We hear we should fight fire with fire or get down in the gutter and fight dirty with the rest of them, but is this the best way? Won’t everyone just be hurt? Won’t our young lose role models for the importance of virtue?
What of other, softer, ways to resist?
Consider these words from Richard Rudd:
The Softening
Softness is one of the great secrets of all spiritual practice.
When we become soft, we become like water.
We let life come to us.
We trust in its flow, and we allow ourselves to be taken in whichever direction it chooses.
This is true power because it comes from love, and love is the softest thing in the universe, and yet it is the most powerful.
When you soften your attitude to yourself, to others, and to life, you release the natural wisdom that lies within you.
Your body softens, your thoughts soften, and your heart softens.
Through softness, you find clarity and purpose without needing to force anything.
Your life becomes a gentle unfolding rather than a constant battle.
Do not lose heart. The challenges you see today are the ones you must face. You are strong enough to do your part, and you will find allies everywhere you look.
Do not be afraid.
You may feel you are riding on stormy seas, but look around you. In the words of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
You do not need to do everything. Do what you can, where you can, with what you can. Your actions combined with actions from millions of like-minded individuals will make a difference for good.
No one knows what tomorrow will bring, and that can be frightening. We are in a volatile time. It helps to keep our attention on the present and what we can do here and now.
The great poets help calm our souls. Take comfort today from these tender words from Mary Oliver:
Be still, my soul, and steadfast. Earth and heaven both are still watching though time is draining from the clock and your walk, that was confident and quick, has become slow.
So, be slow if you must, but let the heart still play its true part. Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience. Let God and the world know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.
+ Mary Oliver
We do not know what tomorrow brings, but we will approach it with full souls, grateful and loving, ready to meet the day with a steadfast heart.
As you continue to adjust to the realities and promises of the new year, enjoy this poem by W. S. Merwin:
To the New Year
BY W. S. MERWIN
With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning
so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible
Here we are in 2025, with our age and knowledge, such as they are, and our hopes, such as they are, with everything again before us untouched and still possible.
Are these the times that try people’s souls? What does it mean to have your soul tried anyway?
I’ve been thinking about this picture:
Those faces, contorted in rage, caught for history. This picture, reflecting a military presence during school desegregation, anticipating, presumably, a violent reaction from the mob, freezes a moment in history. I wonder how those women feel looking back on it. Would they be ashamed to have been part of a mob hurling epithets at this young woman? Would they feel contrition?
That period in history was certainly turbulent. Fraught with animosity directed at those seeking an education, because of the color of their skins, the women in the crowd wear their anger and hate openly in their faces.
We too are in turbulent times. Whole industries are churning out content intended to divide us, to make us hate others like the women in this picture? We are fed misinformation and disinformation designed to further these divides. Presumably the motive for this hate industry is profit, but at what expense? Will this hate-filled rhetoric cost souls?
It will certainly try them, and it is our job to protect our souls. To listen deep to the wisdom that seeks love and peace, harmony and cooperation. To deplug from the constant rhetoric of othering and hate.
It’s a loud angry world. Hush and listen to the harmony of your soul.
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Also Inauguration Day. When we picture King, we picture him as heroic, confident, strong. And these are likely the pictures you may see today.
And, of course, he was these things. Championing civil rights and railing against injustice, able to see inequity in the systems around him and dream of a better way. He was an advocate of love over hate and peaceful protest.
And yet, his life was not a peaceful one. He was killed for the beliefs he professed. And much of the progress he made was met with violence and hate.
Progress is not a straight line, and hate is ever-present. And hate can be powerful and beguiling and intimidating. And hate can creep into the consciousness of a group, or even a nation.
And yet, I will stand with King for love over hate, all these years later, and do what I can to continue his fight for justice and peace.
Because, even in the midst of hateful people and those who seek to divide, justice and truth are on the right side of history.
Sometimes our eyes and hearts are focussed so far in the distance, that we fail to see what is right in front of us. The people we spend our days with, the beauty surrounding us, the opportunities we have to make a difference. When we zoom in to the detail, the richness of the particular moment can be astounding and surprising. What a beautiful, remarkable world we live in. So full of complexity. Each person we see is as full of contradictions and surprises as we are ourselves. Each living or created thing we see is so full of detail.
Long-term goals are great, but what a shame if we don’t appreciate each step along the way. We may work side by side with someone but barely know their name let alone what their hopes and dreams are. We may be so busy moving forward that we are blind to the heartache of even the people we live with. It is easy to speed through life with eyes averted like people descending in an elevator focussed only on the floor numbers.
