“Much is breaking. Much is being born. The two go hand in hand, and that is one of the deepest and strangest, most terrible and most redemptive truths of human reality.” Oh Krista, How beautiful and terrible at the same time! May we all find the strength and perspective to watch the wave disappear, knowing the ocean is not less for it. May we witness a heart that stops between every beat and still lives. And may those hearts guide us in focusing on the stars that can only be most visible in the darkest of moments like these.
“Will you be my comrade in seeing things deep and whole and so keeping the possibility alive that wholeness and healing are what we grow and live into.” - yes, and thank you.
This moment has me questioning my voice and my agency, but there are moments in this moment when I think of remembered and unknown ones who have come and gone before me, think of those alive now with even less voice and agency than I have, think of those yet to be born. Perhaps I can choose to stand for them also.
I take refuge in the wisdom of teachers like Krista, with thanks.
“All that you touch / You change / All that you Change / Changes you / The only lasting truth / Is Change / God is change.
I am reminded of these words from William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming": "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
And yet, the Center holds us inside of it, somehow. What is temporal, what is external, what has been built (and is now being dismantled) falls, but the Center, the Center does not. The empire will crumble, maybe, probably, even if it will be delayed, but the beating heart of the Universe carries on. Always. Hold to the Center, and when you cannot, rest in the knowing that the Center is holding you.
On Being is so important particularly in this contentious time in our nation. A respectful suggestion: It seems that Krista has moved to hosting events on a more occasional basis. Such events are substantive and important. What many of us miss are the weekly conversations. I'm wondering if there are any plans to find a a few gifted people to share the hosting duties for such conversations? We need On Being more than ever!
I hate to be the fly that dives in and ruins your soup. Yes, history keeps recycling through deep time and space but I cannot get past this moment. One of my client's friends who is from Puerto Rico lives here in Philadelphia with her husband and two children. Out on an errand she was stopped and asked for her ID which she didn't have on her. They threw her into a bus without allowing her to first call her husband. My client got a call from her from Tijuana (very far from Puerto Rico). This was not reported in the media like the raid in Newark. And although these beautiful words provide a momentary comfort, I can't let go of the horror I feel that thousands of good people are being extricated from their homes and from each other....
I am not Christian nor Jew nor any other religion. So, religion will not hold me safe and sound with a belief in something other than ourselves that cares about me... but I do know in my deepest knowing that the mystery which keeps my heart beating and the why and how it beats at all is one with the mystery of how and why the universe, the multiverse, all the cosmos, planet Earth and all the solar system hold the center together with me in it and of it. I trust nature and gravity. I trust the salt taste on my tongue when I kiss my sweaty grandson's cheeks. I trust that the worst of times can be our greatest gifts, that in every wound there is a gift. But, and I do mean but, these times are so painful to witness from the security of my middle-class heated home on a beautiful island in a democratic state that it slays my heart.
Thank you for these words that so tenderly articulate the clashing emotions of these days. Thank you for calling our attention to deep truth and deep time, to wholeness that grows and healing that breaks us open. All these realities are so essential and precious. These very truths have powered my thriving in so many ways and I am so grateful for that awareness and the moments that have inspired me to notice.
Our daughter works intimately with refugees from violence who come to our country for safety. Her resilience in these days is a lesson in hope. Muscular hope, as you say ! I love that ! She is inspired, she says, by the people she works to help, their vision of a better life, their determination to find that life for their children and themselves. And by the immigration legal aid that comes from all over the country to work to benefit these families . . . all pro bono as her work is.
And I am inspired by a friend who is facing pancreatic cancer and courageously announced she wanted to live as vibrantly as she can now . . . and is doing that.
To recognize that we can feel so much of our truth at once . . . all the hurt and pain of loss and all the opportunity to live and breathe and feel the beauty that is around us. Deep truths cannot be destroyed - they not only survive, they become.
Thank you so much, Krista, for your heart-filled wisdom, and honesty. I tried to go to the link for the Surgeon General's ceremony and it took me to the Department of the Interior. There are no links prior to January 20th. Where is the archive?! I'm concerned this will be a practice across the board in terms of not honouring institutional memory.
Diane, Thanks for pointing out the need to preserve the events in public life in an accessible archive. This care taking is essential for historical purposes.
My heart is breaking in real time because families are being separated. Full stop. The new administration has painted an entire group with a broad brush
this is the most painful reality of it all . . . our inability to comfort those we know are in the midst of the cruel chaos . . . so I try to imagine the courage they carry and the hope they hold that will see them through. That is wholeness of another sort.
Did your heart break when 300,000 children were brought into our country & sex trafficked these past 4 years…. Carried in, drugged, by the cartels. Did you have a voice then? Did you have a voice was Laken Riley was brutally killed by an illegal border crosser? Thank God this new administration will send the illegal crossers back to their homeland, preventing further harm on American citizens.
Freshly returned from a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the eve of this inauguration, these words are truly what I need to read. Always my aim to see the wholeness of things, it is very encouraging to read your call for companionship in our effort to keep " the possibility alive that wholes and healing are what we grow and live into." Thank you.
OH, my what an experience you have weathered. I have been there and it etches something "deep and muscular" in your heart to touch that history. We honor the suffering and resilience of those times and these when we take the experience of others so deeply to heart. It all belongs . . . and taking that in is a deep truth of its own.
“Much is breaking. Much is being born. The two go hand in hand, and that is one of the deepest and strangest, most terrible and most redemptive truths of human reality.” Oh Krista, How beautiful and terrible at the same time! May we all find the strength and perspective to watch the wave disappear, knowing the ocean is not less for it. May we witness a heart that stops between every beat and still lives. And may those hearts guide us in focusing on the stars that can only be most visible in the darkest of moments like these.
