How to love when dealing with outrage.

Euphoria.
A feeling I seldom experience these days.
Maybe because of less drugs, sex and rock and roll?

But then there were the Women's Marches.  And weekend workshops. And other protest gatherings, of which I've been a part.

Central Park 1890s

I'm not into mobs of people usually, even disdaining a crowded sports stadium as a frightening experience that causes high anxiety for me.

But when people come together in a spirit of intense love, to remove a wrong having been, or about to be committed by others who have given every intention to do so, those gatherings really revive something in me.

Last night I was trying to explain why those experiences hold me fast when confronted by the scary and ridiculous political shenanigans that repeat themselves throughout the ages of our young republic.  Yes, these are not the first times party politics have been played out with shock and awe.

But the steadfastness of those protestors...that's what I'm trying to talk about.

It made me feel something that doesn't happen at other times in my life.  A group of well-intentioned people that causes a spiritual surge of love.  I swear there's an atmospheric shift when these happen. At least on heart levels...

I remember meeting someone I hadn't seen for years at our local Women's March.  She and I both commented upon our pleasure that this was an event full of love, which we'd been skeptically anticipating.  That caused us to share a joy that was somewhat a surprise.

So when I was talking with someone who didn't have that groundswell experience of shared love in community, I tried to explain how that became part of my foundation to deal with all the little tacky experiences that I continue to share on FB.  It isn't to cause any increase in people's level of anxiety.  It is to share facts, and to increase actions when they are possible.  Sure there are some scary things happening...but many of my friends on FB also have the experience behind them of knowing they are not alone...there are millions of us who can link arms (if we choose) for all the causes that need a unified action.  And action is the name of the game...at least in ways of Resistance!

I particularly liked a post which I shared, an urge to stay focused upon the strengths we have together.  I'll share a quote from it, and hope this link will stay available for a while. "How to Get out of the Cycle of Outrage in a Trump World." by Arianna Huffington.

"So we need to go back to the truth that helped the country recover after 9/11: if we are consumed by fear, the terrorists win. If we live in a perpetual state of outrage, Trump wins. Because when we become depleted and exhausted, and sapped of our energy, we’re not as resourceful, creative, or effective. The goal of any true resistance is to affect outcomes, not just to vent. And the only way to affect outcomes and thrive in our lives, is to find the eye in the hurricane, and act from that place of inner strength."

We each have an inherent center of power.  It is innate.  We are born with it.  When we learn to accept and honor it, we find our own strength and power source.  We may name it anything we like, and we often may believe it is connected to an external being, another source bigger than ourselves.  That is fine, and it gives us something to fall back on when we doubt ourselves.

But I have learned part of the outer external being that gives me my reflection of energy, is seeing the inner strength in other people who act from their own source of love.

And that is a surprise, because I'm an introvert, and usually get my own "recharge" from time alone, from being in nature, from meditation and contemplation.  What is this new stuff?  There is energy shared among people? I am so happy to find this.

Of course it can go wrong as well as very right.  I must have my own system of guards and guardians while tapping into the shared love-fest.  No this isn't a sexual energy (at least at my age I haven't found that kind of energy happening in crowds.) It's compassionate love.

This sense of caring among people is very powerful.  It is a real base of love, or Love with a capital letter.  OK, I'm an ex-hippy freak, so perhaps I'm harkening back to the days when we did say "Make Love, Not War."  And there were flower-children around at the time I was having my own children.

But today, in 2017, with Trumpian repeats of strangeness, and with politics run amuck yet again (look at the post-Civil War years in case you don't think we've done this before, or the pre-WW II isolationist years) I am able to walk around in a cautious optimism.

No matter how bad it gets, I know myself as myself.  And I know most of my neighbors will aid each other, and that's beyond politics.

Today's Quote was already given above.

Mentor: M. C. Richards (Part III)

My youngest son, the potter, went to a Waldorf school for a year also, which was based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner.  I just realized that MC wrote the book that I read about him also!
Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America.

And another influence of MC...when I interviewed at one of the rehabilitation centers where I counseled, I impressed the director by describing the organic crossing point in all plants (see below) as MC had taught.  Whether a person or plant, we all have almost microscopic points where change happens...in a plant from root to stem as the cells have different purposes...in a person when change becomes healthy rather than unhealthy for the organism.

It's all about Centering.

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Seeing with Your Inner Eye

Picture in your inner eye, your inner sight, four avocado seeds on the window sill. Three are suspended in a glass of water and have sprouted. One is still dry and papery and brown. Each of the sprouting seeds has its own character. One has two long roots, like two rubbery legs folding around each other in the bottom of the glass. Out of the top rises a cluster of tiny seedling leaves, and surprisingly, on this one, these leaves are white -- little tight white albino avocado seedling leaves, coming out of that big hard seed knob. Another has one short straight root and one straight shoot bearing green leaves at the top. The third has neither root nor shoot, but the whole seed has been split open by a thrust from inside, and the two halves shoved apart by the germinating seed force -- that little bunch of stuff, big as the end of your pinkie, shoving those big doors aside like a tiny Samson. It is a wonderful sight. And now let us look at the fourth seed, dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside. But within are a life force and a living plantness which we cannot see with our ordinary eyes. If we are to behold the wrinkled old seed in truth, we have to behold it with imagination, with our inner eye. Only with the inner eye of imagination can we see inner forms of Being and Becoming. In this lifeless-looking seed there is a germinating center, totally alive and totally invisible.

-- from The Crossing Point
Selected Talks and Writings

Plain ole me

Many things changing ...the one constant that life offers us is change.  Each day something is always going to be different.

At least it's not like walking on quicksand...I think.  It's like walking with many curves in front (as well as in back) of me, with many high slopes ahead, and with some rocky places as well.

But it all comes out with a cycle of movement, which I prefer to think of as a spiral.

The only trouble is forgetfulness.  I forget each morning until I get reminded, that life is a spiral, not a straight line between birth and death.  The spiral takes me from inside close to center, then out to the further edges where movement seems so slow that it's as if I'm barely moving.  

But then before I fall off this spiral (whatever that might be) I'm pulled back, moving towards center again.

If you're a potter friend, you know how centering is something that is done before creating anything on a wheel.  If you're a meditating friend, you know how sitting in quiet lets you feel your own physical, spiritual, emotional being is tucked there inside as you feel centered.

So as my life as Barbara has experienced yet another turn of the earth around the sun, I celebrate with my friends and family becoming a youngish elder of 73.  Once that felt like it would truly be old age.  But today I meet many people in their 80s and 90s...and one dear person over 101...so I know I've got a lot of living still to do.

Sharing cheer with my friend, Helen, I'm on the left.

Today's quote:

The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass where ever you may be.

Robert Fulghum