Winter Mornings

A gentle stillness settled in for the last week of December. For a few days the whole world seemed to slow down, as though perhaps we could give up the fading year’s hectic pace and allow ourselves to rest and breathe. But that stillness was ruptured far too soon by the chaos and tortured anguish of the tsunami, the keening sorrow and howling losses that sounded across all the oceans of the world. The suffering that followed as the waters receded will echo down this decade and into the next in the lives of those who survived.

Around the world these early winter days, compassion began pouring forth just as it did on September 11. The best and sweetest and most sacred aspects of the human heart shine like precious pearls in times like this. The common denominator of human suffering and mortality bridges great divides. In the immediacy of loss and the scope of sorrow, our barriers somehow become less rigid, our edges soften, and the simple love that is the heart of human decency flows a little more freely.

How, how, how do we keep that river flowing? In the days and weeks following 9/11, so many millions of people around the world grieved America’s losses and sorrow. Yet in the blink of history’s eye, three years later our own actions have all but scorned that precious river and America is reviled across many borders. The spontaneous nectar that flowed so freely has withered to barely a drop in the world community’s cup.

How do we keep the preciousness of life right on the tips of our tongues, as fresh as morning meadow grasses? Keep the depth of our own capacity to love as bright and warm as summer sunrise? How do we not contract into the drier, more brittle, and dull state that far too often is the status quo and sum total of our lives?

Can we only open our hearts in selfless love in the face of catastrophe? Are we only capable of coming into our full humanity when the enormity of death is pounding at our door? Or is there some way we can keep this openness, this surrender to the embrace of life, vibrant and immediate by conscious intention and action?

Those are the questions that fill my morning stillness these days, in the quiet candlelight before the dawn. As winter moves its way toward spring, and the days grow warmer and light grows longer, maybe, hopefully, the answers will come.

The Tibetan story of the Shambhala Warrior is profoundly relevant in this time and well worth reading. We first heard the story related in this way from Joanna Macy.

Betsy Toll is Executive Director of Living Earth. Contact her at Betsy@LivingEarthGatherings.Org