Resilience - Survive, interconnect, thrive, repeat

Resilience is primal law.

There is something very deep in us that considers survival not just a right, but a duty. We pity people who give up, either in spirit or by suicide. But we also judge them.

Maybe that is why I included resilience in my list of ethical principles. I didn’t mean for any of them to be judgy. But by their very nature, ethical principles are something we strive to live by.

And yet, resilience is often discussed as something a person either has or doesn’t have, and we still judge people who lack it. And to be honest, I think the jury is still out on how much of resilience we have personal control over.

Resilience is partly explained by the comic with the frog being eaten by a bird that reaches out and grabs the bird’s skinny neck in a fist while most of its body is already inside the bird’s bill. In a nutshell, that’s it. A living being has got to struggle to survive and to thrive. It isn’t just the frog that embodies resilience. It’s the bird too. That bird’s got to eat to live.

Creative Commons image by Pacheco of Flickr.com

Resilience is what I put in place of the rules about self-sufficiency and industry that crop up in some other systems. I don’t think self-sufficiency is really possible in an interconnected world. Putting it forward as an ethical goal is like saying one should try to be at the top of the food chain at all times.

Well, yes, that does seem preferable to the alternative.

It is also a warning against sloth, but most people who have touted “self-sufficiency,” “industry” and “individualism” as values were privileged and they got much of what they thought was their own “honest gains” through systems that oppressed and stole from other humans or damaged the natural environment beyond its ability to regenerate in that person’s lifetime.

Concern over self-sufficiency mostly ignores the fact that so much of our ability to provide for ourselves is dependent on the local natural environment and/or the manmade circumstances we’re in.

Sure, I get irritated with laziness, but I have never encountered laziness that wasn’t based on being in a privileged position. I have never actually met a lazy, poor person and I’ve met a lot of poor people.

I have met people sick with a disease we call addiction that looked lazy. I don’t know their fight, thank the gods. But I don’t think that is “laziness.” I’ve met people sick with despair too, but those were generally people still working their asses off.

I have met people who were lazy and complained about not having money, but invariably they lived in wealthy areas and were actually being kept in relative comfort by someone else, often their parents, an inheritance or a privileged job that didn’t require much of them.

I have traveled in some of the most desperately poor parts of the world, like Bangladesh or the back roads of Zimbabwe and Ecuador and I never met a lazy person in those places. I don’t see laziness among poor people in wealthy countries either.

Among people who struggle for the next meal or for next month’s rent, I see resilience. It isn’t self-sufficiency. People in these hard situations are always in a community, supporting one another, getting by and sending what they can to those who need it even more. It certainly isn’t individualism and sometimes health precludes outward “industry.”

This resilience is a tenacious will to survive and thrive, but it isn’t just greed and self-service. There is more too it because resilience also implies a long view and it’s requirements often extend beyond the self..

Resilience has several interlocking components:

1. One prerequisite for resilience is the understanding that failure and struggle are normal and inevitable parts of life. It isn’t that one has to be a morose pessimist in order to be resilient. Resilience walks a delicate balance between optimism and knowing that mostly life is pretty hard.

2. An old adage says, “God only gives us what we can handle,” but that is really only true for those who have been born into relative comfort. It’s a comforting thought but a false friend, which can lead to crippling despair when luck deserts us. Resilience says, “It is our purpose to keep on, even when the way is broken and there is no light anywhere.”

3. Part of resilience is the ability to get up and try again when circumstance throws you in the dirt. We love to say it to others, “Try, try and try again.” It isn’t much fun in practice, as I was reminded when I finished this post and a website glitch deleted it permanently as I was finalizing the formatting. If you’re reading this, I managed to finish it again. It’s not the most popular part of resilience, but it’s there.

4. Another part, often neglected, is the ability to pace one’s self and engage in self-care within overall focus on the goal. When my web software deleted my post, I was very unhappy. I’d spent all of my free time for several days on it and now it was gone. I started rewriting but only got a few paragraphs in when my ten-year-old finished his online schoolwork. Despite the looming deadline, I fulfilled my promise to make gingerbread cookies with him and then sat down to enjoy some with a cup of tea. This too has to be done if resilience is to be maintained.

5. Another aspect that sets resilience apart from sheer desperation is that strong community, reciprocity with the earth and a healthy local environment all enhance resilience. It is possible to be somewhat resilient even in the worst place and circumstances, but insofar as resilience is the ability to survive and to thrive even amid adversity, external conditions matter, particularly the most local conditions. Getting to a better location or improving the situation where you find yourself build your capacity for resilience.

