During this time of wintery darkness, continuing multiple unknowns, in a year of heartbreak, fear, chaos and profound loss and in the final days of a stress-filled semester of remote learning we thirst for goodness. We thirst for a way to exhale, to believe in ourselves and each other. We want goodness to prevail and we need it soon, please.
A little over two years ago a close friend of mine passed away. He lived a beautiful, faith-filled life, loved travel, sharing meals with others, being generous and nurturing the souls of countless people. He loved well and was well loved. When he became ill, his world shrank quickly and decisively. During the months leading up to his death I would visit him and listen to what felt to me to be the truest musings of his very big and warm heart. The markings of his soul were visible, raw, vibrant. He talked about how wide his life used to be and how narrow it had become. As his daily life grew smaller his spiritual awareness became so very deep. He would cut to the quick, speaking about love, suffering, fear and the end of life itself. Of course, he would have given anything to not know these things so soon, but that was not to be the case for him and so he shared what he was experiencing freely. It was a gift to witness those markings of his soul.
During these times of great uncertainty, fraught with a kind of daily test of moral challenges given the state of our world and all that has happened these last eleven months I have thought of him so much and have wondered what our conversations today might have been about had he lived. In one way or another we are all experiencing a shrinking in our lives. We are living smaller, around less people and waiting anxiously for whatever is yet to come. I remember quite vividly how comfortably my friend could say words of love to me and others, how honest he could be about just about everything. In his darkest of months, he could name and grow goodness because he knew where it started. It started within, in our own small, yet fertile interior space of our souls.
In her simple poem “where to find it” Cleo Wade hits on the heart of the matter that goodness can spread, but it must start deep deep in us:
where to find it
kept looking for goodness
kept asking everyone
where I could find the
good in the world
it was not
until I
looked within
and
grew
my own
goodness
that I
began
to see it
everywhere.
Wishing each of you deep wells of goodness experienced within and around your worlds no matter how small or wide.