Expanding Our Inner Resources

Dear Friends,

I hope this message finds you safe and in good health. As we are all too aware, the outer landscape continues to be rocky and unpredictable, but with care and attention, our internal landscape can look quite different. In these surreal times, we have the opportunity, indeed the imperative to call on and expand our inner resources, both for our own sake and that of our families. These resources, which we need as much as the air, can restore our spirits, enhance our ability to live in the unknown, renew our hope. They are all vital, if we are to be able to sustain ourselves, to come together with the shared vision and commitment needed to co-create a new present and future. It is these resources which can nourish our resilience and strengthen our resolve, day by day, hour by hour, to push through even when we feel we are facing a constantly-unfolding tsunami.

It is no secret that our life-giving reserves are fed through closer connection to family, friends and our various communities, by contemplative and ritual practices, meditation, breath and bodywork, writing, dancing, singing, chanting, drumming, gardening, cooking, painting, collage and a range of creative arts, making music, yoga, hiking and other forms of movement. Any of these practices can at least temporarily shift our perspective and ground us; we need to remind each other to employ them when we forget, and I thank those friends and colleagues who occasionally have to remind me.
 
Daily contact with the supportive people in our lives--and our animals, as I am now reminded by Tzedek and Lilit (below)--can help us find positive aspects in sheltering in place longer than we ever expected: the ability to connect with new and old friends across thousands of miles, gifts of time and spaciousness which allow us to focus on the things which give our lives true, not superficial or ephemeral meaning.

Of course, I’m speaking for myself, but I hear that many others are having the same experience. In what seems to be a world gone mad on a number of fronts, my strongest wellspring of support and revitalized energy comes from my personal relationships, for which I have deep appreciation every day. It is in our power--and vital to our emotional and spiritual survival--to hold and nurture these connections with care. In so doing, we fuel our collective heart and spirit, inspiring us to bring our best selves, our most creative thinking and energies to the urgent task of co-creating a new world.
 
This is a time when many are examining and re-visioning their lives, their purpose. Despite all the challenges we continue to face, many of us are redefining our goals based on where our passions lie and writhe, jump and dance, hearing the strong call to no longer postpone listening to our deepest longings and to finally pursue what we love, especially if we have pushed that aside in favor of earning a living at work that may feed our bodies but not always our souls.  

(excerpted from December 2020 Lilith's Institute Newsletter)
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