JOYFUL PIECE #149
And it will come to pass
Lost, without a Joyful Piece for today, I opened a book of poems and met Tomas Tranströmer and the poem Face to Face, translated by Robin Fulton.
“In February living stood still.”
That is how the first stanza of the poem begins, and I can feel the bitter, cold, harshness of a stark winter day.
The poem winds its way beautifully through the winter landscape to this last stanza:
“One day something came to the window.
Work was dropped, I looked up.
The colors flared. Everything turned around.
The earth and I sprang toward each other.”
I could not help but reflect on the times in which we live.
The nation we once knew as America, and whose myths of excellence and compassion we fervently believed, seems at times but a distant memory. We are living through unthinkable corruption and depravity, and we sometimes think that the future is bleak. But if we look at history, and if we are woke to the efforts of millions of fellow Americans who oppose the reproachable conduct of the GOP, and the POTUS and his sycophants and associated oligarchs, we see a geometric growth in opposition to them as we head to the November midterms.
The daily meditation from cac.org brought me this gift:
“Our sister and ancestor Julian [of Norwich] is eager not only to speak to us today but to shout at us—albeit in a gentle way—to wake up and to go deep, to face the darkness and to dig down and find goodness, joy and awe. And to go to work to defend Mother Earth and all her creatures, stripping ourselves of racism, sexism, nationalisms, anthropocentrism, sectarianism—anything that interferes with our greatness as human beings. And to connect anew to the sacredness of life.”
—MATTHEW FOX
It reminds me that our joy, that inner joy that simmers beneath the current dysfunction and oppression is continuing to energize the resistance.
We must steadfastly support each other in overturning the opprobrium and oppression. I am confident that we will pop corks of happiness from bottles of sparkling joy when we drive the fascists from power. As assuredly as the Hungarians recently did, we will also succeed in shedding tyranny. And we will rebuild our political system to fulfill the premise that America has a government run not by oligarchs and ideologues, but by a government of, by, and for the people.
“Not just knowledge but true wisdom is needed in a time of death and profound change, for at such times we are beckoned not simply to return to the immediate past, that which we remember fondly as “the normal,” but to reimagine a new future, a renewed humanity, a more just and therefore sustainable culture, and one even filled with joy.”
—MATTHEW FOX
We must protect the embers of joyful resistance. We will be smelling the flowers of a new spring of liberty and opportunity for all.
Resist daily— a bright future awaits.
💐
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References of interest:
Sacred summoning?
See, sustain soul, soothe, support.
Life/love affirming.
"We must protect the embers of joyful resistance."
Amen!