hope

Active love.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Love isn’t a feeling we fall in and out of. It’s an action we choose to take even when it may be challenging. Sometimes it brings pain. When we think of love as an active verb, like, as Mr. Rogers suggests above, ‘struggle’, rather than as an emotion, it opens our eyes to the fact that we must work at it. It’s a struggle, a constant readjustment and tinkering, constantly expanding our own understanding and empathy. Love is not molding someone to our vision of what they should be, but accepting who they are and supporting them as they blossom. Thinking of love as something more akin to struggle encourages us to keep looking for new and better ways to show up for the people in our lives, to view the relationships as evolving rather than static, and to appreciate all the little successes and breakthroughs in those relationships along the way.

Tending roses.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

‘If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden,’ muse the characters in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. And, perhaps, on a more intimate level, so our mind is too a garden.

We cultivate our thoughts, enrich them with information, learn, grow, stretch. But weeds can overrun any garden, and we can find our minds overcome with anxiety, negative thinking, and endless catastrophic thinking.

But Burnett notes:

Much more surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.

When we find ourselves overcome with negative thoughts, we can imagine our mind a garden. Something we can lovingly tend, plucking weeds, nourishing blooms, replacing gloom with gratitude, planting seeds of possibility and promise.

While there are many things in this world we cannot control, we still can control our thoughts and find a way to focus on ones that keep our mental garden thriving.

Keeping Christmas.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Love wins.

Isn’t that the bottom line of Christmas? Strip away all the decorations and gifts and songs and celebrations, and what remains is: love wins. It’s about love. God loves us, and we are to love each other. And even in a world divided by hate, blind to oneness, driven by greed, love will win. Because that’s the point of Christmas.

It’s about the love.

Remember whose you are.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

The days before Christmas can be frantic. We sometimes find our tempers short, our tongues loose, and our wits frayed. We think of Christmas as something in the future, speeding toward us, that we need to hurry around and prepare for so that we can enjoy His coming. But a birthday, like Christmas, is a celebration of something that has already happened. And, in the case of Christmas, it is a celebration of a whole new world order that is here. We are His now, not just at Christmas. We need to shine with His love now and everyday. Particularly when the world is harried. We need to reflect the joy and peace that comes with knowing that love conquers all.

Pause. Breathe. And remember whose you are.

Presence over presents.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

It’s getting harder to find the right presents for my granddaughters. I’m keenly feeling their growing up and the fact we are of different generations. Their world now contains so many things that I have so little clue about.

And Christmas for us, with cats in the house, requires a whole new game plan. Making things festive without creating feline hazard zones is challenging. 

And, with a family filled with different eating preferences and diets, food is a puzzle. 

But, as with the Whos in Whoville, Christmas will come and find us regardless of how decorated we are or how many presents are under the tree, and we will learn the underlying truth again that Christmas isn’t about the stuff. It’s about the love. And that, we have in abundance. 

Presence over presents for the win.

Praying with the news.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

How do we read the news and not get overwhelmed or angry, disconnected or depressed? How do we keep showing up with compassion and grace in a world where there is so much hate? How do we keep ourselves on the right path through the midst of it all? How do we continue to show up from a place of compassion, forgiveness, and grace? how do we keep our hearts from growing hard?

In this thoughtful letter, Rabbi Yael Levy shares his insights on how to pray with the news:

The 17th of the Hebrew month Tammuz initiates a three-week period of mourning that leads to Tisha b’Av, which is the day that marks the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and 70 CE.

Tradition teaches that the Temple was destroyed because hatred became the operating principle in the community. The scorn, contempt and disdain that characterized daily interactions caused the Divine Presence to flee and leave the Temple vulnerable to attack.

These next three weeks ask us to reflect on the hatred that we allow to take root in our hearts. The wisdom of the tradition acknowledges that hatred can sometimes feel energizing and “so right,” but allowing it to fill our bodies and guide our actions leads to destruction.

Many years ago I was taught the practice of praying with the news. I have shared it over the years and always find myself returning to it during this season.

In this practice, each time we read or listen to a news report that enrages us, we turn our attention to those harmed by what is happening and pray for their healing and well-being. Doing so encourages us to acknowledge feelings of anger, grief and despair, and at the same time it turns our attention toward connection and compassion. Praying with the news can help us learn to bear witness to devastation and mayhem, while keeping our hearts soft, our minds calm, and our actions clear.

