This summer, freedom’s been on my mind, even before it became the rallying call of an energized Presidential campaign.
I was but a child in the ’60s but the courage and commitment of Black civil rights activists and their white allies during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer shaped my development into a justice-seeking adult.
At times I’m terrified about our current moment’s rollback in rights – the devolution of democracy, the resurgence of authoritarianism and fascism (which my grandparents fled in Europe). I can feel hopeless, powerless, despairing, defeated.
Thank goodness for all that invites my heart to open.
When we are at peace, when we are not fighting it, when we are not fixing and controlling this world, when we are not filled with anger, all we can do is start loving and forgiving.
—Richard Rohr
I’m fortunate to have such good anam cara (soul friends) in my spouse, my clients, those taking my classes, and the spiritual communities I’m a part of. With their example, support, and opportunities for practice, I’m starting to let go of fixing and fighting for control in the world. And doing the humbler work of loving.
“This is what it is right now – and I’m here for it.” is a reminder, an aspiration, on a sticky note on my computer screen.
The freedom of Acceptance. The radical inclusion of How It Is. To love and to heal that which can’t be fixed. To show up for each other. To remember, to mourn, to honor, to bless. To go on, not knowing how.
I feel awe every day beholding the magnificence and intelligence of the natural world and what researchers are calling moral beauty – our capacity as humans for kindness, courage, and resilience during difficult times.
This summer supercharged this experience of awe. My newly-retired spouse Amber and I took a six-week roadtrip in our camper van to the Great Lakes and Algonquin lands of Ontario, rolling through 6,000 miles of spectacular natural beauty. My destinations were the heartland of Michigan, for the launch of “We Can Live Like This: a Memoir of a Culture,” a book I helped with, about an intentional community I was part of for 20 years. And then “A Handful of Endings” with Stephen Jenkinson at his Orphan Wisdom Farm.
The spiral of life revealed itself again and again. An epic roadtrip with Amber, 25 years after our epic Travels with Betty (18 months in a vintage RV). A reunion with our Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival family, nine years after seeing her down. A return to the Farm that shaped so much of my approach over the past decade, for the first time in six years, since the pandemic changed so much, and since the School ceased to be, in the way it had been.
Traveling those roads, walking those paths, inhabiting those spaces not as an adventurer in her late thirties or mid-fifties, but now standing in my seventh decade of life. Finding, in the clock face of my life and all the limitations and diminishment, a new place of belonging. A dawning sense of freedom.
The freedom of knowing: You are not alone. You are held. More will be revealed. And you are so damn lucky to be alive. To be able to love. To love this imperfect world.
Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Photo: Below Tahquamenon Falls, Michgian’s Upper Peninsula.