Everywhere, Everywhere, Everywhere
Mid-October is shifting seasons and losing light and hurtling toward the end of the year - only three more months to achieve those New Year’s resolutions, friends!
Soon it will be All Hallows Eve and everywhere the young and young at heart will pass strangers on streets asking each other, What are you? A zombie. What are you? A monster. A unicorn. A nurse.
October seems to lend itself to mystery, but this year, I find my own tolerance for living with mystery and uncertainty is low. Perhaps yours is too.
As these words reach you, millions of our neighbors in the south are recovering from not one but two historically powerful hurricanes. How much more devastating will our weather become? Are we prepared for those changes here in New England?
As you read these words, we are days away from a highly consequential national election. The outcome is maddeningly uncertain. How much farther divided can we as a people be, and yet remain committed to our collective survival?
A conversation with a friend recently about how there is so much happening all at once and any one of these things would feel overwhelming reminded me of a poem by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. It ends with these words:
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered,
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.
October is carrying us quickly towards Halloween and its pretend-scary mysteries, into the darkness of winter, and another real-life scary election. This season I keep company with worry, anxiety, and fear. Some days it feels overwhelming.
Two years ago - two years into the Covid pandemic - my colleague Erica Baron wrote these words: “There are lots of things in congregational life that can cause big feelings… - finances, music choices, covid policy, revising the bylaws, experiencing racism, anti-racism concepts and work, any kind of change… Finally, one person said, EVERYTHING!
Right, everything! Everything we do together in our congregations has the potential to bring on big feelings…”
And everything that happens outside our congregations (and outside our control!) can also bring big worried, anxious, scared, and a whole range of other feelings.
Fortunately, we have some tools for times like these. When we feel overwhelmed by powerful feelings, when everything, everywhere feels out of control, our brains and nervous systems get activated. But the practice of Spiritual Leadership we call Doing Our Inner Work can help us individually and as a gathered community to return to a place of greater emotional and spiritual center.
What helps you move from a state of activation to greater resilience? Is it taking deep breaths or stretching? Maybe moving to a different room to literally change your perspective? Calling a friend? Turning up some music to dance with abandon? Our bodies sometimes need help to discharge the energy that keeps us locked in anxiety and fear.
The same is true for gathered communities like our congregations. What might help you as a community to manage the heightened emotions of these anxious days? Singing together is one way - it requires us to breathe together, in time with the music and with one another. Listening to one another solely to understand - to hear each other’s fears and worries without trying to ‘solve’ anything or make anything better. Simply to bear witness; to say, I hear you; that sounds hard. Sharing a meal together builds trust and connection - and who does potlucks better than church people??
It can also help to discern where we have power to act, to effect change, and to acknowledge what is not in our power to do.
What is ours to do is to try to love the world.
To keep our faith - the faith that teaches that revelation is not sealed; our stories are still unfolding.
To care for ourselves and for each other because all of us need all of us to survive.
We cannot control hurricanes, but in this connected world we can provide sustenance to survivors. We can draw our circle of care wide and learn to receive, as well as to give.
We can remember with deep hope that seasons turn; that it will not always feel so hard, so intractably impossible everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
Mary Oliver wrote about the aftermath of a hurricane she once witnessed -
…listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of the summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn't stop. They
looked like telephone poles but didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.
And what I also dream of for us.
May we get through these days and these seasons, together.