Winter Solstice • Linda Hartley

“Everything is Going to be All Right”

These are not the words of wishful thinking that we have heard from some of our politicians over the last year, but the title of a beautiful poem by Irish poet Derek Mahon. When he died on October 1st this poem was widely circulated, and I feel moved to re-visit it now.

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

For me, this poem expresses not blind optimism or unfounded hope, but the wisdom that comes from living deeply through suffering to meet with acceptance and gratitude for life’s beauties.

Grief and gratitude share one source. We grieve because we love. Gratitude for the beauty of life is the other side of the grief we feel when we lose what we love or value. It speaks of a sense of rightness that goes beyond the trials and losses of an individual life.

I am here in my studio looking out on the beauty of a clear blue sky and tree branches dancing above the skylight windows. Not far away my neighbour is in the hospice, nearing the end of her life. How do I hold these two places in myself – sorrow at her imminent death and the pain her family are feeling, and the beauty I see all around me? I know that grief and suffering need beauty and gratitude. This is how we survive the pain in the world.

We all feel vulnerable at the moment. A virus that potentially threatens our lives is invisibly circling the world, ravaging many lives; and it seems to me that other vulnerabilities we may have are rising to the surface too. I hear of so much illness that is not Covid-related, but seems to be emerging at an accelerated pace. A time of clearing out, of cleansing, as we prepare for the new? I would like to think so.

Whilst we are told to ‘stay at home’, and many might feel unable to do much to help others at the moment, it has become clearer that whatever we do to help and protect and heal ourselves, we are also doing for others, for our collective humanity and for the Earth. We are deeply interconnected. Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh brought the word Interbeing into our awareness. We exist within and because of each other – Interbeing includes the Earth and all her non-human inhabitants too. The understanding that we are part of each other and part of Nature is not new but is one that is growing; it is a foundation of the next steps we will take. We are moving into an age of collective consciousness and collective responsibility. The pandemic has given us an opportunity to practise the kind of collective responsibility that is needed now. ‘I am because you are’.

Astrologers tell us that this year’s conjunction of planets at the Solstice marks a significant portal in the transition towards the much heralded ‘Aquarian Age’, an age of visionary and collective endeavour. A planetary configuration that happens only every 1,000 years or so is taking place. Deep and fundamental change is inevitable. At this time of unravelling at all levels – personal, societal, cultural, economic, political, and environmental – people from many walks of life, including some in positions of power, are talking about the need to ‘build back better’, a ‘greener future’, ‘people’s assemblies’, and so on. We are on the threshold. As we practise through making sacrifices in our personal lives because of Covid, I like to think that we are learning how to participate in the collectivity of the new era that is emerging.

There will be more pain and chaos and suffering, there is no doubt, but we do have the tools and the resources to help us through. We have been preparing for this transition for many decades now. As we allow the unravelling of ourselves that this time requires, can we let the Light flow through the cracks and inspire us to participate in what lies ahead, in whatever small ways we are able to.

On one of my first walks with friends after the spring lockdown, we visited an outdoor café where I saw this short poem carved into a table top:

Risk

“And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took to Blossom.”
Anais Nin

At the time it expressed for me the challenge of emerging from what felt then like the long months of lockdown. Now it speaks to me even more fully of the risk we might each take as we open out of the dark path of descent we have been travelling, towards a vision of new ways of being, and interbeing.

May 2021 bring ease from illness, loss and fear. May it bring us with heartfelt commitment to this new path.