Expressing Hope

Hi, friends :)

I wanted to write today about hope and help and how we express hope and how we ask for help and where do we look for answers.

But, like, what do I know about all of it anyway??

Nuffin.

SO!

I just hold onto hope that there is help and there is hope and there are answers or maybe not concrete answers but there are always new ways of imagining new ways to be in connection and community and relationship with each other and with the earth and with the universe and with all of the things we definitely do not understand.

Which brings me to the thing that's been on my mind all morning.

Which I'm stalling giving language to, because most of the words for what's on my mind carry the weight of connotations that aren't always helpful.

Maybe just stick with me even if my first sentence doesn't land for you.

Acknowledging whatever reaction you have, not avoiding it, but also staying a little bit open to the idea.

Which is

the idea of prayer, of spells, of offering it up to the universe, of saying I don't know please show me, of asking for help even if nobody is listening.

I believe these all are ways of expressing hope.

I believe these all are ways of releasing a control that we think we have over everything that happens but that we definitely do not actually have.

I believe these all are ways of getting out of our own heads and habits.

This week, Anne Lamott wrote a lovely essay about these things.

This is the bit that got me in the center of my heart:

I do not understand much about string theory, but I do know we are all vibrations, all the time. Between the tiny strings is space in which change can happen. The strings are infinitesimal; the space between nearly limitless. Prayer says to that space, I am tiny, helpless, needy, worried, but there's nothing I can do except send my love into that which is so much bigger than me.

Yes, yes, yes.

To get more personal, I grew up in church. Luckily, in a really loving, welcoming, inclusive, service-oriented, community-centered church. I grew up with prayer as talking to capital-G God. At some fairly young age, my beliefs in all of it shifted, and I spent a lot of time sitting and staring into space thinking about how infinite existence must be. I think about that time now and I'm like, shit girl you were totally meditating.

At a slightly less young age, I fell in love with pagan and wiccan ideas of nature meditations and spells. At again some other age, my beliefs in all of the above shifted, and I thought, no, no, we're all in it alone, there is no one out there to help.

At another some again time again later age, I was in some tough times and the only way I got through was giving up the idea that I could know what exists, and allowing myself to completely rely on the support of people around me who were also getting through tough times.

Sitting in a circle with people being vulnerable and speaking without shame made me believe in big things again. I don't know what big things?? But where I am now, I don't think I need to know what big things. I think what I need is that idea of sending love into something which is so much bigger than me.

Something that has always stayed with me, from my early days in church, is that we prayed not only for ourselves. We prayed to lift up the needs of others.

I think this is what a lot of (cough modern fake 'wellness' manifesting cough) gets wrong.

The important part is, I'm not talking about saying, 'dear universe, gimme gimme.'

I'm thinking about how we connect to, as our buddy Anne puts it, the space between.

I believe when we're able to say:

I do not know the answers.

I do not know all of the things.

There is mystery in the world.

This helps us remember there is also grace in the world.

There is also hope.

This helps us out of our habitual responses, it helps us out of fundamentalism, it helps us out of being so sure that we have the answers we end up losing track of what even were the questions. It leaves us open to imagination and inspiration.

In my deepest heart I believe that imagination and inspiration are what get us out of the darkest times. In my deepest heart I believe that imagination and inspiration are also what we connect to most when we're in the best times.

So despite any feelings you may have in any direction about the words here,

what I hope for us all this week is that we find ways to express a connection to not knowing, to uncertainty, to imagination, to inspiration.

Prayer.

Poetry.

Nature.

Stillness.

Howling at the moon.

I hope we can all express some version of:

I am a mess and the world is a mess and I couldn't possibly figure it all out in my one brain in this one life, so here I am, I don't know it all. I open myself up to being inspired. Please soften the armor around my heart and help me feel a little more love, a little less contraction.