Holding tight to one another's hearts

And clinging to our humanity in the polycrisis

Dear Soulful Revolutionary,

Lately, I have felt as though I am underwater, sinking under the rising tides of authoritarianism, the immense suffering of so many, and the devastations of an escalating climate emergency. I have been at once frantically trying to do something useful and totally exhausted.

I wonder if this feeling resonates with you.

I have found myself asking:

How do we hold onto our humanity, and to one another, when so many violent forces threaten to separate us from each other and from the best of ourselves?

For the last few days, this question has not let me go.

It surfaced last weekend, when a harrowing first-person account of the Hill Country floods in Texas brought me to my knees. (A word of caution: this is a distressing story that left me with some vicarious trauma, particularly as a parent. It is also an incredible piece of journalism, a vital story for those of us clinging to our humanity amidst escalating and overlapping crises).

In his article, Texas Monthly editor Aaron Parsley tells the story of what happened to his family — him, his husband, his father, his sister, his brother-in-law, his four-year-old niece and 20-month-old nephew — when their cabin on the banks of the Guadalupe River broke apart around them.

This is the part that will never, ever leave me, as long as I live:

The baby slipped through his mother’s arms, lost to the floodwaters.

I froze when I read this. Then, my body released a sob — an expression of primal solidarity with this mother.

Is there anything more soul-crushing than clinging to your child, only to have them ripped from your arms?

Parents in Texas know this grief. Parents abducted by ICE know this grief. Parents in Palestine know this grief.

The terrible reality is that, try as we might to keep our babies safe, there are so many forces that threaten to separate us from one another.

I cannot help but wonder:

What courage, what faith, what sheer survival instinct, allows a person whose loved one has been torn from their grasp to continue living?

Dear two-year-old Khaled.

My friend Muhammad recently sent me photos of his toddler and baby holding signs that say, “Help me before I die of hunger.” Two-year-old Khaled grins — his precious face offering a jarring contrast to his poster’s dire message with its accompanying drawing of a crying face. Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza has ripped an estimated 18,000 children from their parents’ arms. Muhammad is desparately doing everything in his power to keep his children alive — he is staying human in the most dehumanizing circumstances — yet is rendered almost totally helpless by Israel’s mass starvation of Gazans. (You can help the family procure what little food is available by giving to this fundraiser I administrate).

I am compelled to ask:

How do we hold tight onto our humanity, when our hands have been tied?

On Saturday, a small vegetation fire two miles from my suburban Colorado home grew into a 136 acre urban interface fire, leading to the evacuation of a nearby town. The grey plume of smoke never turned black (which I’ve learned indicates that structures are on fire), but for 8 hours or so, all my internal alarm bells were going off. I packed important belongings in go-bags, in case we got evacuation orders too. My three-year-old daughters associate fire with our friends who lost their home in the fires in Altadena earlier this year, and they kept asking me if our house was going to burn. I stayed in touch with neighbors through our group chat, as we collectively monitored the smoke and our respective fire apps. Stay calm, I coached myself, be prepared, don’t dawdle, stay connected with neighbors.

I found myself wondering:

How do we reach out to help others when we are trying to stay afloat ourselves in the sea of anxiety?

None of these questions have easy answers. In fact, they are poised to become even more difficult as the polycrisis we inhabit deepens. Which means they are all the more important for us to ponder now, on this side of whatever waves of grief and loss may be coming our way.

In a tender piece about love for so many people and places undergoing concurrent disasters, the Rev.

Amy Peterson

writes,

“A priest I know in Texas lost three girls from her church to the floods. She says she believes pastoring through this crisis will be the greatest challenge of her life and ministry. I hope she’s right. I fear we will all be dealing with damage and suffering like this more and more often and for the rest of our lives.”

While we do not know the specifics of what the future has in store, we can certainly extrapolate how the structures we have counted on to hold us — our climate, our social fabric, our institutions — will likely continue to devolve.

Still, all the prognostication in the world is inconsequential if it doesn’t lead us to hold more tightly to our humanity as dehumanizing forces compound.

In the face of escalating destruction, we must support and learn from those who have already suffered the unimaginable. It may be overwhelming and even frightening to do so, because those who have lost everything reveal the vulnerability inherent to being human. Yet, by refusing to deadbolt the doors of our hearts, we recover the truth of our interdependence. And as various constraints are placed on us — economic, political, and environmental — we will be practiced at reaching out to our neighbors in relationships of mutual care.

