Your words ring so true and powerfully Renee, we have to see it as it is happening, not how it is reported, so we must look through the the lens of truth and innocence that we have become disconnected from. Despite what is happening I feel so positive, because I have an inner knowing that everything is going to turn out alright. I have that privilege and I honour it, so that I may shine that light for everyone to see. Forever grateful for your kindness wrapped around the world from a insight that can only be know from being at the very heart of it. Love Louise x
Louise, thank you--for reading, for letting your heart be so open, and for shining a light on this aching world as you daily do from what is given through you with love and kindness and care. With love to you, dear Friend.
This is a poem Renee. Achingly beautiful. You invite us into the experience of our becoming through the alchemy of the hearts becoming. Sometimes ‘I look away’. The scale of humanities suffering is unbearable. Yet, we have both come to know that our embodied humanity is being initiated through the experience of broken heartedness
Megan, thank you for sharing that "Sometimes I look away." How much can the human heart bear? To the extent that we can become intimate with what and that we cannot bear seems to me to be passage into this initiation. *That* the suffering is unbearable to the heart nearly brings me to my knees even here, as you and I write.
Such a beautiful evocation of the “grief of the world”. Now my first tears fall before the first light of the world, then l light the first candle that bridges the space between the tender heart and the presence of stillness. As I read your opening lines they became a long cascade of sorrows that picked up speed and intensity as my eyes moved from one to the next. Honoring the dead, the suffering, the innocent ones. Then I became acutely aware of W.S. Merton’s poem, “Thank you” — a poem always close to my heart. Once again I became blessed and able to transmute all the sorrow into grace. Thank you, Renée, for that opportunity through your poignant words this morning.
Thank you, Renée. This is a difficult time to be open-hearted and I’ve been more guarded than usual. Your encouragement helps more than you know. I hadn’t seen Berry’s transcendences before — that’s brilliant. 🤍🙌
Julie, thank you for sharing this. It is, as you say, a difficult time to be open-hearted. My sense is that if we can let ourselves feel even our guardedness, our worry, a prevailing sense of foreboding, and on and on, the presence to that feeling itself begins to crack open the door of the heart, guarded justifiably to keep watch. I am reminded just now of our recent correspondence regarding your beautiful reflections on the Prayer of St. Francis (which I never circled back to finish!!). You and I shared that we had 'stumbled' when it came to the word, "Lord." And we explored the ancient etymology of the word, "keeper of the bread." We are keepers of our heart, lords watching over with care so that tomorrow, there will be still heart (inner feeling) there. With just this quality of tenderness, I sense the heart can begin to open.
Dear Renée, your words, so beautifully spoken will rest in me with a deep longing.
How often have we taken the eye of our hearts to other more hopeful unworldly worlds - for surely we have but this one - to forget and ignore an obvious and desperate need to stay focused on that which must be changed? How complacent we have become to the horrors unravelling in our everyday? As if there is no option, either now or in future days. When will we call upon 'the soft pulpy inside of newborn innocence' to repair, to begin anew?
These are such powerful and haunting words you write, I pray nobody looks away too soon. My love to you always and with hope xx
Susie, thank you for sharing . . . with a deep longing. Your words, "I pray nobody looks away too soon" -- I share your prayer, dear Friend. With love to you and shared hope.
We may not use the same words to say it, but our hearts are in the same place. Thank you for saying the thing that must be said over and over again. You just summarized love and what it means in the real world.
I have to tell you, Renee, Rona Maynard once advised me to create a compliments file (where you save beautiful things people say about you or your work to look at on days when you're feeling blue). This beautiful, kind comment just got added to mine. Thank you, thank you.
Holly, what a lovely idea, a "compliments file." Thank you for sharing. I will create one, and your words above will go there. The happenstance reciprocity in kindness. How fabulous is that.
A most eloquent plea to the higher self in each of us, Renee. I posted on FB (w/appropriate citation!). IDK, but I hope there will be some folks who take the time to read it there. As always, TY.
Powerful Renée. Why do we keep going back to sleep? We all do it of course, for many different reasons; fear of change, fear of facing the uncomfortable and overwhelming truth of all the suffering around us, fear of not being able to make a difference, fear of not being able to access our greatness and our strengths, our confidence, fear of exhaustion, of depletion, of ineptitude, of failure, fear, fear, fear. Our fears our endless, but they only have the strength to stop us when we succumb to them, which we do over and over again, until we don't. I watched this movie last night about a young Norwegian man who joined the resistance against the Nazis, and did incredibly dangerous and morally questionable things to liberate his country from the horrors of the Nazis. When confronted about those morally questionable acts, like having to kill fellow country men who were betraying his country by aligning with the Nazis, his response was that nothing was more important to him than freedom for him and his country, and he did what he thought he had to do to secure that freedom. I admire human beings like that who face their very real mortal fears and do the right thing despite them. They act with courage and conviction. That was in times of war, but that is what is needed in all times; that courage to face one's fears and do what is right. And to do that, as you say, we have to drop our illusion that we are here only for ourselves and for a secure life, and see the bigger picture of our interconnectedness as beings on this earth with every other being and the earth itself. Your grief at our forgetting the truth reminded me of this poem by Mary Oliver: "Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing? This winter the loons came to our harbor and died, one by one, of nothing we could see. A friend told me of one on the shore that lifted its head, and opened its elegant beak, and cried out in the long, sweet savoring of its life, which if you have heard it, you know it's a sacred thing, and for which if you have not heard it, you had better hurry to where they still sing. And, believe me, tell no one just where that is. The next morning, this loon, speckled and iridescent and with a plan to fly home to some hidden lake, was dead on the shore. I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world." Amen.
Ed, thank you for sharing. What stands out as I read your reflection is the fear of letting the heart be broken. "Are you willing? . . . I tell you this to break your heart. . . ."
Robin, your question gave me such pause, recognizing that you asked what, I imagine, would be on the heart of many: "then what?" This Sunday's letter offers one response.
Last night, It was only after I went out on the balcony and watched the palm trees swaying and listened to the surf here in Cabo where I'm vacationing that I was able to go back to bed and sleep last night. I had binged on wildfire news earlier in the evening and was feeling such distress that I couldn't sleep. But listening to the surf, I was taken in by the wholeness of it all and recognized that I belonged to it. Very different from watching it burn on the TV screen.
Susie, your experience is very moving. I felt and heard myself release an audible sigh and mmmm when I read your words: "But listening to the surf, I was taken in by the wholeness of it all and recognized that I belonged to it." Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Renee. My heart cries out for these disaster victims of all species. There will be greater loss even after the fires are out. When the rains come, blackened debris flows will sweep downslope, in part due to the hydrophobic soils that result. Mitigative methods cannot begin to address this. Solutions are complex and must be removed from politics and rhetorical attacks. Looking to the future the rights of nature, not developers, and the protection of human settlements, are paramount to begin seeking balance. Only then can we start the long journey of universality.
"My heart cries out for these disaster victims of all species." I hear you and I join you, and I thank you for sharing "in the wake" details. You offer such "on-the-ground" wisdom here. I know you understand these matters as well as anyone.
Your words ring so true and powerfully Renee, we have to see it as it is happening, not how it is reported, so we must look through the the lens of truth and innocence that we have become disconnected from. Despite what is happening I feel so positive, because I have an inner knowing that everything is going to turn out alright. I have that privilege and I honour it, so that I may shine that light for everyone to see. Forever grateful for your kindness wrapped around the world from a insight that can only be know from being at the very heart of it. Love Louise x
Louise, thank you--for reading, for letting your heart be so open, and for shining a light on this aching world as you daily do from what is given through you with love and kindness and care. With love to you, dear Friend.
