Hope Arising

It has been a slow evolution of experiencing fall weather here in northeast Ohio. We’ve had cold nights but a lot of warm and windy days. Halloween night was kind to children wearing only their costumes without the need to cover them up with jackets.

There has been no need of imagining things to scare adults as we now are in for 4 more years of destructive chaos post-election. Fortunately, for me, my body simply cannot handle fear and despair. I think of a Rumi poem that says something to the effect of, “If you are selling fear in the marketplace, I’m not buying.” I cannot handle it in this body which has an already overloaded nervous system from 55 years of living with MS.

I am not dwelling on what might or might not happen. I see humanity as swinging on a pendulum always moving between chaos and order, darkness and light, destruction and creation, and fear and love. I am intensely curious to see where the pendulum lands after the dust of rancor, lies, and told you so’s die down. I am aware that we are no longer able to easily reach a peaceful equilibrium at this point in our history. But order follows chaos just as creative chaos follows too much rigidity. We are not exempt from the laws of Universal Mind which arose from cosmic chaos to create our universe. All according to an order that scientists are still proving, uncovering more and more through new technology.

Meanwhile life goes on as it will in our individual lives. For those of you reading this, our immediate daily patterns may not be disrupted very much as we may not be the direct targets of the deconstruction touted by the new administration. The ripple effects will touch us all. We do not live in a vacuum of our own socio-economic status. We also know that our country and the world are deeply interwoven. Changes will continue apace.

More than ever, I am determined to continue to hold to the values that resonate with my integrity and support their implementation at any level in my own sphere- from my retirement community to the local town and college just across from our campus. We keep breathing, and loving, and giving our best. I wrote this RAP (rhythm and poetry) song during Covid and updated it to present for Kendal at Oberlin’s Winter Solstice program. These are the lyrics and am currently working with an inventive percussionist to accompany me. I’ll post that finished version when available. (I dressed up as Gaia for Halloween)

Hope Arising

by Judi Bachrach

Gaia, She hangs in some cosmic infinity.

Mother of us all She acquires some divinity.

Her salt tears are rising, She storms and She burns

With immutable laws that Her children must learn.

Chorus: (sung)

I’ve got to-

uplift, my heavy heart

Whenever I feel my world is falling apart.

Uplift my troubled mind

Give voice to all the love and all the light I can find.

The whole world is in chaos it has happened before

Poverty, tyranny, deadly plagues, and war-

Everything is shifting before our own eyes.

We’ve got to keep uplifting so that Hope can arise.

Chorus:

People used to taking need to learn they must give back.

We’ve got the wisdom and the will it is connection that we lack.

Lead by giving, lead by loving, lead by changing how you think.

Believe that change can happen even standing at the brink.