Dear Friends,
An Atlantic Monthly headline on April 11 read, “Am I still allowed to tell the truth in my classroom?” Historian Heather Cox Richardson, who’s on a “professor watch list,” wondered if her writing was putting her family and herself at risk. Today, in my hometown of Corvallis, Oregon, 13 international students at Oregon State University had their visas revoked—no reason given.
I love writing this newsletter. My motivation to write usually happens when some event occurs, and the inspiration to write about it takes over. You artists know that following the flow of inspiration is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
So, it’s time for another newsletter, but I’ve struggled with feeling empty and distressed. I’m living with a new emotional landscape of disbelief, malaise, and worry. People around me chatter happily, buy espressos, and plant spring flowers. How can they live as usual when nothing in my 81 years is usual in America?
I have a memory as clear as though it was happening now, now over 70 years ago.
I was raised Catholic, which comprised religious holidays, daily prayers, and nuns’ continual lessons about how lucky we were to have the One True Religion.
In fourth grade, I was standing in the schoolyard near the large chain-link fence when public school kids passed. They were doomed to a very unhappy afterlife because they were not in the One True Religion.
As I watched, one girl who looked much like my friends smiled at me, and I smiled back. I felt our similarity. In an instant I knew then that she wasn’t lost, unfortunate, or doomed to Purgatory, at best. She was like me, and it wasn’t true that only Catholic kids would be saved.
I couldn’t verbalize this understanding, but it dispelled a myth. For weeks, I lived amid the turmoil of bewilderment and fear.
Today, 70 years later, I feel similarly. What I thought was true and forever is devolving daily, and I find myself returning to the school. What is true? Is there anything to believe that can’t be torn apart?
I started to write a newsletter about the importance of generosity in relationships, the magic of showing up repeatedly with goodwill and kindness and learning the difference between a new grievance that needs resolving with one’s partner and a new grievance with little to do with the present. But all of these seem feckless and shallow. Daily, the news brings more shattering stories about our country. Each is a sucker punch in the gut, and what I have to say feels trite and minimal.
So I’m telling you the truth: I’m afraid. I’m disillusioned. I am angry, and if I can’t believe what I learned about the One True Religion and the One True Country, what can I believe?
Like many of you, I have a team of poets, philosophers, artists, and musicians whom I visit in moments like this to find solace and answers. Today, that team includes Parker Palmer, whose wisdom seldom fails.
He reminds us the outer world isn’t the only world we occupy; we also inhabit an internal world. Here, there is solid ground, truth, beauty, wonder, and reminders that in solitude and community, we can do inner work, find our own light, and locate the wellspring of transformation.
I forgot that the craziness of each new headline documenting the collapse of “The One True Country” would have counterbalances if I could find them. Anne Frank said it, Vicktor Frankel said it, Nelson Mandela and Socrates said it. What happens in the outside world cannot steal what is true and good inside me. There is a landing place in me, when I stay still enough to remember it, which is calm and knows its all just another moment. When I read a poem, say a prayer or listen to my favorite music I remember. When I see the mountain at Rancho La Puerta, watch ocean waves, feel the sweet kisses of my doodles, I remember.
It’s all moments, they change and change again. As Pema says so eloquently, “Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really, we just don’t know.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
My wish for all of us is to remember this is a moment, it will change and change again. Finding the still place of wholeness within is what keeps us steady in all storms.
With Love,
