Part of me hopes we are emulating how to be in despair.

Part of me wishes we were not in despair.

Part of me knows this is the only way to be right now. We are in it, whether we want to be or not. Certain things are falling away and certain things are arising. We are killing each other, we are killing ourselves with grief and hopelessness. And yet…things go on. Life demands a certain something from us. We need to continue to do our work, to continue to plant trees that future generations will eat from.

What you will detect in this podcast is definitely a tone of hopelessness. It is possible that hopelessness is the other face of hope, that one cannot exist without the other, for we cannot feel hopeless about something we do not care about, only about something we once felt hope for. Perhaps leaning into the hopelessness gets us back toward the light of hope.

Teilhard wrote “Seeing. One could say that the whole of life lies in seeing — if not ultimately, at least essentially. To be more is to be more united — and this sums up and is the very conclusion of the work to follow. But unity grows, and we will affirm this again, only if it is supported by an increase of consciousness, of vision.”

So what are you seeing? What give you hope or despair? Are you able to be with both? Our stamina to get through times such as these depends on it. We are, in some ways, like baby birds just learning to fly.