How do you build resilience? How do you find the strength to bear the burdens of living and find grace and beauty in life alongside the sorrow and pain? How do you face with hope and grace the systemic oppression and climate crisis that is out of any one person’s control? Here is what I know about it: I am too weak to create resilience for myself. Oh, I bear just fine the small things, the inconveniences of life—the slower-than-I want traffic; the longer-than-I-think-I-have-time-for checkout line; the ice and snow when I am wearing the wrong shoes. But what about disappointment? What about ruptures with family members? What about illness that won’t cure and trauma that won’t heal? What about systemic oppression and climate crisis, both the result of human activity, but not directly traceable to me. That is a much different matter.

How do I build resilience? I look to the example of people far more resilient than I am for models. I look to the beauty of the world—in the landscape, in cityscapes, and in the faces of strangers. I look to the way that strength emerges from the woven fabric of intersecting lines and rarely from one thread. My effort is a drop in the bucket. My effort is a drop on raging fires. My effort alone is both all that I can do and very little, whether I am talking about healing the world or healing myself. And so, I seek companions, other drops with whom to merge and grow. A drop in the ocean is only a drop. But a multitude of drops is a wave, and a wave can make a difference.

Whether you need to make a change in yourself or whether you seek to make a difference in the world, I pray you are a drop seeking other drops seeking to be a wave of solace and of action, as you remember today and every day, that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so. And may it be so.

Blessings, Rev. Rita