I am struggling mightily with this practice these days in the wake of continued violence and oppression in this country and throughout the world. Hatred can sometimes feel like such a welcome harbor. Not only does it feel so right, it can also act as a shield, creating the illusion that I don’t have to acknowledge the grief and heartbreak I am experiencing.

I need practices to help quiet the rage and fear, to loosen the constriction of hatred and to help me be with overwhelming grief. I need practices to help me return to compassion, love, joy and possibility. I find praying with the news both painful and helpful. It keeps me connected, allows sorrow, and grounds me in care and love.Weekly reading from the Awakin.org newsletter.

Open your eyes.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Do you have any disagreeable people in your life? People you avoid, maybe?

What if they are the ones who need love the most?

Most teachers will tell you that the child who acts out is the one most in need of love and attention. but those kids have learned to ask for it in all the wrong ways. And those children grow up, sometimes into disagreeable adults who still ask for love and attention in all the wrong ways. Maybe they have been disappointed so many times, they’ve learned to strike first, to reject you before you reject them.

Do you know anyone like that?

It’s no particular challenge to love the people who love us. But the ones who rile us, who ruffle our feathers, who are caustic and rude? That takes some serious patience and humility. But, perhaps, that is a place you are desperately needed.

Embracing this life.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

The might have beens are a killer. We each take so many forks in the road, it’s easy to wonder how our lives might be if we had taken a different turn—gone to a different school, chosen a different career, picked a different partner. Those might have beens can keep us up late with longing and despair about the life we currently have. And, more importantly, they can strip those lives, the actual lives we are living, of joy. 

Consider this poem by Carl Dennis:

The God Who Loves You

BY CARL DENNIS

It must be troubling for the god who loves you 
To ponder how much happier you’d be today 
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings 
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened 
Had you gone to your second choice for college, 
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted 
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music 
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion. 
A life thirty points above the life you’re living 
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point 
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you. 
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments 
So she can save her empathy for the children. 
And would you want this god to compare your wife 
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus? 
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation 
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight 
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel 
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife 
Would have pleased her more than you ever will 
Even on your best days, when you really try. 
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives 
You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him 
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill 
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you 
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene 
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him 
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend 
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight 
And write him about the life you can talk about 
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed, 
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

Carl Dennis, “The God Who Loves You” from Practical Gods.Copyright © 2001 by Carl Dennis. Reprinted with the permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. For online information about other Penguin Group (USA) books and authors, see http://www.penguin.com.Source: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004 (Penguin Books, 2004)

We have choice and agency in the life we have. It is there we find meaning and purpose. It is there, in the now, that we can find joy. Embrace that life.

Consider the children.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

We all hurt right now. Our whole world grieves the loss of what once was. The present turmoil and divisiveness weigh us down. Each of us is struggling.

But what of the children? How are they doing? How will they remember this time?

They look to us to keep them safe, to care for them, to put their needs first. They don’t understand the greater turmoil. They see, keenly, what is right in front of them. What is that?

While we may not have a ton of control over world events, we do have control over how we treat the littlest among us. Consider the profound effect your words and actions have on children just starting to be introduced to the world. Temper your anger, your frustration, your dismay. There is no harm in having a full range of emotions, and teaching children that they, too, will be subject to sadness and disappointment, frustration and anger, bewilderment and helplessness as they age. But never let them forget that you love them and are with them and that you will stay in their corners come what may.

A persistent hope.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

What is hope, really, but a persistent insistence that things can be better, that there is more to it, that the final answers are yet to be revealed. Emily Dickinson describes hope as 

“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.”

And this feels right. Hope sits there perched, singing, warming our souls and keeping us fed. A wordless song because we may not even have the ability to put our emotions into words or know what it is we hope for. And this is a positive, persistent hope, but somewhat passive, waiting. 

And yet, we know, too, that hope gets its fingernails dirty because while hope sits on the periphery expectant, it can also be in the fray fighting for a better world. That kind of hope is captured by Matthew @CrowsFault:

“People speak of hope as if it is this delicate ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.”

And this, too, seems true. Hope keeps our souls fed but also prompts our entering the arena, helping us to do the hard work to make a better world for all.