14 Jul My question to you: What gives you hope and faith to carry on?
The practice I have of turning toward love, toward goodness helps me set an intention to see the best, to find inspiration, and hope. I’ve found that intention helps me find evidence of what’s possible, helps me orient toward transformation instead of providing evidence of how horrible life is, hope there isn’t anything good to live for.
My recent vacation gave me ample evidence from Mother Nature as I explored the Volcano National Park on the big island of Hawai’i.
The lava fields are wide and long. All over the big island you see areas where the lava flowed leaving behind areas of destruction.
I took this picture below where once had been a community, roads, a subdivision. Not any longer. What you see here is where the lava rolled right over the road.
As much as I wanted to see the lava flowing from this still active volcano, when I saw the destruction that has happened even as recent as 2003 I was glad I missed the front row seats. The lava tubes can run up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and take a year to cool. That’s mind warping.
Walking over the lava fields, the barren emptiness, what seemed like a wasteland showed signs of life. Out of cracks I would see life emerging.
It’s a miracle really, to find life in the midst of these vast fields of rock.
Growth coming from this kind of barren emptiness.
It’s such a metaphor for the healing journey.
We all feel this way as we plod through painful, painful times, that seem endless, empty, impossible. We doubt goodness will come, we crawl into caverns in our hearts to avoid getting hurt – again. We hold onto our arid, barrenness clutching it closely to our hearts confident that doing so will avoid the sure defeat we “know” is coming.
Yet, as with the healing journey, as I walked through these lifeless lava fields it was impossible to not see signs of life.
It does take time.
Without question. It takes time. More than we want to dedicate to this.
There are other things we want to do, to be. We grumble, “This isn’t what I signed up for!”
Yet, this is the path we are on.
Whether or not we have chosen this particular healing journey we enter the barren inner landscape that often seems impossible to traverse. Somewhere along the way it seems we have to give up hope. We resign ourselves to this terrible emptiness. Our hope, our confidence, our faith in possibility gets tested.
My question I kept pondering as I hiked these lava fields was, how do you do it? What keeps you going when you feel you’ve lost hope? When things are bleak and empty how do you carry on?
It seems time to cull our combined wisdom together.
What makes it possible for you to carry on when things are tough?
What gives you hope when there’s nothing there?
What helps?
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