I am deeply frustrated with how we live, and I know many of us feel a similar dis-ease. Even before Covid spread around the planet, this was true. Racial economic injustice, class warfare, BIPOC and MMIWG deaths and trauma, climate crises -all of these were symptoms of this wrongness long before our global plague began.
And I can get stuck in spirals of futility over our lack of options, and the entrenchments of our dysfunctional political systems, because I cannot see a way forward or through.
When these clouds pass over my heart, my vision is darkened by fear and anxiety, grief and despair. It is easy to lose sight in these times, easy to let hope slip through my fingers.
What happens is that then I am not focused on what can be built, what we can make, who we can be. My brain becomes filled up with not inaccurate but certainly not generous assessments of the obstacles.
I have slid into cynicism, as the snarky and snappy retort generally elicits shared laughter. A witty observation can have insight, but the chuckles have an edge, the smiles are wry.
I have been twisted into knots over hypocrisy, making it difficult to see the bridges between dissonances that others are already starting to build. Nothing aborts change faster than contempt, the close cousin for me when I start tallying these double standard metrics.
I have let the deep interlocking crises of our needs feed an urgency that feels righteous but always leads to skipping crucial initial steps, gathering the wrong people or ignoring crucial voices, and accepting the unacceptable in the name of progress.
When I have let any, or God forbid several, of these become tools on my journey, directions for routes I will take, I lose my way. I become unmoored, ungrounded. I become as fearful and weepy as any child caught unprepared in a thunderstorm.
But these storms pass. In my life, I have repeatedly had to learn that hope is a choice. I have come to understand that I have a vision, and that people respond to my voice, to my words. I have learned that I cannot nor should not do this work alone, that building community matters but that my journey is my own and brings a view that is mine to articulate and share. No one else can do that.
I do myself have stops along this journey where I learned these lessons, people who have lit my path and left me bread crumbs to follow.
As I lean into longer timelines for change, and building new structures, I remember the first lesson from my young life as a youth minister.
There is no instant gratification in this work.
In order to do it well, I had to let go of any sense of knowing how things were going, of getting positive feedback from the youth, or of being valued by the system within which I worked. I learned that an intentional ministry of presence and love, and a stance of gratitude that they’d even come, transformed my interactions. It changed me.
This was the key, because I was the one whom I could affect, and only I had control over which me showed up.
No, it isn’t until years later that you know anything at all, when a short note or a quick comment or even sometimes a long and careful letter lets you know that something you said, something you did, some person you were, was crucial for this young person in some important time in their lives. It’s utterly unpredictable and wholly delightful.
And it brings to my mind the importance that the small actions, the little nudges, have also had in my life.
Near the end of the most recent of these storms, as I was weeping over those who will die, I realized that I knew I was okay to fall apart a little bit because I also knew that I would be okay. I knew that I would again choose hope, and life and abundance. That I would again be able to build, and celebrate all the gifts we bring. That I would again wield fear and temper panic and hone chaos.
There are times I lament that I cannot reach every single individual or system, that I cannot do all the jobs that are important, that I can’t say yes to all the things. And that’s when I must remember that I have bread crumb trails to lay, that I have lanterns to light.
Over the next several weeks, I will explore those practices that help keep me on my path. These are the things that I’ve adapted from the bread crumbs left by others, those things watched and mimicked as lights are raised and lives are revealed, the routes illuminated by the pilgrimages of all those who have walked these ways.
I intend to leave bread crumbs for you to follow and perhaps share. I intend to light lanterns for sanctuary and guidance as you travel. And perhaps you will share that as well, for the same light is already within you. Sometimes, our light needs to find other light to catch, to shine more brightly. And that’s okay.
We all get lost and we all need help. But practices of slowness and gratitude, abundance and community, regeneration and renewal can put us right again, help us find our bearings, and give us all we need for the journey.