Dowsing for Divinity

How do we continue with the inner work when everything is scary and bleak?

One book that really helped me with this question is Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit.

And I also think that it is necessary for activists to practice self care (in the Audre Lorde sense of self care, which is more of a communal and radical self care, not the commercialized version).

Sometimes, when things are overwhelmingly bleak, spirituality can seem like self-indulgence (especially when it doesn’t acknowledge the suffering of others).

But the beauty of Nature and of other people is why we care so deeply about climate change and wars and genocides and hunger and human rights.

If we don’t sustain ourselves by connecting with that beauty, then our well is in danger of running dry.

This is a memo to myself as much as anyone else. I’m terrible at sustaining my spiritual practice when I am sad, angry, heartbroken. All I can do is write poetry about it (which is not nothing, but it’s not enough either) and read poetry, especially if it’s by Tom Hirons. I am succeeding in doing ritual work with others, which is also not nothing, and I am getting spiritual sustenance from that. But I feel like the water in my well is dangerously low.

If you’re succeeding in maintaining a spiritual practice in the face of all this whilst not ignoring it (gestures wildly at the bombing of Gaza, killing and famine in Sudan, continuing invasion of Ukraine, suffering of Indigenous Peoples, anti-trans legislation and violence, anti-Black racism, rising antisemitism and Islamophobia, mass extinction of animals caused by the climate crisis and habitat destruction, etc) then I congratulate you on having a truly robust and well developed spiritual practice.

Sometimes all we can do is pray, meditate, show up for rituals, go for walks in Nature, whatever it is that keeps you going. It also helps to do magical work for the situations that you care about.

But don’t feel that your spirituality is self-indulgence (unless you are ignoring the suffering of others). You need it to sustain you and give you hope for the future.