This is a poem Renee. Achingly beautiful. You invite us into the experience of our becoming through the alchemy of the hearts becoming. Sometimes ‘I look away’. The scale of humanities suffering is unbearable. Yet, we have both come to know that our embodied humanity is being initiated through the experience of broken heartedness
Megan, thank you for sharing that "Sometimes I look away." How much can the human heart bear? To the extent that we can become intimate with what and that we cannot bear seems to me to be passage into this initiation. *That* the suffering is unbearable to the heart nearly brings me to my knees even here, as you and I write.
Such a beautiful evocation of the “grief of the world”. Now my first tears fall before the first light of the world, then l light the first candle that bridges the space between the tender heart and the presence of stillness. As I read your opening lines they became a long cascade of sorrows that picked up speed and intensity as my eyes moved from one to the next. Honoring the dead, the suffering, the innocent ones. Then I became acutely aware of W.S. Merton’s poem, “Thank you” — a poem always close to my heart. Once again I became blessed and able to transmute all the sorrow into grace. Thank you, Renée, for that opportunity through your poignant words this morning.
Mark, your words are an invocation that connects. You have introduced me to Merwin's poem, and I thank you. For others reading:
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
Thank you, Renée. This is a difficult time to be open-hearted and I’ve been more guarded than usual. Your encouragement helps more than you know. I hadn’t seen Berry’s transcendences before — that’s brilliant. 🤍🙌
Julie, thank you for sharing this. It is, as you say, a difficult time to be open-hearted. My sense is that if we can let ourselves feel even our guardedness, our worry, a prevailing sense of foreboding, and on and on, the presence to that feeling itself begins to crack open the door of the heart, guarded justifiably to keep watch. I am reminded just now of our recent correspondence regarding your beautiful reflections on the Prayer of St. Francis (which I never circled back to finish!!). You and I shared that we had 'stumbled' when it came to the word, "Lord." And we explored the ancient etymology of the word, "keeper of the bread." We are keepers of our heart, lords watching over with care so that tomorrow, there will be still heart (inner feeling) there. With just this quality of tenderness, I sense the heart can begin to open.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. It helps me to shift and crack open even a little bit.
Together, all of us here, we'll keep the crack open.
Dear Renée, your words, so beautifully spoken will rest in me with a deep longing.
How often have we taken the eye of our hearts to other more hopeful unworldly worlds - for surely we have but this one - to forget and ignore an obvious and desperate need to stay focused on that which must be changed? How complacent we have become to the horrors unravelling in our everyday? As if there is no option, either now or in future days. When will we call upon 'the soft pulpy inside of newborn innocence' to repair, to begin anew?
These are such powerful and haunting words you write, I pray nobody looks away too soon. My love to you always and with hope xx
Susie, thank you for sharing . . . with a deep longing. Your words, "I pray nobody looks away too soon" -- I share your prayer, dear Friend. With love to you and shared hope.
We may not use the same words to say it, but our hearts are in the same place. Thank you for saying the thing that must be said over and over again. You just summarized love and what it means in the real world.
Switter, yes, our hearts are in the same loving place, and it is a great comfort to share with you in this world at this time.
Well, that was lite reading!
And still I could not look away. Thank you.
Robin, thank you for commenting. It is good to "meet you" here, and it is most heartening to read that you *could* not look away. . . .
“Every one of them at one time your breath”
This single phrase summarizes the profound truth and beauty of this essay.
Thank you, Rene.
Holly, I am humbled by these words from you whom I revere as one of Substack's most enchanting and gifted writers. Thank you.
I have to tell you, Renee, Rona Maynard once advised me to create a compliments file (where you save beautiful things people say about you or your work to look at on days when you're feeling blue). This beautiful, kind comment just got added to mine. Thank you, thank you.
Holly, what a lovely idea, a "compliments file." Thank you for sharing. I will create one, and your words above will go there. The happenstance reciprocity in kindness. How fabulous is that.
