When the news of the week drags me down with the dysfunction, vitriol and violence of our species, I search for a framework that provides a meaningful counterbalance. How do we gird our spirits to withstand the tsunami of negativity?
For me it entails shifting a paradigm. Instead of portraying ourselves as the center of the universe as our venerable traditions teach, what if we understand ourselves instead as a precarious experiment in one small laboratory at the margins of the cosmos? It seems like a reasonable possibility, especially as our capacity to love, nurture and create seems to be succumbing to our propensity to vilify, confront and destroy.
Maybe our task in our short span of life is simply to find our calling, pursue it with passion and love those around us. Maybe the energies of love extend out beyond the gravitational pull of our planet to combine elsewhere for the greatest good. Because our perspective is lost in the tall grass around us, we may not know if it makes a difference to anything larger than ourselves and our immediate circles of influence.
Nonetheless, a much larger world beyond our grasp may depend on our persistence in generating love. Mary Oliver raises this prospect in her poem Song of the Builders.
On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God –
a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope
it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe.
sacredlead 
thanks Bob, for your always eloquent posts and for the Mary Oliver poem which I hadn’t seen in a while and which I love.
Anne
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This hit home Bob. Thanks!
Happy to know that, Linda. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Bob 🙂 I love your words, and I love Mary Oliver’s sentiment. I also love leading a yoga community that believes in moving some of these grains together. It always strikes me as so wonderful and beautiful that each one of us has our own practice: asana, pranayama, meditation, walking, singing, gardening… whatever it is… but that we can come together in a shared and sacred space to learn, share, grow and build consciousness together. Here, I feel, all those grains we move around by ourselves (and it is a necessary feat to work on ourselves alone; what “energy” and humility this takes!) can actually take shape in the loving support of a community. Maybe then the plague of media that chooses to highlight the negative can instead be tuned to an experience of “[our] capacity to love, nurture, and create” our own best selves among others of like mind and heart.
Beautiful words, Katie, about the work of each of us individually and in community. Yours is a powerful force of love and creative energy and it is a blessing to part of the community you lead.
Bob – I love reading all your posts. This one resonates with particular strength today. Thank you for it and for sharing Mary Oliver’s work.
Thanks, Allison, for weighing in with your support. The awareness that my posts and Mary Oliver are resonating means a lot. Sending positive energy to you for today and everyday.