Hiya, friends! There’s a lot going on right now and my relationship with this blog is evolving… transforming? Not sure when I’ll be back with anything of my own that’s worth sharing. I’m confident it will all come in its own time.

Meanwhile, please enjoy Elizabeth Lesser’s Facebook post from today, which speaks directly to my soul. Maybe you’ll resonate as well, and it can bring you comfort and peace as it does to me.

ODOMOBaaT, my peeps. Until next time.

***

I still have abiding hope for our times. I have it because I am a student of history and I know that human communities have struggled through other desperate times: famines, disasters, droughts, floods, and plagues; the fires of war, genocide, slavery, despots, and dictators. Like the mythical phoenix bird, we have risen from the ashes many times before. Eras of destruction have been followed by those of recovery and peace, creativity and great leaps of ingenuity.

I was born in the 1950s, an era that came out of the global brokenness of World War II. To many, the 50s were a time of healing and rebuilding and stability. But to others, they were a time of racism, sexism, and stifling conformity. The 50s gave birth to the 60s which, on the one hand, brought freedom, justice, and liberating creativity, and on the other hand went too far and too fast for many. It has always been thus—cultures swinging back and forth between brokenness and breakthrough. Humanity winding its way through growth spurts and amnesia, destruction and advancement, but always moving, always changing, and, from my point of view, always being offered a choice: to languish or to rise, to perish or to mature into a more magnificent expression of life.

Can we rise? I am eternally optimistic that we can. I have seen people change; I have changed myself. I know it is possible. Even neuroscience is confirming this. Brain scientists once believed that by early adulthood the physical structure of the human brain was fixed. But newer research has revealed that our brains never stop changing—that from childhood on, new neural pathways are formed when we learn new information, change old patterns, or confront physical and emotional trauma. This is called neuroplasticity, and it confirms for me that we are equipped to respond creatively and constructively to stressful and difficult times—that it is possible for all of us, as a species, to create new pathways in our collective brain.

Sometimes it feels way too exhausting to keep carving those new pathways! But I like the way the poet Rumi gently chides me to keep on going, to stay optimistic, to head toward what’s possible:

Drum sounds rise on the air,

and with them, my heart.

A voice inside the beat says,

I know you are tired,

but come.

This is the way.