The Promise of Resistance

Is this a year without summer?

Oremus

So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. 
Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. 
Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. 
Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us.  
Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug. 
Let’s lick the earth from our fingers. 
Let us look up and out and around. 
The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, 
and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. 
Oremus. 
Let us pray.

Padraig O'Tuama

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This world arrives with the promise of resistance, right from the time we encounter the birth canal to the time we find our final earthly resting place. I have been naming the harsh light that has been surrounding us. I have been naming the audacious resistance of the blowing snow and minus 24 windchill outside my window, since last Tuesday morning when I looked up and out and around. When I walked half my usual distance after the bus drop off with H, at 8:15 am that morning. Half because it’s April and I didn’t have the gumption I had in January when those temps are the norm. Half because I curled inward with the sting of the wind, even though I was dressed for it.

I have wised up enough to double check my weather app, even if we are well into April. Yesterday, it wasn’t much better when I walked in minus 12 wind chill, snow diagonally smacking my face, while noticing the bitterness rattling my bones. I commiserated with our crossing guard who looked like he was ready to throw down his STOP sign and walk away for good.

Even if Spring has been taunting us with its arrival, with its fluctuations between minus and plus temperatures, I know better - especially after this winter - to care for myself by dressing in enough layers for the chill. I have actually been somewhat frightened that Spring won’t ever come. Sometimes, I am scared that a volcanic winter will embrace the planet like it did in 1816, after the Indonesian Mount Tambora exploded and sent clouds of gas and ten billion tonnes of volcanic rock and ash into the atmosphere, coating the world in “a year without summer,” as named by English poet Coleridge. This feels like a year without summer, even though I tell myself otherwise. It’s coming, I promise myself. Mother Nature’s resistance to change is not unlike my own.

I don’t know if it was coincidence or timing, but I missed a lot of these unusually snowy and precipitous walks in late March, early April, due to the resistance of sickness. First, my girl, and then me. I generally stop for nothing - except my 8-year-old and her complicated influenza. I mostly keep going onward - except for her and a bladder infection - silent, but moving in a deadly direction. And then - after she finally gets what she needs, starts feeling better - I succumb after three nights of too little sleep. Of being worried sick, that I am going to miss something, forget to check a symptom, watch her disintegrate the way she almost did, nearly two years ago, when a bladder infection hid under her 6-year-old skin like a million sardonic grinning E.Coli cells, and it was getting too late to treat it like a normal infection. Worrying. Over-caring (is that even possible when it’s your child?). Fearing over their little lives - will they make it ok?

It is the way of parenting and it is the way of being human, isn’t it? And like Kate Bowler says, “There is no cure for being human.” Dang. If only we were celestial beings, having it seemingly all easy, with wings and light and sparkles everywhere, gold streets, and whatever else they experience with their time.

But not in this life.

No. This life promises us ice storms finishing off the old birch in our back yard. Its tiny branch fragments, like crushed ice from my refrigerator box. That weekend, I saw those pieces littering the back deck with shards of it, melting later in the day leaving miniature stumps of wood, left to rot in the warmer temperature that followed. And my dear friend, who recently purchased her dream property a bit more north of us here in Uxbridge experienced the ice storming their roof with tree damage, before they even got to move in. Worst housewarming gift known to me. A new insurance claim before inhabiting their first real home together. Complicated for many reasons.

Speaking of what else might not make it because of the resistance this too-long winter is putting up about leaving. I wonder if my magnolia tree will survive. The buds came out before that first ice storm, and H and I were so excited. Excited about the would be pink and white butterfly blooms that last for a week before falling to the stone walkway and turning to rust. Before they are swept into the earth nearby to be turned over, into soil and rot. This magnolia tree is my spring hope, the thing that turns pedestrian heads, complimenting how beautiful it is, and I think I am fortunate to have it, as the rest of my garden leaves so little to be desired, although we have been making it better, since moving in here 6 years ago. Who knows, maybe the ice will make the tree stronger.

This resistance feels like crap. We may as well admit it if we want to move forward. And yet, after the admission we must do something about it. For “when we are fixated on total defeat - whether we feel destined to repeat the past or meet a disastrous end - we doom ourselves to frantic action that keeps us exactly where we are,” claims Maria Bowler. No, I not fixated on total wintery defeat. Yes, I am hopeful Spring is actually coming with better weather, so I can slip into sandals instead of wool socks and lined boots.

We’re all feeling it, aren’t we? Worst winter in decades. Shoulders slumped forward with the threats from our southern neighbours. Shit-slinging politicians tempting politicians with promises of “better times if you vote for me” metaphorically scratching all other names off the ballots. Aggressiveness growing online with self-righteous slander and bullying. I stay away from that stuff, I can’t tolerate it. I can’t tolerate anything but love, not even towards myself. I reparent myself over and over, reminding myself to focus on the things that grow pretty, like the magnolia, whose buds were covered in snow and ice. And then snow again, yesterday. Again. And the magnolia? What if it doesn’t bloom this year? Can I survive without that pretty thing, even if it’s only a week of admiration? Is my dwarf blue spruce enough to keep me satisfied? Will I be happy with the hanging peonies and buttery daffodils?

“While dread might increase productivity for a while, it’s deeply uncreative. We stop living fully.” Bowler says. We try to escape our fear by building walls and digging tunnels and scurrying like mice hunting for a cheese fix. We work harder, sleep less, scroll more, dig our heels in as if it will save us.

What if the ice storm made something stronger? What if there’s a purpose we couldn’t see? What if nature knows what she’s doing? What if we don’t have all the answers? Who would we be, without resistance? Would we become weak?

What if yesterday’s final (hopefully) snowfall is nature’s last ditch to numb the soil surface - cold - and leave a frozen ground with its final death threat? What if what is breaking through the soil needed it to break through?

I consider the seeds waiting to push through soil. What is it that has been planted in my life? What is it that I have been waiting to bear fruit? To see the evidence of what is unseen? What is waiting to come up for air? To come up to the light?

What if the breakdown comes before the breakthrough? What if this ice storm, these abnormal weather patterns, this strange political climate is nothing but shoddy efforts from the universe to distract us from our ever present reality of moving forward in life? What happens when we allow this resistance to make us stronger?

I am reminded of this, today. The world has been over many times before. It was proclaimed in 1347 when the bubonic plague reached Europe, Asia and North Africa with devastation. An Italian chronicler was quoted as having said “So many died that it was the end of the world.” It does sound apocalyptic, but the world didn’t end then, and it’s not ending now.

What if this resistance is not unlike my pushing through personal bests during my weight lifting? How can I lift heavy if I don’t lift heavy? If my long term goal is to be in my own personal best shape, to be the healthiest I can be when I turn 50 in a few years, I guess it means I need to encounter more resistance. I get to choose to keep pushing past my perceived limitations and get there healthily. Some days it feels really hard. And, I know how I get through that weight-lifting resistance, and that’s through breathing. Like Padraig wrote: “Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies.”

Maybe we do need to breathe more. Maybe we need to slow down and listen to our breath.

Maybe we need to get back to creating, in slow and still ways.

Maybe all of this resistance is an attempt to be a distraction, because we’re heading in a better direction.

Every last one of us.

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“The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning.” Padraig O’Tuama

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Peace and love my friends, throughout your journey of resistance.

Jaclyn xo

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Journal prompt:

What keeps showing up, as resistance, in your own life?

Can you hone your skills of noticing what is resistance to your personal and spiritual growth?

Is there something you can do about it? If so, what?