Tag Archives: inner wisdom

Both/And

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I admit to some shame after my last post in which I wrote of the blissy aspects of this bizarro time, as I experience it. Of course I have also shared heavier stuff in previous posts. I experience the gamut of emotions and I am open to all of them moving through me… and I want to live in the present and in my body (where all is well just now) as much as I can.

But the mind will have its say, and here’s what it said after that post: You are insensitive to go on about joy when so many are suffering. Last night we drove down the “main street” of our neighborhood last night and it was a ghost town. Seeing our sweet small businesses close up shop really hurts, especially knowing each such street all over town—all over the world—represents untold financial hardship for countless families.

Also, in the last few days I’ve had conversations with people who are closer to the economic impact of this worldwide shutdown. An urban farmer brought up his fears about the food supply, and whether he would be able to protect his crops if things went really bad. A friend in South Africa spoke of the immediate need all around her, with people going hungry right now as they live in a veritable police state.

Also: 2000 deaths each day in the U.S. alone. And no real plan or social cohesion to get through this ongoing crisis.

It’s frightening, sad, and angering to witness the leadership void at the top worsen the situation for regular folks (even while yes, I am glad for relief packages and stimulus checks).

Joy and worry, shame and gladness, fear and hope: I’m feeling “both/and.” These words from Daniel Foor really resonate:

I am concerned about expanded government abuse of power and I support the shelter-in-place directive right now.

I abhor the exploitative aspects of the global economic order and I am deeply concerned about it just falling apart.

I want systemic measures to truly address climate change and I feel uneasy about a rapid jarring halt on the ability to travel.

I am not afraid of death and I don’t want to die. OK, I’m a little afraid, but not so much. Mostly I love being alive here today.

I am open-minded and not inherently trusting of any source, and there are also facts and knowable things.

I want more nuance, play, and irreverence in the collective and also I want people to submit to facts and what is knowable.

I am truly gut-level worried about where we’re headed and also spacious, relaxed, and in touch with levity.

To quote a true American patriot,
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
I am large, I contain multitudes.”

– Walt Whitman

So, what to do with all this? (Surely there must be something to do, beyond airy-fairy being.)

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This creek holds raw sewage during heavy rainfall events. That concrete structure overflows with it. It’s the way our city designed the sewage system years ago, an unsustainable combined sewage overflow setup (which is being updated in recent years). I love this creek. Shit and beauty exist side by side. Love abides no matter what.

Unable to steer an entire culture or country, I return to the small ways I can have an impact. I create more space in myself to be more present to possibility. I come back to the guidance of my Wiser Self, as Ellen Meredith calls it, in contact with the big-big picture. I write things down in case they speak to someone else’s soul.

And in the practical arena, I’m giving in ways I can, since I feel amply supplied. In that giving, I don’t want shame to be my motivator any more than I want fear to take the driver’s seat. I want to give my courage and gratitude the space to lead, even as I realize that this attitude is itself a measure of my (largely unearned accident-of-fate) good fortune.

Gratitude: I’m grateful for a Zoom call with my family members last night, for belly laughs and shared concerns. Also grateful for a heritage of Mennonite thrift that helps me stretch resources, so there’s a sense of abundance, more to share, etc.

Tip of the Day: Speaking of Mennonite…It’s soup-stock-making day! I save veggie scraps like onion skins, carrot tops, mushroom stems and celery trimmings in a freezer bag. When it gets full, I make a pot of veggie stock. I add it to this recipe, but it would also work on its own to make a mineral-rich and tasty soup starter. Using up items that would ordinarily be immediately compost-bound makes me feel so smart and thrifty. (Bonus tip: don’t put anything too strong or bitter in your scrap bag, such as broccoli trimmings, and don’t put anything that looks questionable, like moldy onion skins.)

Resource of the Day: I usually send you to an online resource here. But in keeping with the last post’s theme of cutting back on screen time, how about considering inner resources, instead of outer? What are your special resilience superpowers? Maybe your sense of humor never quits (mine certainly does), or you always know how to bring comfort to a friend in need. Mine include the frugality mentioned above, but also a spiritual framework, a strong creative drive, and a willingness to turn toward whatever is passing through me.

If you’d like to post a comment about yours, I’d love to read it! We inspire each other.

Where We Rarely Dwell

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In my quest to be an engaged citizen, urban homesteader, radical homemaker, contributor to household coffers, writer, etc., I can get trapped in a life of busyness. I have so many goals. My days are full of checking the clock as I push myself to be more productive, to mark things off my  lists. (Yes, I have more than one list.)

One week before I fell ill, I was advised to take some unscheduled time every week. I never got the chance to try this radical experiment—because soon I was pretty much glued to the couch, in a haze of pain and exhaustion, just trying to get through my days. And even then, chafing at all that was left undone.

My cat Maggie enjoyed the couch time immensely.

My cat Maggie enjoyed the couch time immensely.

This is a typical pattern for me—I have to be forced to slow down. I suspect it’s not uncommon in our hyperproductive Western culture, this need to be sick or injured before we grant ourselves rest.

So when I listened to intuitive Lee Harris‘s monthly energy forecast this week, and heard him talk about slowing down, I had to laugh—it was so on-target. He said we must stop rushing about and go inside the body, where we rarely dwell. We’re so stimulated all the time that we don’t really know our inner selves.

And that’s a loss.

I like to think I’m fairly good at this: after all, I’ve studied mindfulness meditation! I practice yoga! I’ve done all kinds of personal healing! Yet, the fast track always, always hooks me, and I give short shrift to my dreamy, drifty side—until I have no other choice.

Harris says, “The ‘driving masculine’ side is not what we are needing as a world anymore. We have been hearing this for years, but it’s hard for us to change the program.”

I guess that’s why it takes enforced couch time before I can stop being so terribly driven.

Recently on a Transition US call about creating new stories, one of the panelists said something powerful: That we get tripped up if we try to remake the world in the context of an old, outdated story—meaning looking through the lens of competition, judgment, conflict, scarcity, and domination.

I’m reminded of the wisdom feminist poet Audre Lorde offered years ago: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” She was referring to racism and homophobia in the women’s movement, but it applies here too. How can we transcend the dominant culture’s destructiveness if we’re working from that old script—if we are subjugating our inner knowing (available only in stillness) to this constant striving and acting?

Stillness

Stillness

How, though—this is always my dilemma—how do I get important work done without this driven side of myself? Is there a new way of being that allows both the focus to finish (so satisfying: to finish!) and the freedom to swim about, aimlessly dreaming?

Perhaps, instead of a driver archetype, I could assume the gardener archetype. Cultivate change instead of push it. Would that work? What do you think?