Tag Archive | Active Hope

This Week in Cheese Sandwiches

I started the week with a fresh loaf of sourdough, which I hadn’t made in awhile since I was obsessed with tomato sandwiches on the complicated mock wonder bread. It’s a relief to return to the simplicity of sourdough. Tuesday evening in grief, I ate a simple deconstructed cheese sandwich with the first two slices: mayo and havarti on one, butter and rosehip-crabapple jelly on the other. Yeah, the jelly is a little overcooked as I’d feared, a bit thicker than I’d like, and a little sticky to spread, but it tastes great. I had to try it before I send off the jars to the lottery winners. In case, you know, it was a total fail and I had to eat it all myself with a spoon.

With local tragedies and national catastrophes, it’s a good time to remind myself that most people are good and kind and there’s a lot of great news that just doesn’t make headlines while the bad news come so fast and furious. I don’t remember how Daily Good found its way into my inbox, but I’m grateful there’s a group of volunteers curating good news stories around the world (also, it seems that AI is working for good in this instance); 625 stories so far this month, which I trust is a drop in the bucket, simply knowing how many good, sweet connections were made just in my neighborhood this week.

Wednesday’s sandwich was a simple cheddar, havarti, lettuce and tomato, but I wanted extra crunch so I quick pickled some tiny red onions from the final harvest. Mayo and Penzeys sandwich sprinkle completed the project.

One of those good things came in a voicemail yesterday from an unknown number. Last year when I struggled so before hip surgery, I had registered to get assistance from North Fork Senior Connections, and also offered to volunteer for them in some capacity after recovering from surgery. I hadn’t done either yet, and sort of forgot about it. But there’s a new crew closer to home now, and the coordinator wanted to know if I could use help with anything next weekend on their Service Saturday. As it happens, I could! I was so grateful to be asked, and when I called back I also gratefully volunteered to bake and do other light services as needed. I’m looking forward to participating in this community building network created “to support aging with dignity, choice, and companionship.”

In more good news, I started the Bibliofillies pick for November this week, The Book of Hope, Jane Goodall’s conversations with Douglas Abrams. Abrams brought us The Book of Joy a few years ago, chronicling the beautiful friendship of H.H. The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s perfect timing for me, and maybe for you, too. I’ll take inspiration anywhere I can get it.

Jane has been much on my mind since her death October first. I’d admired her for years before I was fortunate to meet her. I worked at Busch Gardens in Tampa, as a conservation educator in the zoo division of the amusement park. Busch housed a chimpanzee colony, and Jane had just emerged from Gombe after understanding that she needed to speak to the world about the plight of wild chimps, and the urgency of saving the species and their forest habitat. The zoo was aflutter that she was coming to Busch to speak, and would also, incidentally, be evaluating our chimp facilities. She was gracious and kind as she greeted a lucky few of us junior staff. She was not impressed with the zoo’s chimp habitat, however, which prompted a total, costly revamp which ultimately, years later, earned her approval.

She campaigned tirelessly to protect our precious world, and though her hope faltered occasionally, she never lost it, confident for four reasons: “the amazing human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of youth, and the indomitable human spirit.”

Thursday was cool and grey with glorious rain off and on all day, and snow in the mountains. It was crisp but cold outside Friday so the sandwich had to be grilled: Brie, pickled onion, mayo, and calamondin jam.

Jane told Abrams, “Hope leads to future success in a way that wishful thinking does not. While both involve thinking about the future with rich imagery, only hope sparks us to take action directed toward the hoped-for goal.” It occurs to me: Wishing is to Hope as Empathy is to Compassion: Hope and Compassion spark action. Robert Hubbell’s weekly dose of perspective Saturday touched on this same idea. He covers the White House horrors every day, yet he remains an inspired, hopeful, and inspiring activist, lifting us up daily with his newsletters and a weekly livestream pep talk.

“Hope and optimism are not the same thing,” Jane says. (Boy do I know that from the inside! As I read this I think, Hope is wishing plus Action; Optimism is wishing plus Belief. I’m grateful to be reading a book that’s making me think.) Abrams says, “Archbishop Tutu once told me that optimism can quickly turn to pessimism when the circumstances change. Hope is a much deeper source of strength, practically unshakable.”

*Saturday’s sandwich was not grilled, but otherwise essentially the same: Brie, pickled onion, mayo, with the new red jelly and lettuce. And Jane, for company, in the sunroom.*

Hope, Jane says, “does not deny the evil but is a response to it.” And later offers this pressing insight, “If we live in a society with a reasonable standard of living and some degree of social justice, the generous and peaceful aspects of our nature are likely to prevail, while in a society of racial discrimination and economic injustice, violence will thrive.”

Today’s cheese sandwich: mayo, havarti, pickled onion, lettuce, bacon, and apricot jam. It was a beautiful, mild day here, on this precious planet, and I savored lunch outside, with a different read, keenly aware of everything, absolutely everything.

“Facing our grief is essential to combatting and overcoming our despair and powerlessness,” she says, and adds, “Every day we make some impact on the planet. And the cumulative effect of millions of small ethical actions will truly make a difference. That’s the message I take around the world.”

I was online leading a meeting this evening so I missed the sunset, except for the layered cloud colors I could see through the kitchen window beyond my computer, and the alpenglow, which I could see behind me through the east window, reflected back to me in my square on the zoom screen. There was a pang of longing to be out in it. So I was thrilled to get a text an hour later of this gorgeous sunset over downtown Hotchkiss from my friend Mary Hockenberry who caught it on her evening walk.

