Nearly four years ago, Adrienne Maree Brown wrote "Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered." And uncovered they have surely become. The foul human impulses that have been on display may be disturbing, but they have always been with us. Incivility is not new. Neither is greed or hatred. And fear, the emotion that many see as giving rise to all forms of vulgarity, has always been with us as well...and likely always will be.
Still, it does seem that on so many measures, things have gotten worse, far worse than we ever imagined. It's as though we've been given license to behave badly, and even peace~loving, gentle folk find themselves inflamed. And yet, while recognizing that what our leaders say and how they say it has enormous impact, we know we never get a free pass to behave badly. We are each responsible for our actions.
In times of significant upheaval, we need to be more attentive to nurturing our spirits and offering a soulful response to the world. And we need to listen to the astute guidance of enlightened others. Like that wise and wily wizard Gandalf.
At one point in Lord Of The Rings, Frodo laments the challenges that have come, saying "I wish it need not have happened in my time." Gandalf replies, "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." Sage advice, indeed.
So what are we to do with the time given us? The answer to that question must always be personal. Just as no one can give us permission to behave badly, no one can save us from the task of deciding for ourselves a wholesome response. Many of us, though, have used the baseness exhibited outside us to uncover and heal the hardness within our own hearts. For how can we expect the human race to heal itself sufficiently to effectively face its many challenges if we can't do the same in our own small way?
But I think it goes deeper than that. Since we are all interconnected, whenever any of us loves more purely and lives in greater harmony with the spiritual teachings given us, we also do our part to shift things for everyone. When, in the words of Anne Herbert, we "practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty," what comes through us is healing to the whole.
Albert Camus wrote, "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." A powerful statement, though I'd like to suggest a modification for our purposes here. "The only way to deal with an unloving world is to become so absolutely loving that your very existence is an act of rebellion...and of a blossoming beauty, as well."
After reading Jamie Lombardi's essay on Camus, I believe he would approve. Lombardi tells us that "for Camus, love is the conscious choice to see the world in all its terrifying reality...not just a confrontation with the absurdity of the world (but) a refusal to be broken by it."
And when we allow the hate out there to grow the hate in here, we are indeed participating in our own breaking. Let us instead find ways to cultivate soul within this time given us, unfolding our deepest~most selves in the process.
In Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore writes, "The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is loss of soul." Obviously, those words remain true one fifth of the way through this current century.
And we respond best to that fact by regularly engaging in behaviors and invoking sentiments that bring us into deep communion with the soul. Such as love. M. Scott Peck wrote that love is "an act of will~~namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love."
The next weeks and months will, of course, be challenging. Base impulses don't simply evaporate. We must continue to work to transform them in ourselves and to offer a wise response when we see them rise up in others. Still, we have been given a fresh start. Let us make it a start worthy of us and of all those who have lived to see such times and have risked so much to bring them our way.
Let us choose love. Even when it's hard and even when we don't know how, let us love anyway. And let us do so again and again and still yet again.
In love,
Leia
And click here for Jamie Lombardi's writing on Albert Camus.
