Turning toward hope

Will you journey with me through the clouds and into the light?

Listen to me read the post…

1.

“This world is full of trouble and woe. All I see is trouble, everywhere I go.” – song by Ruth Moody

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I could see little but trouble and woe. I wasn’t lost in a sea of despair entirely, but I had certainly waded in up to my waist and was having a hard time getting back to shore. Being far away from family over the holidays was hard, and I was still trying to shake off the ache I wrote about in my last post.

Personal things were compounded by existential things. To paraphrase Glennon Doyle, “Living at the intersection of fascism, menopause, and empty-nesting is a mind-fuck.” I’m there, at that intersection, just a few years ahead of her. I would add to those converging roads the fear of climate disruption and the collapse of capitalism. One never knows from which direction the Mack truck is going to come and knock you flat.

One day I woke up and knew that it was time to do whatever I could to shift my perspective. In the twelve-day period away from work, I decided to intentionally seek out hopeful content. Not the kind of hopeful content that feels like it will rot your teeth with its artificial sweetness, but the kind with meat on the bones. I wanted hope that wouldn’t attempt to erase my grief, restlessness and despair but live alongside it.

I finished reading The Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent, then picked up The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams. Next, I revisited Active Hope, by Joanna Macy, and listened to The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. I also got part way through Of Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Patrice Somé.

The movies I watched were tinged with a fair bit of sadness, but all of them left me with at least a taste of hopefulness at the end – Hamnet, Train Dreams, and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. And then my daughters got me hooked on Heated Rivalry.

As for podcast episodes, one of the most hopeful was “Where to find ‘critical hope’ in hard times” with Kari Grain, the author of the book Critical Hope. Another was Trevor Noah’s conversation with Zohran Mamdani. A third, which surprised me with its hopefulness, was The Magic of Darkness: learning to love life in the night, with author Leigh Ann Henion.

The content helped, but it didn’t go all the way. Especially in bed at night, despair still lapped at my ankles.

2.

“I’d rather be broken than empty. Oh, I’d rather be shattered than hollow.” – song by First Aid Kit

I have wrestled with the concept of hope for many years now. In 2010, shortly after the shattering impact of my former husband’s second suicide attempt (one of the least hopeful moments of my life), I attended a five-day leadership intensive with Meg Wheatley. Not long before, the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry had happened in the Gulf of Mexico and Meg spoke honestly of her despair. She wasn’t sure there was still hope for the future of our planet.

The question that was alive for her at the time (and which she’s written about since) was whether hope was needed, or if we could carry on doing the right thing even when hope was lost. In her book that came out the next year, Walk Out Walk On, she said “My great teachers these days are people who no longer need hope in order to do their work, even though their projects and organizations began with bright, hope-filled dreams. As ‘the blood-dimmed tide’ of greed, fear, and oppression drowns out their voices and washes away their good work, they become more committed to their work, not because it will succeed, but just because it is right for them to be doing it.”

Meg’s words lived in an uneasy place in my heart for many years. At first, I resisted them, not sure I could live in a world without hope, and then I began to embrace them, opening myself to the possibility that contentment and purpose could be uncoupled from hope.

In more recent years, though, I’ve leaned more in the direction that Joanna Macy and Jane Goodall pointed toward. Both were brave enough to look with clear eyes at the destructive impact that humans have had on the planet, both were honest about grief and despair, but both also wrote books about the importance of hanging onto hope

.“Active Hope is a practice. Like tai chi or gardening, it is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps. First, we take a clear view of reality; second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we’d like things to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed; and third, we take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction.” – Joanna Macy

“Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think that it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement.”
― Jane Goodall

3.

“It’s getting hard to find a place to go, where peaceful waters flow.” – song by Chris de Burgh

“What can water teach us about hope?” Kari Grain asks in a lecture based on her book Critical Hope. Water’s four habits, she says, help us understand the movement of hope: bending, pooling in deep places, going underground, and persisting.

“Critical hope offers an alternative to toxic positivity, shifting from an emotion that we either have or lack to a complex relationship that we navigate continually. When it embodies the habits of water, critical hope is a practice of relentless incrementalism, discernment, and creativity, fluid enough to forge new pathways forward.”

With her words ringing in my ear, I went in search of water. Specifically, I went to visit Sitting Lady Falls, a waterfall that splits in half partway down the cliff. In high water, it looks like an old woman sitting on a ledge with fat legs spread. I wanted a watery elder to teach me about hope.

