Over the holiday I received a newsletter email from Bruce Kasanoff via the Mountain Minute where he relayed his enthusiasm for lexicographer and etymologist Susie Dent’s declaration of reclaiming long lost positive word’s. Dent’s article in The Guardian goes on to describe how despair can joyfully be replaced with respair.
In Dent’s words:
“But one English word surely stands above all others from the corners of the dictionary. I mention it all the time, because I’m determined to bring it back. Or bring it anywhere in fact, for it never really enjoyed more than a day in the sun. “Respair” has just one record next to it in the Oxford English Dictionary, from 1525, but its definition is sublime. Respair is fresh hope; a recovery from despair. May 2022 finally be its moment.”
Truth be told, like many, I’ve been struggling. Normally, I’d never tell you that. I’m strong and smart, I can figure things out. I’m willing to tap into my feelings, emote deeply and then keep pressing on. But something feels different…
Lots of changes have occurred over 2020 and 2021. Oh look, here we are already in 2022! For me, I’ve noticed the ability to set a goal and believe that I will achieve said goal seems to be waning. Sure, I can walk through all of my practices to flip the drama triangle, to listen to what I really want, and to lean into how I can serve.
But really it’s in these moments that I brave myself to reach out to those in my community. Folx who are able to swim with their head above water more often than not throughout the ever-changing tides of our realities. We link arms, we assist one another with treading gracefully, floating effortlessly, learning how to swim again and allowing ourselves to continually become buoyant.
My sense is, this struggling, these constant changes, the despair ready to be turned into respair are calls for P R E S E N C E. To be present with our current sense, again and again and again.
“The liberation of guilt is faith. If I believe that I can do what I want from a place of love, and just continue to act from love it will all be ok. Then I don’t need to be guilty for doing what I want because that actually is the plan. And I can trust myself and I can trust the world.” -Aubrey Marcus (from How Can We Repair the Collective Mistrust? w/ Charles Eisenstein)
Like for real, bumper sticker, DO WHAT YOU LOVE.
The thing about love though, is that it takes courage. Stepping into love also means stepping into loss. To love fully, we know that a time will come where we will lose it all. Grief abounds, but so does courage to keep our hearts open, to love again.
As Charles Eisenstein said in a recent interview with Aubrey Marcus, “If I’m showing an ounce of courage it’s because of those I am surrounded by and in service to in my community.” These are the humans that inspire me to be better, to do better, to seek to understand the world around me and the world inside of me.
As Dent mentions Respair is fresh hope… And I come to wonder, what does this fresh hope look like? What does this fresh hope feel like? What is the sense of fresh hope moving among many?
Is it a place few of us have been, but now we need to go together? Is it a place we create? Heaven on Earth? In and through our nervous system’s? Connecting unto and through one another?
I find myself clinging to old hope’s, places I once dreamed of being a part of, of creating and communing together, and while those spaces seem fleeting I can’t help but wonder how we create a recipe of hope sprinkled with joy through doing what we love.
I don’t know what’s coming in 2022. And I don’t know where we should go. I do know, that love will see us through it when we dare to respair.
“Glimpses by grace of who we could be and what life can be and those then provide some guidance. Once you have that experience, then the old reality seems all the more intolerable. You’ve seen something else. No one can tell you, ‘oh this is all there is’.”
Respair…
“Yes! Here it is! What is it?... Really can’t say, but it just feels like a strong invitation into who I will be. And those are just precious experiences. And if you’ve had one of those experiences… even to bring that experience into presence, to call it up, to remember how you felt at that moment and just to do honor to that experience. That will exercise in effect too. That was real. What you saw. It could’ve been something you saw through another person who demonstrated some kind of courage or generosity or kindness or power that called to you. Or just an experience you had that was outside the normal bounds of what you thought was real and that called you into a new being. And maybe you didn’t listen to that call, or you weren’t ready, or maybe that call is something that persists over years and comes again and again in different forms. So, it’s not like you’re a failure if you didn’t immediately transform your life. That’s not the requirement. But what is helpful is to recognize the preciousness of that and to accept the gift of it. To do it honor.” -Charles Eisenstein (from Marcus Pibworth Storyteller podcast)
Can you recall an experience or glimpse of grace like this? Let’s bring it to mind together. Remember that it happened, the moment exists, that person exists. Let’s be present with the preciousness of that very real experience. Let’s just in Charles Eisentsein’s word’s “do it honor”.
(((Pause, honor your moments, …)))
It is an honor to share these words, senses and experiences with you Hedge Schoolers. Til next time, Lara.
Dare to Respair