A reflection on cultural change, our work in the world, and what we leave behind
As I sit here drafting this note to you, I've been feeling into some big despair. Our Senate just passed a new budget bill that will strip millions of people of their healthcare (which is already tenuous at best here in the U.S.). It will slash food benefits for the poorest citizens, jeopardize rural health care even further, set back our climate policies, among other things. It will hand more tax breaks to the richest citizens and increase the national debt by trillions.
The current Vice President said the quiet part out loud last night on X when he said, "Everything else…is immaterial to the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) money and immigration provisions.".
In essence, it's a lopsided race to push through more money for authoritarianism and the erosion of due process and democracy at the expense of our most vulnerable.
Where do we and our work in the world fit in?
The truth is that this moment today is only one of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of moments of cultural change happening right now here and elsewhere in the world.
And when we're faced with one, or many of those points, it can feel so unsettling.
What and where do we place our focus from moment to moment?
Each of us ultimately answers that question for ourselves. Some will be focused on climate or policy, others will be focused on art or healing or social justice. Whatever it is that we will do, we’ll do it best when it’s a reflection of our own yearnings, an expression of our own gifts and talents.
The sacred everyday
I’ve also been thinking about the power and holiness of what we do on an everyday basis. The actions we take daily. The ones that may appear to be small or insignificant but when we step back, reveal themselves as moments that seed change.
As minutes spin into hours, years, and centuries, as a garden blooms into a neighborhood, a nation, a planet—each can have an impact on what legacy carries forward.
I wrote this piece thinking about that and what I hope will carry on in the soil I leave behind:
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Continuations
I hope to leave behind remnants of a new way of being, one I was able to bring forth, however imperfectly, from what I was given. I hope to leave the remains of stopping before the work is done, of sitting on the front porch with a glass of cold water or sun tea. Of walking barefoot in the yard, of feeling the grass between my toes.
I want to leave quitting time well before 5:00, with dawn and days of joy. Of work that is meaningful, not a slog.
I desire to leave breakfasts of baked bread and pressed berries, and cups of rich coffee. I hope to leave lunches with a sigh of contentment, a settling into the chair.
I long to leave singing for no reason. Homemade gifts and handwritten notes, and the time it takes to let someone know you're thinking of them.
I want to leave joy and sorrow too—for how can you offer the one without the other?
And, oh, I will leave this truth too— that your own joy will not appear in a tiny blue box in a robin’s nest. But rather, it will be scattered by the wind.
To find it, you'll need to wander, and you’ll need to stop. You’ll need to bend low and look high. You'll need to still everything—your voice, your thoughts, even your own hammering heart— to listen. To hear what makes your chest rise. So, you can know what brings the softest smile to your soul; so, you can understand what feels like wings lifting you aloft on a dewy day.
And when that happens, you'll need to remember yes, this here. This is what I love. Because there will be others (even other yous) that will try to convince you that you'd imagined it. They may say that you'd really love this other thing over here, the one that so many others are looking at.
Should that happen, I want to leave you with the words, beloved, to say no. To shake your head firmly and say. No, I know my own heart. I know my way, and I will not be deterred.
All this and more is what I wish to leave.
What will you leave behind this week?