I sat in a room of strangers last week, together for a workshop on writing and grief. We went around the room, that first night, sharing the name of the person(s) we were grieving, or the moments we were grieving. I watched the facilitator, Rosemerry Trotter, model for us what it means to be a kind soul. She listened with a full-hearted presence to each person. Looked at them as they spoke. Rushed no one. And offered a a blessing to the names of those we had lost. Without fanfare, she held us steadily, patiently and generously – setting the tone for how we would be together throughout our days. For three days and nights, we were held in a gentle, tender care. And isn’t that what so many of us want when death, disease, destruction, disrepect and disregard surround us?
But how is that brave, you might ask? Because in the worst of times it is easy to forget that others are suffering too. Because goodness requires presence and attention, it requires living as if others matter, even if we don’t agree on some of the thornier issues, or even if our personalities don’t exactly line up. And it requires reaching out. Goodness demands effort; without effort it is just a thought, a wisp, a dustmote in the wind.
And if the definition of bravery is, “the quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty” (thank you Merriam-Webster), then beneficence to each other – strangers, friend and family alike – clearly qualifies.
“Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner’s manual,” wrote Anne Lamott, and I find that to be oh-so-painfully true. There is no guidebook for a world gone mad in the ways we are experiencing now. So we do our best to make it up and our decency toward each other, our kindness, and generosity is a choice. To light a fire in a cave of despair. To plant a seed in a fallow field. To build a hut or send a lifeboat.
For the three days of the writer’s workshop, we noticed each other’s vulnerabilities. Some of us emote a lot, some of us are shy. Some of us don’t follow the rules, some of us live by guidelines. Some of us offer words as prayers, others as swords. And like a large family of generations of cousins, not everybody made sense to each other. But Rosemerry – she treated us as if we all belonged. As if we all mattered. As if our sorrows were valid and our stories important and our writings worthy of care. She radiated love. And because of that we become braver ourselves in our kindness, our attention, our simple gestures of care.
We were better because of her.
I hope you have someone near you like Rosemerry.
And I hope too, that we are all a bit braver at this time, in living forward from the place of our own inner decency; what his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, calls the true essence of humankind, which is our good hearts.
We all want that warm fire in the dark cave. Let us be that for each other.
Love, Maria
