GOLD

    Half the time when someone announces, “Here’s the thing,” I bristle: Did God stop by their home that morning with a Power Point presentation? Had they contacted Stephen Hawking in a seance?

      The other half of the time, I feel a desperate relief that someone is reminding me how appropriate it is that I feel completely discombobulated and hopeless, and yet that there is hope. Yesterday morning I woke to an absolutely unremarkable sky. Not a cloud in sight, gray but with some weak suggestion of brightness to the right where the sun could be sensed. I might have sensed a mere hint of gold, of warmth, but way too subtle for me in my current condition.

      As usual in the morning, I turned to Scripture. Rebecca Solnit reminds me, “People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.” And Mary Oliver: "Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.” Jesus (paraphrased): “Don’t be a jerk, and help take care of my sheep.” (cf Jefferson Airplane.)

      So here’s the thing: Right now, circumstances have shaken up the snow globe, and for nervous cases such as myself, it is hard to get my bearings. Even before this godawful and illegal war, there were the billionaires cavalierly running and ruining things, a far right Supreme Court, Epstein, etc. not to mention our own mixed-grilled lives— struggling family members, climate change, the slow-mo decline of aging, and then? Ring ring ring: Our beloved old friends getting godawful diagnoses and dying. I ask you: Life just gets so much lifier than I was prepared for.

     Some mornings after reading the most recent news of corruption, evil and treason at the highest levels of power, I’m reminded of Joseph Goldstein, the Buddhist writer, who once said, “Another day? Didn’t we just have one yesterday?”

     It can be unfathomably weird and hard these days. How do we see a way forward through the swirling white particles of fake snow? How do we not give up and let them ruin and steal everything that is beautiful about America?

      Well, here’s the thing: What has always worked before will work again. We stick together. We feed the poor. We take to the streets, loudly and peacefully, like Molly Ivins said, banging pots and pans and shouting, “This must end.” We keep the faith in We the People, in the Constitution, in the basic goodness and courage of people.

     I have seen alchemy many, many times in my 72 years here: against all odds, lead transformed to gold. Sober drunks like me are Exhibit A.

     My Jesuit friend Tom Weston always tells me, when I am at my most frantic and doomed, “We do what is possible, what is practical, simple and  kind.” You all have got the kind part down: We wave to people, we return phone calls and library books, pick up litter, flirt with very old people in the express line even though they have brought coupons. You give some money or food or clothing to the poor, drop dollar bills into paper cups, you show up and listen to people who are hurting, while refraining from offering your incredibly annoying advice.

     The game of life is rough, and a lot of people are playing hurt. We listen. We get them water.

     The practical part is to help protect the midterms by supporting the integrity and possibly even the existence of the midterms. You give anything you can afford to the ACLU, and to the nonpartisan Election Official Legal Defense Network. If you are struggling with higher food and gas prices because of the illegal Iran war, have a garage sale and donate what you make that day. Doing this will make you happier that you could have imagine possible, what with the appropriate terror and grief so many of us are feeling these days. I promise: You’ll feel as enlivened and hopeful as you did at the last No King’s Rally. If you don’t, I will gladly refund your misery.

     The practical/spiritual part, in the loosest meaning of the word “spiritual” is to fill up on nature, on her staggering, showoffy beauty   and her schoolmarm lessons: let her blow your mind with awe and the interconnectedness of all things. Remember that root systems share their oxygen, water, and nutrients with trees who may not be doing so well. We are in this together and we are connected. There is still so much magic in the world, let alone those the strange sidelong paths that Reverend Solnit describes. No matter how tempting it is to check out, stop hitting the snooze button. Keep looking up and around: Guess what? The sun did rise yesterday, not blindingly so, but as a plain old ordinary yellow sun, as life and possibility.

    So here’s the thing: A golden portent of light means that that’s where the sun will come up. Stay alert, and let your good heart stay open. I know I sound like a broken record, but here’s the thing: I think we’ve got this.