The state of the world: it might just be grief and fear. A few weeks ago, as a part of the time of Joys and Sorrows, I shared the last stanzas of Warsan Shire’s poem “What They Did Yesterday Afternoon”:

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

(The full poem can be found here )

And the news this week is filled with the war that has begun in the Middle East, and again it feels like the right words to remember. The pain of the present moment is wide and felt across the world.

It’s also a moment of holding to the both/and. This is not a single event, but a moment in a long struggle, the origin reaching back years and traumas beyond counting. And it is a present horror, and our hearts are breaking for the death, loss, fear, and trauma that has begun and whose end we cannot predict.

I appreciate the words of UUA President, the Rev. Dr. Sophia Betancourt in this moment:

I pray for the people of Israel and Palestine. I pray for leaders around the globe who must respond to this latest flare of violence and the untenable ethical considerations that abound. I pray for Muslim and Jewish UUs who experience the impact of this long strife acutely. I pray that those of us less likely to know the trauma of unending brutality and harm will not turn away from generational loss, from the devastating realities and their root causes, or from the relentless tragedy of war and occupation. Be gentle with yourselves when you need to be, but do not turn away unless you must. We are one global family living tenuously on the same human-impacted Earth. Let us center ourselves in justice as we call for peace. (Full text here )

How do we stay awake to what is happening around us in the world, and the terrors that are present across the wide earth all the while, never losing track of the sweetness of morning fog lifting from a beloved landscape, or our palms meeting as hands grasp for each other? These words from Denise Levertov remind us that it is in our connections to each other and the connections that spread from one to another to another that creates hope, and the possibility of something better for the world:

For the New Year, 1981 ~ by Denise Levertov

I have a small grain of hope–

one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send to you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source–
clumsy and earth-covered–
of grace.