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Have you ever had a feeling of numbness around a part of your body you identified as your soul? A kind of bone-deep sadness and weariness? I feel that now.
![dead seed pods with sunset](https://grateful.org/content/uploads/2017/10/siim-lukka-dead-seed-pods.jpg)
Photo by Siim Lukka on Unsplash
Of course, like everyone, I know most intimately the events taking place in my own life. But remembering how the poet Mary Oliver once put it, I know many could tell far worse. She said in her poem Wild Geese, “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. / Meanwhile the world goes on…”
And yes, the world does mercifully go on. As I write this evening, it goes on past the cascading, heart-wrenching circumstances and mounting deaths in New York City, the current epicenter of our coronavirus pandemic. Plus, the news that many other cities and locations in the U.S. and around the world are experiencing their tragedies and others showing the same signs as New York’s earlier trajectory. It goes on past political leaders, many so uncaring and seemingly untethered to reality. It goes on past what feels like the weakening of democracy itself in so many nations. Yes, it simply goes on.
How do we keep from merely turning away, numb and desperate? There is a tool and practice strong enough for such times. It is gratefulness practice. And no, we cannot be grateful for any of the things I just mentioned. Let me be clear. We cannot be grateful for such difficult and fierce things in this world.
This is not gratefulness for the hurt, grief, and losses we suffer but rather for the opportunity to grow, heal, and reconnect to our selves, to others, and to the great other.
Over time, however, we can begin to tease up to something I call paradoxical gratefulness. This is not gratefulness for the hurt, grief, and losses we suffer but rather for the opportunity to grow, heal, and reconnect to our selves, to others, and to the great other. It allows our heart to open more fully even as it shatters and breaks into ten thousand pieces.
In recent times, I have had the honor of working with the team at gratefulness.org. The outcome of this collaboration is an on-demand eCourse, which in part deals with the fierce and paradoxical gratitude I am describing here. It’s called: A Fierce and Enduring Gratitude: How Poetry Supports Us in Good Times and Bad
This course features beautiful, hand-picked poems and stories offered as uniquely helpful tools for anyone wishing to deepen their gratefulness practice.
So please, take this journey with me… and with all of us. Let us meet just slightly west and south of a place called despair. It is a place that does not turn away from difficulty or fierceness. It is a place of paradoxical gratitude, where images, metaphors, powerful language, and practices of grateful living combine to bring about moments of belonging, grace, and yes, even joy.
* Please note that ALL of our eCourses are available for FREE right now. We invite you to explore our collection and share with others.
Hi Dale, I relate to your use of the word, paradoxically, as paradox is one of my favorite words. Why? because I have learned that paradox always leads me to a deeper truth. I share a poem I wrote in 2018. It’s titled: God is Being
God I’ve come to know You are not a Being.
You are Being Itself—
ever faithful, ever present, in my joy and sorrow.
Your vulnerability humbles me beyond belief.
It leaves me in despair.
Why do You trust me so?
You see I’ve come to know my choices matter.
They either nurture or destroy the gift of life.
I realize that YOU have made us all CREATOR!
And I don’t want this responsibility!
Why don’t You change the rules?
Change the game, just fix everything?
“It’s not possible,” You say.
I have to change my own mind?
“It’s called free will,” You say.
But how can I change?
“Change my fear to awe,” You say.
“Plant the seed of willingness in my heart.”
“Become the peace and love I seek.”
“Share it with all I meet.”
“It’s an inside job,” You say.
“That begins and ends with me.”
So please, take this journey with me… and with all of us. Let us meet just slightly west and south of a place called despair.
But the MOST desperate ( and therefore dispersing ) belief of all is the Judao-christian habit of misinformation …..The Souls and/or the place of the Soul / cannot nor does it EVERY have to feel dispart! That is a complete fallacy …albeit good fuel of poety etc …which promotes the chaos we are .treated to in this current earthly time.