To Dance with Openness

End Times and Solid Ground

It has been said that growing old is not for the faint of heart. I would say that living in the twenty-first century is not for the faint of heart either—and there are many of us who are trying to do both! These are times when the ability to rely on strong spiritual foundations has never been more critical. An old hymn speaks to the importance of standing on solid rock, not sinking sands, yet I wonder if our spiritual foundations are as solid as we would wish.

Our world has been dramatically transformed in the last handful of centuries, leaving traditional religion scrambling to meet our psychic and spiritual needs. And, while these may or may not be end times, they are certainly calling into question the future of life on Earth as we know it. With dire climate warnings, soaring inequality, corrosive racism, and frightening cultural divides, the unrelenting and escalating bad news on all fronts collides with our society’s deep-rooted narrative of inevitable progress and our need for a place to stand. 

We find ourselves disoriented—shell-shocked even—and desperate for relief. A competitive and individualistic culture focuses our efforts on personal goals, providing little space for engaging with loss and fear. It leaves us vulnerable to the lures of consumption, distraction, addiction—anything to numb us to emotions too painful to feel. And it sets us up to grasp at modern forces for a certainty that seductively claims solidity but still leaves us on shaky ground. 

One is that narrative of inevitable progress; another is the lure of separation. Whether we are speaking of independence, privacy, or even loneliness, all rotate around the sanctity of the individual that has accompanied modernity. Though there is certainly something to value about individual agency and choice, there is also much to challenge us when we consider our spirituality. 

Though there is certainly something to value about individual agency and choice, there is also much to challenge us when we consider our spirituality. 

This seems clearest when we frame the issue as one of private ownership. Wealth and progress—we have come to believe—depend on the individual being able to reap the rewards of individual effort. Extending this logic, we ask what it means to have private ownership of our own separate lives. How does that affect the way in which we engage with other people, other groups, other species, other generations to come?

Privatized lives are, at their root, protected lives—whether in the form of isolated individuals managing their own separated existence and engaging with the world’s problems as best they can or whether in the form of small self-identified groups building walls between themselves and the rest of the world and creating their own narrative of reality. To the extent that our lives are privatized, in whatever form, our feet are slipping toward sinking sands.

Another central thread of modernity has been humanity’s concerted quest for greater knowledge. That process has been steadily accelerating, with scientists having opened up whole new frontiers of knowledge that would have been unimaginable to our grandparents. There is certainly much to celebrate in this process. Knowledge, they say, is a powerful thing, but it is also a fearful thing. We have become increasingly vulnerable to the belief that it is all-knowing: that knowledge equals wisdom. Traditionally, to know the name of something was to hold power over it. Misused, that power would break the sacred order and wreak havoc. Why, I wonder, does that ancient warning ring so eerily true in our present condition?

For those of us who have shifted our allegiance from an all-knowing God to an all-knowing science, our salvation rests in immersing ourselves in trying to stay current, to understand the pressing issues of the day while continuing to process more. Though there may still be a place for the spiritual, those beliefs and practices come to conform more and more to the ways of knowledge acquisition and application in the secular world.

If, on the other hand, we’ve never made that shift in loyalty or have simply decided that there’s no way to absorb so much information, then our commitment may be to wall off that sea of knowledge, refuse to give it legitimacy, and base our lives on whatever guiding principles can bring the greatest measure of peace or happiness.

One approach supports a spirituality more grounded in science and the big picture, the other in the small joys of daily life. One tends toward pessimism, the other toward optimism, but both are engaged in a dance around the power of knowledge, and neither seems built on completely solid ground.

Another more timeless dance that we are all engaged in is the intimate dance with despair. Some of us embrace despair as a sign that we are strong enough to face reality and still continue to put one foot in front of the other. Some respond with a set of rose-colored glasses and a fierce determination to control the narrative on our own terms.

Yet despair dominates both approaches. Those who choose for the rose-colored glasses are grasping for protection against despair, desperately needing to believe that everything will be fine. Our wishful take on reality is our protective armor. The doomsayers move straight toward despair, trying to gain strength by embracing it as closely as we are able, hoping that our willingness to claim the most unpalatable take on reality and to look the most unpleasant facts in the eye in spite of how we feel will somehow stiffen our spines and prove our worth.

Do we go with a resolute pessimistic acceptance of what we can see of reality in a stubborn determination to press on regardless of the odds, or do we wall off that which seems unthinkable with a protective rosy narrative and equally resolute optimism because that’s all we’ve got?

I see signs of a third way: one that doesn’t center despair as the most powerful player in the room. I remember sharing some despair with a friend and realizing that the voice I was hearing sounded like that of a very little girl: a voice from my childhood. Of course, I was too little then. The forces that governed my life were way beyond my control. 

It was an “aha” moment. The despairing feelings that come up so quickly, with regard to climate for example, were present in my peers and me long before we had ever imagined what we’re now witnessing. They are old feelings, lingering still from when we were too small to have any impact on the world around us. I find it very clarifying and refreshing to consider that they are therefore not inevitable. They are always looking for a convenient place to attach in the present—and the climate has become an irresistible magnet—but they are ours to challenge. 

This is not to say that we don’t have a problem! As the big international forces that have brought us to this point grow in their complex interconnections and global impact, the magnitude of the threats we face is unprecedented. We may not survive. But what if we could look despair in the eye and still embrace an alternative place to stand?

As we engage with all these powerful forces of separation, secular knowledge, and despair, I see a common choice. Do we go with a resolute pessimistic acceptance of what we can see of reality in a stubborn determination to press on regardless of the odds, or do we wall off that which seems unthinkable with a protective rosy narrative and equally resolute optimism because that’s all we’ve got?

