Practicing Hope week 5 - The Other Side

AWM

What is the love on the other side of your pain?
Krista Tippett

This week’s Hope Portal struck a nerve in me. Bear with me please. It struck a nerve with my anger over snowballing choices made in our world that cause pain and suffering. Not only war and detainment of innocents. But rhetoric that perpetuates prejudice and dehumanization, laws limiting access to food and health care, decisions that refuse to give people a second chance and disregard our environment. Rulings that place more importance over protecting some at the expense of others, quite literally. With regret, I know this anger translates into my divisiveness and judgment against the bandwagon of individualism at the neglect of community. I also have to acknowledge anger with myself when I follow the rhythm of angry rhetoric. I am too often in step with this human condition.

I am grateful for today’s question – what is on the other side of your pain? – because I’ve never taken time to look and consider what my anger may be hiding. As I lifted the weighty rock of my anger in prayer, I discovered that what I am holding is pain – pain that comes from denied grief because anger feels more self-confident and less vulnerable. When I turned the rock over, what I found on the other side is deep love for humankind and creation. In the dark places concealed by my pain turned anger is the rich soil of love that is the foundation of life from which we have breath, the dust from which we all come and to which we all return. The musty, earthy smell is grief for Love denied in the world.

I’m still digging through the dirt looking for the Hope. What seems to be germinating is that anger is not hopeful, but Love is. Allowing the grief is painful, but as a friend told me once, not many people will plumb the depths of grief to see the gifts it brings. This practicing Hope is a vulnerable exercise!

There is absolutely no excuse for making our passionate love for the world
dependent on what we think of its degree of health or
whether we think it’s going to go on forever.
This moment you are alive,
so you can dial up the magic of that at any time.
Joanna Macy

practicing hope with love,
in this together -
Amy