Creation
Children, everybody, here's what we do during war: In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment.
~Maxine Hong Kingston, The Fifth Book of Peace
The past week has overwhelmed me. I have found my nervous system on high alert, my brain on edge, my body tense and uncomfortable. Who else, perhaps?
The news of so much pain, death, destruction has torn at my heart’s edges. Powerless and afraid, how could I experience peace? Why even should I? Is peace nothing more than ignorance, an act of spiritual bypassing in a world that feels like I should remain vigilant? My heart reminded, no, you must also rest in my center, yet my brain was unsure.
As my anxious thought swirled, the only things I knew to do were ground myself and then consider, in a time like this, what can I actually do?
My usual seated practices did very little to settle my system. I could not hide in my own small world, churn in my thoughts. Instead, I found my brain and nervous system began to settle only when I was outside, out in the world of nature with all its dirt and wonder. And there, amid creation, I was able to answer the question, what can I do?
The answer came as a whisper—create something beautiful. Not frivolous or wasteful, as my inner critic tried to chide. Partnering with creation to offer beauty to the world is a gift, to my nervous system, to the world that’s close in around me particularly my teens who need to know that each day is worth some measure of beauty, to my future self who deserves to relish in some fruit of creation. It is not frivolous at all. It is necessary, and it’s the only thing in my power.
So, I tended roses that their blooms may be enjoyed again in a someday not so far off. I fed my birds. I offered a yoga class that we may till the rich soil of our bodies. I walked out into a field of sunflowers under a clear blue sky and gathered giant yellow faces of beauty with my teenagers. I stood in the middle of creation in any way I could, and I allowed myself to be present to enjoyment, even if for but a moment.
The peace I long for I must be in partnership with creating. I can not take away the world’s anguish. I can not make the horrors right. I can’t even take away my own fear or anxiety. My heart hurts and I don’t know what actions are in my scope. I can, though, partner with something beautiful and remember why peace is essential and worthy.
Christie Purifoy writes, “If peace is a state of harmony, if it is a kind of wholeness or completeness…we will find it, in truth we will make it, when we draw near to the mess with shovels and paint cans…the work of wholeness and the cultivation of peace will carry us right on out into the realm of chaos. It will lead us to edges—in the land, in our hearts, in our memories. How frightened we will sometimes be. How hopeless we will sometimes feel. And yet here is where we will make gardens. Here we will eat the fruit of them. And when joy comes in the morning, as joy always does come, we will clap our hands with all the trees of the field.”
I do not know if this gives any more than a small measure of comfort, if even that. But I search for a path in my longing, that joy for me, joy for my children, joy for the children of the world, may come and come again. May it be so.
I am learning some a new grounding technique I will share soon. For now, friends, here is a simple practice for some not so simple times. Vagal Tone