Again, as I sit down to write this newsletter, I am taken up with the question in my own life, of why I seem to focus on the narrative, that these are the darkest of times and that families have never faced such regressive and oppressive times, as these. I look for evidence that it is true, facts that confirm my feeling of losing ground. And then, I received this quote sent to me from a dear friend, that shifts my mood, and loosens my grip on my perception that resilience is all that can get us through these times.

Howard Zinn wrote the book: “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train”, several years ago and stated that:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory.

He reminds me that what I do in some small ways, matters. It adds to the energy of kindness and compassion in the world. It signifies that we all play a role in defying the odds and acting otherwise. It is a form of grace for which I renew my gratitude for today.

In appreciation for everyone’s contribution to the grace that fills the world today.

The unfolding of life does more than fray our bodies with entropy — it softens our spirit, blunting the edge of vanity and broadening the aperture of beauty, so that we become both more ourselves and more unselved, awake to the felicitous interdependence of the world. And yet the selves we have been — young and foolish, hungry for the wrong things, hopeful for the right but winged by hope into hubris — are elemental building blocks of who we become, unsheddable like the hydrogen and helium that made the universe.

Kahlil Gibran