GETTING OUR ‘JOICE BACK

     I’ve told this story other places over the years, but it bears repeating:

     A great war horse comes upon a sparrow lying in the street on its back, with its legs sticking straight up in the air. The horse bends down, sneering, and asks, “What on earth are you doing?

     The sorrow replies, “I’m trying to hold back the darkness.”

     The horse laughs contemptuously and says, “Good luck with that. What do you weigh, about an ounce?”

     The sparrow says, “One does what one can.”

     In the face of darkness and evil, what can one do?

     So much. We the people are at our most profound, prolific and present, millions of us turning up for every No Kings and Anti-ICE rally, some of these gatherings called into action the day before, in sub-zero weather. Non-violent mass movements are the only that have ever roared back successfully and peacefully against evil, whether it’s Jim Crow or Vietnam.

     Yesterday’s NY Times editorial board addressed how we, the people, with our good hearts and troubled minds and sore feet, can defend our election system, help guarantee that not only will the 2026 midterms be legitimate, with people like us manning the polls on Election Day, but that there will even be an election. The board also lists legal defense organizations you can donate to who protect and safeguard election officials and process. Every sparrow-sized dollar helps.

(I would reprint the whole article here but have such limited tech skills that I don’t know how to access the gift link, and horribly my grandson/IT guy has gone off to high school for the day. How selfish!)       

     What else can one do to help hold back the darkness? We can shine a little brighter. I know you are sick of me using this line, but lighthouses do not run all over the island looking for boats to save. They just stand there, giving off light. Now, in the face of the current streams of evil, some days are just too long, period, and all one can do is to keep the patient comfortable—hot tea, warm baths, gentle walks, bingeing on TV series. This is exactly what Jesus or Buddha would recommend: rest as a spiritual act, noticing when too much sand has leaked out of our souls’ burlap sacks, and intentionally filling back up. (Not positive Buddha would support a Below Deck binge, but Jesus would roll His eyes and say that it was fine, as long as we were loving and forgiving with ourselves.)

      How do we shine a little brighter? Gratitude is brightening. Gratitude for all that remains, no matter how much the locusts have eaten, is a subversive act. I am grateful beyond words for the people of America, our parks and lands, our  immigrants, our democratic institutions.  Gertrude Stein said that “silent gratitude isn’t very much to anyone.” America the beautiful, thank you. I am at your service.

     You want to get happier today? I’ll tell you the paradoxical secret: Radical self-love, and helping to take care of the poor and suffering. There are many kinds of hunger and emptiness. Take a sack of (mostly) healthy, delicious food over to the food pantry, and then call your weird, anti-vax Uncle Ed, who is lonely, ignorant, and family. Stay on the phone. Say “Uh huh” a lot. Not running away changes lives, ours and theirs.

     One does what one can.

      Lastly, we have to get our joy back. Wendell Berry instructed us to be joyful though you have considered all the facts. And I wrote a piece called ‘Joice to the World” one Christmas twenty years ago, about how to get back our original joy back, our curiosity about life, our wonder in the presence of nature, art, our stunned appreciation of our best friends. The piece was based on taking in a writing workshop to a large group of inmates in San Quentin. My partner and I evoked the listening child in these men, and they shone, so we could see, as I wrote, “beautiful rough glass, tumbled in the turbulent and unrelenting streams of prison life.” I could have chased down an airplane that day.

     P.S. We are all rough glass.

     Joy is one of the most subversive things we can do. We the people celebrating our endless victories in court, our mass gatherings, joyfully supporting Minnesota—this must drive Stephen Miller crazy, and this, again, is our North Star.        

      Joy is medicine.

      We are fighting tooth and (in my case) glittery pink nail, peacefully, en masse, to defend democracy’s greatest institution, free and fair elections. We are, as usual, being saved by goodness and love. Thank you for helping me so much today.