My side lost. “I must close my heart in order to witness all the atrocities to come,” was my first reaction Wednesday morning. And fear. Fear of loss of so many things that are important to me. I’m feeling devastated and off balance. There are profound consequences to this election.
After my daily outings and necessary chores, I’ve spent many afternoons on my couch trying to to sort it out, processing what I didn’t want to be feeling, and attempting to open and accept what was now happening. “This is how it is,” always helps.
Certain pundits and comedians helped, and some readings and podcasts, as did many gatherings of like-minded folks. But mainly the silence, the solitude is where things feel most comfortable.
It’s like everything is at a standstill, in-between things, paused for a while – the seasons, presidents, fragile time between life and death for a dear friend, my moods. Maybe it’s natural to go through these inward and more gathering times. There are times to act and times to remain still, times to push and times to wait, times to engage and times to retreat. There seems a natural law of expansion and contraction of all things.
Perhaps this still time, or time of quiet reflection and grief is a good thing. It’s coinciding with nature’s seasonal change, and the quiet nurturance of an afternoon pondering, reading, and writing feels right. A gathering in.
Who knows what will happen? Who knows when I’ll feel ready to act again, to try to make my little corner of the universe a better place? And to do more opening poses in yoga, instead of the ones that fold me up and protect me.
We can’t lose hope. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “We were made for these times. For years, we have been learning, practicing, and been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.”
And Rebecca Solnit: “Remember what you love. Remember what loves you … the pain you feel is because of what you love.”
It’s difficult to retain hope when we, as elders, may be living out our last years under this oppression. But we need to retain hope for our children, our grandchildren and for the good of all beings.
There are many of us, and we are needed right now in some form or another. I can’t fix the whole world, but I can do little things in my own corner here to help another, support something or shine some kind of light. We must be strong, yet kind. Powerful, yet compassionate. Fierce, yet thoughtful. Resentment and bitterness prevent us from feeling the wind and noticing the black raven … we must keep a sense of preciousness about the earth, and each other.
I don’t have answers, but I do know we must seek common ground. The grassroots movement is where it will start, and continue, and we now have the infrastructure in place that we didn’t have in 2016. We can’t blame anyone or anything, and we cannot normalize this administration. We have a lot of good, hard, and sacred work to do when we’re ready. We have no illusions that the next 4 years will be easy. We have more to do than ever, and we need to come together to do it.
Words from Mother Teresa: There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.
Martha McClellan has lived in Durango since 1993 and has been an educator, consultant and writer. Reach her at mmm@bresnan.net.
