Building Blindly

Five Things Friday—

1. All week, I’ve been noticing dichotomies—beautiful things happening alongside brutal things. Success among hardship. Kindness among cruelty. Hope mingling among despair. Slipping from one to the other is a sleight of hand, and sometimes so subtle we don’t recognize our part in it.

2. Some spiritual circles are talking about a split between worlds—one that descends into darkness and one that ascends toward light. I don’t know what this means exactly, but even as a metaphor it carries a weight worth witnessing.

3. I feel myself straddling the two all the time as I make moment to moment choices about where to place my attention. I can easily spiral into darkness if I’m not diligent about how I respond to the information around me. Am I leaning toward hope? Am I building a future that I want to leave for my children? Am I choosing to believe in the best of people? Am I caring for myself? Am I moving, building, creating, and loving my family and community well?

4. What I’m finding is that it isn’t one choice. It’s a million choices all day long; a process of creating from moment to moment. And most of the time, I’m building blindly based on how I want our shared future to feel. I want freedom for everyone, so I’m feeling freedom in myself. I want abundance for everyone, so I’m feeling abundance in myself. I want love, space, gratitude, beauty, grace, equality, and creative energy to flow through everyone, so I’m calling it all into myself and then doing whatever I can to send it back out.

5. Because if we’re building a new earth, this is how we do it. With love, hope, and meaningful action despite the darkness we face. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead

Always only love,

e.