Finding Value

Oct10

We use this graphic in the Mindfulness Foundations Course to illustrate how we tend to get complacent about the things we think we care about. I used ‘the necklace’ as an example for a few courses, but after today, I’ll use losing Biko as an example. Unless I get complacent about having found him again, and forget all about how it felt for a night and a morning to think he might be gone. Which was awful. A friend just this morning was talking about the phenomenon of hedonic adaptation, wherein we become acclimated to a new condition, a change in fortune, and over time our wellbeing goes back to its general resting state. It’s like when we forget to appreciate the non-toothache, and only notice that we were relatively painfree for awhile once we suddenly have pain again.

While we looked for him last night, and again for hours this morning, I did manage to appreciate the blooming maxis near the front gate. I looked behind them four or five times, since there’s a little divot in the ground where he’s hidden before, but nope, he was not there any time I looked. I was pretty sure that he was in the yard. It got dark last night, and I didn’t worry because I knew there were no holes in the fence, and sometimes he’s hard to find at dusk. Wren is so easily distracted these days by the sparrows in the rosebush, and now the finches at the feeder.

I poked around with my walking pole in the thick grass under the apricot tree. With all the fallen leaves his camouflage shell might not show up. I even lengthened the pole so I could poke to the bottom of the pond a few places where I couldn’t see beneath the plants and algae, just in case. We looked for about half an hour last night, forty-five minutes before work this morning, and another hour before lunch while the sun hinted through cloud cover. We looked absolutely everywhere, and even walked the perimeter outside the fence. I knew there was a slim chance someone might have come in the gate and left it open while I was out half the day yesterday: even just long enough to walk down to the door, knock, and wait a couple minutes, if it was sunny and he was active and near the gate, he could have walked right out with no one the wiser. But it was a slim chance, and I didn’t panic. I wouldn’t have worried at all in summer, confident that when the sun came out he’d emerge from hiding to bask, and I’d catch him running around later in the day. But the forecast for the next few days was not conducive to his coming out: possible heavy rain through the weekend, and on Sunday an overnight low that could spell the end of him. So we had to find him, and I didn’t want to be out looking in a downpour later.

It would take a gap this size beneath the fence for him to escape, and there just isn’t one along the perimeter. This gap is between the garden and the yarden, and those are his footprints: he uses it regularly to come and go from the area where his dogloo provides frequent overnight shelter. It’s where Wren found him on Wednesday night, but not last night. I triple checked. I checked both corners in the shoddy shed where he’s sometimes tucked in, and lifted the cardboard box he used before it collapsed, but he wasn’t under it.

However, after looking literally everywhere else in the yard, and triple checking the dog pen and garden, I went back to the broken cardboard box and lifted it all the way up, not just the front end–and there he was! Oh the wave of gratitude I felt in that moment! It washed away all my pending grief at possibly losing him.

To be clear, Wren did not find him. I found him, she was nowhere near, off chasing sparrows. But I put the box back over him and called her, and then she found him. To her mind, she had succeeded after our long and arduous hunt, and it was important to her to feel that she’d found him at last. We were both delighted and grateful, and moved Biko, some dried rushes, and the box all to the round pen to recreate his cozy bed, so he could tuck in for the rest of the season and I’d always know where to find him when it’s time to bring him inside. For the moment, his value is as high as it’s ever been.

I’m thinking there may be a lot of people who don’t realize how much they value Democracy just now, and what an ugly surprise it will be for them if it comes to pass that they wake up one day and we no longer have one. It’s certainly the direction this regime is trending, and the source of pervasive grief for many, but it’s not yet a done deal. If we act together, each of us doing our little things every day, but all of us coming together over and over in grassroots groups and other communities, resisting as a population instead of lone individuals, then we can still stem the creeping red tide. This short interview with Rebecca Solnit inspires the hope that remains for all of us if we come together in determined resistance.

An Irish farmer I follow on Instagram highlighted this trick to refresh rusted garden shears, and I’ve used this jar of vinegar to soak three pruners, about twelve hours each. The vinegar bubbles and the rust just falls off! Then you scrub them clean of vinegar and they’re ready to sharpen and good as new. It’s time to soak the Supreme Court and Congress in vinegar. Here’s a list of links I shared with North Fork Indivisible this morning. I hope some of them inspire or at least interest you.

42+

Jun7

The most perfect western tiger swallowtail I have ever seen. She must have just emerged from her cocoon. Not a tear or tatter on her as she feeds on the perennial onions in full bloom the past couple of weeks.

It’s been a challenging few weeks. Between internal and external events, I’m tired all the time. It’s hard to rise to each occasion. But from this glum place, I’ve reached a conclusion: I need to return to my daily gratitude practice. And why bother with a thousand words, when a couple of numerals and some pictures can do the job? So, catching up for the past couple of weeks, here are just some of the things I’m grateful for…

*Honeybee on the crabapple tree a couple of weeks ago.*

42+ is a gratitude practice from the Active Hope course I just completed this evening. It’s freely available online, and one of these days I’ll probably facilitate a group engagement similar to the one that just ended, hosted by a friend. Today, I’m grateful for (4) having been given the opportunity to take the course, having made the commitment to take it and participated in it fully, and for the wonderful classmates I shared the eight-week journey with. I’m grateful to (2) Deborah Sussex for offering the course for free, and for her skillful and open-hearted facilitating of it through an increasingly difficult time in our country, when active hope is needed more than ever. The + part is how I will express my gratitude: right here, right now. Many thanks, Deb, Denali, Kes, Renee, and everyone else, for the inspiring experience of virtual connection.