Despair and Hope

Hope is a state of mind, not a state of the world

Either we have hope within us or we don’t.

Hope is not a prognostication—It’s an orientation of the spirit.

                                               -Vaclav Havel

In spring, life begins anew.  We wait anxiously for those first signs of green poking through the frozen ground.  In my neighborhood, I know where to look for the earliest signs.  In sheltered corners, against a south facing rock wall or hillside, that’s where I find the first snowdrops emerging followed by crocus and daffodils.  These early spring flowers are pushing their way up through the frozen ground from the bulbs where they stored their energy over the winter.  It seems so incredible to me that these intrepid flowers will bloom out of frozen earth, unphased by the cold spring winds.  How is it that they push their way through solid ground with their tender leaf tips?  This is the magic of spring or the Wood phase of the life cycle.  Wood energy perseveres through tight passages and adverse conditions, inching forward, to finally emerge and spread to its full potential.  This is the natural movement of spring.

The cycle of life happens all the time—birth, growth, death and rebirth in a continuous cycle.  We can think about it in a micro sense, like the cells in our bodies. Or we can begin to zoom out to phases of a day, seasons of a year, stages of a lifetime, or even the stages of a civilization.  They all follow the same very predictable pattern of birth, growth, death and rebirth.

In late February, the invasion of Ukraine brought with it a wave of despair that feels discordant with the hopeful energy of spring.  The despair of death and destruction of war, along with the IPCC Climate report laying out a description of what we are in for with fires, flooding, drought, irreparable ecosystem damage and the resulting humanitarian crisis feels overwhelming.  This all on the heels of a worldwide pandemic that mutated from a health issue into a political issue; a political system generating misinformation designed to terrify the population; and legislation designed to restrict the lives and opinions of all but a few.  How on earth do we find hope in this?

In his book, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, Amitav Gosh tells the story of how the Dutch came to the Banda islands in the mid 1500’s with the intention of taking the nutmeg, to sell at huge profit in the spice trade.  Never mind that the people who lived on the island had a relationship with the nutmeg that had sustained them for Millennia, these European prospectors sought to extract the nutmeg for their own profit no matter what it entailed.  In the end, in 1621, the Dutch invaders committed genocide in the name of profit.  They were richly rewarded by their monarch and celebrated by their countrymen.  This is a pattern we have seen over and over in the last 575 years of our civilization.  It is the basis upon which this country was founded, and it is the basis of the current war in Ukraine.  With the ideas that rationalize colonization and genocide (which are very complex and include issues of patriarchy and racism) also came the false narrative of the superiority of white male human beings over all other human and non-human beings.  In the example of the invasion of the Banda Islands and the genocide that took place there, not only were the human beings murdered, their culture destroyed, and their co-inhabitant (the nutmeg) stolen, the ancient relationship between humans and the nutmeg (and other non-human beings of the island), was destroyed without so much as a twinge of recognition that something critical to all life was also destroyed or that the destruction might negatively impact the invaders.  The rituals and traditions of the Banda people and the stories that they told about nutmeg were the link of communication between the human and natural worlds that allowed the light of humanity to nourish and be nourished by the light of the nutmeg, reciprocally. 

Rituals and traditions are a portal for our souls to give meaning to life.  We are nourished by the wonder and awe of rituals because they are designed to bring the human being into contact with the sacred in a way that connects us with the unseen world, to be nourished by it in the same way that having a cup of tea with your best friend is not about the nutritional value of the tea.  That feeling of awe is our soul speaking to us.  It is like plugging a lamp into an electrical socket, only then can its light shine.   The nutmeg lamp was stolen, but the thieves didn’t know how it worked, they didn’t have the right dongle, so the nutmeg’s light can no longer fully shine.  Not only did they not have the right dongle or means of connection, they were in denial of the fact that the connection even existed and that their transgression extended beyond the physical world.  Humanity has repeatedly done this in infinite ways, and so the light of the world is dimming.  She is dying. 

This time of the rise in colonialism coincided with what we now call the beginning of the “Age of Reason.”  The Age of Reason brought a shift away from the Medieval mystical understandings of the workings of the universe to the idea that everything in the universe could be rationally demystified and cataloged.  This thinking has stranded humanity in a world where nature is an inert substance, reduced to its chemical constituents, a resource to be taken for profit, devoid of the magic and wonder that animate life.  We have the lamp, which we might regard as attractive décor, but don’t know enough to plug it in to see that its real purpose is to shine and emit light by which we can see. And, worse, we have forgotten that we have forgotten.

