Spiral of Reflection

Same Purpose, Different Expression of It

Let me start with something beautiful. This is one of my family’s beds in Front Yard Gardens, whose story I will tell a little later in the post. The photo was taken on May 8, 2023, not quite a year ago. Somehow I warded off the deer long enough to get my vast array of tulips and daffodils to bloom. The sight filled my heart with joy. The surrounding community responded similarly, as people walking by stopped to admire the beauty. So, let me begin with gratitude for the beauty in our world, wherever we find it.

As of this morning, I have several daffodils already blooming. The tulips are coming up. Some even have buds. In a week or two I will have my own mini-Keukenhof underway in my front yard. Praises be! Because I have needed a little injection of hope lately. I am continually teaching myself where to find that.

After little more than two months of blogging, I paused this week to remind myself why I am doing this. My worry: I am just being a Pollyanna, posting sweet things about a world that is actually, obviously, crumbling.

You see how the news can drag me down? So much so that positive messages can feel a little . . . what? tone deaf? trivial? I have been thinking deeply about this, pondering, then re-articulating my purpose here.

Perhaps the recent killing of the team of World Central Kitchen workers, who had just delivered essential food to a starving Gazan population, is what most edged my self-doubt into the ascendancy. Every year, my spouse and I compose a list of charities to which send significant contributions. World Central Kitchen is on our list.

If you don’t know much about World Central Kitchen, I encourage you to Google them. They were started in 2010 by trained chef Jose Andres, who decided to use his skills to bring food to populations suffering starvation from climate disasters, war, and other humanitarian crises. WCK doesn’t simply cook a bunch of food and deliver it where it is needed. They also learn how to prepare the kinds of food the population they are serving typically eats. Their work is blessing of the highest order.

Those WCK people killed in the attack? My family’s donations, in part, put them in the line of fire. And our American tax dollars, in part, wrought their murders. Excruciating for me to try to reconcile. Hard to find a pathway from there to One Good Thing…

But you never know where help might arise. The other day a friend asked if our tears are important. He really was talking about the pain of the world: the injustices, the wars, the suffering, the starvation, the unleashed climate misery. There is so much to mourn. Does our grieving matter? he wanted to know. Does it heal anything? What purpose does it serve?

Our conversation covered a wide range of ideas, but, ultimately, I was reminded of Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects. Joanna, who might be best described as a Buddhist eco-justice activist, has developed a spiral of reflection to help engage with the difficult work of transformation and healing our world. The spiral contains four segments. And, because it is a spiral, once you have completed the fourth segment, you can begin again with the first.

First is naming our gratitude: To name my gratitude is to ground myself in whatever blessings life has bestowed on me. My very life, for instance, is a grace given to me without my asking for it or contributing to its creation. But, of course, I am grateful for so many other things, too. Expressing gratitude gives me hope and power: It is the foundation for my work.

Second is honoring our pain: A Work that Reconnects workshop includes rituals for doing that in a group, and there is great depth and value to that. Most days, however, this second segment is one I often undertake alone, as I read the news, as I witness more evidence of climate change, as I encounter the tide of unhoused people in my community, as I see the mounting toll of the war dead and starving, and so on. Honoring my pain is difficult, but critical. Without that step, I bury my head in the sand and relinquish my own ability to create change. (So, when my friend asked about the importance of tears, I reminded him of this second step on the spiral of reflection. Yes, our tears are important!)

Third is to see with new eyes: Here the task is to inventory the tools available right here, right now, that can be harnessed to bring about positive change. More is required than simply producing a list. The idea is to examine that list with the goal of brainstorming and envisioning new ways to use those tools to effect change.

Fourth is to go forth: Here, one harnesses the new vision and the tools and begins the work necessary to build the world of our dreams.

One good thing leads to another — that was my thought when I started this blog. I was inspired by the old saying “One good turn deserves another,” but I wanted to jettison the expectation of reciprocity that old saying implies. As I thought of Joanna’s spiral of reflection this week, something clicked, and I was suddenly able to articulate the purpose of this blog in a transformed way. Same purpose; different expression of it. With the world so instantly and constantly connected by bits and bytes, I can easily get bogged down in step 2 of the spiral, endlessly naming my pain while skipping over the critical work of step 1, gratitude, and diminishing my chances of reaching steps 3 and 4 of the spiral. So, roughly once a week, I try to harvest at least one thing that is feeding my soul — a point of gratitude, if you will, and, without a doubt, an anchor I need to do harder reflection.

Step 1, Gratitude — that’s what this blog is for me.

Because the truth is, I am no Pollyanna. The world with all its sorrows, injustices, and acts of cruelty weighs heavily on me. Just some a small dose of mercy is what I seek here each week. Just some moments to be a flotation device in rough seas. Something to anchor me as I steadily discover the ways I can find my good work in the world.

One Good Thing: Gratitude.

Front Yard Gardens

So, let me tell you about Front Yard Gardens. This is a concrete example of how the Work that Reconnects has created positive change in my life and, I daresay, the lives of others.

A few years ago, my spouse and I attended one of Joanna’s Work that Reconnects workshops. When we reached step 3, Seeing with New Eyes, we pondered together what tools we had that could create some positive change in our world. We realized that one thing we had was a sunny front yard. In our neighborhood, so many houses are surrounded by trees and, consequently, shade. So, we created a community garden on our front lawn. Now, five families, including ours, tend plots, and it all happens right outside my front door.

As I had imagined, Front Yard Gardens had an obvious positive impact on the neighbors who garden there. I could never have imagined, however, how far the positivity would spread. First of all, my own family reaps enormous benefit. In the warm months we see our neighbors frequently as they tend their gardens. Connections and friendships have deepened over time. This in a world where people don’t often even know who their neighbors are! I cannot even begin to tell you what a difference Front Yard Gardens meant to us in the early days of the pandemic. Back then, when nobody was supposed to socialize with anybody, I got to connect, in person, with my neighbors as they tended their garden beds in my own front yard.

But Front Yard Gardens creates a community that extends beyond the five families who sow and reap here. Countless people — neighbors and strangers out perambulating — stop to marvel at our gardens. I cannot take credit for everything, I explain, because this is a community garden, created to give neighbors with little sun in their yards a chance to garden. When people hear the story, they often stop to think of what things they might be able to do to build community where they are. Although I may never know the results of those reflections, I can see that at least a seed (pardon me) has been planted.

Front Yard Gardens may seem a small thing. And it is a small thing. But it is one good thing my spouse and I could do. The deer may have eaten most of our green beans, but, believe me, we have reaped so much more.

One good thing leads to another. That is my hope.

Love,

Sylvia