“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”

View from our porch

Gratitude: Summer, I love you. The ease of you. The barefootedness. The sun and warm. Everything fruiting and seeding all over the place, practically spilling over abundance.

Tip of the Day: If you have the means, give a little some of that abundance away. Whether garden produce or a smile (make it big enough to show with the eyes since the mask will hide it!) or a monetary contribution, giving is good for the soul. (Here’s a GoFundMe option: My friend Lydia, living on the other side of that blue dot just now as she went home to her native South Africa just in time for COVID-19 lockdown, is raising money to help people whose homes were destroyed in a windstorm in a town called Ladismith.

Resource of the Day: I wrote a piece about finding balance in uncertain times for Kit Magazine. Check it out if that is of interest!

Both/And

Posted on April 26, 2020 by Shawndra Miller

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.)

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.

The Impossible

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Shawndra Miller

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

—Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned here for 18 years of his 27 years of captivity. This is his jail cell on Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa. When he stretched out on the floor, he could touch both walls. Photo by Judy Hostetler.

Lessons from Sugar Man

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Shawndra Miller

The documentary Searching for Sugar Man came up in conversation with friends last night. If you haven’t seen this Oscar-winning gem, go immediately to your preferred film source and get it. (Immediately after you finish reading this!)

Photo by David Ingram, via Flickr Creative Commons

I won’t give too much away, because the joy of this film is experiencing the discovery. In brief: Rodriguez, a Detroit musician whose lyrics and style rivaled Dylan’s, made two records in the early 70s. Both flopped. End of story—as far as anyone knew in the U.S.

But in sequestered South Africa, where apartheid had a stranglehold, his anti-establishment message galvanized a generation. There Rodriguez became a superstar—and a mystery. Rumors circulated about a dramatic onstage suicide, involving self-immolation or a gun. Because South Africa was cut off from the rest of the world, in those pre-Internet days, there was little to go on. Who was he, and how did he die?

The story unfolds from there.

In our case, the film sparked a discussion about the impossibility of ever knowing the impact of your deeds.

Clayton said he recently talked with his young son about what it means to be a good person, and how important it is to get off your duff and do something. “You can’t just sit around your house and say you’re a good person. You have to get out and make a positive effort.”

And it doesn’t matter if you fail, because the simple fact of your trying may inspire someone else, Clayton believes.

To my mind, “positive effort” could be as simple as a kind word or smile. We don’t know how these little things might bolster someone facing an inward darkness, or outward danger.

I seem to write about this often: that acts we think of as small actually have great power. Most of us, living our lives in defined spaces, consider our influence very small. Our lives seem circumscribed by smallness; we go to and fro, following our routines, taking care of the details that make up a life.

We may feel that we are too insignificant to make a difference in the fate of our planet and our race.

Yet everyone can do small things with great love, and who can know the ripple effect? Especially if we work in tandem with others.

Photo by Lisuebie, via Flickr Creative Commons

The row we plant might be just the encouragement our elderly neighbor needs to start seeds on a windowsill. Which might nudge her granddaughter to visit a farmers market and buy a farmer’s tomatoes, and one of those funny-looking squashes while she’s at it. Maybe she’ll come back in ensuing weeks and bring her children and a friend, buying more locally grown food. Which shows the farmer that his produce is desired, and keeps him from throwing in the towel after a tough summer.

Think about it.

(And seriously, see the film. Then watch the “making of” extra. If you’ve ever been so discouraged that you nearly gave up a dream, you’ll connect to the story behind the film.)