A meditation for those days when we feel small, abandoned, or on the outside of our lives.Bless these feet that carry me by day and by night.Bless these hands that touch, sense, and bring the world towards me.Bless these lungs, transforming air into life on every breath,and bless this heart, for the continued heritage of all heartssince the first broke into the stillness.Bless this mouth, that can say what only I can say.Bless this body for love, joy, grief, rage, despair and hope.Bless this 'I' for incompleteness.Bless this mind that discerns, wonders, confusesand occasionally makes sense of the chaos.Bless the uncountable mistakes, accidents, chances and failuresthat keep life going and delivered me to this moment.I do not know, really, what is mine to do.But I do know that I am here,along with so many others.So bless the here-ness of me, and may it be my offering,My thanks, my home.
Photo Credit: le Roumain Flickr via Compfight cc
Perhaps uniquely among living creatures, we have the capacity to sense beyond the particular details of the situation in which we're living. We can see its limits, and perhaps more importantly we can see our limits. We can understand that there's a ceiling to our power and capacity, that our time is finite, that the future is unknowable, that our understanding is small, and that much of what we depend upon is way more fragile than we'll ever admit.There's a special word for the feeling this evokes - angst.We mostly experience angst as a feeling of absence, because in coming up against the limits of our world, and the limits of our understanding, we quickly conclude that something is missing and that we must be responsible for it. We feel that we ought to change things, make them better, fix them up. We feel our inadequacy in doing so.And so we build cultures, organisations and lives in such a way as to shore us up against experiencing angst. We imagine that if we don't have to feel this way - perhaps if we don't feel too much at all - then we can assure ourselves that everything will be just fine.Of course, in the end this doesn't work out, because behind all our busy activity, our habitual routines, and our constant affirmations that we're doing ok, angst is still making itself felt. In a way our efforts make it more apparent, because living in such a way as to avoid angst means making our world small and tightly sealed. The feeling that we're deceiving ourselves and imprisoning ourselves and that there is some bigger way of living becomes even more present, even as we try to hide it.Running away from angst, it turns out, amplifies it and robs it of its biggest possibilities.The way through this?Firstly, giving up the idealised notion of an angst-free future. Angst is, it seems, built in to the human condition and comes as a consequence of our capacity to see beyond ourselves. And so there can be no world in which angst is fully absent.Secondly seeing angst not as a terrible something to be avoided, but as an invitation, a reminder of the truth of our situation, which is that the world is much bigger, more mysterious, and more possibility-filled than we can usually imagine. And that even though there's really nothing to stand on, there's much that we can trust.Angst is then not a signal to hide away, but a reminder of the uniqueness of our human situation. And a call to step more fully into life.
There are a million ways to be. But we hold on tightly to the way of being that is most familiar to us - the one each of us thinks is who we are.And so when we're in trouble - or stressed, or feeling held back by the world or by ourselves, when we're longing, wishing, wanting, despairing - we tend to do more of what we already know to do. What we always do.Even when it hurts us.Even when by doing this, we keep the world the same as it has been for so long.We choose familiarity over our own growth, because familiarity seems to save us from risk. At least we know the world when it's this size, this shape.At least we won't be surprised.And, because of this, just when our habit is to rush to do something, it's often just the right time to wait. When we're certain we have to be certain, the right time to be curious. When we're most familiar with holding back, it can be the time to act. When we're sure we have to be strong, the right time to be vulnerable. When we're most ready to judge can be time to suspend judgement. When we're most harsh on ourselves it's the time, instead, to be exquisitely kind.And, when we're most despairing, it's often just the right time to hope.
Some things to think that might help us do what we're really here to do:We're here and so soon we're gone.In comparison to geological and even to historical time our individual lives are the briefest flash of energy and vitality, and then we're done. For most of us it's true also that our lives are the briefest flash in our own personal experience - done way before we're ready.We're living longer than anyone previously in history.Which, if we're willing to seize the chance and to take our own development seriously, might just give us the time to develop the intelligence, sensitivity, and breadth of vision to solve the problems we've made for ourselves.We're going to have to get way more intentional about our development than we are now if we want this to happen.The world was here long before each of us arrived, and will be here long after we've left it.Seeing ourselves as part of something much bigger in this way can help us give up our self-aggrandisement and also our self-obsession, both of which keep our concerns and our lives in very narrow bounds.And maybe we can find out how much more there is than living a life in which we get comfortable or which is oriented first around our own likes and dislikes. Instead, seeing ourselves as the inheritors and custodians of a world can support us in having our lives serve everyone who'll come after us.There's nobody coming to save us.Many of us secretly wish for the moment we'll get rescued from all our difficulty and all our worries - by a parent, a lottery win, a leader, a messiah. Our longing has us place wishful thinking above meaningful action. Let's give this up and imagine that we are the ones sent to do what saving can be done.Each of us is an expression of life itself.In the our disorientation and our confusion, it can help to see how each of us, all of us, are an expression of life doing what life does - experimenting, learning, and responding.Seeing ourselves this way opens a huge opportunity to take responsibility. And perhaps to trust ourselves enough that we can participate in our lives rather than fight against them.
