We’ll hold the line

I ran across a post a while back, and of course it’s now lost to the inner recesses of social media, but to poorly paraphrase:

Nevermind, I have to find it… please hold…

(For a brief musical interlude to hold you over, let’s go with some Saggitarius 🎧.)

Ah, here it is:

“Not every tree stands tall in the storm. Some bend, some shed their leaves, some go dormant—but all are still alive. Still rooted. Still part of the forest.

Activism is the same.

Some days, you’re the one shouting from the rooftops. Other days, you’re the one quietly healing, gathering strength beneath the surface. And both are necessary.

If today you need rest instead of resistance, that’s okay. Even the strongest oak takes breaks from growing.

We’re not meant to bloom nonstop. We’re meant to take turns, to hold each other up, and to trust that when one of us needs stillness, another will rise.

We’ll hold the line. 🌱✊”
~ Paul Avellino

I suppose it caught my attention because I needed it in that moment. There’s nothing all that profound there, really.

I suppose it hit me because I didn’t realize that I needed it until I was called back to it.

Does that ever happen to you? You read something, hear something, see something, and glaze right over it, maybe think, ‘Oh, how nice,’ possibly fist bump the air, and then for whatever reason you rewind and read it again, listen again, look again, and the whole thing is cast in a different light?

I read Avellino’s nice little post, and thought how nice it was (there may have been a nice little fist bump), and just kept on truckin’, but soon found myself backtracking to give it a second look. Damn, if I didn’t almost cry.

Because I have taken a break. Because I am exhausted and disheartened and spent. Because I did let go of my little corner of the battle for a while. The rush of summer rushed in, as it does, we started traveling, as we do, and I very quickly jettisoned the daily phone chats with the minions of Derrick F***ing Van Orden, gave up on all that screaming into the void. I managed to be out of town for almost all of the marches and rallies and out-there forms of activism, and had no problem missing out. I took a step back and allowed myself to ignore it all for a while.

It’s not that I felt bad about it. I needed some time, and I took some time.

Resist Recharge Repeat.

No guilt.

“… we never find the crest of a wave without a trough…”
~ Alan Watts, The Book

“Except that the stinging in my eyes upon repeat reading of the above suggested that possibly I wasn’t completely free of some feelings of guilt. Seems a little bit of me was still looking at my retreat as a failure, rather than a necessary rest season.

No rest for the weary, so they say, and the hidden parts of my mind bought in.

It was the beginning and the end that I needed to hear. That reminded me that this fight for a just world is just like the rest of life. That we are all together, part of the same whole, no matter what season we’re in, still part of the beating heart of it all. That when one of us needs stillness, another will rise. That the whole has got this, even when the individual has dropped all leaves and ceased activity for a while.

We’ll hold the line.

Thank God.

“Nothing worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing that we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”
~ Reinhold Niebohr, author of The Serenity Prayer

Yes, I will get back on the warhorse. Yes, I will once again be the voice on the line that causes the minions to sigh. Yes, I will get out there and hold my sign and band together with the rest of the forest of fighters. But for the moment, I’m taking a breath. And trying to remember that without breath, there is no voice.

Loving louder is sometimes the quietest thing you can imagine.

Time to love louder, no matter what that looks like for you today.

“In the world where I choose to live, even the coldest winter must yield to agents of spring and the darkest view of human nature must eventually find room for shafts of light.”
~ Madeleine Albright, Prague Winter