Where Hope is Born

Beloved friends,

As most of you know, I led a Community Reading of Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities this winter. I found myself quite changed by this slim book with an estimated 6 hour read time. My sense of power, possibility, politics, and cultural change were shifted and enriched. I've been promising that I'd say a bit more about that, and today's the day! Before I dive in, I wish to give thanks again to my beloved friend, student, and sister-on-the-path Jessie Raeder both for turning me on to this book and for the many hours we've spent reading aloud to one another.

Understanding Hope
Rebecca posits that both optimism and pessimism are certainties: we believe that things will or will not get better. Hope, she points out, requires only that we are willing to hold uncertainty about the future. This simple point was a wedge that blew my heart and mind wide open. It's so easy! Do I know what will happen? I do not not! I can guess, and often my guesses are correct. Also, however, my guesses are often incorrect. Truly, I do not know what the future will hold. This is the seed of hope.

"Hope locates itself in the premises that we don't know what will happen and in that spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act."

For me, who calls myself Priestess of the Mystery, who has chosen wondering and uncertainty as core practices in my living and loving and mystery itself as the subject of my devotion: how utterly ideal! Of course I do not know what the future will hold; no one does. What a joy to understand that this is precisely where hope is born: the willingness to hold uncertainty, to wonder.

Taking Action
Rebecca speaks of political and social change with the most moving blend of romance and pragmatism. While editing this piece I looked up the meaning of romance to see if I meant this correctly, and I found: "a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love." Yes. That is just right.

Rebecca set me and other folks in our Community Reading alight, leading us to step forward and get more active and engaged in political organizing. I read a suggestion recently, and I ache that I do not recall the source to credit them, but oh, the beauty of it: that we should all be saying proteCtors rather than proteStors when we speak of this process, of what it means right now.

Rebecca speaks of organizing for change as if it were some combination of the world's livingroom and a wonderful party we're throwing together which makes me see how it can be that: how it can not only perhaps lead to change, but nourish and sustain us in the effort itself. As in spiritual practice: the practice is the point.

"Activism, in this model, is not only a toolbox to change things but a home in which to take up residence and live according to your beliefs, even if it's a temporary and local place, this paradise of participating, this vale where souls get made."

Uprooting Fear and Despair
Hope, action, and community are gifts this text offers. Hope, action, and community blunt the power of fear and even despair. Grief is still likely to be a companion, but grief can be borne when we are connected and supported; grief is something we can walk through and make meaning from. Fear and despair are harder to find an end to, harder to make meaning with and get free of.

"Thus it is that the world often seems divided between false hope and gratuitous despair. Despair demands less of us, it's more predictable, and in a way it's safer. Authentic hope requires clarity – seeing the troubles in this world – and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable."

The principles shared in this little tome are elucidated with gripping examples, often from recent history which many of us have lived through. The story of the world is a very different thing when I hear it from Rebecca – and the story she is telling is the story I want to live in. Her stories are riveting, from how Viagra helped save the caribou, the inspiring philosophy and poetry of the Zapatista uprising, and the care-giving and order-making that naturally arise when people face disasters. She makes political process sound like the life of the world in a way that makes you want to jump in and join the dance.

After writing this and rereading it, I find myself lingering on that last sentence: OF COURSE politics is the life of the world. Of course it should be lively, creative, philosophical. This is how we put our values and ideas together to decide what the world we are living in is. How have we allowed ourselves to become convinced that this is boring or that it is work for someone else, anyone else, because it is drudgery? This little book reawakened me to the fact that our shared life is what we are choosing in this work. It is not an aside from our living, it is the entire context for our living. It is worthy of our attention, and it is the ground in which we plant the seeds of our hope.

Resilience

Creation and Connection
Last week I shared instructions for making dandelion garlands. Deep thanks to Calah and Sarah, who sent me photographs of the garlands they made. Seeing my words lead to small magical objects in your homes is so moving, friends, and lifts my heart.

We Want to Belong
Susan Dominus has written a beautiful article for the NY Times about happiness (gift link). "How Nearly a Century of Happiness Research Led to One Big Finding" details that, in short, connection is key to our happiness; it does this by exploring the story of how we have engaged in this research over time, how our understanding has grown and changed, and why. It's a wonderful read. Along the way it refers to one of the most-watched TED Talks of all time, Robert Waldinger speaking about a 75 year study on happiness. Thanks to Kirsten

Embracing Imperfection and Creativity
One of my favorite forms of the backlash against fast fashion is the trend for visible mending. My lifelong love of visible mending began, as it does for many of us, simply because I wasn't very good at sewing yet and could not make my work invisible; therefore, I tried to make it beautiful. There's a global Street Stitching movement and public mending and repair events are popping up all over. My county has a group which does regular repair and fix-it fairs for all sorts of things and there are folks working on a tool library in town. I bet if you poke around you'll find such things near you as well! Reasons to be Cheerful's piece on the visible mending movement is a lovely inspiration if you'd like some. “Mending is a technique and a decision and a way of life,” says Sekules. “Once you mend, it changes you.”

Springtime
This week's cover image is a maidenhair fern fractaling away in the Olympic National Park where I hiked this weekend.

We Are Not Alone
Someone set out to study whether anecdotal reports that seemed to show more-than-human animals attempting to revive unconscious companions might be correct. The charming answer is yes, science has now proved that mice do something CPR-like when they encounter unconscious fellows, particularly if they know that person well. The path there is via caged mice in laboratories and therefore not for all readers. NPR has an interview with the researcher: "New research finds mice perform CPR-like behavior on each other when incapacitated". Science has the original study: "Reviving-like prosocial behavior in response to unconscious or dead conspecifics in rodents".

Resistance

Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny from the Twentieth Century is a beautiful little piece by Timothy David Snyder who is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University. A snippet in hopes of easing you toward reading more:

12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

13. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

14. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting.  Consider using alternative forms of the Internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble.

Now I end as I began today: by thanking Jessie, who sent this my way.

I began the process of thanking people in this newsletter at a time when I was thinking a lot about the values of white supremacy; I wanted to say something like, "I am writing this, but the meaning I make is shared; we make it together. My thoughts are made of yours just as you are making mine yours in reading this." I wanted to say: "This is an interdependent thing, this whole being-me situation!" It's an honor to share this with you, precious being.

Feeding the teacher:
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