So . . . How do we do this? How do we keep up the good work?
Out in the middle of South Pond last week, I was paddling with my dear friend, Helaine, and I found myself saying, I know I’m not alone in this — I just find I need to say it out loud; I’m feeling the uncertainty of these times and the warming of the planet in my very being so deeply . . . It is taking effort to keep my heart open and my energy up and resourceful. Helaine listened and concurred. Helaine is a good listener.
The pair of Loons that I’ve been communing with in the last few months were swimming nearby, and just then the one chick they have been fiercely protecting all summer dove below the surface of the water. I’ve been observing this little one — first riding on her parents’ back with her two siblings, then swimming alongside them solo, and now we saw that she had just learned to dive into the deep!
Often these days my heart feels as if it is dropping out of my chest (Do you know what I mean?) and then something I love, something pin feathered and brave, brings support back up under my breast bone once again. The practices in the Daily Activists’ Log are some of what helps me to keep showing up enough to be out there communing with the loons, while staying engaged with what the world seems to need from me now.
I’m also hearing words from people like Toni Morrison, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and Martin Shaw that call me into my staying power.
If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then you need to empower somebody else. Toni Morrison
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My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times . . . Clarissa Pinkola Estes
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The nightworld is where we are. I say it. I say it till we may hear it.
And in that darkness, we remember what we love the most.
That itself is the candle. Martin Shaw
So on behalf finding the candle by remembering what we love the most, the Daily Activist’s Log, which I first published in 2016, is my mid-summer offering. May it support you to make your contribution and to keeping up your resolve in these tumultuous times. Love, after all, is a verb.
Click here to access the original post and to download the Daily Activists’ Log.
Warmly, Lyedie
Final note: Remember to keep making breakfast, making love, and making some trouble on behalf of beauty truth and goodness . . .