No doubt many of us want things to go back to normal as quickly as possible but we are also probably wondering what kind of permanent positive impacts this Covid Time might have in our lives. Will I be a different person when/if things return to some new kind of normal? Do I want to be a different person, a person more connected to those I love, those who need love, those who are hard to love? When this time of restricted gathering passes, can we make our gatherings more meaningful? Will I be more present when we are together?
I am also hoping that I will be more willing to embrace hard things because that is where the growth is, that is where the meaning is, that is what is calling me to a more fully lived life. In May I will turn 65 and I can start collecting a pension. I don’t want to be someone who worries about investments, and bond markets, TSFA’s and RRSP’s and financial recovery in a post Covid world. I want to be a good and generous steward of all that is given to me for this time.
I recently heard about the piece below by Victoria Safford which was written in response to 9/11, and it has inspired me to a different place, a harder place, a hopeful place.
The Gates of Hope
“Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope--
Not the prudent gates of Optimism,
Which are somewhat narrower.
Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness,
Which creak on shrill and angry hinges
(People cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through)
Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of
“Everything is gonna’ be all right.”
But a different, sometimes lonely place,
The place of truth-telling,
About your own soul first of all and its condition.
The place of resistance and defiance,
The piece of ground from which you see the world
Both as it is and as it could be
As it will be;
The place from which you glimpse not only struggle,
But the joy of the struggle.
And we stand there, beckoning and calling,
Telling people what we are seeing
Asking people what they see.”