We've allowed ourselves to become obsessed by youth.The way this has shaped our public lives is quite easy to see, from the relentless focus on youthful beauty in our media to the cruelty of causal ageism in the workplace.What's harder to see is how it is affecting the narratives we have about ourselves.We see all the ways that growing old is a falling apart, an endless series of losses, a disintegration. And so we try to stave it off, denying what is happening to us. As we grow older and as the time remaining to us diminishes, we become diminished in our own eyes. In this way we rob ourselves and others of our dignity.But here is an account of ageing from the Jewish mystical work, the Zohar, which points to a different possibility:
When we're feeling fear, sorrow, anger or emptiness at the world - or at any situation we find ourselves in the midst of - perhaps it would help us to remember:That when we speak our fear we draw on the courage and dedication it takes to speak;And when we express our sorrow it can arise from our love and care for what has been lost;That we can speak about our anger best by finding the commitment to justice from which it comes;And that our emptiness, our sense of what is still missing, is also the possibility from which something new can arise.Every anguish, every sorrow, has its truest ground in a kind of dedication, hope and love. And when we can remember that, rather than just the anguish and sorrow, our chances of being able to contribute with dignity are deepened and widened and made more real.
Our primary needs as human beings:Warmth, shelter, food.and then:Touch. The loving gaze of others.Being welcomed by smiling faces, simply for being alive.Community.A way to express our feelings and experiences truthfully, and to be heard.People with whom to celebrate, and with whom to grieve.Intimacy with others, and with the world.Nature.A way to belong.Being of service.Art.Beauty, wonder.Encounters with the sacredness of things.It is the nature of our primary needs that, when met, we feel filled, complete, connected. Nothing more is called for.The consumer economy in which we live is dedicated to meeting secondary needs - which are a pale imitation of what is primary. Our secondary needs, even when met, can't fill us. They leave us wanting more. And as such they are ripe for the sale, for the making of profit.So it should be no wonder that our primary needs are marginalised, often ridiculed, in our education system, organisations, and politics. Why have real contact with others when there's no money in it? Beauty, when it will satiate rather then create demand? Intimacy, when it interrupts our addiction to the latest products? Deep joy, or deep sorrow, and contact with what's sacred, when it stops us from feeling like empty vessels that need continual filling? Why do anything if it can't be linked to productivity, or profit, or economic growth? Why do anything that will have us stop our restless, rootless consumption?You could say that it's the systematic marginalisation of our primary needs, and the worship of the secondary, that keeps our whole economy going in its current form.But it's in meeting one another's primary needs, needs that can never be met in the form of a transaction, that we are most fulfilled, and most able to take care of what really needs our care.
Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise were live again on Sunday 26th November.This week the source for our conversation is Francis Weller's book "The Wild Edge of Sorrow". We begin with two poems - Denise Levertov's "To Speak of Sorrow" and Robert Bly's "What is Sorrow For?". We talk about the connection between feeling our sorrow, shared rituals and spaces for grieving, and aliveness. Along the way we touch on how restraining sorrow keeps the myth that we are separate going, and how our collective numbing to the losses of our own lives and the world is a way we keep perpetuating the more destructive aspects of our current culture. We end with the hopeful thought that finding ways to grieve together is a way to help us turn more fully and courageously towards life and all that is called for from us.You can find both poems, which we recommend you read before watching, 
Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise were live again on Sunday 19th November.The source for this week's conversation was Joanna Macy's "Personal Guidelines for the Great Turning". We talk about what can support us in responding courageously and truthfully in the midst of the enormous changes - political, social, environmental - which may only just be beginning and which could change everything. Along the way we touch on the life-giving necessity of beauty, how to know ourselves in a way that can give us the courage we need to step forward, and how important it is to realise that none of us is alone.You can find Joanna Macy's 'Personal Guidelines', which we recommend you read before watching,