Over the past few months I’ve risen into the day on a flood of deep grief some mornings, accompanied by anger, contending with an intense soup of emotions connecting both private and public realms. My husband is navigating the final days of esophageal cancer, grief enough without expanding it as it naturally links to the very public grief over the heinous processes being perpetrated on U.S. residents by the cabal currently running the U.S. government.

Knowing about the crowds of unjustly incarcerated immigrants who’ve been thrown into horrendous prison-like conditions across the U.S. by ICE, even here in Vermont, deepens and extends my grief over my dying husband. Looking away, even momentarily, doesn’t help much because there’s no getting around the truth that all of us in this country are complicit because our tax dollars are being used to implement these cruel and inhumane practices that vanishingly few of us support.

Most who voted for the current regime believed a story about how electing Republicans up and down the ticket would return “America” to its former glory by lowering daily expenses, deporting violent criminals who had illegally entered the country, ending continual U.S. engagement in foreign wars, stopping political corruption, bringing Jeffrey Epstein’s collaborators to justice, and rebuilding American manufacturing. Instead, everyone can now see that those voters were badly duped. Every detail of the story about how Trump would “make America great again” by implementing policies to accomplish the things he promised on the campaign trail has gone exactly in the opposite direction, making life much worse in all those categories for average Americans.

Most of us who aren’t milking government coffers in one way or another, as is Trump’s entire family, along with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and too many other corporate titans, cannot avoid seeing how the story too many people believed during the campaign was a complete falsehood designed to get votes by hook or by crook, as the saying goes. Simply looking at the details of our daily lives reveals that truth, in the price of gas and groceries and the inability of many businesses and farms to find enough workers to stay afloat. Adding fuel to the fire burning down our democracy, federal funding that would usually support educational, healthcare and other social programs is instead being funneled into horrific projects aiming to convert abandoned warehouses into facilities for abusively incarcerating immigrants, some of whom are U.S. citizens and many who have no criminal record at all. The few kidnapped and incarcerated immigrants who have regained their freedom to return to their U.S. families report that life-threatening abuse and neglect permeates those hell holes. Those who protest these crimes, even elected officials, are being manhandled and pepper sprayed by ICE officials, then indicted by what used to be known as the Department of Justice, which the U.S. constitution defines as a politically unaligned institution, but which is now run by those completely beholden to Trump and happy to do his bidding.

What’s happening in the personal arena exponentially expands the pain of the grief and anger ignited by what’s happening to our government, as my husband lies dying following a rapid decline that began in January when his cancer treatment increasingly stopped working. As I write this I’m caring for him at home with support from a amazing home hospice team that feels like a band of angels. I think of them as the sisters of mercy Leonard Cohen sang about. Even as the intensity of pain and anger surge through my veins, my husband needs my cheerful energy and good will to provide fundamental daily care. He is the love of my life, for whom I am more than willing to give that kind of care, but to do so life has demanded that I deepen my skill set for transforming the energy of anger and grief into creative resilience, something we humans are all being called to do in this tipping point moment for human culture in its relationship with larger, all-inclusive natural systems.

The most powerful way to do that, I’ve found, lies right at the feet of every one of us if we stop to notice. Pausing whenever possible to walk outside, even for ten minutes, but preferably for as long as it takes to shift those debilitating feelings by noticing and taking in the natural beauty and wide circles of kind, human community that quietly persist right beside the grief and anger is now more essential than ever.

That may sound too simplistic to meet this overwhelming moment, but its effect is far deeper and more subtle than you may imagine. Allowing myself to notice and deeply feel the beauty and the pain together as I walk, or sit quietly in a safe, comforting place, instead of following knee-jerk inner prompts to react instinctively, creates space to experience the whole of what the moment holds before saying a word. When that practice can be followed by speaking about my feelings with a sympathetic listener, using the kindest words possible, my heart begins to open in a unique way that gives rise through the witnessed words to a different story about my role in the wider Earth process. And that story is always one I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to articulate, much less know, before sharing those spoken words with a kind, receptive listener.

The experience of speaking and listening in kind community feels like true compassion in action and has proven to be a powerful engine of active hope for me. Each time that process is engaged, the new story that emerges with the free flow of spoken words also contains a suggestion of how to effectively re-channel the powerful soup of energy roiling in my veins into creative action, inspiring resilient agency and propelling me on to do whatever needs to be done right in front of my nose.

Listening and speaking from the heart after it has been nourished by the natural world, rather than analytically examining and strategizing using the head alone, is also a practice you can notice spreading broadly and quietly under the radar of common culture across the globe, subtly but powerfully redefining what it means to be human at this crucial planetary time. We all have important roles to play in determining how the huge transformational process gripping the globe right now develops, whether we’re aware of them or not.

Underneath all the other feelings, the mystery of this time that lies behind the veil of illusion we call reality rises to attention for me daily, most vividly in early waking hours while sitting quietly with a cup of coffee, or later when moving outside the constructed human box of walls, ceiling and floors that tends to keep thoughts trapped in the claustrophobic duality of separation. When my imagination is freed once more to roam under the sky with my feet on the earth, I get a subtle sense of that subterranean tale taking shape and rising into consciousness through this body and every other living entity sharing this planet, and there lies belonging and courage.

