the seeing stone...new year...new possibility... and the restless longing for change

The questions and the wanting:

Are new beginnings ever truly possible if we must live out of the patterns of our own personal history combined with the patterning of our collective cultural history?

What does it take to break out of deeply engrained ways that serve (for better or for worse) to maintain the status quo?

Is there still time to allow begrudging change to move the fitful way it does? Or should we leap?

These are all questions I have been asking myself, about myself of late. I admittedly have a love/hate relationship with this world and with the way I find myself continuing to interact with it. All of this also applies to the greater realm of the social, environmental (aka “the climate crisis”) and economic crises.

My incredible need for things to be different than they are is a universally recognized form of ancient suffering. It wears a wholesale classic uniform; widely identifiable and immensely uncomfortable, both.

There is nothing tailored about my suffering, whatsoever.

Yet my ego mind wants.

It wants a way out.

It wants to not suffer. It wants others not to suffer.

It wants to reject acceptance of what is, even though one of my favourite mantras is a poem called The Prayer, by Galway Kinnell.

Likely an element of this rejection mindset serves purpose. Its thrust strong enough to birth new ways forward or see emergency exits from deplorable circumstances.

Though a great many beings in this world are suffering unimaginably deplorable living and dying conditions, I am not. And yet, I suffer.

“Whatever happens. Whatever what is is, is what I want. Only that. But that.” Galway Kinnell

So I am trying to listen to the nuanced whispers as they voice their concerns to me. As they write their own seemingly unique persuasive arguments. As they plot my escape from an unnamed misery. All the while I sit Rapunzel like, twirling my ever greying hair, plaiting mind braids miles long.

Caught in thought and longing.

Imagining. Desiring change.

Why is my desire for change so deeply seated --hard-wired in so that I cannot fit neatly into mainstream society’s design? Is it so I can help to make visible the invisible? Give voice to the voiceless? Give form to what has long remained without form?

Is this the job of artists since time immemorial? To look, to listen to feel and carry what they’ve learned back to a world that doesn’t always want to look or listen or feel.

The reality:

The winter of our suffering as a family has been years long. An awfully long time in the life of a family. An awfully, awfully long time in the life of a suffering child. We have been in retreat. In lockdown. In survival mode so long that it has become the norm and like any living thing, when faced with needing to continue surviving through tremendous difficulties (the consequences of horrific unnamed trauma one of our beloveds long- endured as a child and unbeknownst to them and to us all until quite recently) we adapted to the difficulties and lived with the incredible hardship, it shaping our lives in ways we ourselves were often too close to see. Unseen and wreaking havoc.

Not unlike the unseen ways we collectively live out of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy and the resulting enduring, disgusting and painful trauma we have accustomed ourselves and subjected others to.

Living like this robs us of energy. Living like this robs joy. Horrible trauma does this to people.

I see parallels here with responses to our long winter and with Hurricane Fiona on this little Island in the sea. And with all the mighty storms and their increasingly terrifying ferocity.

The more we cover our ears and bury our heads and sweep the evidence of the multiple crises we are living under the rug, the more loudly and painfully they shout to be heard and the more they bring harm.

And then a pandemic with its powerfully disruptive charge. Its screams of fear, illness, isolation, death. Its incredibly unjust reality of bringing the greatest trouble to those most on the margins of the mainstream and most poorly equipped to manage.

Can we still look away? Will we?

Can we buy our way out of this one with boxing day sales promising warmth, comfort and the distraction of modern gadgetry. It seems the more we partake of distraction, the louder the calls for help must be in order to be heard. The closer the water must creep. The deeper the gouge of the ravagings. The higher the rubbish heap piles.

The call to more:

What next? How to forge a new way forward while honouring the truth of our reality? What is worth carrying onward and what needs leaving behind? These are questions being asked by humans the whole world over. These are not unique to my house but we too often fail to address them because we do not have a vocabulary for the kind of pain we personally have suffered and what we as a civilization in collapse are collectively suffering.

Trauma unresolved begets trauma. It is a vicious cycle that we have to name to break. It takes courage to gaze into the eyes of and name your suffering. It takes courage on top of courage to heal and forge new pathways forward that do not bring more harm.

