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In the spirit of gratitude and the settling in of the season of Christmas, Hanukkah and Solsitice, Im writing to you all to both buoy your spirits and lift up my own. This year the calander brings both the first night of Hanukkah and Christmas day together in the week of Solstice. and I want that to mean something more than a shift in the seasonal moon cycles. I want it to mean that we are connected in the Abrahamic faiths, and to the Earth that we have more deeply in common than not. I'm choosing this stance because Im looking for reasons to love and connect pretty desperately this year. Im searching everywhere, and refusing to back down, even as I gently whack down my chirppy, reactive brain when it says things like "Chaos! Confusion! Stress! End of Days!"
I'm remembering the truth that humans are really flexible and adaptable (when we allow ourselves to be) and in every past generation our ancestors faced great material and cultural difficulties that we can't really imagine. Every single generation until ours have struggled, progressed, regressed and created new truths out of passing ones. We are in the middle of this churning, seeming chaos, and this season too shall pass.
As stressful as this present day may seem, I would choose this day to live over any other time, however glorified in retrospect people may want to view the past. True, many things were simpler, things moved more slowly and communities were more deeply connected, sometimes, and in some places and yet, life expectancy was lower, people died of simple infections we can cure with telehealth now, oppression went unchallenged for the most part...And.... We do move on, we do heal, we do progress, and we are moving on and healing, even when all we may see is a weird foggy back drop of cartoon characters and false prophets.
And yet this current 'retro' culture shock mode suggests that for real and lasting change to anchor in and remain solid we must show compassion to others who are frightened of progress, because their fear of the unfamiliar is as human as the desire for equality and the push forward towars the arch of justice.
Its an ugly truth- we humans seem to have some biological bigotry built in and at times, we let it out and we even revel in it. All of us, sometimes. We all fear what we are not familiar with, we pretend we don't sometimes but we all do a little. Both sides. The mass regression can and needs to be challenged but only when it is challenged with a dose of compassion can we find real change.
So practicing Gratitude as a choice allows me to create autonomy over my fears, gives me the power of having a choice when, in fact, I dont like many things happening around me, and in the world.
This day to day, hour to hour choice to see the good mixed in with the confusing and even the painful keeps me going. It helps me remember that I can do really hard things and each time I have either chosen to do hard things (well, really when I was forced to do them most of the time) I found more joy and more gratitude in the process than I would have had in avoidance. Just facts as the teens say.
So, I can fight the "fairness" of the challenges in an infinite loop in my squirrel brain or I can embrace them and rally with my silly current slogan, "Not today, Satan!"
I look all around for the kindnesses of others, the willingness to give and to love and most of all for the courage to forgive, even as I grieve and remember people who are gone, people who will not forgive, people who are lost. I can do the most difficult thing and stay balanced between both these places.
Can I tell you a cool secret that provides data for premise humans are mostly good? More people donated gifts and funds to an annual event I help organize at an emergecy family shelter this year than EVER before. We have recieved more gift cards, cash, clothes and volunteers and kindness than any year in the past 20 or so. Wow! (Again, God showing off just when I was feeling pretty morbidly pessimistic)
Here's a link to the Shelter and what wonderful work they do:
Christian Community Action Emergency Housing
Tell me please if you have wittnessed or experienced such a moment of Grace. I want to keep track and feel joy in these small and great things.
Sending you Hope and Gratitude- Liz
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