Oh, thank you for the stars that can only be most visible in the darkest of moments. That is a Deep Truth !
Thank you, Bill, for these beautiful words.
“Will you be my comrade in seeing things deep and whole and so keeping the possibility alive that wholeness and healing are what we grow and live into.” - yes, and thank you.
Yes.
This moment has me questioning my voice and my agency, but there are moments in this moment when I think of remembered and unknown ones who have come and gone before me, think of those alive now with even less voice and agency than I have, think of those yet to be born. Perhaps I can choose to stand for them also.
I take refuge in the wisdom of teachers like Krista, with thanks.
“All that you touch / You change / All that you Change / Changes you / The only lasting truth / Is Change / God is change.
- Earthseed: The Books of The Living.”
from The Parable of The Sower, Octavia Butler
I am reminded of these words from William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming": "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
And yet, the Center holds us inside of it, somehow. What is temporal, what is external, what has been built (and is now being dismantled) falls, but the Center, the Center does not. The empire will crumble, maybe, probably, even if it will be delayed, but the beating heart of the Universe carries on. Always. Hold to the Center, and when you cannot, rest in the knowing that the Center is holding you.
I have thought of this so often in the past months. Thank you.
Thanks for this calming post. Deep time perspective so needed right now.
On Being is so important particularly in this contentious time in our nation. A respectful suggestion: It seems that Krista has moved to hosting events on a more occasional basis. Such events are substantive and important. What many of us miss are the weekly conversations. I'm wondering if there are any plans to find a a few gifted people to share the hosting duties for such conversations? We need On Being more than ever!
“We need On Being more than ever!” Yes, we do!
I hate to be the fly that dives in and ruins your soup. Yes, history keeps recycling through deep time and space but I cannot get past this moment. One of my client's friends who is from Puerto Rico lives here in Philadelphia with her husband and two children. Out on an errand she was stopped and asked for her ID which she didn't have on her. They threw her into a bus without allowing her to first call her husband. My client got a call from her from Tijuana (very far from Puerto Rico). This was not reported in the media like the raid in Newark. And although these beautiful words provide a momentary comfort, I can't let go of the horror I feel that thousands of good people are being extricated from their homes and from each other....
I needed to read this and yes. I’m all in.
I am not Christian nor Jew nor any other religion. So, religion will not hold me safe and sound with a belief in something other than ourselves that cares about me... but I do know in my deepest knowing that the mystery which keeps my heart beating and the why and how it beats at all is one with the mystery of how and why the universe, the multiverse, all the cosmos, planet Earth and all the solar system hold the center together with me in it and of it. I trust nature and gravity. I trust the salt taste on my tongue when I kiss my sweaty grandson's cheeks. I trust that the worst of times can be our greatest gifts, that in every wound there is a gift. But, and I do mean but, these times are so painful to witness from the security of my middle-class heated home on a beautiful island in a democratic state that it slays my heart.
Thank you for these words that so tenderly articulate the clashing emotions of these days. Thank you for calling our attention to deep truth and deep time, to wholeness that grows and healing that breaks us open. All these realities are so essential and precious. These very truths have powered my thriving in so many ways and I am so grateful for that awareness and the moments that have inspired me to notice.
Our daughter works intimately with refugees from violence who come to our country for safety. Her resilience in these days is a lesson in hope. Muscular hope, as you say ! I love that ! She is inspired, she says, by the people she works to help, their vision of a better life, their determination to find that life for their children and themselves. And by the immigration legal aid that comes from all over the country to work to benefit these families . . . all pro bono as her work is.
And I am inspired by a friend who is facing pancreatic cancer and courageously announced she wanted to live as vibrantly as she can now . . . and is doing that.
To recognize that we can feel so much of our truth at once . . . all the hurt and pain of loss and all the opportunity to live and breathe and feel the beauty that is around us. Deep truths cannot be destroyed - they not only survive, they become.
Thank you so much, Krista, for your heart-filled wisdom, and honesty. I tried to go to the link for the Surgeon General's ceremony and it took me to the Department of the Interior. There are no links prior to January 20th. Where is the archive?! I'm concerned this will be a practice across the board in terms of not honouring institutional memory.
Diane, Thanks for pointing out the need to preserve the events in public life in an accessible archive. This care taking is essential for historical purposes.
Thank you Krista.
I cried as I read this.
Thank you for holding us.
My heart is breaking in real time because families are being separated. Full stop. The new administration has painted an entire group with a broad brush
this is the most painful reality of it all . . . our inability to comfort those we know are in the midst of the cruel chaos . . . so I try to imagine the courage they carry and the hope they hold that will see them through. That is wholeness of another sort.
Did your heart break when 300,000 children were brought into our country & sex trafficked these past 4 years…. Carried in, drugged, by the cartels. Did you have a voice then? Did you have a voice was Laken Riley was brutally killed by an illegal border crosser? Thank God this new administration will send the illegal crossers back to their homeland, preventing further harm on American citizens.
Krista, I hope you will join the Bluesky platform. It is off to a pretty good beginning, and I think you could add something to it.
Krista, Well done- D
Freshly returned from a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the eve of this inauguration, these words are truly what I need to read. Always my aim to see the wholeness of things, it is very encouraging to read your call for companionship in our effort to keep " the possibility alive that wholes and healing are what we grow and live into." Thank you.
OH, my what an experience you have weathered. I have been there and it etches something "deep and muscular" in your heart to touch that history. We honor the suffering and resilience of those times and these when we take the experience of others so deeply to heart. It all belongs . . . and taking that in is a deep truth of its own.