CLOSING THOUGHTS
Chaos: a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order. (Dictionary.com)
Am I the only one who believes that this word – this description- pretty much sums up the state that we have been in for the past four or five months? You don’t believe that this is accurate? Then turn on the nightly news (actually I don’t advise you do this); each evening there are new and mostly conflicting stories and advice being dished out to the already bumfuzzled public. Wear masks, don’t wear masks; forget about the advice on wearing gloves since no one could agree on their benefit. Stay at home and somehow, for certain workers, figure out how to feed your family with no income. Trust this expert based on science, or trust that authority figure just because they bluster the loudest.
Chaos: a state of utter confusion. Yep, I’d say that all of us have been experiencing this maddening daily reality in our lives. You are all very familiar with the “fight, flight or freeze” response encoded in our cells, and living in this “what’s gonna happen next?” constant fear, our individual and communal adrenal systems have lived 24/7 in a state of heightened alertness…always on guard for the unseen force of evil to sneak in the back door of our lives and destroy all that we value, all that we love. There is a serious health risk to this hyper vigilance condition. If the old adrenals never have a time to rest and restore, then eventually they will not function as designed to.
So, I’m wondering as you may be too, how does one successfully survive such an existence? There are some standard bearers that we can look to for inspiration. Some of the first of these who come to my mind are survivors of the Holocaust. Those who were interred in concentration camps witnessing the worst of the human condition knowing that at any moment their lives could be extinguished simply because they were Jewish, but who found a way to survive in the very meanest of conditions and inspire us as they rose above their condition and lived every moment they were granted to the fullest. Viktor Frankl, who found a way to identify a purpose in life to feel positive about and then immersively imagining that outcome. Elie Wiesel, who was only a teenager when he was sent to Auschwitz, and later was able to write an incredibly moving memoir about his experience and survival.
Also I think of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and his spiritual brother,The Dalai Lama, both of whom endured incredible hardships but were able to maintain their hope in humanity and the belief that joy is in fact our birthright. They are each examples of real lives filled with pain and turmoil in the midst of which they were able to discover a level of peace, of courage, of joy that we can aspire to in our own lives as we navigate through the murky waters of this pandemic that engulfs us. There are many other human guideposts we can look to for direction.
I found this message from James Finley, a Center for Action and Contemplation faculty member, whose words always inspire me. I hope these few lines will offer you a way to find peace amid chaos.
“A practice is any act habitually entered into with our whole heart that takes us to the deeper place. Some of these practices we might not think of as prayer and meditation: tending the roses, a long, slow walk to no place in particular, a quiet moment at day’s end, being vulnerable in the presence of that person in whose presence we’re taken to the deeper place, the pause between two lines of a poem. There are these acts that reground us in the depth dimensions of our life that matter most…”
May serenity be yours. Namaste, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.
Mimi
