Take It from the Tears of the Poets

I am fighting pessimism. I do not want to be sour and gloomy and see only all that is wrong in our country and the world. I am trying to not believe we are at the edge of the abyss staring into the darkness.

The poet Mary Oliver has written, “My concern for the world is a sorrowful business.”

I have that concern as well.

I struggle to breathe easier, to lessen the stresses, to find a place beyond the hard realities of this current debacle that is our nation and its defective government.

My Facebook friend, Shelley Henderson, shared an astonishing poem from the brilliant Kate Tempest, titled, “Brand New Ancients.” In it, she writes,

“In the old days,

the myths were the stories we used to explain ourselves

But how can we explain

the way we hate ourselves?

The things we’ve made ourselves into,

the way we break ourselves in two,

the way we overcomplicate ourselves?

We are still permanently trapped

somewhere between the heroic and the pitiful.”

And it is that entrapment that suffocates our potential, that is squeezing the life out of us. We are, as a people, blue in the face, gasping for air, about to collapse in our paralyzed indifference, in our tedium, in our apathy.

Educator Parker J. Palmer has said, “Civility will not come from watching our tongues. It will come from valuing our differences.”

It is not enough anymore to be polite, courteous, careful about how we speak, what we say. We are long beyond pleasantries. Our circumstances require something much deeper. We have to examine our values, the truths we hold about humanity and about ourselves. Can we not dig far enough into our souls and find the resources to be humane, to treat one another with intelligence, with generosity in spite of our differences?

Our guidance in these hostile times, in our flawed and deteriorating nation, must come from within. There is an innate knowledge of right and wrong in all of us. Instinctively we know when we are crossing a line that violates our goodness. We cannot ignore those inner standards we know without question lead us appropriately and honorably.

The eminent psychologist, Eric Fromm, wrote that in troubled, threatening times, the most critical psychological task to set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

That requires stable inner resources. When all the road signs are garbled, broken, or down, we have to resort to our inner compass to find our way. We know what is the right thing to do. We know. We just have to do it.

Kate Tempest reminds us,

“But the plight of a people who have forgotten their myths

and imagine that somehow

now is all that there is—

is a sorry plight

all isolation and worry

but the life in your veins

it is Godly, heroic.

You were born for greatness.

Believe it,

know it—

Take it from the tears of the poets.”

© 2018 Timothy Moody