6. But there’s a catch, if those good local conditions are manufactured through exploitation and exclusion of others, resilience is weakened instead of strengthened. The wealthy might pay for their place in a gated community or a climate-change-proof bubble, but all they gain is a tenuous advantage. The structures that keep desperation at bay through exploitation will eventually crumble, leaving those who opted out of developing strong community and a healthy environment even more vulnerable.

7. Finally, resilience isn’t just about the survival of the individual. It is about building resilience for life through the generations. A resilient plant, when threatened by extreme heat or drought will put every bit of its remaining strength into throwing out seeds. This is part of it, the urge to help one’s own kind continue. But the same urge drives us to do creative work or aid other species. Life promotes life. Resilience.

These interconnected aspects of resilience give a better understanding of why resilience is an ethical principle, rather than mere survival. Resilience calls us to survive and thrive over the long haul, not just as individuals but as a community and an ecosystem in a way that ultimately benefits the individual as well.

I’ve finished the post for the second time and I’ll take better care in saving a backup. It has been a hard year and the last couple of days have epitomized that with close friends and family angry and not speaking over online accusations and politically sensitive resentments among those who usually share the same politics. And yet it is Thanksgiving.

A lot of Americans are having a quiet long-distance holiday. It is always possible to think of something to say we are thankful for, even if we don’t feel very thankful, even if the day is bitter. I am reminded that all of these values are interconnected. Gratitude is another and it too is part of resilience. We know things are hard and that makes gratitude even for small things blossom.

They say it will be a hard winter because of the virus and the economy and isolation and climate change and political division. Our hope is for resilience. Breath. Humility. Gratitude. Interconnection. Hope.

How we've done Halloween/Samhain in isolation for years

Cold, frosty air swirling the first snowflakes in at the open door of the woodshed… all the neighborhood kids crowded inside… bobbing for apples with faces stinging from the cold… warming up with hot, fresh-pressed cider… pin the tail on the donkey—finally a game I could beat the older kids at, where my experience not seeing much came in handy!

Among my best childhood memories are those of Halloween.

This particular year, I was dressed as a witch, the green warty kind, with a tattered homemade black dress and a store-bought pointy hat. Pa lifted the broom with me on it and spun around under the bare 40-watt bulb of the shed. Then we piled out into the night, racing up the lonely road, a few kids pulling sleds, a third of a mile to the first place, then keep on uphill in the snow until our legs ached.

We knocked on doors and filled bags with homemade treats and several pieces of candy. Someone had changed an outdoor light to a green bulb and it shown out over the fields and made me shiver with delight. The boys tried to scare me, saying a real witch lived there and she’d take me because I was dressed right this night. Even at that age, I was more interested than really afraid.

There were other years, when we went trick-or-treating in a town. And in someways it was better because there were more houses and thus more candy. But I always remembered that year, tramping the gravel road in the first snowfall. It was special enough to last nearly forty years, bright and crisp as a jewel of memory.

And of course, I wanted these kinds of things for my kids. I wanted them to know safe types of adventure and real wonder. I wanted them to touch the spirit world in a way that fosters respect and a healthy caution. And I wanted them to know that good, old-fashioned fun that makes your cheeks numb with cold and your voice hoarse from laughing.

But it wasn’t in our wyrd, not much at least. There was one year when the kids were very small when we managed to be in the US during Halloween. My daughter was old enough to kind of understand. My son was a toddler, lost and terrified in the darkness, uncomfortable in his costume and not even that interested in the candy.

Image by Arie Farnam

Otherwise, we have spent this season in the Czech Republic. They have a day of devils and candy in early December, something that resembles a Christian remake of old folklore traditions involving mischievous land spirits and a pre-Santa figure. But they don’t really do Halloween.

There is a heavily Christianized tradition of visiting graves during All Souls. We go to my husband’s family plot and clean out the debris of branches, wilted flowers and burnt out candles. I lay offerings and pay my respects. The kids usually run around outside the walls and don’t want to be involved.

There is little of mystery or wonder to attract children to such a celebration. And American traditions of Halloween meet mostly with ridicule and disdain among the locals. Early on I enlisted neighborhood kids to have a party and they were game because, “Hey, candy is candy.”

But negative comments from adults eventually persuaded me to stop. And since then, I’ve had to find ways of making Halloween/Samhain good for my family, both in terms of the fun and the deeper spiritual connection to ancestors and the Otherworld.

