Looking Beyond the Single Point that is Now


I have been immersed in some heavy conversations and reading this week. HEAVY. Racism. Sexism. Elitism.

It’s January and by the end of the week, it’ll already be February. January’s Dear Teachers was about Now. Summing up my January essays into a single, cohesive message:

We move now, together, with what we have in our grasp- with hope that both we and things will grow.


As I look at February’s writings, I see the month’s messages moving to either side of this point on the timeline: yesterday and tomorrow.

As I mentioned before, my work this week has sunk me deep into what’s in front of us now. I’ve also been exploring what happened in the past to get us to this now. I’m finishing up reading The New Jim Crow and Evicted, both extremely powerful books. Finally, I can look ahead with clearer eyes. To the work that needs doing. Desperately. I see some helpful reminders in my own writing and the voices I’ve heard recently that I will share soon. As the image quote suggests, starting now (with what we have in our grasp, etc) is better than never starting at all.

I hope you’re looking forward to the coming month. It holds promise to you. I hope you find time to truly see what you have. You’ll feel better for it. I hope you both give and receive at least one gift of a compliment and of appreciation this week. You deserve it.

(Folks in school management- I know you have your own tools for this, but Dr. Amy Fast had a great suggestion this week from her own principal. Get your teachers out of their classrooms for a few minutes and ask the students to “love bomb” their teachers with some sticky notes on their wall. Cool idea!!)

As Agatha Christie once said,


“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”



We’re here now. It's insane at times. However, let’s do this!! Together!!!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Heart Within

Image
I just finished writing a big essay on my main blog, called Spring and the Death of Denial . It was in response to a fantastic conversation on a philosophical radio program called On Being. Now, I’m hopping back into Dear Teachers , and am struck by how this week’s essay, the last of the April focus on what’s really there, connects to that. When we don’t want people to see who and what we really are, we throw up defenses. When we don’t trust the people that surround us, we again build barriers. Within those walls, we are one thing. Outside of those walls, we are something else. To grow, we first have to admit the walls exist within all of us. They come from our families and traditions. From our own pasts. From our own needs. From our own fears. In this week’s essay, the image from Marlene that I chose was a close-up of a lily in full bloom. The center of that flower is bright yellow, while the outer edges are a deep red, trimmed in that same golden hue. We don’t get t...
Read more

Life's Sweetness When We Look

Image
I slid 2 poems into Dear Teachers. Week 22 is the first. (Week 32 is the second, if you’re keeping track.) Overall, my writing style has become more poem-like as I’ve grown older. Shorter and more lean. However, I felt the need for lines here. Why? Marlene’s image is very linear. The vertical grass texture is amazing and I found myself relaxing with the rhythm of it. To me, it almost hums in quiet anticipation. While you can’t see its legs, you feel this deer is standing completely still and its legs are as straight up and down as its neck and ears are. Lines. Timelines. Lines start. Lines stop. This deer has stopped. Let’s stop. I said before that February’s thoughts would touch on before and after the Now of January. When we stop, we can experience both the moment and what’s hidden. What’s hidden can be what has happened in the past- what’s gotten us here until today. Which leads to the heart of this poem. It shares a subject with a piece that’s way at the ...
Read more

The Heart of Living

Image
Please take a minute (or two, or three) to simply stare at the point on the horizon in this picture where the trail disappears. Find a relaxation music channel & hit play. Breathe in and out, looking at that path- going, going into...somewhere. Hakim Sanai was a Persian poet. I learned of him as I was seeking quotes to connect with this image. He influenced another, more popular, spiritual mystic poet, Rumi . His words I quoted in Dear Teachers this week are almost 1000 years old: “When the path ignites the soul, there’s no remaining in place. The foot touches ground, but not for long.” The Persian mystics were also dervishes. I recall the phrase, “whirling dervishes”. They danced in joyous exultation as part of their faith; their feet literally touched the ground but for moments. To me, this quote’s message is that if we’re engaged in life, we’re going to always be transitioning. Living is not stagnant. I may be in the foreground of that photo, but I am crawl...
Read more