How Does it Work?

The morning is always dark, cool, and embracing here. The temperature is 52 degrees and today is Sunday. It's the day we greet the fall equinox for 2024. Days grow shorter.

We have been sharing our insights, experiences, and lives with one another for a mere 72 hours. During this time, there has been a lot of serious, heartfelt, and deeply anxious discussion about what the future holds. The question of what is to be done is pending.

Today we learned that bombings have intensified; starvation continues to haunt the world; and at the same time, there are new lives entering the stream of life. So, what do we take from all of this? It has been like this for as long as humanity has existed and - we cannot forget.

The Tao invites us to consider doing nothing so that nothing is left undone. How do we reconcile this with the feeling that there are so many things that need to be done. How do we live into the prayer for humanity? Shouldn't we be advocates, organizers, change agents in a world that is so utterly imperfect? Isn't there something that can be done to stop the violence - as in the shooting that happened just today and took the lives of another dozen people and injured more? Can't we convince world leaders that the clock is ticking and really, if there is to be prevention of more violence, everyone needs to pause? Apparently, there is only prayer.

Prayers are important in times like this. Blessings are essential as we start another cycle in the effort to keep affirming life. Perhaps this newborn child is the one who will be the force us to redirect our tendency away from violence and turn us toward love. This is not wringing of hands or being idealistic. Perhaps this is when prayers and blessings matter the most. Perhaps this is when we have the chance to become one with our collective pain from so many different sources.

It is a bit of progress when we can recognize the truth of the fact that tomorrow is never promised to anyone. It is more progress when we recognize this fact and we also can see that the idea of a promise broken is always possible – meaning, that demise is waiting for all of us. Either in the short term or the longer term, but for sure: demise awaits us all.

Then, we can wake up to the fact that we have so little time; we have so many opportunities; and we have innumerable reminders that wasting what little time we have in despair is a mistake.

We honor the arrivals as much as the departures. We emerge from the sadness with even more hope. We find a way, by making the way to our next opportunity to encounter what it means to be a human being in times of uncertainty. As now.