At War with Ourselves
One of many images of the war in Ukraine that scald a mother's heart. Another went viral yesterday of prams left at a railway platform for refugees arriving in Poland. Not too long ago Poland was invaded. One of the first things we teach our young children, is that sharing is caring.
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, "Where are you going?"
And this he told me...
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning"
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who l am
But you know, life is for learning"
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
~ Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock"
How can we have peace? Surely it begins at home.
In our own hearts and families?
And here I am getting to grips with the impossible process of mothering my own children.
The wheel turns eternally. I had a dream last night that I found a desiccated cormorant in the bathroom. I assumed the cats had dragged the poor dead creature in, but then realised that the walls were caked in its blood and feathers. That the bird had tried desperately to escape. I thought, if only I'd been here I could have opened the window and let it fly free.
Come help us build a school for our children in Delft. Because we all belong to each other.
There are no others.
My children are yours and yours are mine.
And I'm so sorry we haven't fully grasped that yet, because therein lies our great suffering.
Also, we all need to be of service. It's the only thing that feels
meaningful and the very best thing for teens who can get too terribly
self-involved/sorry for themselves/mean/selfish/emo/etc etc etc.... But also have the capacity for incredible altruism & compassion, if given the opportunity.
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| https://www.naturalbuildingcollective.com/ |
There is so much suffering in our individual hearts and homes, so of course we see it writ large on the global political stage.
Yesterday I had a lovely online lesson chatting with a very bright young Russian student on the border of Ukraine who is himself half Ukrainian.
He delighted me with his “Random Dude” hypothesis of Russian History.
Are we not all random, whether royal, dictator, or other?
Or the flip side of that same coin…
are we not all of equal significance?
Whether prince or pauper?
Instagram influencer or Luddite?
He
shared his concerns & outrage at the propaganda they have been made
to watch at school and we talked about probable outcomes, the crashing
economy, how to access info when even VPNs don’t work, where his family
might evacuate to.
He talked about how his grandmother used to be paid in Vodka during the bad old days.
It’s
Women’s Day and I drew a mandala card for his lovely little
sister which I thought was very apt, both for her lovely gentle spirit
and for us all to remember.
Gently does it…
Breathe in
Breathe out
It
was also refreshing to be in communication with a young man who doesn’t
think I’m beyond the pale. My own beloved son is pulling away as needs
he must. But wow, it’s painful.
Happened to listen to two amazing podcasts that handed out epiphanies,
both illustrating the impossibility of fulfilling the archetype of Mother satisfactorily:
Jeanette Winterson (love her memoirs) on Desert Island Discs &
the third part of this week's edition of This American Life.
Neither are exemplary mothers by anyone’s standards.
And yet here we all are…trying our best surely.
Gently does it....
Some art therapy to help me process all the big feelings. The image of the family fleeing taken from an old report on the war in Kosovo. Remember that one? The mother's jacket happened to be flying the Ukrainian colours. The child looks back.
This poem written by Ukrainian poet Anna Akhmatova comes to mind:
Lot's Wife
And the just man trailed God's shining agent, over a black mountain, in his giant track, while a restless voice kept harrying his woman: "It's not too late, you can still look back at the red towers of your native Sodom, the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, at the empty windows set in the tall house where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed." A single glance: a sudden dart of pain stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . . Her body flaked into transparent salt, and her swift legs rooted to the ground. Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn.
When the first magazine you happen to pick up from a huge old stack includes Red Square you roll with it. A meditation on empires built up at any cost. And truly they all rise and fall like the tides, the waters often run red with blood.
And why can't we remember our shared humanity?
It begins at home. In our own sacred hearts. No quick fix. Only constant gentle mindfulness. This is the medicine, the antidote. Our salvation.
Poetry, a balm and holy moment of recognition.
Thank you poets, artists, kind hearts. Thank you. You help us slow down, notice & tell the truth.
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| Dankie Aré |
The Way It Is
By Lyn Unger
One morning you might wake up
to realize that the knot in your stomach
had loosened itself and slipped away,
and that the pit of unfulfilled longing in your heart
had gradually, and without your really noticing,
been filled in—patched like a pothole, not quite
the same as it was, but good enough.
And in that moment it might occur to you
that your life, though not the way
you planned it, and maybe not even entirely
the way you wanted it, is nonetheless—
persistently, abundantly, miraculously—
exactly the way it is.
(Thank you Gareth for the daily dose <3 )
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| Peace at every step |
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