So here are three ways we might practice holding tight to one another’s hearts, and onto our common humanity:

We carry lullabies

I have been listening to What We Remember Will be Saved, Stephanie Saldaña’s extraordinary, heart-on-her-sleeves recounting of the stories of refugees from Iraq and Syria. She reflects on what people carry with them from the ruins of their previous lives:

"We want to be believe there is a pattern to what survives and what dies….Why something that appeared so sturdy gave out and something so fragile survived…. That a bridge might collapse into the Euphrates but a song survive was something I was only beginning to comprehend. The intangible quality of a song makes it both fragile and portable, able to be carried out of war even by those who did not have time to pack a bag or who lost their belongings along the way. A mother without a suitcase might still carry a lullaby."

I wonder about the lullabies that will carry us — and our children — forward. What are the songs that situate us within communities of kinship? the stories that convey our most deeply held values? the games that bring us delight and laughter?

By telling his family’s story, Texas essayist Parsely, sings a lullaby to his surviving niece about her mother’s courage, and the beauty of the time they shared with her brother before the flood. He gives to this beloved child a handhold with which to steady herself as she grows up in a chaotic world. This story says,

You come from a family who fights for one another through the hell of high waters. You are loved and you are so very brave.

From the wreckage, those who have gone through the unimaginable sing songs of survival for those who would listen.

We keep faith

In conversation with an elderly Mexican woman, I asked her how she was doing. She promptly decried the cruelty and chaos of the Trump administration, before referencing this Gospel passage:

“Jesus said to them, ‘Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other. There will be great earthquakes and wide-scale food shortages and epidemics. There will also be terrifying sights and great signs in the sky. But before all this occurs, they will take you into custody and harass you because of your faith. They will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name….You will be betrayed by your parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends. They will execute some of you. Everyone will hate you because of my name. Still, not a hair on your heads will be lost. By holding fast, you will gain your lives….

‘There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, there will be dismay among nations in their confusion over the roaring of the sea and surging wages. The planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken, causing people to faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. Then they will see the Human One coming on a cloud with power and great splendor. Now when these things begin to happen, stand up straight and raise your heads, because your redemption is near.’” — Luke 21:10-12, 16-18, 25-28 (CEB)

My conversation partner’s point was that the chaos of our world is not a sign of God’s absence. On the contrary, she was convinced that her faith is being strengthened in this crucible.

Personally, I find it compelling that Jesus’ advice to his followers was to look up in anticipation of divine accompaniment. I think this counsel has little to do with some pre-Copernican cosmology where God is “up there,” and everything to do with how, when we’re swirling in the waters of chaos, humans have a tendency to hang our heads in despair. We no longer make hopeful plans for the future, we stop looking at other people’s faces, we just shuffle along from one compulsory task to the next until we die.

That’s not living.

And so, the invitation Jesus offers is to straighten our backs and lift up our heads, in order to look for Divine presence. To seek out love in the midst of fear.

To put it simply, hear the Gospel according to Mr. Rogers:

“Look for the helpers.”

When the most devastating horrors are unleashed, when suffering is unbearable, amidst the anxiety and the chaos, go looking for signs of hope:

For people courageously loving their neighbors.

For the astonishing beauty of nature.

For the simple ways in which grace breaks through the grind of the everyday.

This may seem absurd, to hold hope amidst apocalypse. But I suspect it is the only way we survive these times. Much is being revealed right now (this is what the Greek word apocalypse means — an unveiling). Faith in fearful times is not about denying reality, negating suffering, or seeking to escape it. Rather, it’s about looking to the horizon and conceiving, against all hope, of the possibility of a good and beautiful future.

We refuse to let go of our purpose

Horizons — both near and far off — feature prominently in Buddhist teacher and Indigenous Hawaiian elder Norma Wong’s book When No Thing Works. Wong urges readers to take hold of a motivating reason to move through the chaos to a shared future — whether it is one we may know, or one that will not be experienced for another seven generations. Regardless of the timeline,

“No strategy is possible if we are mired in weeds and mud, or chasing the emotive pull of our amygdala, or especially if we do not know the answer to why, otherwise known as purpose.”

A rigorous reckoning with why we intend to survive is required if we wish to “make the leap beyond this fraught moment.” What are you working toward? What would make this struggle worthwhile?

The “meta purpose” Wong proposes is “interdependent thriving.” Which is to say, aligning all of our work toward a world where everyone thrives, and where, in their living, they will be guided by this same ethic of mutual flourishing.

We have to hold tight to a clear sense of purpose, allowing ourselves to be moved by a vision of what could be, even as we may never reach the horizon in our lifetime.

Our future is shared. We are bound up with one another. This is our common cause.

e e cummings put it so exquisitely when he wrote:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

Here we are, friends. We may be underwater, but we are, most assuredly, not alone.

Here is my heart. Hold it awhile, would you?

I can help you hold onto your humanity if you help me hold onto mine.