June 2022

For years I have been asking my teachers, my friends, anyone I respected, ‘Do you have hope for the world?’   I have done that a lot, looking for reassurance, trying to soothe the fear and despair in me, hoping for crumbs of hope.

I realised recently that this is no longer viable.  I need to look inside, ask myself these same questions, find my own inner authority in this.  

 To part of my mind, our situation is utterly hopeless.  It seems that nothing has been learned.  As we are reeling from the effects of the pandemic (and our responses to it) across the world and its repercussions on our social, economic, mental and physical health; as we lurch through increasing climate chaos, and the inability of outdated political systems to respond effectively; as we now face the absolute horror of another devastating war on our doorstep; as the price of living everywhere rises plunging more and more into poverty, and the profit machine of the capitalist system ploughs on with unstoppable momentum… (I could go on and on)… how can anyone dare to hope for the future?

 But I am not my mind.

 And to my amazement and wonder I find that, more and more reliably, my heart is full of hope; radiant, joyous, quiet hope.  Overflowing with an optimism which confounds my beleaguered mind.  This is not based on thinking about the future, it is not based in outcomes.  It is based in a knowing of the power of love, and what happens when I no longer presume I know what should be, but bow down to what is.  And neither is this hope a turning away from the grief and heartbreak of our situation, it includes it.

 In parallel with the devastating news of the invasion of Ukraine, I have been deeply affected by a crisis in my own family.  My mother, who I am very close with, plunged into the deepest depression I have ever been witness to.  I watched her as the aliveness, the love and creativity in her got replaced with more and more anxiety, fear, numbness and incapacity; this person who I have loved all my life was no longer reachable and what was left was a shell, a brittle shell, so small, vulnerable, helpless and lost in catastrophic thinking. 

 I saw a choice for myself.  I can join her in this madness and go down the tubes myself in my worry and fear for her, and attempt to do what she has always done for those she loves – desperately search for solutions and leap at them.  Of course I did what I could to get her help.  Whether that was what she really needed I will never know.  But I also dropped into my heart and felt what was moving in me. This situation is calling me.  Like every challenge I have ever met.  Calling me to meet myself deeper.  I felt layers of pain and fear.  I met very young parts of me which felt left, abandoned and overwhelmed.  I found ways to welcome them in.  I found myself appreciating how every interaction with other family members, and every interaction with my mother, was showing me what I needed to see in myself. I met the hopelessness.  And in that, I meet hope.  I meet a trust in an unfolding process which has the potential in any moment to bring us home, to create community, to open us to the unbelievable mystery of life; and to feel for our response to the unfolding of events from a wider perspective than our knee jerk reactions. 

It seems to me that to be with this heart perspective takes an on-going interest to listen.  To feel for where I am putting my attention.  To find ways to be in integrity with myself, which is not easy when old outmoded habits have such a strong sway. To withdraw my judgements on others and attend to myself and my own behaviours.  It is never a done deal.  

Fanny