We're Not Going Anywhere
In the middle of catastrophic times, when we are encouraged to go into hiding, what I know for sure is that we’re not going anywhere.
In catastrophic times, when we are encouraged to go into hiding, what I know for sure is that we’re not going anywhere.
By “we,” I mean community, friends, family, outrageous warriors, quiet resisters, monks and nuns, sanghas, congregations, preachers, humanists, and all the unlabeled people of good will who continue to make brave choices despite enormous pressure to betray ourselves or to vanish. Now that survival is questionable, despair becomes an unaffordable luxury. Cynicism is a lazy dead end.
From the commitment to stay arises ways to resist. Even when we make our own lives as rich as possible, we are showing that we are not going anywhere.
“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would have never otherwise have occurred.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This simple premise of constancy does not dictate a particular course of action. We may drop our own firmly held ideas. We are like patients caught in a terminal diagnosis and forced to answer, “What matters? What can we rely on?” We find emptiness, the underlying reality of limitless potential from which all possibilities may emerge.
We’re not going anywhere but we will change. We might cherish more, nurture more, protect more. We who have never protested before may take to the streets.
Finding effective ways to resist is an ongoing quest. We are presented with new choices, confounding decisions. We become impatient with simple categorizations. Bullies and smear campaigns can be found on the most virtuous side.
We’re the sand in the gears, the burr under the saddle, the mosquito that returns to whine in your ear. We’re the weeds that spring up in the vacant lot. We’re the coyotes running through suburban back yards. We’re the memory held in the trees and stones.
