'We know so much...

But comprehend so little.'

(Uncle Angaangaq, shaman, healer, and storyteller, Eskimo-Kalaallit Elder)

How do we grow humility? This is a question I am constantly asking myself at the moment. When the current solutions seem completely narrow & inadequate to the existential problems we are seeing on our planet - Covid19, climate change, structural supremacy & crumbling democracies? How do we grow from this play of 'not enough-ness' or scarcity, to an abiding sense of abundance & reciprocity? Is it possible we can re-learn to live in harmony with Nature? How would we dissolve our western/individualistic ways, in order to get to the heart of this matter.

My gut feeling is that maybe we need to admit some things. We are lost! We are incomplete! We have been taught that in order to function in this society, we need to separate ourselves from our deeper, truer selves! We are not nearly as coherent or clear as we would like to be! What would it look like to learn to sit with these 'failures' & listen deeply in other ways? 

Recently, through a series of endings at this particular time in my life, I have had the opportunity to 'slow down' & sit again with some of these deeply uncomfortable questionings. It's been messy, let me tell you! And there seems like there are a lot of tangles. I am deeply unsure of the way ahead, but I am able to remember that there are many who have walked along this way before me. I am not alone. I am tentative as I touch into some of these wounds within me, as I feel the ache of having ignored this body & breath for so long. I yearn for Healing - yes for myself, but also for the many I see around me who are suffering, and for our beautiful green planet. 

As the busyness slowly begins to settle further, I am aware of an online conversation which has begun around Gabor Mate's 'Wisdom of Trauma' movie & Thomas Hubl's  'Collective Trauma Summit 2021 - Collective Healing in Action'. Here I have been listening & deepening with fervour alongside these voices of  those who feel like my tribe, from all around the planet. It gives me a glimmer of hope again.

I have never been more uncertain of things, nor paradoxically felt more awakened by such stirrings. I hear within me, a deep call to 'simply' come home again to this body; to witness this breath that moves through me & to follow the threads of meaning step by step, as I inch forward. In this vein I share an offering that has deeply touched my heart, by the poet & mystic Rainer Maria Rilke, whom I have loved ever since reading 'Letters to a Young Poet', many years ago. I share this alongside an older work of mine from 2012 - Holding Sight in my Hands. I wrote the following words then & they are just as true today: "It is high art, to simply hold dear the lens through which one sees, while not reducing or inflating another's. I am brought to my knees many times, with the enormity of this undertaking. Losing my grip again and again, I slip into the Masterpiece. And I am in All Ways Held in coming to stand again. It is this, that ‘these hands’ now hold."

Before the Beginning 

God speaks to each of us as we are made,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words,

the numinous words,we hear before we begin:

You, called forth by your senses

reach to the edge of your longing.

Become my body

grow like a fire behind things

so their shadows spread

and cover me completely

 
Let everything into you;

beauty and terror.

Keep going, remember

no feeling lasts forever

 
Don’t lose touch with me.

Nearby is the land they call life,

you will know it by its intensity.

Give me your hand.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

May we remember to come to our knees. May we remember that we don't have all of the answers. May we grow humility.