The birds are flocking, packing up, many have already left. To my ear they are the early morning songfesters. The ones I wake to and sleep through. It’s quieter now as the rest of us are preparing for winter each in our special way. Some are in denial, others have hay in the barn and food on the shelves. And some of us are flocking to our respective corners in readiness for whatever the next few months will contain.
This does not feel like a “que sera, sera” moment. I feel a kind of destiny, a turning of so many wheels. I guess climate change isn’t enough, we need plagues and unrest of every kind. We have peaceful demonstrations, looting and burning, killing and flexing guns, rage and religion. It feels as if everyone can have a place in the world, which I used to think would be a good thing, but this moment feels profoundly unsafe, there is no easy navigation.
The biggest “stop” I know for a change agent is love. When complexities are endless (and they are) and confusing and good people want to be good but there is such a history of bad, and bad people don’t know it or care – or maybe they are doing the best they can – I lean in on cultures who share love through forgiveness. Always starting with myself.
I can thank this current moment for revealing so much pain. Not necessarily mine – or yours – or anybody’s in particular. I feel a whole culture of pain, pain as a guiding light, pain as denial, pain as hope; a clear choice for love to come into the cracks left by generations of us.
I want to give pain its due. It’s above mine, and yours, it’s way beyond my conceptual abilities, and that is why and when I lean on the Ho’oponopono prayer. It’s simple and can be said hundreds of times, which I do. How can I stand all the injustice I know and that of which I know nothing. How can I walk around knowing and not knowing? I need a process by which to make things “right” in my relationship – to the earth, my pain, your pain. I need to take responsibility and be relieved of it at the same time. There is too much here to count. My poor human body/mind/heart is crying.
Here’s how it goes:
Thank you.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
Please forgive me.
That’s it. Any order, each phrase spoken in your mind or voice, over and over. It promotes a clearing, a cleansing and a space to love the connection I have with everything – even me.
It was hard to say, “I’m sorry,” at first. It got easier. I hated “please forgive me.” It too got easier. The phrases became healing, each in their own way and in their own time.
It helps me be here now: this time, this place, this action – or reaction. Breathing helps too.
Thank you.
Please forgive me.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
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