Our Gifts

Last week I attended an online presentation sponsored by an organization called AIRLIFT. A volunteer group that supports nationwide grassroots efforts to save democracy, its major focus is registering non-voters. Boosted by the funding AIRLIFT provides, effective grassroots organizations are drawing more local people into political action, developing local leaders, and building statewide political coalitions that give them a voice in creating the policies that govern their states.

The undoing of democracy we are currently witnessing is the result of a long, insidious effort by the Republican party, which now encompasses extremist religious, right wing, and racist voices that in fact do not reflect the will of the majority. It will take discipline and persistence to undo this and achieve true representative governance, and AIRLIFT and its partners are offering strategies for doing so. Real change will start with real people taking action about the issues that matter to them.

The discussion was motivating and informative. It’s reassuring to know that there are folks with effective strategies in place, and we can support their efforts rather than reinventing the wheel. As one participant said, “Just interacting with engaged folks makes me more optimistic and willing to get out and do something.”

I feel less alone now, like I’m part of an army, and maybe I can give a useful shape to my diffuse energy. I now feel that there might be some value even in my own informal networking and communicating, because even within the choir to which I tend to preach, I do hear mutterings about giving up and just not thinking about it.

Variations of this quote have been attributed to many (starting with First Century Jewish sage and scholar Hillel the Elder) but it certainly applies here: “If not us, then who? If not now, when?”

So I’m going to stay informed and connected, spread the word, and try to model hope and action. And I’m telling you about this because my blog is a platform too, and maybe someone out there needs a nudge.

Anyway, while I was sitting at the screen listening to these earnest and dedicated citizens from all over the country, Monte tapped me on the shoulder and beckoned me to the upstairs window. A beautiful bobcat was nonchalantly wandering about on the rocks behind our house, soon followed by another, and then, amazingly a third one appeared, this one a cub. (An intact, two-parent bobcat family?) It was such an incongruous and wondrous sight. The little trio strolled past the window, down the rocky ledge, and vanished into the brush near the creek. I returned to my zoom session, newly aware that wonders abound, and, as Mary Oliver advised, we should “Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

On Friday, continuing my quest to say yes to affirmative and hopeful things, I went to an event at the Santa Ynez Valley Botanical Garden in Buellton. A very talented young woman with whom I used to teach had invited me to join her there in a gathering of about a hundred summer camp attendees who would be participating in various workshops in which they would make music, learn about native plants, and even have a hand in forming mud bricks for cob house construction.

I stood in the heat in my KN-95 mask as the children poured in from the school buses noisily and joyfully, and I suddenly felt very ill-suited to the situation. I had wanted to help, but I know nothing about music, and I don't like to manage children, and at this point in my life, I have zero interest in cob house skills, or wandering around in the sweltering heat pointing out gopher holes and identifying plants in my teacher-voice. (Also, I confess I am more paranoid than ever about Covid. It seems to be sweeping through, even among our cautious and boosted circle of friends.)

But I was touched and inspired by the energy and commitment of these people who are working with children and trying so hard to make the world better, and I was enchanted by the beautiful garden and surrounding park, which I had no idea existed in Buellton. It dawned on me then that my role will be to write a story about this place for the local paper. And I realized again that we each have to figure out what talents and resources we possess and give of those. And that’s my plan.

Sometimes I get terribly discouraged by the relentless onslaught of bad news. Rather than sinking into paralysis, I allow myself to be swept into a flurry of activity, some of it purposeful and well-intentioned, some of it pure distraction or social interaction. Eventually, like a dry leaf in a wind gust, I spin around and blow away. It isn’t helpful.

There’s some kind of trick I’m still trying to learn, some kind of balance. I am sure I’ve said this often, but I believe it has to do with giving equal weight to the wonder and the horror, of acknowledging the problems but leaving some space in our hearts for the “unimaginable” (as Mary Oliver said), by which I think she meant solutions and outcomes that are surprisingly wonderful, maybe too unprecedented to envision, and if we could conjure them up, they might seem unattainable from a tired and quotidian mind set.

But giving credence to this theory are the multitude of wondrous things happening right in front of us, if we notice, and notice we must. This will sustain us. This too is real.

Mary Oliver again:

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for–
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world.