Ironically, when I got to the trailhead, a sign informed me that a section of trail was closed due to a landslide. “Oh sure,” the cynic in me scoffed, “water is supposed to be my symbol of hope today, and yet it’s revealing itself as harmful.” I could see the waterfall from a different vantage point across the lagoon, but I wouldn’t be able to continue the familiar trail to one of my favourite watery places – where the lagoon meets the sea.

I stood gazing at the waterfall and... nothing. It didn’t make me hopeful. It didn’t even spark the sense of wonder that’s usually close to the surface whenever I set off on the trails that crisscross this beautiful island. I felt flat.

4.

“Heal the people, heal the land. Then we will understand, it goes hand in hand. Heal the people, heal the land.” – song by Archie Roach

Though nature is often where I find hope, I do my best not to bring that expectation with me when I visit. Mother Nature is not my therapist, and I don’t want to be extractive or reductive in my relationship with her (the way colonialism has taught me to be). Yes, nature has healing power, but sometimes things like forest bathing and nature therapy can feel like attempts to reduce that power to something we can contain and usurp. Capitalism casts its shadow on everything.

I want to be in a kinship relationship (to echo Robin Wall Kimmerer), seeing myself within the web of life, contributing to and receiving from the circular economy it invites me into, rather than extracting from it or set apart from it. I want to come humbly and reverently into the woods, seeking friendship with the waterfall, the trees, and the forest beings, not expecting them to heal me or give me hope (the way a child would expect a mother to solve her problems for her).

Perhaps that’s why the waterfall gave me nothing. I was treating the Sitting Lady the same way I’d treated the books I’d read earlier in the week – as content for my enrichment rather than as kin.

5.

“I wanna lay my bones down in the water. I wanna lay my body down on the earth.” – song by Rising Appalachia

After the waterfall, I followed the trail on the side of the lagoon untouched by the landslide. Rocks, roots and mud along the narrow winding trail invited me to pay more careful attention than I would have paid on the more familiar trail. The more attentive I was, the more the gloom lifted. I watched ducks on the lagoon, took pictures of the orange limbs of the arbutus trees reaching across the water, and paused to notice tiny mushrooms peeking out of mossy beds.

Uncertain whether the marshy land was solid enough, I risked stepping off the main trail to get closer to the water. Gingerly, I stepped around puddles and over logs, rounding the bend to find a place hidden from other hikers on the trail.

There at the edge of the water was a magnificent tree – a Scouler’s willow, if my plant identification app is correct. Lying horizontal, suspended above the ground in places by left-behind pilings from an old footbridge, was a huge, ancient tree. It was hard to tell whether it was an old tree that had toppled but kept sending its young branches heavenward in defiance of death, or a dead tree that had offered itself up as a nurse log for younger trees to root themselves in. Either way, it was beautiful, resilient and stubbornly hopeful.

I climbed onto the gnarly old trunk and found a comfortable place to sit. I lay my hand on a young limb and said a silent thank you to the tree for continuing to be in service to life even years after calamity struck.

My sense of wonder was now fully awakened, as was my hope.

Further along the path, another ancient tree invited my attention. A huge arbutus tree stood just up the hill from the path. Near its base was a five-inch hole that let me see right through the tree to the other side. I climbed the small hill and circled the tree. On the side facing away from the trail, her massive trunk was hollowed out, like a fairy house with a window through which magical forest creatures could watch people on the path. Though the interior showed signs of fire, this solid old tree was stubbornly alive.

I climbed inside the hollow and let the tree hug me.

6.

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow, it’s cloud illusions I recall - I really don’t know clouds at all.” – song by Joni Mitchell

After the hike, I drove up the Malahat, a beautiful section of highway that winds its way up the side of a mountain overlooking Saanich Inlet. Halfway up the mountain, I entered a cloud and suddenly trees, water, and mountain were all lost to me.

Just before I reached the summit, I broke through the top of the cloud, and the land was suddenly flooded with the muted orange light of the setting sun. I pulled over onto a cliff-edge viewpoint to gaze over the tops of the clouds nestled in the inlet. On the far horizon, I could see the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula, across the U.S. border.

Continuing down the other side of the mountain toward home, I sank back into the clouds. By the time I’d reached ocean level, dusk had fallen, and the world looked dark and gloomy. I remembered Ruth Moody’s song... “All I see is trouble, everywhere I go.”

But by now, I’d been to the top of the mountain and had seen that there was light on the other side of the cloud. I’d sat with ancient trees who told me that there is still life on the other side of the darkest days.

I wanted to stop people on the street and say “This gloom isn’t the whole story. Just drive a couple of miles up the mountain and you’ll see that there is still light.”

“I can see the light of a clear blue morning. I can see the light of a brand new day. Everything’s gonna be alright.” – song by Dolly Parton