Greetings from the middle of the apocalypse. The skies are dense with the smoke and ash of what seems like all of our hopes and dreams. We are months into a global pandemic and ensuing economic disaster, years into a political catastrophe that amplifies every bad choice we have ever made. What shall we do with our heavy hearts, our horrified eyes, our saddened souls? When will we “hit bottom” and start stepping our way to humility? I reach for my emotional crutches, and they carry me only across the room to look out my closed windows at the smokey orange sky. Netflix, sugar, caffeine and alcohol probably won’t fix this. I can’t garden or walk outside. Social media is filled with anguish and anger. Connecting to my people through video chat is… fine.

I will be honest with you and confess that I have not meditated more than once or twice since March. I have been hobbling around on those crutches and holding my breath, riding the waves of dullness and despair when they force their way through (which is frequently) and literally focusing my lens on the beauty I see around me. My instinct has always been to keep working, try to show up, be of service. It is my attempt to balance the continual onslaught, to stand for growth and possibility, for the bigger picture and the higher purpose. Thankfully I am able to work, but it is harder than it was six months ago, it exhausts me.

The past few weeks have been really hard. There is So. Much. Grief. We have enormous work to do, and we can’t seem to get past pointing fingers and yelling at each other about whose fault it is that we are here. Free-radical fear is finding purchase in every body and then amplifying itself in chain reactions of mirror-neuroses. Hat tip to the sociopaths who are probably the only folks feeling ok right now- I’m not even throwing shade here, this might be why we need them in our societies, to keep going when all feeling people are crippled by the resonance of pain.

I see you light-bearers, I see you strugglers, I see you, fellow humans. I want so badly for this to be the moment when we find the collective will to do this work together. Where we somehow find the capacity to truly see our impacts (on each other, the planet and all her beings) and instead of lashing out or running away or shutting down we take a moment to just allow that it is so. Perhaps then we can see more clearly what part we have to play in the revolution, and in my dream the revolution is one of acknowledgement and connection. In my dream dignity and respect are afforded to all beings, and our words and actions reflect our interdependence. That dream requires the capacity to bear the truth of the suffering of the world, to respond with humility and love, and in so doing to unlock the joy that is triggered by my reunion with all that is. So I will begin again the practice of being, of allowing my heart to sing me the songs it knows (terrible, wonderful, all the notes in between) and of letting my body be the instrument of my life and of all life, ten minutes at a time.

Pretty sure there’s an app for that.

I am told that if we do this together it works better. I have found other folks doing soul work and have today committed myself to rejoining them for regular support and visioning. If you are interested in holding the story of reunion with us, there is a zoom call coming up on September 29th, and I invite you to check it out here: https://sarahmacleanbicknell.com/courageousgoodcompany/ If it feels right, I will see you there, if it doesn’t, I hope you are finding your own support and succor. Strength and resilience to you, my friends, I am glad you exist.