Today take time today to enjoy the journey, the mysteries unfolding all around you, the people who share your path, and all the beautiful and startling things right here, right now.
Like, for example, who can not stop and be amazed at this little beagle shaking its jowls, its great ears flopping to the beat, its sturdy paws holding on in front but shifting with its wagging tail in back, the gorgeous landscape behind it? What a fascinating little miracle, right here. Just this.
We begin the year with hope. Hope for peace; hope for good health; hope for reconciliation and redemption; hope for progress on our journeys and throughout the world. Emily Dickinson’s poem is a lovely metaphor to return to when drawing on this hope to get us through rough days:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
Hope is active, isn’t it? Sometimes singing, sometimes soaring, sometimes hanging on by its toenails. Faith is different. Mary Oliver describes this difference beautifully in her book, Upstream:
In the winter I am writing about, there was much darkness. Darkness of nature, darkness of event, darkness of the spirit. The sprawling darkness of not knowing. We speak of the light of reason. I would speak here of the darkness of the world, and the light of _______. But I don’t know what to call it. Maybe hope. Maybe faith, but not a shaped faith–only, say a gesture, or a continuum of gestures. But probably it is closer to hope, that is more active, and far messier than faith must be. Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know is a fighter and a screamer.
As we go forward, let us hope for a better world for every one, but let it be an active hope–a fighting, kicking and screaming hope– a hope that urges us into that battle of making the world the better place.
The new year brings with it an expectation to reflect and set intentions for how to perhaps improve from the last. Often these reflections result in an examination of all the ways we’ve fallen short and a profession to do better, eat better, exercise better…be better. Often the premise unspoken is that we’re not enough, we must improve, be different.
I wonder if there is a better way to start a new year. Perhaps in astonishment that we have made it through a year filled with so many challenges and yet we persisted. Perhaps filled with gratitude that our opportunities to contribute and bring joy to others continues. Perhaps thinking about all the small wonders that make up our life and rejoicing.
Each new year is an opportunity to wake up with the enthusiasm of Scrooge after his ghostly visits and realize that here we are, in the thick of it, able to love and be loved, able to contribute, and make a difference, filled with delight:
“Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!”
When he finds out from a boy outside his window that it is still Christmas Day, Scrooge says, “I haven’t missed it. Yes, the spirits did it all in one night—they can do anything they want to do.”
Then his thoughts turn, with glee, to anonymous giving, saying to himself, “I’ll send [a turkey] to Bob Cratchit’s! rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. “He shan’t know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim….”
“The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried.”
Chuckled until he cried. How thin the edge between joy and grief. What a gift it is to be here. How precious in its finiteness. But here we are, dancing, able to bring joy to others. Here now, but not forever.
How do we make sure we aren’t just staying alive but staying vibrant? Making our moments count? Making an impact and difference in the lives of those we care about? Making our lives matter?
Consider Virginia Woolf’s words:
Whatever happens, stay alive. Don’t die before you’re dead. Don’t lose yourself, don’t lose hope, don’t lose direction.
Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fiber of your skin.
Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also, outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with hope, with Wow Scenery.
Stay alive with joy.
There is only one thing you should not waste in life, and that’s life itself.
How do we become hard-hearted as we age, focused so much on ourselves and our own needs? How do we deaden ourselves to community and lives being lived around us, turning inward and reclusive, dying really to the fabric of life?
I just watched the muppet version of Christmas Carol which did a great job of capturing Charles Dickens’s classic story about the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, first his turning in, the selfishness, the greed, the callousness to those around him, his miserliness in spirit and deed.
But then, with the spirits’ intervention, Scrooge has an epiphany and realization that life is a looking out, a contributing, a generosity and an overflowing of joy. His life becomes filled with vibrancy and exuberance and a realization of the difference he can make in the here and now. At that moment, he becomes part of something larger than himself, alive with possibility and connection.
Each of us faces Scrooge’s dilemma. We may not be miserable misers, but perhaps we have turned in to focus on ourselves. Perhaps we’ve become callous to the suffering around us and blind to the good we can do. Perhaps we’ve lost the joy.
Scrooge’s story reminds us all that it isn’t too late to turn over a new leaf, to reach out to those around us, to wear our love and concern on our sleeves, to care. And by spreading joy, we find ourselves drenched in it as well.
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