Unite With Love
Along the Hudson River
Photo by Dawn Breeze, January 2021
Hello friends,
The personal is political.
As I think about entering this new year, I think about what intentions we set for ourselves, our organizations, our projects, and businesses. I recognize that my personal intention is to practice self-trust or put another way, to develop my intuition as my compass. To find the inner wayfinding signs that will guide me through the fog that we are collectively experiencing as the pandemic still storms every place on earth. When I consider the word intention, I know it means two things in our English language. The first definition is purpose or direction and the second definition is to heal.
We marked this new year by the transition of a new government in our United States— our country bearing a name that is still a dream rather than an accurate description of place. The more accurate name might be the Divided States. People feel apart from their places and each other rather than a part of their places and each other. This is the great divide we are called to heal. We all belong here now, there is no other place to be.
When I think about our Divided States, our disconnect from ourselves and each other, our apartness, I think our most productive work is to direct our intention with compassion. We are sick. We are hurt. We have harmed each other and our places. We need healing. Healing cannot happen by continuing to assault our wounds by fighting for ourselves or each other. We must be compassionate with ourselves and one another.
We can cultivate love instead of sow fear and anger.
As we encounter the unknowns in 2021, I am taking with me my personal lessons from 2020. I hoped that we could build safe relationships by trusting we wouldn’t harm each other, by creating safety constructions with shared policies, and beliefs. Covid taught me we can’t always keep each other safe from harm. Instead, we need relationships that are built on trust that we will care for each other when we are hurt and that our compassion is not limited by shared beliefs or state lines but is instead unlimited unconditional love. We can be united when we recognize we all belong here now, destined to be together in this place, Earth.
Love can heal us and our places.
Wishing you best intentions in the New Year!
Warmly,
Dawn Breeze
Director
“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke