WordSisters

Category: Recentering

  • Three Summertime Favorites

    This summer’s smoky air has forced me to confront the many effects of climate change. While I shop for an electric or hybrid vehicle, I’m consciously turning away from my anxious dismay to remind myself of three favorite summertime experiences.

    Fireflies at the University of Minnesota Arboretum 

    Walking the hardwood paths and wildflower fields at dusk, when the grounds are usually closed, was magical. The air was warm and still. The land exhaled. At first, we saw a spark of light here and there in the shadows. As dusk deepened to near dark, small clouds of fireflies shimmered in meadows and swamps. Flashed On. Off. On. Off. A silent conversation. A symphony of light.

    ShrinerFest 

    In a week, my extended family will gather for a weekend in Chicago we call ShrinerFest. I continue to be delighted and surprised my siblings, their far-flung children, spouses or beaus, and grandchildren love this get-together. We’re all so different—from introverted scientists to outgoing sales managers—and hold a range of political and religious views. But we sidestep all that and just enjoy catching up, eating, laughing, eating, teasing. One young niece even illustrated a book about ShrinerFest for a school project.

    Drinking wine on my small porch in the evening

    We sit in the glowing circle of lamplight. I stretch out on the loveseat reading a novel while my husband reads tomorrow’s news today. The dozens of birds inhabiting our blue spruce are silent. City buses trundling by interrupt the KBEM jazz or blues on the radio. Now and then we hear the cry of a small animal—a rabbit? Chipmunk? I’m not enough of a naturalist to know. The ceiling fan stirs humid air that’s cooled to comfortable by 10 o’clock. The neighborhood quiets. We sip and read.

  • Meditation on Autumn Equinox

    Long before a turning point is evident, tiny shifts lead to change: The last cut of the axe before a tree falls, the gathering force of an avalanche before it lets go, the final few cells piling up to a clot that blocks flow and becomes the stroke, the gradual loosening of a sleepy child’s fingers before the toy slides to the floor, the droop and dangle of a leaf before it drops, the new insight added to insight as a mind is changed. 

    At autumn equinox, a near balance is struck when day and night are almost the same length before the northern hemisphere tilts toward winter. Minutes of daylight have been slipping away since June, and September’s days, though still sunny, are cooler. I don’t welcome the coming darkness, but accept it. And autumn has its compensations: apples, fires, and glorious colors.

  • Cultivating Hope

    Lately, I have been struggling to feel optimistic. The Ukraine invasion is heavy on my mind. In the big world, there are many other pressing problems (you know the list). Yet I want to be hopeful. In fact, I kind of insist on it. 

    I have been heartened by the astonishing global reaction to the Russian invasion. 

    I also remind myself that historically, when cataclysmic events have changed the world order, sometimes positive change happens too. It may be that having been through something terrible, people vow, “Never again,” as the Greatest Generation did after WWII. Their commitment to preventing more world wars held for decades, not perfectly, but mostly. Taking the long view gives me hope.

    I strive for perspective and balance. I remind myself my own life is fine. But sometimes I backslide into overwhelm: How can we find lasting peace, address the climate crisis, shore up our democracy, and so much more? It all feels insoluble. What can one person do? 

    What I finally come to is, what other choice do we have? We have to keep trying to change and improve the world. And that means hoping.

    Howard Zinn, in “The Optimism of Uncertainty” expresses what I believe better than I can—

    To be hopeful in bad times is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. 

    If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. 

    And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. To live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.