🥰
A most eloquent plea to the higher self in each of us, Renee. I posted on FB (w/appropriate citation!). IDK, but I hope there will be some folks who take the time to read it there. As always, TY.
Brenda, thank you for sharing, dear Friend.
Your words reminded me of this Rosemerry Trommer poem, the not turning away, and allowing our hearts to break and remember its truth. ❤️🙏
when I say my heart breaks
I mean it breaks like a wave—
as if exhausted
by its own separateness
it gives itself back to the whole
Kimberly, Rosemerry Trommer's poem is beautiful. Thank you for sharing what says it all.
Powerful Renée. Why do we keep going back to sleep? We all do it of course, for many different reasons; fear of change, fear of facing the uncomfortable and overwhelming truth of all the suffering around us, fear of not being able to make a difference, fear of not being able to access our greatness and our strengths, our confidence, fear of exhaustion, of depletion, of ineptitude, of failure, fear, fear, fear. Our fears our endless, but they only have the strength to stop us when we succumb to them, which we do over and over again, until we don't. I watched this movie last night about a young Norwegian man who joined the resistance against the Nazis, and did incredibly dangerous and morally questionable things to liberate his country from the horrors of the Nazis. When confronted about those morally questionable acts, like having to kill fellow country men who were betraying his country by aligning with the Nazis, his response was that nothing was more important to him than freedom for him and his country, and he did what he thought he had to do to secure that freedom. I admire human beings like that who face their very real mortal fears and do the right thing despite them. They act with courage and conviction. That was in times of war, but that is what is needed in all times; that courage to face one's fears and do what is right. And to do that, as you say, we have to drop our illusion that we are here only for ourselves and for a secure life, and see the bigger picture of our interconnectedness as beings on this earth with every other being and the earth itself. Your grief at our forgetting the truth reminded me of this poem by Mary Oliver: "Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing? This winter the loons came to our harbor and died, one by one, of nothing we could see. A friend told me of one on the shore that lifted its head, and opened its elegant beak, and cried out in the long, sweet savoring of its life, which if you have heard it, you know it's a sacred thing, and for which if you have not heard it, you had better hurry to where they still sing. And, believe me, tell no one just where that is. The next morning, this loon, speckled and iridescent and with a plan to fly home to some hidden lake, was dead on the shore. I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world." Amen.
Ed, thank you for sharing. What stands out as I read your reflection is the fear of letting the heart be broken. "Are you willing? . . . I tell you this to break your heart. . . ."
But after the heart is broken into a million shards , then what?
Robin, your question gave me such pause, recognizing that you asked what, I imagine, would be on the heart of many: "then what?" This Sunday's letter offers one response.
Amen.
There are simply no words other than the ones you have shared here.
Donna, thank you for recognizing the wordlessness and giving heartfelt space for pause.
Last night, It was only after I went out on the balcony and watched the palm trees swaying and listened to the surf here in Cabo where I'm vacationing that I was able to go back to bed and sleep last night. I had binged on wildfire news earlier in the evening and was feeling such distress that I couldn't sleep. But listening to the surf, I was taken in by the wholeness of it all and recognized that I belonged to it. Very different from watching it burn on the TV screen.
Susie, your experience is very moving. I felt and heard myself release an audible sigh and mmmm when I read your words: "But listening to the surf, I was taken in by the wholeness of it all and recognized that I belonged to it." Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Renee. My heart cries out for these disaster victims of all species. There will be greater loss even after the fires are out. When the rains come, blackened debris flows will sweep downslope, in part due to the hydrophobic soils that result. Mitigative methods cannot begin to address this. Solutions are complex and must be removed from politics and rhetorical attacks. Looking to the future the rights of nature, not developers, and the protection of human settlements, are paramount to begin seeking balance. Only then can we start the long journey of universality.
Michael,
"My heart cries out for these disaster victims of all species." I hear you and I join you, and I thank you for sharing "in the wake" details. You offer such "on-the-ground" wisdom here. I know you understand these matters as well as anyone.