As a writer, one who has committed to writing not just as a private practice of meditation and reflection, but also as a public sharing for mirroring and consideration, I am immensely careful with my words, or atleast I make every effort to be. I know what Toni Cade Bambara knew when she wrote, “words set things in motion”, so I take great care in minding what motion, what currents, what energy I may be setting, amplifying or creating.
I write for many reasons, one reason is rooted in the desire to constantly encourage myself, and others, to more deeply, consciously and intentionally interrogate our states of being, our perspectives, our notions, and gazings. Through writing I am not just addressing what I am seeing, thinking, feeling and experiencing, but I am critically examining the origins of my sight — what I see and how I perceive it — my thoughts, and notions. Given that most writers are gifted in the art of persuasion, I am mindful of how I use what I have been gifted. I have committed myself to not using my writing as a tool for convincing. I want the reader to be an astute and active participant, to see and think for themselves, and even think beyond whatever the words may portray or convey. I endeavor to use words and language as an invitation for myself, and others, to become more aware, if not already, of ourselves and the thing we see, as well as what we do not, cannot, or choose not to see (ode to James Baldwin).
The current state of the world has, for the last several weeks, left me stunned and reeling. My heart aches in ways I do not have the words to describe. This often feels debilitating because words are my craft but, as I have gleaned from Toni Morrison, there are some things “language can never pin down” but I am lured by the possibility, and so I am moved to try.
Instead of pushing these aches down and away, I have been choosing to honor them, give them room, space, and time. This has felt arduous and though I’d like to ache less, I am thankful for, and welcoming of, my capacity and ability to feel – to feel sorrow, to feel anger, to feel compassion, empathy, grief, and grace. These tender feelings remind me of the tethering between myself and what is softest and most vital within me, and around me. And that is life, and not just my own.
Earlier this week while on the phone with my mother discussing both global events and some more personal, she said something that hit hard, and felt soft, and profound all at the same time. She said, “My heart goes out to all the people who are in a heartless place.” Instantly, I paused and assessed my own heart and its place.
While walking the next day, replaying these words as well as others rooted in my mother’s deep and thoughtfully sensitive wisdom, I began having a conversation with what I can only describe as spirit. A quiet, and constant stirring presence, I believe spirit is always with me but hearing spirit requires an acute kind of awareness, and supple listening. On this particular day, during this spirit conversation I heard a question,
“Is your glass half full or half empty?”
I said, “It is full, but, and even with all the grieving and aching, it is full up, not just half, but all the way.”
Follow up question, “What is it full of?”
I said, “Love.”
So much so there is no room for love’s opposites: negligence, apathy, or indifference.
I believe for most, myself included, it is easier to respond to life’s heartaches, horrors, and hardships with hardness. This hardness is what we so often see modeled and so it is easy to copy and mimic. It isn’t easy to remain soft, tender and feeling, especially when and while experiencing hurt or violence, whether it psychological, physical, and/or emotional. It seems easier to succumb to the same kind of blatant disregard and neurosis that infects and afflicts those who inflict pain and commit violence. It seems easier to become numb and unfeeling because these states of being are unyielding and so they require nothing but the unconscious regurgitation of violence.
To remain heartful in the face of heartlessness is a matter of choice and requires our consciousness. To assess my heart and its place I have asked myself these questions:
What do I choose to hold and what do I choose to let go?
Do I choose to be consumed (if yes, how, or by what?) or do I choose to be restored (if yes, how, or by what)?
With my words, my feeling and my actions, am I choosing to yield (feel) or am choosing to destroy (numb)?
As I continue to navigate my heart’s space, milking wisdom, and meaning from the world and people around me, I cocoon myself in words. Over the next few weeks I plan to spend some time gathering a plethora of them so that I can place and share them here as a sort of end of the year salude. Until then, I leave you with a few words I have, over the last week, been revisiting.
“Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to.”
— TONI CADE BAMBARA
“in the wilder gardens of this life i root myself in a quiet form of art- between my untamed thoughts and a tender woman's pen. it is where my heart and mind find themselves less estranged. it is where my grief and joy extend themselves, only to find that they once suckled the sap of the the same tree. it is where each after-thought remains hopeful in the wake of its defeat. it is where i have learned that poetry is not the words you write. but rather, it is the thoughts you take in, and the life you breathe out. it is every quake, every tremble and every joyous stir of the heart coming together to unite beauty with truth.
(find your art. the world needs it.)”
— ISRA AL-THIBEH
“When apparent stability disintegrates, as it must – God is Change – people tend to give in to fear and depression, to need and greed. When no influence is strong enough to unify people, they divide. They struggle, one against one, group against group, for survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, they create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, until they are exhausted and destroyed, until they are conquered by outside forces, or until one of them becomes a leader most will follow, or a tyrant most fear.”
— OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, Parable of the Sower
“Do you believe in love, Julia? Of course I am not referring to those outbursts of passion that drive us to do and say things we will later regret, that delude us into thinking we cannot live without a certain person, that set us quivering with anxiety at the mere possibility we might ever lose that person — a feeling that impoverishes rather than enriches us because we long to possess what we cannot, to hold on to what we cannot.
“No, I speak of a love that brings sight to the blind. Of a love stronger than fear. I speak of a love that breathes meaning into life, that defies the natural laws of deterioration, that causes us to flourish, that knows no bounds. I speak of the triumph of the human spirit over selfishness and death.”
— JAN-PHILIPP SENDKER, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
Parting lines, my heart sits, kneels, prays, beats and stands with the people of Congo, Haiti, Sudan and Palestine. Their lives and their deaths are raising me in ways I am only just beginning to comprehend.
Thank you for offering words when there are none.