How We Hold On In Discouraging Times

from the Smart Anglers Notebook by Carl Richardson, illustrated by Ted Walke

While stopped for a travel break at the Pennsylvania visitor’s center, we found a display about ice fishing, including a description of how to make and use your own ice awls. The helpful illustrations showed how, if you fell through the ice, you could use the awls by driving each spike into the ice, pulling yourself out of the water and onto the ice, and then rolling to safer ice. Though I will probably never do any ice fishing myself, I was so impressed by the clear instructions and practicality that I grabbed a flier on my way out.

Later on that evening, the family was talking about Habitat For Humanity’s first ever 3d printed house. We were charmed by the idea- how pretty the house had looked, how quickly it had been built. “Maybe this could make a real difference,” said someone hopefully. A young person in my family expressed a long-time frustration that no matter how many small improvements we make, great suffering continues. We offered examples of big changes in the world, like in the fight against Malaria and AIDS, but he countered with the big persistent problems of our time. He's right of course. There are many people suffering right at this moment. And some of that suffering could be relieved if we came together a did all we could, yet the great problems persist.

It's important to look critically and realistically at the problems of our world. But when we do, it is easy to sink into despair. “Despair” I offered “can be a slippery slope. We can always come up with more and more reasons to feed our despair, and once we begin, it has a kind of addictive quality and a limitless appetite. It sucks us in. In my experience, despair is not helpful.” I grasped around for a metaphor. “These little bits of good news, like the Habitat for Humanity houses, they are like the points in the ice awls. We grab on to them to pull ourselves out of despair, so that we can roll to safer ice.” Once we have pulled ourselves out of the suck of despair, then we can look for solutions, and do whatever things we can do to make life better for all we touch.

Our spiritual practices can be like those ice awls. When I feel the pull of despair, they anchor me in whatever solid ground I can find. One practice I use is looking for what my teacher Brook Thomas calls “basic goodness”- by which she means not necessarily something that feels good (it can be hard to find anything that makes us feel good when we are truly discouraged) but any ordinary sort of neutral feeling. If I am having one of those days when “everything hurts” I might notice that actually the tops of my feet feel neutral. If my worries are weighing me down, I notice those basic things I don’t often pay attention to; right now I am in a dry, warm room with working electricity that powers my computer and a nearby lamp. I have a full belly and am able to breathe without effort. I hear the sounds of my housemates and neighbors. All of those ordinary good things are like the solid ground on which we can anchor ourselves. Even if, say, your heating goes out, or you have a respiratory illness that makes breathing onerous, we can shift our anchor to some other basic goodness- the people who will answer if I reach out to them, the solidity of the comfy chair that holds me up, the warm blanket I wrap myself in.

I believe that there is a basic goodness that is deeper and larger than all the troubles of the world. One of the most important practices that sustain us in unstable times is to remember and connect to this deeper goodness. I encourage you to locate or build your own “Spiritual Awls,” and keep them handy whenever you notice yourself sinking towards despair. This is one of the reasons for spiritual practice, so that we can anchor ourselves in what is good, what is enduring, even in challenging times. Anchored in basic goodness we are able to see the beauty in even the coldest winter, and to help and support one another from that stable ground.

 

Where is Beauty Now?

I believe there is beauty to be found in every season, if we look deeply and patiently. I make a practice of looking for beauty and wonder wherever I find myself. Sometimes it is the dramatic colors of sunset, or a glowing moon rising behind the hills, but sometimes it is more subtle -- a bit of green lichen on a dead branch, the wildflowers poking up in a roadside ditch. When I get a chance for some time away on vacation or retreat, this practice brings me special joy as I learn the unique beauty of a new place, and let that beauty nourish my spirit.

One winter I was traveling in the grey and brown season of the year. I was dispirited by the grey skies, the dry brown leaf litter everywhere, the empty trees, the dirty remnants of old ice and snow. I gazed out, that first morning of my visit, over the parking lot at the grey and the mud and I was discouraged. Perhaps it was the fractal patterns of a thin layer of ice over a mud puddle that emerged overnight -- each puddle frosted with fragile geometric patterns -- that first gave my eyes something to enjoy. Perhaps when the weak winter sun finally emerged, so did the birds and chipmunks enjoying the feeder across the parking lot. The moss also responded to the melted snow and the sun’s rays by bursting to life and shining a bit of emerald green contrast to the relentless brown of the landscape. Perhaps it was all these together that helped me tune into the particular beauty of the season of brown and grey. I became curious about the different shapes of the bare branches against the sky- some smooth and round, others twisting in sharp complex angles. Both were beautiful in their own way; each told a different story of many seasons of growth and life. Even the relentlessly brown acorns and oak-leaves, pine-cones and seed pods caught my eye with their abundance and the patterns they made laying in drifts on the ground. It had taken several days of earnest looking for the beauty of that time and place for it to show itself, but in the end, I was moved by its beauty.

In another place and another season, as I walked across the sparkling shells in the tide-pools by the ocean, I knew objectively that what I was looking at could be called beautiful. I felt so unappreciative that I was not able to enjoy that beauty. But my heart was heavy and joy was not available that day. I could only be present with what was real for me. I learned that day that sometimes before I can see the beauty of the season where I am, sometimes I have to grieve the seasons that have passed. I walked, and pondered, and finally wept – the storm outside felt like the storm in my heart and spirit. When the storm passed it was like my eyes had been cleaned, and now I could take in the wonders that had been there all along.

I believe there is beauty everywhere, if we look deeply enough, but it is sometimes hard to see. Here where I live in the Northeast, the green of summer fills the sense. The tulips, crocuses and forsythia of spring offer hopeful bursts of color in the gradually renewing landscape. But winter, after the first frozen storms have made a brown mess and the skies are grey more often than not, can be an ugly season. Even so, there is beauty there if we look patiently and with a loving eye. If you find yourself in such a time, I invite this practice- it’s okay to grieve the loss of summer, to miss the bright colors of May, but have faith that wherever you are there is beauty which can nourish your soul, if only we have the patience to let it reveal itself to us.