Everyday Is Not An Opportunity

This is a perfect reflection for today.

"Some days are there 

for you to accept yourself

and look at the clouds."

This applies especially

when the clouds are heavy with rain.

Welcome rain, yes, with heavy clouds.

"The flowers do it everyday"

The reason flowers brighten everyone's day.

So, let's all remember and practice

making the world beautiful

just by being here.

kastilwell

 

Limitless

"Be your own illumination."

Such sweet wisdom from the world

I so often take for granted.

"Small does not mean powerless."

That phrase, in particular, galvanizes me.

Here's a shot of my one small slice 

of a single modest galaxy yesterday morning.

It felt vast and limitless.

Standing there gazing upward.

I was awestruck.

kastilwell 

 

Recalibration

 

Death Is

Contemplating the cellular activity

happening to the remains of a being who has died,

 shows one how this is so.

It's a thought that caused a strong pause 

and then a hearty yes.

One of those paradoxical,

messy-brilliant realities

I appreciate more and more

as my own life moves closer

to overflowing.

kastilwell

 

Remember, Remember

Becoming "acutely aware" is the prompting.

I want to become acutely aware of

the promising and the possibility.

I want to remember that uncertainty

doesn't have to mean doom and gloom.

It could mean something wonderful,

an unexpected cause for jubilation,

rejoicing, dancing in the street with strangers.

It could be small and extremely significant.

I want to remember most people are kind and good hearted,

living quietly all across the globe,

rising each day and doing the best they can.

We are in the process of writing history.

The River of Goodness is flowing strong

carrying us along with unseen but perceivable 

grace and power.

I will no longer be taking this for granted.

kastilwell

 

Hope In The Dark

I confess to some strong tension going on inside of me

as I contemplate Solnit's thoughts and ideas.

I'm feeling called out. 

However, I believe, small actions matter.  And doing nothing isn't being idle.

I have a strong resistance to guilt as a motivator.

I am seeking a way to act that makes sense and has an impact however tiny.

There's also my deep belief in the River of Goodness which

gives me hope in the darkest of hours.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's poem today brings solace.  

I love this place (Earth).

There are options:

"to shovel, to teach, to clean, to rebuild,

to organize, to guide".

All options matter.

We Can Tell Of A Past

"we can tell a more complicated and accurate story. . .

a memory that includes our power"

It's difficult to distill her thoughts into

short statements...I think this is because

it takes more than short quotes to 

give justice to what everyday citizens

have been able to accomplish across history

and to remind us what is necessary for hope.

"Despair is ... a form of impatience as well as of certainty,"

is one of her quotes that requires a lot of words to unpack.

Her thoughts on despair, especially on the left

hit me hard as they revealed a truth I hadn't seen in myself.

I was raised to believe things happen to me. 

My job was to accept them ("God's will).

No one discussed managing the uncertainty 

of the future and the possibility of being

an instrument of change for the good.

I was taught to brace myself for the inevitable

hardship that I was destined to endure;

rather than being taught that uncertainty 

is a fact of life and I have the agency

to participate in bringing about 

a world I want to live in.

This book makes me want to

"play a role in that change" [for the better]

in whatever way I can.

I'm going to include this rather long section as I think its worthwhile in case you're interested.

"Left despair has many causes and many varieties. There are those who think that turning the official version inside out is enough. To say that the emperor has no clothes is a nice antiauthoritarian gesture, but to say that everything without exception is going straight to hell is not an alternative vision but only an inverted version of the mainstream’s “everything’s fine.” Then, failure and marginalization are safe—you can see the conservatives who run the United States claim to be embattled outsiders, because that means they can deny their responsibility for how things are and their power to make change, and because it is a sense of being threatened that rallies their troops. The activists who deny their own power and possibility likewise choose to shake off their sense of obligation: if they are doomed to lose, they don’t have to do very much except situate themselves as beautiful losers or at least virtuous ones. 

There are the elaborate theory hawkers, who invest their opponents with superhuman abilities that never falter and can never be successfully resisted—they seem obsessed with an enemy that never lets them go, though the enemy is in part their own fantasy and its fixity. There are those who see despair as solidarity with the oppressed, though the oppressed may not particularly desire that version of themselves, since they may have had a life before being victims and might hope to have one after. And gloom is not much of a gift. Then there are those whose despair is personal in origin, projected outward as political analysis. This is often coupled with nostalgia for a time that may never have existed existed or may have been terrible for some, a location in which all that is broken now can be imagined to have once been whole. It is a way around introspection. 

Another motive for gloom is grandstanding, for the bearer of bad news is less likely to get shot than to acquire a certain authority that those bringing better or more complicated news won’t. Fire, brimstone and impending apocalypse have always had great success in the pulpit, and the apocalypse is always easier to imagine than the strange circuitous routes to what actually comes next. And then, speaking of fire, there is burnout, the genuine exhaustion of those who tried—though sometimes they tried in ways guaranteed to lead to frustration or defeat (and then, sometimes, they burned out from being surrounded by all these other versions of left despair, to say nothing of infighting).

Solnit, Rebecca. Hope in the Dark