I Wake Up and It Breaks My Heart*

 

I open my eyes on a beautiful West Coast morning: sunshine, forest breathing greenly, eagles soaring above, the eternal waves rolling in to shore. The world could not be more beautiful. Yet its human and non-human beings are suffering. Holding both these truths at once breaks my heart.

So much suffering: humans, whales, polar bears, Mother Earth herself, all of her creatures struggling to adapt to the climate crisis, wars, discord and injustice that (in)humanity has caused.

I have lived through suffering often in my 79 years. But what is on my tv screen these days I never thought I'd see in North America. Yet here we are.

I was raised to live in hope, "hand on my heart, hand on my stupid heart*", believing that faith and goodness and laws and rights and freedoms - that justice itself - would hold strong.

This box of darkness is too heavy. Yet I have to believe that, collectively, far more of us believe in justice and equality and human rights than not. We can put this box down, rise up to reclaim all we hold most dear, talk loudly to our representatives, VOTE!!!, help, protect and bear witness to our neighbours in harm's way. March for the dispossessed, both human and animal. Help where we can.

I carry two truths in my tired and aching heart: the world could not be more beautiful. That it also is suffering lives in my every heartbeat.

In the morning, I open my eyes on this beautiful West Coast world. And it both lifts and breaks my heart all over again.

* title and italicized lines from "Meditations In an Emergency" by Cameron Awkward-Rich

For my prompt atWhat's Going On: Help for Hurting Hearts. (Not sure how much help it offers, sadly. Other than sharing the journey.)

No Words

 I don't even have words for what happened this morning in Minneapolis. As I watched, a feeling of doom came over me. This. Must. Stop.

HUMANITY RISING

 

Where to find hope or inspiration,
when cruelty and lawlessness,
racism and fascism,
things we never dreamed could be this bad
in North America,
assault us every day
on our tv screens?

It is in
a line of monks
walking across America,
spreading compassion,
exemplifying peace.
Showing us how.

It is in humanity rising
in response to brutality,
neighbours turning out 
to support neighbours.
Love trumping darkness,
even if it takes a while.
Because this is not who we are.

It is in intentional writing,
our words, like the monks' footsteps,
travelling across the page or screen,
our fingers tapping solidarity,
our gaze as loving and serene
as Aloka's,
looking out at a world gone mad,
yet clinging to the peacefulness
within,
so the dark and toxic ones
don't win.

Seeking Peace

 

Walk for Peace photo

Everything is beautiful,
and I am so sad.*

Where to find peace in difficult times?

It's in a line of monks in orange robes,

walking across America for peace and compassion:

their quiet hearts, their smiles, their fingers
raised in blessing.

It's in the sunrise rising up over Rosie Bay,

in the crows strutting along the beach,

turning over shells, looking for their breakfast.

Everything is beautiful*
 and then I turn on the news,
speechless at the illegality, the inhumanity,
the cruel brutality,
yet also lifted up
by the voices of good people
fighting to uphold the rule of law.

Then, I have to
disappear, like a hermit,
into the forest,
to listen to the trees
breathing peace.
What we save, saves us,
I read somewhere,
and it is true.
The trees fill me with their peace,
and I emerge transformed,
renewed, restored.

I have carried beauty and sorrow
in equal measure
through the length
of my old age,
watching the world I love
fall apart.

We turn from scenes we never dreamed
we'd see

on the streets of North America:
an angry, ugly boil that has festered
and broken open.

I walk, like the monks,
intentionally,

to find some peace, and there she is -

a fox, where there has never been
a fox before -

peering from the thicket
- not alarmed, not running off -

just looking, as if to ponder what manner

of beast we humans are, to make so much noise

and clamour and distress on lands

meant for peace and plenty,
for beauty and for joy.

I carry the forest's peace
with me as I leave.
When the clamour is too great
it is the wild
that helps me grieve.

The fox sighting was by a friend, not me. But she sent me the photo and I put her sweet face into this poem.

***The italicized lines are from Mark Nepo's poem "Adrift".

A slight adjustment to last Friday's poem, for Susan's prompt at What's Going On - Peace.

What's going on indeed - things I never dreamed would happen this close to home. In Canada, we are appalled - and nervous.

In Difficult Times

 

facebook image from Walk for Peace

Where to find poetry in difficult times?

It's in a line of monks in orange robes,

walking across America for peace and compassion:

their quiet hearts, their smiles, their fingers
raised in blessing.

It's in the sunrise rising up over Rosie Bay,

in the crows strutting along the beach,

turning over shells, looking for their breakfast.

It's in the daily news, horrifying, heartbreaking,

violent attacks on innocent civilians, and it's in

the voices of those there to witness, asking

"what's your name? who can I call?"

We turn from scenes we never dreamed we'd see

on the streets of North America,
an angry, ugly boil that has festered
and broken open.
We walk, like the monks,

to find some peace, and there she is -

a fox, where there has never been a fox before -

peering from the thicket
- not alarmed, not running off -

just looking, as if to ponder what manner

of beast we humans are, to make so much noise

and clamour and distress on lands

meant for only peace and plenty.

The fox sighting was by a friend, not me. But she sent me the photo and I put her sweet face into this poem.

Begin Again

 

Walk for Peace

"Something that will not acknowledge conclusion insists that we forever begin."
from Brendan Kennelly's poem "Begin".

The year begins, not at all hopeful,
and yet......

in the early morning light, nineteen monks
chant prayerfully before setting out
on their journey across America,
walking for peace, for compassion,
bringing hope for better times
in their kind eyes.

Beautiful spirit-dog Aloka, a being of
unutterable love, walks beside them,
light on his paws, jauntiness in his tail.

This journey is met with tears
by people so hungry for kindness, for beauty,
in a year beginning even darker than the last,
as we watch leaders repeat the horrors
of the past, having learned nothing
about peace, or how to be happy
just being.

Bless the monks on their journey of compassion,
who are cold and tired with aching feet
they never mention and quietly bandage each night.
Two or three are walking barefoot
to make their offering even stronger.

Their gift is so great. They lift my heart.
They help me believe - that goodness
will always triumph in the end, because
the alternative is not livable.
Day by day, I will pace my small rooms
in spiritual community with the beautiful monks.
I will send out compassion and kindness
and hope. Each morning,
like the beautiful monks,
I will begin again.

for Sumana's prompt at What's Going On:  BEGINNINGS

Holding On

Maybe you don't know strength
until the world has brought you to your knees,
as low as you can go, and yet
you somehow find it within you
to get back up and try again.

Maybe you don't know hope
until, after the hardest winter of your life,
you see a tree frog on your deck,
and small green growing things
start popping up out of the soil.

Maybe you think you are alone,
until you come home exhausted
after the worst day ever, and
two wriggling, barking explosions
of joy leap around, tails wagging,
as if you are back from an Arctic expedition
and have been away too long.

Maybe you start to think that life
will never get any easier, that struggle
is all you will ever know,
until you remember other hard times
and the better days that followed,
and remind yourself that,
after the cold winter, good days
and sunshine and laughter and hope
will come again. 

Maybe you feel so discouraged
that even the blue sky fails
to lift your heart. And yet,
you were born for sunny days,
and visits from the neighbourhood deer,
and green smiles from the tall cedar.
All - all - are surrounding you
with all the beauty they know,
in order to comfort you,
remind you you are loved,
and keep you holding on
for better days.

Dedicated to a loved one who is struggling harder than any one human should ever have to do.