Let me not be mordant to your pain. Let me be a balm to your woundedness. Let my healing remind you of your beauty and of your beautiful capacity to heal. How many years will it take to learn and heal? How many years remain?

And somehow still the spirit stirs towards more.

Wants out of its straightjacket.

Wants freedom to soar.

What is this but hope in the face of hardship?

The continued desire to begin anew has got to be one of the human spirit’s brightest qualities.

Mired in difficulty, in need of a new way forward, my lone heart, like many brave others and some whom I know and dearly love, stands like a little, red-haired orphan, my suitcase held to my breast dreaming that the train I await will take us to a better tomorrow where the sun’ll come out and clear away our cobwebs and our sorrows ‘til they're gone.

I am that orphan.

I always have been. But I am not alone in this dream of mine and this fills me with gratefulness and makes me feel less lonely.

And quite possibly the only true thing I admire about myself is that I do wake up each day marveling at the impossible beauty of this living, breathing world. It truly is a world of astonishing and unfathomable beauty. And you and I are part of it along with the beautiful, suffering oceans. Along with the stunning, melting ice fields. Along with the burning, old growth forests and innumerable disappearing species. The children of war and of famine and gun violence and the opioid crisis. All so beautiful. So utterly magnificent. And in so much desperate need of recognition and of caring. It is truly astounding to think on.

Yet, rival and partner to that wonder is my ability to despair.

I feel deeply worried about the state of this world and what awfulness so many humans subject earth and its glorious beings to on a daily basis.

I see the pain of othering and the consequential horrors that occur. I become almost immobilized by my own grief at what has been and continues to be lost while so many are unwilling to look beyond their own comforts and indulgences.

I comfort and indulge myself to assuage despair. Or I rail at the harmful practices wreaking destruction at every turn.

And then I wreak destruction.

I am the little red haired orphan but I am also Matthew and Marilla and even Daddy Warbucks and the old hag who ran the orphanage that Carol Burnett played so brilliantly. And Diana who falls in love and settles down and has a family.

We all are many and we are one.

I see how we are all connected. I know the vital importance of kindness and love. Of self, of earth, of other. The love that crosses boundaries we have constructed in our hearts…love has a way of doing this. Kindness too. I want to help others know this for themselves. To have their basic needs met. To know their worthiness.

And then I forget so much of this.

So to bring me back, in moments of quiet honouring I call into existence the presence of those past and those yet to come. I sow seeds for a better tomorrow by turning the soil and believing that possibility is only possible if we sow seeds and make space in our hearts for it to emerge. I falter and I begin again. Because I must. Because as long as we can, we have to make space for possibility of goodness. For overcoming hardship. For friendship. For love. For belonging. For new beginnings and for happy endings.

For someone often caught in the grand "what if's" of fear, I am oddly, as well, an optimist.

The space for possibility might be as simple as a quiet maybe in your heart. As simple asking for and accepting help. Or refusing to be set aside when the help you need is not available or when you have not been heard. Or maybe the possibility arises in your willingness to be sad but still play music, be hungry and find a way to grow food or be a terrible at drawing and still pick up a pencil or watercolours and make art because some kind soul across the continent sent you a gift of glorious art supplies. (xo-G) Or maybe your possibility comes through caring for loved ones. Or being cared for. I do not know. We just have to make the space and see what happens.

And remember:

By the power of existing we remain possible. And this is something that needs to be honoured.

The gift of the seeing stone and pathways forward:

On a nearby little trail I frequented on an almost daily basis before Hurricane Fiona wrought its destruction, there is a clearing above a gully that was an old pit. At the crest of the hill before the descent is a rock. It is not a remarkable piece of sandstone except that it is visible inland rather than on the coastline. We can see part of it where the little hilltop path eroded the topsoil to make it visible. Where years of trodding, rain and time have had their way. This is often our turnaround point on the trail. The place where we decide if we are to go down into the gully and take the longer and slightly more challenging route home (my husband's frequent choice) or turn back around to follow the relative ease and familiarity of the trail back from whence we came (my more frequent choice). It is where we pause and be quiet and just gaze awhile. It is where the looking happens…a dreaming over treetops out to the shimmering sea.

