{"id":2251,"date":"2021-08-07T18:35:33","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T22:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/?p=2251"},"modified":"2021-08-07T18:42:10","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T22:42:10","slug":"resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/2021\/08\/07\/resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A friend asked in a private group last week:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This summer season, with its many challenges, has me thinking about resilience. What is it that allows us to get up each day and face anew all the threats and uncertainties of life? Where do we find strength and hope on the spiritual journey?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For me it has been a profound letting go. This was very uncomfortable at first. One thing religion gives is a clear purpose (though what that purpose is is up for debate). I found I struggled when that purpose was entirely up to me. As an activist since my 20s it wasn’t so hard to continue on the purpose\/path I was on, just without the sense that I was called to it by a god.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, I have long been aware of my tendency to be a “doer”. It is often good and fills a moment with purpose, but makes the moments where there is nothing to be done, or when I am exhausted much harder to bear. It is in these times of struggling to simply “be” that I find the works of poets to be very helpful and they have become the scriptures I treasure most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel broken pretty often these days, as I work through cancer diagnosis and treatment. I often struggle to find a reason to do anything. In these times, I find the words of “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver to be very comforting. They remind me that my task is actually simple: be alive in the world. Simple doesn’t mean easy, but at least I can leave agonizing over the myriad ways the world could be better to others for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wild Geese<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
You do not have to be good.\nYou do not have to walk on your knees\nfor a hundred miles through the desert repenting.\nYou only have to let the soft animal of your body\nlove what it loves.\n\nTell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.\nMeanwhile the world goes on.\nMeanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain\nare moving across the landscapes,\nover the prairies and the deep trees,\nthe mountains and the rivers.\nMeanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,\nare heading home again.\n\nWhoever you are, no matter how lonely,\nthe world offers itself to your imagination,\ncalls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --\nover and over announcing your place\nin the family of things.\n\nMary Oliver<\/em><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A friend asked in a private group last week: This summer season, with its many challenges, has me thinking about resilience. What is it that allows us to get up each day and face anew all the threats and uncertainties of life? Where do we find strength and hope on the spiritual journey? For me… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[242,199],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-hope","tag-poetry"],"pbg_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/adam-rhodes-f7Du_8TT80o-unsplash-scaled.jpg",2048,1366,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/adam-rhodes-f7Du_8TT80o-unsplash-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/adam-rhodes-f7Du_8TT80o-unsplash-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/adam-rhodes-f7Du_8TT80o-unsplash-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/adam-rhodes-f7Du_8TT80o-unsplash-1024x683.jpg",1024,683,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/adam-rhodes-f7Du_8TT80o-unsplash-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/adam-rhodes-f7Du_8TT80o-unsplash-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true],"neve-blog":["https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/adam-rhodes-f7Du_8TT80o-unsplash-scaled.jpg",930,620,false]},"pbg_author_info":{"display_name":"kapn","author_link":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/author\/mm_admin\/","author_img":"kapn"},"pbg_comment_info":" No Comments","pbg_excerpt":"A friend asked in a private group last week: This summer season, with its many challenges, has me thinking about resilience. What is it that allows us to get up each day and face anew all the threats and uncertainties of life? Where do we find strength and hope on the spiritual journey? For me… ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256,"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions\/2256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mm.kapn.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}