Wonderbringers Newsletter with Monica Parker
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Hello Wonderseekers!
This has been a heavy week. So heavy and so violent. Not just the violence we are exposed to on repeat through news and social media, but violent speech, violent emotions. I’ve struggled to know how to focus my attention. I’m compelled to document what’s happening because I see realities diverging along polarised party lines, and the echo-chambers are only getting louder. I also feel the heaviness of emotional inertia and compassion burnout. Held fast under the weight of grief’s crashing waves, I attempt to rise, only to be dragged under again, leaving me sputtering and stumbling, too depleted to gain a foothold. At moments, only my outrage keeps me fighting for air.
I recall a story Coretta Scott King told (but can’t seem to put my fingers on it to share) where the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was counselling the widowed Ms. King after MLK Jr’s murder. She told Thich Nhat Hanh that she was filled with so much anger and didn't know what to do with it. She thought that the venerable monk would chastise her or tell her to abandon her anger, but instead, he surprised her by saying she should nurture it. He told her to look at her anger like a crying baby and, by treating it lovingly, transform it into fuel for making positive change.
The crying baby is an apt metaphor. We don’t blame the baby for crying and sharing its distress with us. And we don’t abandon it as a way to resolve the pain. Rather, we soothe the baby until it stops crying and then we nurture it with love so it can grow. As the poet Andrea Gibson said, ‘Everything that you're feeling right now, name it love. Whether it's fear, or sadness — everything that you're feeling, name it love.’
I think this is a beautiful image to help temper our outrage and transform our heaviness into something lighter. And there is light to be found. We have made it through the darkest season once again. (The UK just emerged from its ten darkest weeks of the year.) This is something worth celebrating! And with the light, the heaviness of the moment lifts just a bit.
A friend of mine recently posted about waking early, filled with anger about what’s happening, and then ‘rage gardening’ as a solution. What a gorgeous example of soothing the baby of our anger and nurturing it into positive action. And the key is action. Researchers have found that agentic action lowers our sense of helplessness, and that civic action in particular counteracts the emotional inertia that comes from political exhaustion. This is in part because civic action is often done with a group, bestowing collective agency when, individually, we just don’t have it in us.
This coming week, find the smallest activity that can nurture the crying baby of your anger. And if you’re feeling too heavy to go it alone, engage in some civic activity with others that can counterbalance the heavy with the light. It could be stocking shelves at a food bank, rage gardening in the community plot, or donating to one of the many charities doing work on the ground in Minneapolis.
The author and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel knew intimately the relationship between hopelessness and inertia, saying in his moving and prescient Nobel acceptance speech, ‘Action is the only remedy to indifference: the most insidious danger of all.’ An apropos sentiment as we honour yesterday’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and as we dig deep to find the motivation to keep moving forward with hopeful action.
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
What is the relationship between creativity and revolution? Watch Egyptian author and physician Nawal El Saadawi answer this question.
We now know what may have caused the Salem Witch Trials: Blame Johannes Gutenberg and misinformation.
1 in 8 people never feel wonder: This existential divide matters.
Apologies to anyone who was going to join me at the Resonance Festival next month. I won’t be attending, but I wish all the artists, speakers, and volunteers an amazing festival.
Hope to have another Ireland-based speaking announcement soon, though, so keep your eyes peeled!
With wonder,
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