Plenty
/“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
This is the poem I randomly turned to a week ago, so incredibly aware of the struggles of the people of Ukraine, and of Russia, and of countries all over the world who have and continue to encounter war that they do not want, events that are so terrible that people must abandon their homes and seek refuge in foreign lands, who must leave everything because the priority is LIFE, actions that are so awful that people take to the street to protest in a land where protest is not allowed. People who risk their own lives because they believe so much in LIFE.
And what is life if not an experience of Joy and Despair?
If there is possibility left, as Oliver claims, and I think she was right, then can we feed this possibility by pausing in the efforts to fight, to advocate, to work hard for the great turning, and notice how the pink petals of spring are drifting across the street like snow, how the street lamp has turned on, switching the twilight into night, how our breath moves over our upper lip so so softly, a caress in the midst of the chaos.
Feast on the plenty, allow it to nourish your hope and your fullness of life.