Today with Covid still closing down so many countries, I hear people lamenting another lost holiday for their children. So, I thought I’d write something about how I’ve handled this over the years. It might provide some inspiration and help to those who are now suddenly pushed into a situation more like ours.

The fun part

When my kids were very small, I read about the tradition of Grandfather Deer taking children to meet ancestors in their dreams in the book Circle Round. My children grew up putting cookies and a bit of hay or corn tassel outside with the jacko-lanterns for Grandfather Deer and then racing back there at first light to enjoy a few small gifts.

Here is the video we made when my kids were very small that begins with this Samhain tradition.

The part of the tradition involving presents is based on the idea that children are closer to the ancestors, having just come from another world when they were born. And as such, I have insisted that gifts are only for very little children. My kids get enough plastic stuff anyway and the season is supposed to be more focused on gratitude and respect for ancestors.

So as they got older and braver the tradition has migrated outside. We dress up, though often not in traditional costumes—rather in whatever wild things we want to wear—and go out into the woods near our house at night. I creep out before the kids and place candles in jars at various stations along the way. Each station has a few pieces of candy and some sort of message, joke or fun activity.

The activity is moderately labor intensive for adults. I have to prepare and place the stations and then clean them up the next day. But it incorporates the fun, anticipation, dark adventure, cold weather experience, mild fright and sugar rush of old fashioned trick-or-treating. Some years we include one or two close friends who appreciate the tradition but sometimes we also do it alone.

My kids always look forward to these traditions and for them this year isn’t likely to be much different. But it is possible that a lot of other kids will be doing Halloween in a similar way, finding a secluded, dark place to commune with the night and the thrill of touching normally forbidden things.

The kids do love to run through the night hooping at each sight of a flicker of candlelight through the trees to find sweet treasures and enjoy the thrill of nighttime escapades. And this activity can be easily done with just one or two children and a willing adult accomplice. Teenagers can participate as well (either in the set up or the enjoyment of the hunt) and older kids can can experience greater challenges in natural environments. It’s a versatile activity that taps into our primal need for challenge, adventure and a relatively safe perception of touching the forbidden.

The spirit part

It has been a struggle to involve my kids in spirituality due to their special needs, but we have always carved pumpkins for Samhain, and while it may not be the ancient meaning of candles in vegetables, I envision these as a welcome to friendly ancestor spirits and simultaneously a ward against unfriendly or malicious entities.

I set up an ancestor altar where the kids can see pictures of our ancestors and their symbols. This always sparks several conversations about ancestors over the course of the season. This year will be particularly interesting on this count, since my children both did Ancestry.com DNA tests.

Being adopted from uncooperative Eastern European orphanages, their ancestors have been mostly a mystery. But now we have some actual information to go on, information that paints a picture of a long journey across multiple cultures spanning several centuries. This is what history told us about the Romani people, but now we can see it laid out in clear science and that will add more detail to our celebration.

We will likely watch videos from the various cultures our ancestors come from this year. We might make collages using old National Geographics and printouts from websites.

Occasionally, we have managed to get together with one Pagan family that lives a few hours from us, usually not on the actual day of Samhain but at some point during the season. One of our favorite traditions to do together is to make natural candles by pouring hot beeswax into walnut shells with a tiny bit of cotton wick sticking out. Then at night we take these to a nearby pond, light them for our ancestors and float them out on the water. It is a magical sight and while it is more spiritual than sugar-coated, the kids go along with it reasonably well. This year, we may have to do this activity with just our family.

I do miss being able to have an adult Samhain ritual with like-minded people after the kids go to bed. The few years I’ve been able to do it were wonderful. But this year, I’ll almost certainly be doing it solitary. Other than paying respects to all the various ancestors of our family, of the place we live and of my craft, I always do a house cleansing with herb smoke and renew wards with sea salt and rosemary sprigs on the window sills.

I doubt any of this is going to make you like the time of Covid. But both fun and spiritual fulfillment are possible to find even during quarantine or social distancing.

Blessings to you and your ancestors in this season of going within. Let us hope to emerge fully free after the darkness is past.

Patience: Riding the great wheel

If there ever was a time to write about patience, it would be now.

But I haven’t seen a lot of posts on patience during COVID-19. There are a lot of posts on anger and rage. There are posts on grief and how to get through isolation and depression too. There are practical posts and posts that try to foster empathy and solidarity. But not a lot about patience.

