Although today we have heard that ICE will be "leaving soon", I fear this is more directly related to the vote taking place tomorrow. I hope it is true, but based on previous actions by the current regime, I have my doubts. In the meantime, I have had several conversations lately about "not doing enough." One was with a woman who has a 16 year old daughter who is very stressed because she doesn't feel she is doing enough. So many young people are stressed and anxious during these days of intense ICE activity in Minnesota. Today at my mindfulness class, our instructor read a poem from Joanna Macy's Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power. I think it is a gentle reminder that doing just one small thing to make someone else feel loved is doing enough. We can't all chase ICE, and volunteer opportunities exceed the available people power, so the following may help you feel that just doing one small thing on a daily basis is enough.
When you act on behalf
of something greater than yourself,
you begin
to feel it acting through you
with a power that is greater than your own.
This is grace.
Today, as we take risks
for the sake of something greater
than our separate, individual lives,
we are feeling graced
by other beings and by Earth itself.
Those with whom and on whose behalf we act
give us strength
and eloquence
and staying power
we didn't know we had.
We just need to practice knowing that
and remembering that we are sustained
by each other
in the web of life.
Our true power comes as a gift, like grace,
because in truth it is sustained by others.
if we practice drawing on the wisdom
and beauty
and strengths
of our fellow humans
and our fellow species
we can go into any situation
and trust
that the courage and intelligence required
will be supplied.
p. 110, 3rd edition. Poem edited by Tom Atlee, founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute.
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