The technological advances that made long sea voyages possible, the growing philosophy that the universe could be rationally demystified and cataloged gave rise to the idea that the Earth, its black, brown, female, and young human inhabitants, and all of its non-human beings were merely resources to be taken for the financial profit of a few men, rather than sacred beings to be in relationship with.  These are the foundational ideas on which we have built our civilization and the foundation is rotting because of it.

These relationships that humans have severed over and over again are the threads in Indra’s Net.  Indra’s Net is a metaphor in Buddhism that describes the interpenetrated, interbeing, interdependent Reality of the universe.  Indra’s Net can be imagined as an infinite three-dimensional spider web and at each intersection there is a multi-faceted jewel representing each being in the universe.  Each jewel reflects all the other jewels in the web.  With this archetypal image, we can see that anything affecting one of the beings in the universe affects all the beings in the universe. This is a basic truth that was lost to modern humanity in the Age of Reason, but it remains true none the less.  So many of the, delicate, silky threads of relationship, the pathways for mutual nourishment, between the human and non-human worlds have been shredded by our arrogance.  It is increasingly rare with every passing day that we experience the numinous in the world around us because of the destruction of the pathways.   It will require great humility, open hearts and a willingness to be taught how to live correctly in the web of life by the living, intelligent, non-human natural world if humanity is to be included when the Springtime of the next era of life on Earth comes.

At present, we are in the Wintertime of our civilization.  We are past the Summertime when life was abuzz with the pollination that produced fruit in the Autumn, and we are now feeling anxious about the increasing darkness of a long Winter.  We see the darkness in the breakdown of our political system with misinformation and a shift toward authoritarianism.  We see the darkness in the destruction of ecosystems and their inhabitants. We see the darkness in the complete inability of politicians to take action on the climate crisis.  We see the darkness in an unprovoked war and the ecological and humanitarian crisis in its wake.   We see the darkness in the divisiveness over how to protect the health of the human population in a pandemic.  Darkness comes with the season of Winter and that is how we know we have come to the end of a life cycle of our current era, and we must wait for the light to return.  And it will.

From our diagram describing the basic natural law of the cycle of life, this current era of human civilization is in the first part of Winter.  We have not yet reached the Solstice. We have not yet reached the return of the light that brings the hope of warmer, brighter days and new life to come.  We are still on our way down into the cold and dark that will bring with it enormous suffering for the Earth and all the human and non-human beings that abide here.  This knowing gives rise to deep despair and anxiety.

David Whyte, in his book Consolations, writes:

 “Despair is a necessary and seasonal state of repair, a temporary healing absence, an internal physiological and psychological winter when our previous forms of participation in the world take a rest; it is a loss of horizon, it is the place we go when we do not want to be found in the same way anymore. We give up hope when certain particular wishes are no longer able to come true and despair is the time in which we both endure and heal, even when we have not yet found the new form of hope.”

I take solace in his wisdom that “despair is the time in which we both endure and heal.”  We have no choice but to endure, but how can we focus on healing?  Both for ourselves and for the non-human beings. Where do we even begin?

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, in his book, Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life, gives us very practical tools to help us get started.  He helps us bring a certain awareness of our relationship to Nature and mindfulness to simple things like walking “as if your feet are kissing the earth”, awareness of breath, cooking and sharing meals with love and gratitude, cleaning to create sacred space, and my personal favorite, gardening with “the recognition of our participation in the great web of life.”

Now is the time of year when I plant seeds.  Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee reminds us that seeds are a wondrous gift of nature.  That an acorn contains a whole oak tree and all it needs are sun, soil and rain to manifest its magnificence.  And that acorn carries the stories and knowledge of its ancestors back to the beginning of time.  When we plant seeds with this awareness, we cannot help but to feel our hearts swell with reverence and a sense of wonder and awe which we can recognize as connection to the sacred.  It is that feeling that we are working on cultivating in these daily activities of life because we can know, that for a brief moment, we are in connection with the web of life, that we have found the right dongle to plug in the lamp, and a little light can shine forth.  In that way, we can participate in the healing of Life.

In that same way, each one of us are actually a seed.  We carry the stories and knowledge of our ancestors back to the beginning of time.  Our ancestors knew how to participate in the web of Life, they knew the songs, stories, traditions, rituals and ways of being that are the call and response of Life. With humility, love and willingness to remember that we belong to the Earth, that we have a place in the web of Life, we can begin to grow that connection.  We can plant seeds of connection so that when the light returns and the spring of a new era is pushing its way through the frozen ground of despair, we can recognize and celebrate the tiniest, tender green shoots of new Life beginning to emerge. 

I don’t know when we will start to feel the sunlight of a new era warming our faces, but I take solace in knowing that it will happen, that it must, because it is the nature of Life to renew, for Spring to follow Winter.  And that gives me hope.