Reconnecting the Soul Through Hopeful Imagination

By Courage & Renewal Facilitator Diana C. Brawley

For the last year the waves of news have rolled in about our nation’s shaky financial footing, and we have seen wide-ranging reactions to it. At first, it was easy to say that we saw this coming and that an economic adjustment was long overdue. Then, as the news hit a bit harder, it was easy to be distracted and even in denial. We wanted to focus on anything but the grim financial news. Next our gaze fell heavy on those we could blame for this mess -- pointing fingers and shaming the greed of leaders. Those reactions are less prevalent today.  As I look around, I see a shift occurring. The occasional wave has been replaced by crushing daily news of lay offs, downturns, unemployment, and foreclosures. Even polite dinner conversations have begun their own version of wave-making with talk of the latest neighbor to file for bankruptcy.
 
In this season of winter, there is a global shift happening around us -- like huge plates of ice shifting on the winter landscape. If you’ve ever been in a similar landscape you have heard the eerie moan the ice makes deep down below. That is what I imagine as each country faces its own financial chaos with groans from down deep in the belly of the earth. The reverb of those groans is heard around the world from community to community, from one ice-covered expanse to the other. As the globe braces—breathes in and holds its universal breath across the frozen horizon —some bravely, quietly, ask questions:  Where is this leading us? How bad is it going to get? How much misery is this going to bring? When will it end? These questions have no easy answers and they have now become the backdrop for what we call “Courage & Renewal work.” And we, Courage & Renewal facilitators, also must bravely ask questions about our work: How does the changing economic landscape inform or even transform the work we do? What is Courage & Renewal work? Part of the task for these times is our ability to first face and then adapt to the shifts that are occurring.

When Courage & Renewal work is at its best, artful facilitators create safe circles where people look again at their vocational journeys and after a few hours, days and even years feel restored, refreshed, reconnected in the process. However, the kind of courage work I envision is not limited to the yearning for deeper meaning in one’s vocation. The work I am talking about is the deeply private work that has to do with one’s soul. This work is the daring work each one of us takes on in order to quietly hold hope in our world where the bad news flows in like waves. Included in this hope work is ways to celebrate the small and the large things that get accomplished in a day. For example, getting up each morning, facing the stack of expectations ahead, or heading out to the job that is unsatisfying, or worse, having no place to go with unexpected news of unemployment.  When life stressors threaten our ability to get out of bed, we need to ask for help. Leaning on family, friends and trained therapists are all solid options for us. But what then is the role of Courage & Renewal work?

Set on a backdrop of the worst economic slide in modern history, the courage work I see as essential is the creation of circles that explore the courage to hope.  For those who find it difficult to face this reality alone, “courage to hope” retreats would serve an ever-deepening need.

How might one be strengthened through this kind of circle? These retreats would offer folks an opportunity to ask open and honest questions, despite their roles in the world or their role in life. This kind of courage work can provide a safe place to bravely voice our despair without letting go of the possibility of hope. Through poetry, visual arts and music, participants can explore ways to hold on to their inspiration. They would voice hope-filled expectations in spite of current hard times without fear of humiliation. Perhaps they would discover new resources of strength within and also can be reminded of the strength they have shown in the past.  They would play with new ways of using the gift of imagination to see through the fog of these troubled times.

The imagination of professor and poet, Elizabeth Alexander can transport us to a place of hope. She eloquently describes our current situation neither as some frightening time nor as a time of strife. In her poem written for the recent presidential inauguration, she paints a picture of a people who stand at an important time in history with perfect possibility for hope. Listen again as she sets the stage for a new day:

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer consider the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

How can we hold on to hope? We can hope for a new beginning. A new president is a new beginning. The year 2009 is a new beginning. A beginning is a location, a destination for hope; a place of possibility. Within it we locate our dreams about what is to be. In this new day, let us imagine a new beginning for our work in the world where our praise song is shared by all; where our work is “the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.*” May we have the courage to hope, may love have the final say, and may we ‘walk forward in that light.’

*Parker Palmer quoting Frederick Buechner, The Courage to Teach, p. 30, 1998