Feeling hopeful
Scribblings from my journal
A few days ago, I was reading on a lounge chair outside on the sloping lawn, on what turned out to be the last warm day of autumn.
We never know—do we?—what will be our last experience of something. Or someone.
The leaves were still in their full autumn glory: yellow, orange, red and gold, with green accents where chlorophyll still enlivened the foliage, still profiting from the late-afternoon sun, as I was, my back to the west.
The landscape in the distance was lit as if for a beautifully photographed film—a period piece set at a nineteenth century picture-perfect farm with its gracious house and pillared porch, its three silos and its red-painted barn, the light glinting off distant black cows as if they, too, were made of gold.
And of a sudden, as happens so often in the late afternoon, the wind began to blow. Out of the west, at my back, it blew, and the fallen leaves began to rush like lemmings toward the precipice of the hill, with the sound of an ocean wave receding over coarse sand.
That sound was all around me as the desiccated leaves all raced at once to hurl themselves over the edge of the world, as the last warm day of fall ended in those moments of heart-breaking sound, and I filled my ears with it as with the final notes of a beloved symphony, the last notes of the tympani, the final sweetness of the violins, all the strings playing momentarily in unison as I savor the sounds, wanting to hold them close.
And when I turn to look behind me, the sun is magnified by drops of wetness on my eyelashes, and its light slips inside me—that golden transforming light that signals the end of something and the beginning of something new.
Maybe this is a time for hope rather than despair.
I had the privilege of canvassing the other day with Anne Weisberg, our local democratic candidate for the Connecticut State Assembly. Anne embodies the progressive values I believe in. Spending time with her and a roomful of her volunteers, prior to an afternoon of door-knocking, I was struck by the power of local politics and, yes, sisterhood.
“Act locally, think globally” was one of the guiding phrases of my youth—and, ever since, I have taken it to heart.
There have been many days lately (especially in the middle of the night) when I have given in to dread and despair over the state of our union and the state of our planet. But today I feel a sense of hope.
I’m not sure why.
Was it the beautiful and vivid dream I had in the wee hours this morning about standing inside a greenhouse that was part of some kind of experimental farm? Even the plants were vivid in the dream, vital seedlings, sports that I held in my hands. Grown in staggered planting, so that some were larger, more ready than others to be planted.
I could almost smell the good smell of the soil: the air was filled with hope. With the promise of food and life. It felt like a real place. “This is the first place in a long time,” I said in the dream, leaning in to one of the shadowy people there, someone wise and comforting, “where I have felt happy.”
It felt once more like the Life Between Lives. My passport has been stamped several times now. One day—I can’t know when—I will go there to live, at least for awhile, until my soul is born all over again into a new body.
Even though there is so much darkness everywhere, I have a delicious, precious and delicate feeling that we are about to enter a new era for our species, a casting off of all that is unevolved in us—a casting off of all that we’ve done wrong as a species. A time of searching, with empathy, kindness and goodwill, for wisdom. For Gaia. For the Goddess.
Far be it from me to demonize all men. Some of my favorite, most beloved people on this planet are men. But the time has come (it’s long overdue!) for women to assert the hard-won wisdom that sings in our very cells. Let the era of women begin! And let it officially begin, here in this country, with the election of Kamala Harris to the highest office of the land.
Several things are in progress now, including my interview with poet and biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle, author of Riding Like the Wind.
