This year, I’ve resolved to show up here at least once a month, say that I’m still alive, what’s on my mind and all that. I am alive, reasonably so thanks, and what’s much on my mind is this moment. “This moment” is often used to particularly position ourselves — right now I’m sitting at my round table in the living room, the sky is grey, moving branches tell me there’s wind, I’m talking via a blog post, getting a little hungry since it’s near noon, for example — but more recently it has come to mean the situation we collectively find ourselves in because of what’s happening in Washington D.C., in Ukraine/Europe, in Gaza/Israel, in tariffs/Canada. Say “in this moment” and most everyone knows exactly what is meant without further elaboration.

I confess that I engage a lot, perhaps more than I should, eyes on what’s there, sometimes reacting, looking for hope. Honestly, I’m afraid. For the future. For the world on multiple fronts. It takes some wilful energy these days to keep strategizing my inner position and, especially, talking back to my fear, or better said, letting scripture and wise people, past or present, talk back to it. I ask myself, is there something I can do about it? I can shop Canadian and possibly add my name or body to a protest or write a letter to an official, speak up or affirm someone else with a “like”. Generally, however, for those bigger problems there’s next to nothing I can do except pray (yes, as a way of pleading on behalf of others, as a way of turning to Power greater than myself). No, generally there isn’t much except keep alert to the macro but live in the present, in the micro level, where my feet happen to be.

A kind of grief as well

I’ve been noticing in conversations with people in my generational cohort (so-called Baby Boomers) that, for us, there’s a kind of grief in this moment as well. Unbeknownst to us, we entered the world after the end of the Second World War. With the war over, it was a buoyant time, one in which we benefitted economically and educationally. We eventually learned what preceded us, of course, we read Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel and Victor Frankl. We read fiction and non-fiction about what had happened, we saw TV and movies, we visited places like Auschwitz and Mauthausen when we travelled, and, speaking for myself, the horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust lodged deeply within and I truly believed “never again.” Actually, again speaking for myself, I could not grasp how it happened even though I knew, for a fact, that it had.

And, although Boomers have been accused of trying to be young forever and making everything about themselves, many participated in and pushed for progress in the women’s liberation movement and the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement and the LGBTQ movement and anti-acid-rain. There was progress. Much, much more to be done, yes, for sure, but what is so grievous and troubling now is that far from moving forward on human rights issues and the propagation of democracy, even those past hard-won advances seem to be in jeopardy. Naively, I suppose, we figured the momentum of our decades on earth would continue to be forward. We’re realizing instead that a great big pendulum seems to be swinging back, that people in the western world are bitterly divided, that horrors can happen again, are still happening again, not to mention the onward march of climate change. So there’s disappointment layered into our reactions to this moment.

The necessary “but”

So this, I guess, is where I should take a turn and say “but.” There are buts, even if I refuse to speak them in caps; there are good things too, and there’s hope, and I’m grateful. Pulling this moment into the personal particular present I see, at this very moment, a gleaming part in the clouds and I stopped to have lunch and it was delicious and since I made enough Spanish rice to last for one meal of it every day this week (that’s how I cook nowadays) I’m set for more deliciousness and there are friends and family, books, music, jigsaw puzzles. Prayers to pray, enough things to do where my feet happen to be.