Onward is the Embodiment of our Time

write poetry, grieve, move forward

Friends,

I’m not going to pretend to have the right things to say today. I’m not sure how to process, to feel, to hold the space here, so all I seem to be doing is holding—-the vast emptiness, the despair, the concern, a moment of distracted joy here and there, the sudden realization that I might be hungry, back to despair again—it’s a cycle that makes no sense and seems to have no end. And it’s only 10AM.

I wanted to write all of this to you yesterday, but it was too raw, and my inbox was filled up with so many words already, words about how we will get through this.

What about words, and what about silence? What about holding space right now?

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

The JRR Tolkien “X” profile shared recently:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

At around 5:40 yesterday morning, when they called the presidency for Trump, I wrote poetry. I wrote three poems as I cried, as I held the emptiness of the early morning with me.

I am holding Tolkien’s words, because he knew a world ravaged by war. He knew a hurting world in need to stories and poetry.

Photo by Ilia Bronskiy on Unsplash

And we know that world, too.

So here is one of the poems I wrote yesterday morning as we found out Trump would be our president, as I processed who we are as people, as a nation:

If we’re not going back

and they’re not moving

forward then we will

stretch the bubble of time

in both directions until

it bursts, and then we

will meet in that field

that Rumi talks about,

lay down in it, and try

to remember what it

always meant to be kin.

I don’t know anything else but poetry, spirit, words. I believe we underestimate them all the time. They guide us home to ourselves. They guide us to one another. They guide political movements, the rise and fall of civilizations. Words, embodiments, they hold deep and treasured time, they mark our lives as humans.

Some folks say, “Today we grieve, tomorrow we organize!” and I understand the sentiment. But I’m going to need a little more time. I’m going to need to figure out how to alchemize this in my own body, how to speak to my own soul about what’s happening in a nation that elects someone like Donald Trump twice.

I’m going to need time, with community, to ask why our anti-Blackness runs so deep, why we have such a hard time seeing the humanity in one another, why we treat immigration as a disease, why we don’t trust ourselves to live in love.

I’m going to need time to consider how we got here and where we are going.

But in that time, I think of this word, this word I use all the time: o n w a r d .

I end a lot of our time together with this word. And I’m deeply feeling the embodiment of this word today.

Onward means: moving to a point ahead in space or time; not stopping here, but moving forward.

So yes, it’s about forward movement, but I see it like this: it’s also about holding the space right here, right now. How do we move forward if we don’t yet dream of what we’re moving toward? How do we keep going into another space and time if we haven’t grieved the one we are currently in?

O n w a r d

is a call to be with our own souls, and then to move sacredly into what is next.

Me? I’ll do that by writing poetry. I’ll do that by showing up for my family and community. I’ll do that by listening and learning. I’ll do that with all of you right here.

I think of the sacred water wells of Northern Ireland, where people brought trinkets and cloths to hang on trees in order to be seen by the sacred waters, in order to be known, in order to be healed.

May we place our cloths on the tree branches by the sacred well, and when we whisper hopes of “onward,” may we feel seen and known in the quiet reflection found there.

Onward, dear ones.

I’m with you.