That timeless narrative silently pushing up into consciousness everywhere tells of the wisdom that lies much deeper than the stories we humans have told ourselves about life’s meaning for so long. It is instead quietly, but steadily weaving new, more life nourishing tales into consciousness, reweaving ancient ones together with the fascinating knowledge science is continually revealing about the mysteries of life and the universe and the unique human power to choose to grow consciousness in ways that build resilient community into the living dance of the planetary whole.

When we open to the mystery of life’s resilience by heeding the quiet, steady call of our hearts, the thriving engines of these bodies that are uniquely individual yet completely interconnected pieces of living Earth, we have access to the immense power to choose where to place our attention, and by doing so gain the necessary wisdom to act creatively rather than destructively.

Up until now, that power has remained largely untapped in civilized human societies, due to modern culture’s arrogant view that we humans are the only truly conscious beings in an ocean of “things” somehow put here on this planet to be used as resources, created solely for our own use. However, this new, subtle countercultural story is moving into this moment in utterly physical ways. Anyone who stops to notice the way energy is playing the harp of their body can feel it. Of course it’s differently interpreted by each of us who tries to express the experience. There’s a way to make sense of it that transcends words, however, by connecting with that deep sense of belonging rising amidst any activity that causes our everyday selves to dissolve into it in what can only be called artmaking, a uniquely personal practice that may not look at all like what you may think of as “art,” but which certainly is if it answers your heart’s call about where and how to pay attention, bringing joy and deep connection beyond self-consciousness with it.

The storytelling trails that emerge from attending to and valuing processes engaged by answering the heart’s call have been consciously and unconsciously laid down and understood over time in each of our lives, if we can look closely, by simply taking action to do what we love and practice it over time, however much or little we’ve made time for that, practices such as building cabinets or running in the woods, cooking deliciously nourishing food or of course, painting, writing or playing music. All of them can be considered art when the heart is fully engaged with the process, giving the activity the capacity to pass on perceptual energy fields that ripple out into shared imaginal spaces, intricately entwining shared expression and reverberating into the mysterious living story of Earth consciousness.

Such stories are increasingly being told in ever clearer terms by quantum physicists, ecologists, artists and mystics alike, who describe how artful engagement with the physical process of living sends out these creative reverberations into the conscious energy field of Earth, which continue to resonate long after any individual body’s atoms have passed back into the material from which they came, continuing their journey of becoming.

Every action and every idea and feeling fed by that kind of attention feeds the voiceless voice of Earth’s interdependent community of being that vibrates in every cell of every living organism on the planet. That “voice” can be heard even in the endless repetition of mundane tasks like house cleaning, doing laundry or brushing teeth. However, no matter how carefully attended to, that silent story does not give space to humanity’s arrogant belief in its power to control others, which so often rises in people who have experienced physical and/or emotional trauma. True compassion and acceptance are required to continually hear the deepest part of this new tale of life’s meaning. In the presence of the far greater power of true compassion, however, formerly barricaded heart thresholds can open to new pathways leading to the healing balms of understanding, love, forgiveness and belonging we all seek.

To grow a new, kinder, more life-giving way of being human, an essential commitment is required to continually forgive ourselves and everyone else for any inability to communicate or act differently, while also holding ourselves and everyone else accountable for the actions we choose to take. No matter how justified it may seem to punish instead of listening carefully to the particular details of any situation, paying close attention to the story behind any action can reveal pathways toward reconciliation and healing that move in the direction of regenerating life rather than continuing cycles of trauma that kill it.

The deepest practice of forgiving comes from learning to have faith in life itself, and seeking to understand what blocks anyone’s unrealized capacities to honor the deeply healing sense that we are all in this living project together, and by “we” I mean animals and plants as well as humans. Like the tiny mitochondria living in our cells and through their collaborative interdependence with those cells giving us the energy to act, that tiny drop of wisdom that each of us can contribute can make all the difference in whether or not the larger whole ultimately lives or dies.

It turns out that listening daily to the stories of our hearts, wherever they call us to go, is essential to individual and planetary healing. Each day can provide the gift of an opportunity to momentarily pause to observe aliveness in our bodies, and the more closely we attend to the mystery of what beats our hearts and breathes our lungs, the less fearful and uncertain we become about what to do next and how to do it.

When feeling tired and alone, battered by personal and cultural experiences, walking into nature by whatever means available, releasing thoughts into the rhythms of body and breath while opening the heart, can provide a sense of connection deeper than human companionship. In natural settings of all kinds, including city parks, humanity melds with the wider community of being that shares each living moment. Other Earth elements tell tales in their own ways. Listening carefully, one can sense an urgency quickening in these times, calling us all to engage courageously and wisely with experience on behalf of life itself, asking for patient, calm, focused speech and action toward that end, as we do what we can to carve new storytelling trails into the wider cultural memory about the meaning and responsibility of living while human.

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