Enough

When the needs are endless

Everywhere we turn, the need is great. For food, for shelter, for safety, for resistance and resilience, for connection and courage and compassion. Of course, this is always true, everywhere and every day. But it feels especially apparent to those of us currently living in the crosshairs of the current U.S. Administration’s retribution and anti-immigrant violence. On any given day, here and elsewhere, it can be hard to choose what to do first — and thereafter. Where to begin and what to do next?

During the uprising after George Floyd’s murder, I often borrowed a phrase from Buddhist teacher Pascal Auclair who, when asked where he found hope, replied “I don’t think a lot about hope. But every day I do ask myself, what is my next right action?” Hearing his answer, the phrase “next right action” became my daily guide during that time of urgency and heightened needs.

Six years later, that phrase is still helpful to me. In the early days of the current federal occupation of the Twin Cities where I live, I experienced a surprising sense of clarity as I named my own next right action from one day to the next. But as time has gone on — and as we’ve experienced astonishing increases in our communities’ needs, in the wide variety of ways to be engaged, and in our exhaustion — my own clarity disappeared. Now, I can get overwhelmed by wondering — at the beginning, end or any time in the middle of a day — am I doing enough? Will it ever be enough? What does enough even look like and feel like in a situation of tremendous suffering and endless needs?

“To know enough’s enough, is enough to know.”

Ursula K. LeGuin’s translation of this Taoist wisdom from Lao Tsu has often assured me in the past. But do I believe it now, as I ask what exactly IS my next right action, and how will I know that it’s the right one? On any given day, what really is the best thing for me to do? Based on my conversations with others in the Twin Cities and well beyond, I’m not the only one asking these questions. So this week, as the waning moon slowly disappears from view, I find a possible answer in the night sky.

Though some will find unique power in a new moon or a full moon, if we ask which phase of the moon is best or most important, we’re asking the wrong question. Because in every phase of the moon — waxing or waning, quarter or crescent or half or full or new — the moon remains the same size. Only its position changes, and thus its reflection of light from the sun to our eyes here on earth. Every phase is equal as one flows into the next and only the reflected light changes within the constancy of the moon’s true shape and size and its orbit.

Image by Enrique from Pixabay

As we now make our way through these uncharted times, can we learn from the moon’s example, honoring our own true size and shape while each following our own cycle of waxing and waning, of darkness and light, of movement and stillness? Taoist teacher Deng Ming-Dao writes: “If we follow the lunar Tao, we simply have to remember to be ourselves — just as the moon never really changes shape — and we simply have to reflect the light of heaven in the orbit that is our life. What could be easier?”

Of course, it is often neither easy nor simple to be ourselves in a time when it feels like we need to do and be more. But what if we don’t have to be more — or less! — than who we are? Because really, how could we? Maybe we’re just asked to be wholly ourselves, reflecting light in the orbit that is our life, on the people and places within range of that orbit.

What if we don’t need to be more — or less! — than who we are? …. Maybe we’re just asked to be wholly ourselves, reflecting light in the orbit that is our life.

As I am learning here on the front lines in Minnesota, when we collaborate and cultivate a community response, no single person has to shine like a full moon every day or every night. For each of us, the orbit that is our life will sometimes position us to shine as brightly as a full moon and, other times, to disappear from view. The waxing and waning of our efforts or visibility doesn’t have to mean we are diminished or distant or absent, if we stay true to our life’s orbit which will bring us back into position for sharing that light in the future. And because we are just reflecting light from sources beyond us all, our waning doesn’t reduce the light available. The sun is always there — as is the ancient light of all the stars in the universe, their light actually becoming more visible in the darkened sky of a new, invisible moon.

Wherever you are in this time of multiple global urgencies — around climate change and war, around power and terror, around hatred and greed — if you too are wondering what does enough look like and feel like in a time like this, begin by noticing where you are and who you are and what your orbit is. Ask yourself, how might your true shape and position reflect the light that you and others need? And how does the orbit that is your life sometimes reflect the light with a fullness shining on everything and everyone around you, while other times offering only the smallest crescent of hope or relinquishing the night sky to the multitude of stars shining across time?

If you’d like to share time with others exploring questions like these, I invite you to join the next three-month series of online conversations I’ll be hosting here with my co-facilitator Anne Supplee on the last Thursdays in February, March and April. Under the title, “Compassionate Wayfinding: orienting ourselves toward kindness in times of chaos,” we’ll begin February 26 by naming where we each are metaphorically as well as spatially. On March 26 we’ll ask who we are and who we are becoming. And on April 30, we’ll consider what might be our next step into the unknown.

Save the dates now. Details and registration links will be sent to paid subscribers in the coming week. If you would like to participate without having a paid subscription, reply to this email to let me know.

Meanwhile, you might enjoy this song, “Infinitely Whole,” written by Alex Fam and Bran Lennox from The Sanctuary Boston, as a soundtrack for being your whole self — neither more nor less — in any time.

Take good care, friends, of yourself and others. I look forward to seeing some of you online in a few weeks.

Karen