If we are willing to question our allegiance to these constants around which our lives are oriented one way or another, what do we replace them with? As I consider the common thread of protection, I wonder what would happen if we decided instead to dance with openness? 

This would mean abandoning privacy and all the walls that protect us and then opening ourselves—with our own hearts and minds and bodies—to connection with the human beings around us and with the ecosystems in which we are embedded. It would call us to dig through the layers of culturally accepted individualism in many of our Quaker meetings to get to the radically corporate foundation of our tradition. 

It would require the humility to assume that anything we learn will illuminate bigger areas of unknowing that were previously invisible to us. It would call for the cultivation of an attitude of wonder at the unknowable. It would remind us to center experiential knowledge above all else, as early Friends did.

It would center a loving heart, as we open to the possibility that love’s opposite is not hate but despair. It would call us to welcome and build our capacity for grieving, to pierce the numbness that allows us to accede to evil, and to maintain our capacity for expectation and hope. Without openness to grief, we have little choice but to protect ourselves from anything that might elicit it.

It would invite us to open ourselves to the unseen, breaking through the story line of the permanence of what is and engaging with a vision of what could be: human beings centered in their goodness and capacity, communities building their own common wealth, non-extractive social relationships, regenerated soil: rewoven webs of life. 

The world needs people who can exercise our imagination and weave new realities from the most insubstantial of threads, people who can say “this is real” even when nobody else around can see it—and act on that reality. Buoyed by that vision, we are better able to step into the unknown and better able to help each other out of the sticky immobility in which so many of us have been ensnared and into the nature to which we were born and move toward our highest dreams. 

A dance with openness calls us to cultivate our ability to listen for what rings true. Tuning our ears and starting with small moments in our daily lives where we feel such alignment, we can build that capacity to listen in other places, at other times. This involves noticing and addressing what keeps us from being able to hear that “clear and certain sound,” as John Woolman says. What clutters our minds? What messages have we absorbed, and what habits have we developed that muffle the ring of truth?   

Somehow we have to believe more fully in our ability—in our right—to listen for the Divine and to manifest what we hear. Ultimately, I believe that all those little moments of clarity, each inhabited fully, will join together to shape a life of ever-increasing integrity and purpose, and I can think of no greater and more grounded gift to our battered world. By following any of these invitations to stay open, I believe we are finding our way toward a more grounded spirituality. 

Grounding ourselves in hope is a workout. It calls for a rigorous discipline of cultivating gratitude. It calls us to remember that regardless of the magnitude of the forces we find arrayed against us, we always have power over our viewpoint about the nature of humanity and the possibilities for transformation.

There are other disciplines as well beyond a commitment to maintain an open heart that can help us along this way. One is cultivating a discipline of hope. This is different from being a fan of hope, passively enjoying the feeling when it descends upon us. It is different from focusing only on happy things and refusing to engage with anything else. Rather, this is a repeated decision to be present to the goodness at the heart of reality, regardless of all the reasons for despair that clamor for our attention on every side. 

Grounding ourselves in hope is a workout. It calls for a rigorous discipline of cultivating gratitude. It involves getting access to perspectives and information that are not readily available. It requires moving beyond basking in obvious beauty or goodness to finding them in places where they are obscured, bruised, and battered. It calls us to remember that regardless of the magnitude of the forces we find arrayed against us, we always have power over our viewpoint about the nature of humanity and the possibilities for transformation.

A second discipline that has been calling my name recently is that of deciding to show up. Generations of training in the Protestant work ethic have conditioned many of us to measure our value in the work we can do to make this sorry world a better place. But no matter how long and hard we work, no matter the depth of our determination, we are bound to fall woefully short. There is no way this work ethic can be the solid foundation for a fruitful spiritual life.

This alternative discipline seems utterly simple and surprisingly profound at the same time: to show up as fully myself as I possibly can—in every moment and every place and with every person and institution, reaching deep into my roots and stretching up and out to my full extent. It might seem safer to hide in quiet despair, knowing that who we are can’t possibly be enough, but somehow, this discipline has the ring of truth. 

As we face these challenging times, my mind goes to how much energy we expend in bracing ourselves. Some of us are braced as we head resolutely into the storm: calling out warning in the voice of the prophets and refusing to be comforted by more hopeful perspectives that seem too naïve. Others have searched out a space that provides some shelter from the storm, bracing themselves by building what protection they can and resolutely turning their energy and attention toward the possibilities of the present.

Some are braced to stay upright in the midst of the storm; others are braced to ward off its horrors. I know the feeling of bracing against the despair that comes with looking out and knowing that anything I can do is wholly and hopelessly inadequate. I know the alternative of claiming whatever power I can by refusing to look beyond what I can control. I’m ever more committed to a third way: shifting our energy from bracing to grounding. My intention is to show up clear-eyed and openhearted; deeply connected and undefended; present to both the challenges and heartaches of this world, as well as all its incredible richness and joy, rooted in spirit; and ready to do my share.

Whether or not we can successfully find our way through this tangle of crises that have been centuries in the making and into a livable future, we can still show up. Now this has the ring of truth, the feel of solid ground.

Theologian Walter Wink offers advice about discerning the nature of that share: finding our way between the hubris of assuming the burden of the world on our shoulders and the lonely conclusion that we have nothing to offer. He suggests that our role is first to listen for what is ours to do, then to do that: no less and no more. And finally, we are to wait in quiet confidence for a miracle. Whether or not we can successfully find our way through this tangle of crises that have been centuries in the making and into a livable future, we can still show up. Now this has the ring of truth, the feel of solid ground.