We Were Made for These Times

Love is Our Guide

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Hello there! How are you doing these days? I mean really doing? It’s inspiring to see the difficult news being balanced with the human spirit’s resilience for togetherness and kindness. There are so many great positive and creative ways to combat our current personal, national and global struggles. Some of our struggles feel insignificant and some feel insurmountable — but they are all appearing simultaneously.

I’m struggling sometimes with putting a brave face on. I’m trying not to worry too much about my seventy-seven-year-old mom who is self-isolating. She has said a few times she’s “fed up”. I miss some of my old life and habits. I miss everybody talking at once at a dinner party (something I previously hated). I miss the clutter and chatter of cafe life and people-watching. I miss spontaneously bumping into an old friend and having a big hug, coffee and cake. I miss a lot of things that I’d taken so much for granted.

I miss spontaneously bumping into an old friend and having a big hug. Image: Priscilla Du Preez

It’s as if each second, I am losing my identities. Some familiar to me and some only surfacing now in the face of these corona-imposed confinements and restrictions. I am staring in the mirror and watching the layers peel away at a rate that I am not accustomed to or comfortable with. There’s a quickening … it’s that no turning back feeling as the lap-brace locks, just before the roller coaster slowly moves off. My spine stiffens even though I know there will be beneficial self-enquiry and tremendous personal and spiritual growth.

We are needed … And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater? — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I’m questioning a lot these days. My opinions, beliefs, point of view. It’s as if every time I reach for a word I cross it out. It’s not exactly self-doubt but more a re-choosing. A confirmation of who I truly want to be. How do I really want to show up authentically in these times, for myself and others? It’s as though I am moving underwater in slow-motion; as though under a spell of peculiar anticipation and welcomed awe. It’s a welcome gear shift; down into meditation and contemplation.

Sometimes, I lay under a tree and feel into it all. I watch the sunrise every day and recognise the miracle of that dramatic tableau. I see the moon shuffle around the daytime sky; in the vast pale Australian blue. I see the Autumn burst of flowers tricking the eyes into Spring. I watch a wild bunny hop over the lawn; our eyes meet and it’s very, very quiet. If I hold my breath and listen in, I can almost hear the bunny breathing.

The soundscape is different now. Between all the gaps that the cars, delivery trucks, buses, break squeaks and car horns and planes would normally fill, I hear Nature, quietly rumble with the hum of a bumblebee or with proud declarations, shriek in the form of a prattle of parrots. Big exhale. And there I am in the joy of witnessing.

The soundscape is different now. Image: Frank McKenna

The pandemic has given me the deep appreciation of silence and the eerie reflection that I, we, you and me — make far too much noise. It feels counter-intuitive to write, to speak, to contribute to the ‘solutions’ without feeling that even breathing can feel too loud.

Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I feel I am in an entirely new world. I am both cautious and reinvigorated. I have longed for a paradigm shift. I have prayed for a dramatic wake-up call for myself and all human consciousness. I thought I was prepared. Now I see that even my altruistic wishes are in some tension, some tug of war with good and bad, better and different, now and then, some deep non-acceptance of what is. I know I am on the brink of something magnificent and yet I am still enjoying this measured apprehension.

We Are All in this Together – We Are Not Alone

Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world … There are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

So many people have literally said to me, “We were made for these times.” They include me in the collective We of visionary people, lightworkers, orderlies for optimism, the Truth-Seekers, the healers and the soul-artists. It’s only now that I begin to move out of the abstract naming and try to match my job title with my job description. Perhaps I am a Light Writer … charged to hone an eloquent purpose that serves the greater whole? To etch ‘LOVE’ into every stroke, or curve or angle of the alphabet. To enlist the help of Rumi, and Hafiz and all the great humanitarian poets who wove God into every utterance.

A light writer… Image: Aaron Burden

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I sometimes question if I am ‘made’ for these times … but I am in these times. And I do love to use words to stitch and mend. So I commit to writing these gifts. These ruminations are my small prayers, my heart-vision, my call to alms for all those who are steered to harness the truth of Unity, Peace and Love and scatter it inwards and outwards. Perhaps then God will feel our commitment to oneness and alter the course of humanity, finally setting sail for Home.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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