You Are Still Required
May we all stay calm and clearheaded and well-informed. May we all remember the common good, and the good of our neighbours, and if we are able to, may we remember to look out for one another. If you’re here, you’re probably the sort of person doing all this already. Thank you. I greet you with my hand over heart, which is the new handshake, or could be.
There is an older post of mine that you might find useful, titled, 20 Ways to Find an Inner Calm. The School of Life has a great list of articles under the category Calm. Karen at Chookooloonks has a good post on compassion at this time. I’ve been retweeting some good stuff over on Twitter and while people are understandably filled with anxiety right now, simultaneously, I really get the feeling that people are caring for each other and want to help out. There’s the collective desire to do what’s right for us all.
So here are a few quotations that others have shared:
“In a time of destruction, create something.” – Maxine Hong Kingston
“My loves, it is okay to strive to create and maintain joy and normalcy in the midst of troubled times.” – Laure E. Weymouth
“We need each other. Be helpful. Be patient. Be tolerant. All of us are a little bit on edge. These are strange times and strange times call for strange measures. Kindness is a superpower that we all possess.” – Jann Arden
As for me, you know my line: “You are required to make something beautiful.” Yes, even now. It helps to find a centering practice, something you can do every day. On Instagram I suggested that the staging of the everyday can be grounding. I know it is for me. Maybe now it is time to think about the encouragement that John O’Donohue shared via Pascal in his book Beauty: “In difficult times you should always carry something beautiful in your mind.” Maybe now is a good time to memorize a poem or a song. Or to stare at a painting so long that you can conjure it at will. Now is the time to draw and listen to music and perhaps photograph scenes from your everyday life.
O’Donohue taught the word Gelassenheit. He says:
“Over against the world with all its turbulence, distraction and worry, one should cultivate a style of mind that can reach through to an inner stillness and calm. The world cannot ruffle the dignity of a soul that dwells in its own tranquility. Gradually, this serenity will begin to pervade our seeing and change the way we look at things.”
Now is the time to cultivate that style of mind.
Another thing that we can do, I think, is to listen. You know the line, “What are you going through?” from my novel, Rumi and the Red Handbag. And I’ve recently been listening to Mumford and Sons and came across this piece on LitHub where Marcus Mumford is talking about Steinbeck. The context is different, but he talks about being on tour in Jerusalem and a mother says to him: “Please, just listen. Don’t try to fix anything while you’re here, like everyone does. Because when you listen to my story you bring dignity to my humanity.” And so now is a time to listen to the fears and anxieties and worries of those in our communities. Marcus Mumford says:
“Granting others the space to speak from the place that they’re in; allowing others to narrate the world they inhabit without needing to put them in a box of your own making; resisting the noisiness of the world that flattens out our differences or explains them away—this is the work of patient observation, the practice of sustained attention.”
There’s a lot going on, new things every day, and so much to process. Let’s help each other navigate through. Let’s listen. What are you going through?
