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By Lisa Steele-Maley,
At the end of September, I attended both the BTS Center’s Convocation: Engaged Hope and the OnePlanet Peace Forum. Both events were opportunities to learn from and enter into practice with faithleaders, visionaries, and justice workers. Needless to say, it was thought-provoking and inspiring.
Importantly, the internal and external conversations that continue to resonate from these two conferenceshave been rich and meaningful––I can feel new learning and ideas finding space inside my body andcollaborating with both prior experience and aspiration.
At one point in the weekend, someone quoted from Wendell Berry’s poem “What We Need is Here”.
And we pray, notfor new earth or heaven, but to bequiet in heart, and in eye,clear. What we need is here.
I re-read the entire poem to myself several times over the weekend. My body relaxed into the sacred truththat what we need is always here.
And then, on Sunday, I saw a video of the Pihcintu chorus, a chorus of immigrant and refugee girls basedin Portland, singing “Somewhere”.
Somewhere there’s a place for me. Somewhere.
Watching the girls sing, I could see their innocence, feel their longing, and hear their strength. My ownbody recognized the yearning for community and belonging to the wider web of creation. And Irecognized my simmering anger, frustration, and sadness of the injustice of our world systems. My perfectrootedness here, and my continual longing for connection, are both true.
This paradox of here and somewhere is both delightful and vexing, painful and beautiful, heart-wrenchingand heart-opening. As I hold this paradox and turn it over and over in my mind, I recognize that it isexpanding both my heart and my spirit and that that expansion will benefit all I am and all I do. Here andSomewhere.
After growing up in small towns of New England and Wisconsin, Lisa developed a strong connection to the affirming rhythms of the natural world while working in the mountains and coasts of Alaska and Washington. She currently lives in an aging farmhouse on the coast of Maine with her husband, two teenage sons, and a handful of animals. Lisa was ordained an Interfaith Minister by the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME) in June of 2019. She is the author of, Without A Map: A Caregiver’s Journey through the Wilderness of Heart and Mind. Lisa shares reflections regularly at lisa.steelemaley.io