Maybe that is because we have no idea if and when this slow-mo crisis will ever end. Whether an effective vaccine ever comes or whether we simply figure out how to live with this new threat to our health, we need patience more than ever—patience with ourselves, patience with those people we do meet, patience with our families and patience with technology.

But I’m not actually writing about patience specifically because of COVID-19, though it is clearly relevant to the times. Patience is the next principle for practical ethics in my backwards take on the code of ethics I presented on this blog a few weeks ago.

While often unmentioned, it is a classic Pagan virtue. Patience is at its most basic about recognizing inevitable cycles, both within us and in the world around us. A farmer who pulls on the shoots will not hasten a good harvest to put it in Wheel-of-the-Year terms.

Last time, I wrote about joy as a principle of ethical living and that might have been confusing to some. But we are used to thinking of patience as a virtue and some may wonder what more there is to say about it.

Image via Pixabay

We should be more patient. We all know that. Yawn.

But before you dismiss patience from consideration, I would ask you to look at some aspects that slip through most interpretations. And to consider the great harm done by insisting that oppressed people need to be more patient. That gets us a bit closer to the ethical principle of patience.

First, we are all pretty familiar with the concept of being patient with children, students, customers, employees or people in the service industry. We are told that we should bite our tongues and stifle our frustration when people don’t live up to our expectations or do what they are supposed to do quickly enough.

Those of us who are very busy and living in hyper capitalist societies have a particularly hard time with this part of it. We are not fond of time wasters, be they human or inanimate. We take yoga and meditation classes to cope, and we still struggle for patience.

If you’ve taken enough self-help classes or have a therapist, you have likely also heard about the concept of being patient with one’s self. It’s the same as patience with others, except patience with yourself is about not churning out hateful, toxic self-talk as soon as you make the slightest mistake. Not everyone suffers from this problem overtly, but those who do likely know what I’m talking about. Here too, patience is widely regarded as a virtue.

But whether we’re talking about patience toward one’s self or toward others, does biting our tongues and suppressing frustration really do any good? Doesn’t it build up tension and resentment that will eventually do its damage anyway, even if less directly? Is patience really primarily about suppression?

It is for a lot of people today, and that’s part of our problem.

What if instead of suppression, we thought of patience as a long-view attitude. That’s what we need with COVID-19 after all. We aren’t telling people developing vaccines and medicines to “be patient” and suppress their feeling of urgency. We are asking them to pace themselves, do the careful double and triple checking and go through the proper science to keep people safe.

A lot of life under COVID feels like suppressing frustration, granted. We have to swallow frustration with our internet providers, our devices, our kids, their teachers, store clerks, our customers, our colleagues and so on. Everyone is on edge. We also have to swallow frustration and stifle twinges of panic at the sensation of partial suffocation in order to put on a mask again and again.

But what if instead of suppression we look at these actions actively? Instead of suppressing frustration we extend empathy to each of those people we are frustrated with. If instead of fighting frustration every time we put on a mask, we consider it an act of strength, steadfastly protecting those in need of protection.

Image via Pixabay

Then discomfort and frustration changes. It is still there but instead of frustration bottled up, it becomes another challenge overcome, another example of inner strength. This is a different kind of patience. It is closer to endurance, but still reminds us to be patient with ourselves as well.

Oppressed people have been told to be patient and to endure too much. Why would I consider patience a primary ethical value then?

If you don’t see patience as a matter of suppressing your feelings, but rather a matter of steadfast persistence and an attitude with a long view, then this question is less troubling.

There are issues and situations that need anger, even rage. There are times when suppression of such rage is wrong. We’ve seen some of those moments this year as well in the United States and elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t need enduring patience at the same time.

Patience doesn’t mean suppressing the rage and grief of people who are yet again traumatized by a system that strips them of their worth and their rights. It means doing what must be done, fighting yet again. It means protesting day in and day out for months if that’s what it takes, like the people of Portland, Oregon have. It means considering the long view in the midst of a crisis and balancing the needs of the moment with strategy.

There are times to exercise patience toward those who don’t comprehend a burning issue the way we do. It is possible to say, “I recognize where you are coming from,” because it is a position we are familiar with. It doesn’t mean I agree, only that I recognize it and I have listened and heard the other. That doesn’t mean I won’t protect myself from someone who refuses to wear a mask or protect the vulnerable from a bigot.

Patience is about recognition of a living being, where they are at right now without assumptions made for their future. Patience doesn’t mean we let ourselves be trodden upon.

The same things apply to patience in our interpersonal relationships and with one’s self. Instead of suppressing frustration, patience here too should be about taking a long view and recognition of where a person is at.

