schools to require one or both of those preventative measures are assailed as “overreaching.” “Individual rights” is the battle cry.

Hope is difficult to hold on to.

The world continues to warm. Fires, floods, and violent storms wreak havoc and intensify in number, strength, and destructiveness. Systemic racism and violence against people of color continue. Yet some rail against teaching children the truth of this country’s history that would facilitate acknowledgement of the past and strengthen the resolve to move forward together.

Laws marginalizing LGBTQ people are proposed and passed. Refugees are turned away. The list goes on. The nation and the world are at a tipping point. Who wouldn’t want a miracle worker to fix it all?

Almost everything and everyone changing the world now is what we’ve forever referred to as “under the radar.” The radar is broken.

Krista Tippett in Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

But Jesus wasn’t about quick fixes then, or now. His life and wonders pointed toward something else. They were signs, not solutions.

When events pleased the crowd, they wanted to make him king. When his message was about loving your enemy, serving others, living with humility and compassion, the crowds thinned. Eventually, the power brokers set him up and murdered him, and crowds shouted their approval.

Hope isn’t found in flash or miracles. So, where is it?

In her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, Krista Tippet devotes the final chapter to hope. She writes about the healing power of seemingly insignificant acts done by people who will never make the headlines. Small acts come together in ways not visible.

In Jesus’s day nameless women and men carried his message and made it the most transformational message in history not only by what they said or wrote but by how they lived. Early followers pooled their goods and gave it away, making sure their neighbors had what they needed. Ordinary people doing good things made a difference. The world is slowly transformed the same way today.

Look for hope in quiet places.

When I do, I find it. There’s a small group not far from me reimagining church, gathering people together to share stories, to grow and cook healthy food, to worship around a table. They come to know and care about one another and hope to transform their struggling community.

Every day, a retired teacher takes food, clothing, and children’s books when he can get them, to those in need but without the means to get to a food pantry.  

Electronic neighborhood “bulletin boards” connect people with things they no longer want with people who can use them. The free exchange keeps “stuff” out of landfills and people from shopping for new, breaking the consumeristic cycle.

It’s not that we can’t find hope in bigger movements begun by people of privilege or money or power. It can happen. It must happen. In some arenas, like government, leaders must step up. But hope rises mostly in quiet places, a response to struggle and need.

It’s tempting to look to others for solutions. But we must also look within and around and together. Hope is in connections. It’s a choice. An orientation. A practice. It grows when we notice the good not just the bad and don’t slip into an easy cynicism that recognizes only failures and saps energy and the will to do something.

This week someone sent me her video of ants moving a dead wasp across a sidewalk and up a steep step, impressed by their strength. I watched and agreed. Ants can lift and carry 50 times their own weight – the smaller the ant, the more it can carry. (A physicist friend called this the “square-cube law” in case you want to look it up.)

While watching, I suddenly realized the obvious: no one ant was moving that wasp. A swarm was. They were working together to do what none of them, no matter how strong, could do alone.

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