What does Rumi say? “Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument…”
Hoar frost crystals on the dormant branches of the smoke bush glistened in the glow of the yard light above the shop door. The waning curve of the moon was polished bright in the predawn sky. Watching from my window seat, I saw the horizon over the east treeline as it warmed, clouds steeped pink. Then that same, big old sun crested, rays of light reaching out over the snow, the white sparkling blanket all awash in burnt rose. While it is true that books are friends, they were best left closed that morning, letting the dawn of that unfolding day envelop me with stillness.
I treasure those still moments, feeling gratitude. However, stillness can be tainted by how much is amiss in our world. Each one of us would have a varied description of the chaos and complexity, be it in our own lived experiences or the world at large. But most likely, each of our tellings would fit in somewhere. The enormity of the tidings that don’t bring comfort or joy is overwhelming.
Recently, an article in the newspaper highlighted Marian Turski, a holocaust survivor (who has since died), and his “stark warning about the dangers of indifference”. Referencing another survivor, Turski said there should be an eleventh commandment that says, “Thou shalt not be indifferent”. No doubt we have all come across quotes about silence and complicity.
And so I wonder, how does this sift down to me? To my lived life? A person designed quiet. Ill-fit for verbal frontlines. Is there a difference between silence and quiet?
A movie called “A Hidden Life” was mentioned in a recent social media post. We had watched the film when it was in theaters over five years ago. Based on true events and filmed with artistic cinematography and minimal script, the movie tells the story of a man who adhered to his sense of what his right action needed to be which was linked to a deep but simple faith (and not necessarily encouraged by his faith leaders). His quiet resistance, and subsequently that of his family’s, took them to a heart-wrenching place. In the comment section of this social media post, someone responded with a quote by George Eliot as written in Middlemarch – “…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Can it be that one can live a quiet life, a hidden life, but can that life still be a life of resistance to complicities that harm people? Could it be that acts of goodness release some kind of pushback against wrongfulness? Maybe even if good things are done simply because they are good and not necessarily as acts of resistance? A small act, tinier than a mustard seed, might be the crack through which the light has an entry point. That bear paw handed off to a hungry kid in the stands of a small town arena or the small but mighty hockey player sharing his KitKat prize with his Marmee because it’s her favourite may be the first dominos to fall in a cascade of kindnesses.
“Seeing a person or piece of creation trampled should always disrupt something in us. It should always do something to the soul. And when you trace that trampling back across generations and systems and powers, a quiet sorrow is born in you”, Cole Arthur Riley writes in her book entitled, “This Here Flesh”. Paying heed fends off indifference. There is story upon story of people and creation being trampled and disregarded. It might be that it’s not indifference but numbness that sets in. What to do, what to do? And no answer emerges. Despair can weigh in when awareness increases without a path. And so I search out a quiet footpath, not checking out, but footfall by footfall, walking on intent on a way that incites within a hope and a goodness.
My hat’s off to the rallyists and the activists, the criers of foul and the frontline change makers. But then too, I heed my call to a quietness that also has notes of resistance played into it.
A large bird caught my eye as it descended beyond the fence line into a grove of pines by the remnant of the old sugar shack. Thinking at first it might be a bald eagle, I saw instead the signature stick legs stuck straight out back of a great blue heron. It seemed odd – too early for a heron to be here. The snow is deep and rivers are frozen. I hope whatever instinctual nudge prompted its arrival wasn’t misread. Or maybe, unlikely tools like stick legs and bulky beaks will implement a survival.