Rather than suppressing my frustration with myself when I couldn’t work for three days due to illness, I have to recognize that I am sick and remember that if I push it, I will remain sick longer. The delay would, in the end, be longer.

Patience may not be the most welcome ethical principle in our tool kit, but it is certainly necessary. It is akin to the self-discipline mentioned in many codes, but it is self-discipline toward a specific purpose—a long view and a capacity to endure.

Patience, my dear ones. Do not despair.

A fragile spring

We so often hear about how fragile the earth’s ecosystems are that we tend to forget just how fragile humans are…

Until something like Coronavirus comes along.

It’s a bug that on the surface looks a lot like the seasonal flu. And we like to dismiss that as annoying but pretty much harmless. Yet that annoying flu bug kills 300,000 to 600,000 people every year.

So, far Covid-19 has only killed about 15,000 people worldwide.

But it’s categorized with the much more deadly SARS virus that killed 15 percent of its victims. That virus didn’t last long precisely because it killed its victims too well. And that may well be part of what makes epidemiologists so nervous about this new virus.

Image by Arie Farnam

It has caused a lot of people to horde supplies and hole up in their houses with vicious glares for anyone who gets close. Despite the fact that for most of us COVID-19 isn’t a major health threat, it has forced us to look too closely for comfort at how fragile we humans really are.

A Swedish study found that heart attack rates jump during the first three weekdays after spring Daylight Savings Time, which forces us to get up an hour earlier to continue the same schedule. Traffic accidents also increase during the same period.

That’s all it takes to tip the balance for fragile humans. An hour’s difference in getting up and it causes deaths. How then are we surprised that some fish die when their water changes by a degree or two or the acidity level rises just a tad. We are really no different.

That’s what makes something like climate change so scary. A couple of degrees doesn’t sound so bad on paper, but just like with this relatively mild virus or Daylight Savings Time, we are fragile. In modern industrialized society we like to forget it. We like to pretend that everyone has an inalienable right to live to a ripe old age without losing family members and loved ones. We get used to thinking that’s just “the way things are supposed to be.”

That’s why something like Coronavirus sends us into a panic or a shopping frenzy. We are desperate to keep that safe, entitled feeling. And yet, the truth is that we are fragile. This modern, convenient, relatively safe society may actually make us more fragile, while concealing it from us.

Spring has always been the time of this fragility. As beautiful as March and early April look in natural places, in northern latitudes this time was known as the time of the greatest threat of death in pre-industrial times. This was the period when humans were most fragile—weakened by poor diet, crowded conditions and a constant stream of viral and fungal infections throughout the winter.

In early spring, food was not abundant yet, supplies were at their lowest and weakened humans, often the very old and the very young, died in greater numbers at this time of year. It is no wonder that eggs are our symbol of spring rebirth and hope.

It isn’t just that an egg holds the potential of new life. Even more viscerally. Eggs were the first abundant fresh food after winter. Domesticated birds begin laying eggs in greater numbers in early spring before even dandelion greens are available to nibble. These early eggs, little packets of life force prepared specifically to give a new life a jump start, literally saved the lives of many fragile humans over the centuries.

If the people could keep their domesticated birds alive and refrain from eating them through the lean times, the first fresh eggs would save them. Dried egg yolk is still used in emergency food deliveries during famines in war-torn parts of the world because it is so nearly the perfect balance of nutrients to save a starving person.

Eggs are an incredible symbol of the survival of hard times and the return of much easier and safer times.

In the time of Coronavirus, we reconnect to the fragility that was so close and personal to our ancestors at this time of year. And that oddly enough, grants us access to the visceral hope embodied by this time of year as well. As we watch the season of spring grow, we know that our immune systems will grow stronger as well. Coronavirus will not have nearly so much of an advantage when June and July come round.

We are stuck now, so many of us in quarantine or in countries under twenty-four-hour lockdown that looking out at the budding beauty of spring may feel ironic or out of place. It is worth remembering that this dichotomy has always been with us—the beauty, the blessings and the terrible fragility of spring.

The spring equinox has just passed in the northern hemisphere and my egg, chick and flower decorations are already out, while most Christians are still waiting for Easter. It is unlikely that Coronavirus will be on its way out by then either. But when you look at an egg decoration this year, you might think of it not just as a fragile little symbol of rebirth but also a symbol of survival, the food that brought so many of our ancestors through the hardest spring famines and epidemics.

We need that endurance and vitality now.