Saw, Seen, Seeing

1 a: to perceive by the eye b: to perceive or detect as if by sight

2 a: to be aware of : RECOGNIZEsees only our faults b: to imagine as a possibility : SUPPOSEcouldn't see him as a crook c: to form a mental picture of : VISUALIZEcan still see her as she was years ago d: to perceive the meaning or importance of : UNDERSTAND

3 a: to come to know : DISCOVER b: to be the setting or time ofThe last fifty years have seen a sweeping revolution in science …—Barry Commoner

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/see

We all need the gift of such a seeing stone.

A place where we can go to be quiet and contemplate the expanse beyond our physical, embodied confines. A dreaming place where the edges between self and other wonderfully blur and that’s okay.

I have come to notice that for me such places are often border zones. Liminal spaces such as the one I speak of beside a field that borders a small woods where you can see the sea can serve as reminders of the ways in which we overlap and intertwine; are different and alike.

Spaces such as these are lovely reminders to pause and just be in wonderment awhile.

And we all need reminders to be still and silent, sometimes.

I heard this little Tibetan teaching during a meditation I did with my husband on New Year’s Eve while two of our three children were sick with covid-19 for the first time and I was in a tangle. It is a wonderful reminder itself:

Let go of what is past.

Let go of what may come.

Let go of what is happening now.

Don’t try to figure anything out.

Don’t try to make anything happen.

Relax right now and rest.

-Tibetan Teaching

The temptation to follow the familiar path of ease back to our comfort zones post pandemic is a strong one and not without cultural precedent. It is important to notice our inclinations towards such pathways with kind, non-judging awareness. Taking the time to pause and rest gives us the strength to forge onward in ways of kindness and of light. And strength to name the darkness and the suffering as it appears.

In times such as we are living, I am remembering to be kind to myself. To not be the harsh judge I once was. To recognize that to be alive is to live in contradiction. This contradiction that feels like my greatest folly is also my saving grace.

I am a human, after all. You are too.

That we are wild beings of a magnificently diverse universe seeking to find nourishment and meaning in a world organically and energetically designed on cycles and rhythms and waves just doesn’t fit in with the ethos of enslavement of life for profit that we are largely caught by the crosshairs in.

It seems the more reductionist we become the more we see we cannot be reduced for easily dissected comprehension.

How then, to live in this time we are living? How does one return part and parcel to earth honouring when our society emphatically denies and suppresses evidence of this way of being that lives and breathes and weaves tapestries of our breath and blood and bones with soil and water?

Throb, cry, laugh, hold and cyclically acknowledge and remember. Be alive and dance the wonder as gently and as madly as only you can. And remember to allow yourself to be softened.

Soften...soften...softened.

Breathe gently and remember to pause and breathe again. It isn't all up to you though you can be a beautiful part of the change you seek.

We cannot truly be separated from the whole but to the degree that we perceive that we are, we suffer. Ancient Taoist texts told us that the rigid will fall when difficulty arises. From tree to human we need the space and flexibility to be ourselves in the company of others to truly thrive. I am more sensitive than your average bear. I need the comfort of the familiar but I also crave and honour change.

And in our ability to change and our possibility to see its place…its constancy... is where my hope lies. It is hard wired into our species to change and be changed. We were meant for this far more than we were meant for forever homes and large scale agriculture. Or large scale anything for that matter. Small is truly beautiful. We have so much remembering to do.

Please see https://poets.org/poem/remember-0...it is worth your pausing here…

For far too long we have warehoused and made idols and museums of the wrong things. We have forsaken the repository of knowledge that eons of being earth beings granted us. We have mocked and destroyed those who most recently still carried this knowledge. We have harmed their wisdom and their gentleness.

But now we are learning the way of reconciliation. We are unlearning the ways of harming.

If we can continue to move humbly towards grass root initiatives that see us looking into, not away from, hurt and suffering, there is hope.

If we can be brave enough to forge new ways forward together, there is hope.

If we can be quiet and still long enough to hear the stories that are being told the world over, there is hope.

I cannot believe otherwise. It simply isn’t in me. My own existence and the future of my children and their children demands this of me.

I bow down in its presence. I rise up to its call. And I breathe, and I soften and I breathe.

Thanks for reading.

Wishing you light and joy and presence in 2023!

Jill