Cacophony

Out of the cacophony of noise, how do we create a symphony of peace?

In the Divine Dance of desire and delight, where Life is participation, will you play?

A seemingly superficial question … and yet, desire inflames desire and it’s in that deep and passionate intensity that the fires of creation break free. 

Now, more than ever, the energies of creation and transformation need to be unleashed in a grief-stricken, devastated world.

How, though, how? How do we establish a “new normal” when we haven’t yet experienced the fullness of the disintegration of life as we understood it?

How do we, in the moment to moment, embrace, simply, the “new”?

First, we have to feel ALL the feelings. These include anxiety, overwhelm, uncertainty, fear, and stress. Yes, all those feelings are there, and, as a dear friend pointed out, there is also grief. 

While many are familiar with Kubler-Ross’ 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), it maybe helpful to know there is also a 6th stage: finding meaning (https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief).

It’s somewhere in that final stage, finding meaning, that we are strengthened to embrace the new. Because in finding meaning, we can, without guilt, feel the other side of sorrow. We open ourselves to feel all the joy, all the pleasure, all the gratitude, all the compassion, all the connection, and all the heights and depths and breadth of love. 

For each of us struggling to create a “new normal”, impatient with ourselves that it’s been 2 weeks and we haven’t created the perfect work life at home, or de-cluttered all the spaces, or started on the “to-do-if-only-I-had-more-time” list, or don’t know what the next moment will bring…

Maybe now is not the time to seek perfection in doing, but instead to find meaning in the mess. 

Here is an invitation to reflect upon the cacophony of our personal lives before, while living within the chaos of our global life  now, and asking again and again and again, what is Real? What is True? What is Beautiful? 

Because for those on the frontlines of every battle, sacrifice finds meaning when those who don’t have to fight choose to fully live.

In the rhythm of a frantic world brought to a standstill, seek and find all that is Real, and True, and Beautiful. Let those things touch deep to the heart of you and spark the creative fire within you. 

And breathe new life into the world.