25 December 2020 – In times of crisis, we summon up our strength

Quotes that highlight some of my favourite lessons from this year

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We have the capacity to create absolutely anything all of the time” Dustin Yellin

“Love is a living, breathing thing. There is no need to force it to grow in a particular direction. If we start by being easy and gentle with ourselves, we will find it is just there inside of us, solid and healing” Thich Nhat Hanh

We are the ultimate creators of our own reality, no matter what. A pandemic cannot change that fact. There is always a choice in how we experience our reality whatever that reality may be.

Words I have found deeply comforting that summon the feelings of hope and fortitude

I have included a fair amount of poetry in my recent editions of OMT as I find it to be a soothing balm for the soul that captures eternal truths and crystallises understanding in a way that is so hard to access in any other form. It feels fitting to end this year with some stunning words from a poet’s book about poetry.

Enjoy these stirring musings from The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser

“In times of crisis, we summon up our strength.

Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.

In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for our selves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness. And then we turn; for it is a turning that we have prepared; and act.”

“In this moment when we face horizons and conflicts wider than ever before, we want our resources, the ways of strength. We look again to the human wish, it’s faiths, the means by which the imagination leads us to surpass ourselves.”

“However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.”

“As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive.

All the poems of our lives are not yet made.  We hear them crying to us, the wounds, the young and the unborn — we will define that peace, we will live to fight its birth, to build these meanings, to sing these songs.”

and One More Thing 

A personal message from me to you:

Thank you beautiful souls for being here this year, this wild and wonderful year of life that we have all been moving through. 2020 was absolutely nothing like any of us expected I’m sure but I know amongst the pain and heartache there were also incredible lessons, growth and love present.

I love you all so much and truly wish you the most wonderful festive season.