As we begin this new academic year, a year that does not look or feel like any other we can remember, as we leave a summer of heartache, protests, bravery, bloodshed, unfathomable death and sadly, as we brace for more to come, we are looking to steady ourselves and to find a sense of equilibrium, something that we can trust. We are longing to understand time in a new way, one that does not send our minds spinning. Many of us are simply thinking, “I do not know how to do this.”
This year is different, and we are going to need to approach it with an awareness that we too, are different. Whether it is because we or a loved one has been ill with COVID-19 or we have lost someone to it, whether we have been marching in the streets to vehemently affirm that Black Lives Matter and have felt hopeful and fearful at the exact same moment, whether our families have lost livelihoods and suddenly the future feels completely upended, or we have just felt deeply sad and alone, we are all in need of a certain equilibrium. We need to find our way to ourselves, to our essence in this new reality. We are looking for comfort, we are struggling to remember how to pray.
As hard as these times are, joy tries to seep in and we must let it, if only briefly, because we need it so. I have felt the most like myself lately while chatting with friends, stumbling upon reasons to laugh and doing so with abandon. After these chats my soul is refreshed, my heart and mind are ready to live some more and I have found a way to pray, I have felt a return to equilibrium.
For Equilibrium, a Blessing written by John O’Donohue Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore, May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul. As the wind loves to call things to dance, May your gravity by lightened by grace. Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth, May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect. As water takes whatever shape it is in, So free may you be about who you become. As silence smiles on the other side of what's said, May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames, May your mind stay clear of all it names. May your prayer of listening deepen enough to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”