Joy, Hope and Awe

 I've been thinking about the theme of this particular blog post for days, but then I doubt that I can do it justice, so I busy myself with something else. Today, though, there's no excuse for putting it off. So I'll just start writing. Probably the same as many of you, it is hard to pay attention to what's happening in the world and still feel positive energy. I get twenty or thirty requests for money from Democratic candidates every day, and I've stopped even opening them. I imagine they are worthy causes, but any extra money I have goes to my family. So I delete and delete, and some days I even delete all the posts about what's happening in the government. Some days I decide I can tolerate reading only one, which is usually Heather Cox Richardson. 

And that's just the political stuff. Then there's the planet. It is so easy to lead our human lives, surrounded by things we've created, and forget about what's happening to the environment outside our bubble. Maybe because I've been working toward sustainability in small ways, and being inspired by leaders in the movement to restore our Earth to health, there are some days when all I see is the artificial surroundings that we live in. I get triggered when I notice all the plastic in my home, around my food, in my frig. I notice all the concrete, the way we've covered our landscapes with things that deter life. I realize that we lead our lives inside buildings that keep us separated from the natural world.  And I start bemoaning our species' impact on the earth that we depend on for our lives.

That is how I was feeling when I went to Friends Meeting last Sunday. I sat on the wooden bench and tried to imagine that this former tree could help me dive deep, to find some strength and root myself in a reality greater than my worries about the world. After a long silence, a visitor from Cambridge Meeting stood up and spoke. At first he was echoing our concerns for our government, for our country, for our people. And then he started talking about joy, how we needed to keep our connections to things that give us joy. It felt like a total about-face, the opposite of our worried reactions to current events. Joy? I spent the rest of the silence thinking about joy, and perhaps others did too. I started remembering the song, "Joy Is Like the Rain" which I used to sing long ago. And then I realized that I had truly felt joy just three days before. I'd spent the better part of a day planting the seedlings that I'd raised inside my home. My dry garden was filled with little tender plants when I trudged back up to my home as it was getting dark. And I SO hoped that it would rain that evening. Rain would be such a blessing for these new seedlings. But it was not going to rain just because I wanted it to. I sat and watched a Cubs game with the window open beside me, and my ears were attuned to any change in wind or possible raindrops. Finally, it DID rain, lots of it! And I felt such joy, real joy. Wow, rain had given me joy. It was such an important reminder that joy is still out there, and for me it seems to require me to connect with something larger than myself.

For years, my prelude to sleep is listening to a mystery when I get in bed. I turn the timer to 20 minutes so that it will shut off if I drift off to sleep. But lately mysteries just aren't what I am needing. When we're murdering strangers across the ocean, murder mysteries are just reminders of bad things in the world. I've told myself that it would be good to listen to something real, something uplifting.  And I've pushed through my resistance and have kept listening to Jane Goodall's audio Book of Hope. Once I begin to listen to it, it's clear that I need this. The thing I like about it is that Jane feels hopeful even though she completely understands the peril our natural world is in, how our time is running out to attend to this emergency, how our species has gotten disconnected from the earth that sustains us. She talks about our superior intellect, which has helped us rise above our fellow creatures with the amazing creations we've invented. Our intellect is a good thing, she says, but it has become disconnected from our heart. Only if the two are joined can we understand what is needed, can we be sensitive to our actions and the harm they may inflict. We need to bring heart to our intellect. Our heart needs to re-enter our policies and our decisions. Heart connects us to the whole. And Jane believes that we can still do this. She has a deep belief that we could still save our place on the planet, and even if this does not happen, she has a firm belief that the planet will eventually heal itself. Her hope is tangible as I listen.

As I've been appreciating the opportunities for joy and hope in our lives, there's a third feeling that has been emphasized in the Tallgrass Prairie course I'm taking: Awe. This course was not what I expected, not so much a scientific examination of the history and qualities of prairie. Instead it dives deep into the spirit of prairie. The two folks who are teaching the course clearly have a deep love for prairie, and that love shines through all their presentations. They describe this as awe, a feeling that connects us to a much larger whole, an awareness that pierces through the boundaries of species and habitats, and brings us close to something breath-taking and overarching. One thing that keeps coming up is how important it is for us to pay attention. We don't always have to be doing. We can sit quietly, whether in a prairie or somewhere else, and just observe, learn, listen, feel. When our course instructors go out to sit in a prairie remnant (a prairie that has been there for thousands of years), they can feel the depth of the interconnections, the depth of the history. They can feel the complex relationships among all the life forms that have gradually developed over the years so that the landscape is living in harmony, everything benefiting from the rest. They point out that in early childhood, many of us perceive this deep connection with the earth and the natural world. We could still recapture that awareness, especially if we stop filling our lives with doing, and reserve some time to just be. So today I'm going to give myself permission to sit outside somewhere, banish the to-do list from my brain, and just meld into the land. I tend to feel guilty if I'm not doing something productive. Is if really OK to just sit?! But yes, that is something we can encourage. We can let ourselves join all the other species filling our world, and just BE for awhile. Feel the awe.

I can still get depressed when I listen to the news, or witness how many people believe our president when he says that climate change is just a hoax of the liberals. These are trying times. But reaching out beyond ourselves, connecting to a wider reality, is something I'm reminding myself is absolutely necessary to stay sane and functional these days. Yes, our species is in a fix in a number of ways. But we still are surrounded by the wider world, the millions of species small and large, the sun and moon, the planets, the weather, the clouds, the wind, the rain. And it is spring, when everything begins to burst forth with new growth and flowers and fruits. It is still a beautiful world, and we have the immense privilege of living in it. Joy, Hope and Awe.... they are all still possible.