Ferocious Love

I remind myself that the heart can simply break, or it can break open. 

A broken open heart is awake; it's alive and calls for action. 

It is regenerative, like nature.

In my experience, to have eyes wide open is to hold a broken heart
every day. It's a grief I rarely speak, though my work calls
on the power of voice.

~Katharine Wilkinson

 

A friend told me the other day that she was so enjoying the emergence of spring. It is the sign of renewal that she needs right now, she wrote, especially the tulip trees in her neighborhood right now, with their dazzling profusion of pink blossoms. 

Just a couple of days before I had noticed that overnight the tulip trees in my complex had exploded into bloom. But unlike "normal" times, my heart didn't skip a beat, I didn't stare doe-eyed, I didn't rush for my camera. Instead, all I thought about was the climate crisis, and how it is way too early to be spring. That we haven't had near enough winter, near enough rain, the temperatures stuck in the sixties, the January and February skies for the most part just blue, blue, blue, day after day after day. 

Reading about my friend's experience, I saw that I was missing the moment, the beauty, the exuberance, the renewal, the very hope of spring. My denial wasn't stopping it from happening, it was stopping me from enjoying it, communing with it, and deeply appreciating it.

That afternoon I looked up from my book and out the window and there in the tree, for the first time this year, were robins. Sweet red-breasted robin, one of my favorite birds~as if it's possible to have favorite birds. Harbinger of spring if ever there was one; symbol of abundant new growth. When I looked around I saw that they were actually everywhere. In my tree, in other trees spread out around the grassy area, on the grass itself. Oh my goodness; they had arrived. As I watched, cedar waxwings joined them, the two species often seen together in spring. There were also the usual goldfinches and a few house finches. Even through the closed window I could hear all of their raucous, glorious singing. They flew in and out of the patio, back and forth, back and forth, all of them; fat robins bathing themselves in a too small birdbath, goldfinches in the fountain, even sparrows, I saw, clinging to my little leafless Japanese maple. Constant, frenzied movement and chatter, as though they were celebrating some invisible something that I, in my grief masquerading as stubbornness, could not see. 

My friend's words threw light on what I was doing, but it was the robins, and the great bird party that I was so joyously privy to that snapped me out of my climate change despair, allowed my spring fever permission to blossom, and opened my heart not only to these sweet, life-affirming creatures, the quickening of this, my very favorite time of year, but also the sorrow that is never far from anything I am witnessing in nature. 

It is not only the birds that bring me back to hope. At the same time, in mysteriously synchronistic fashion, I happened upon an interview with feminist, writer, and environmentalist Katharine Wilkinson, who when speaking of the climate crisis work she is involved in, uses the words ferocious love to describe the approach of women she sees who are involved in the work no matter their particular corner; their incredible love and conviction, their commitment to forging a just and livable future. 

Speaking on the climate crisis podcast, Outrage and Optimism, she recalls a time when she was told to check her emotions at the door, to play by the rules; those rules being you don't bring emotion into the equation: "It is sort of hilarious," she says, "to think that we ever thought we could address this challenge with only the powers of the prefrontal cortex. Why would we leave the is whole of the human super powers to the side?" She peppers their conversation with terms like radical imagination and emotional muscle; integrating head and heart; nurturing the vision. She speaks so beautifully about showing up with our human wholeness, and the deep, raw emotions that are not only present, but wholly appropriate. "You can't watch it all and not have grief," she says, "not have fear, or rage, but also courage and determination."

I am so profoundly moved, so affected, so infused with optimism, so utterly grateful for her presence, her work, and her feminist platform. It is like spring breaking out in my own heart and soul. It makes so much sense it is mind boggling. As Einstein said, we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them. Emotionless climate communication hasn't worked, Katharine points out. We can and must lead in this movement in this way, she reiterates. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears in her TED Talk when she speaks of how the climate crisis is affecting women and girls so disproportionately, and how if we can turn their fortunes, we will turn the fortune of this crisis, we can save them and our earth. She sees a shift coming; she speaks of the much needed change that is, albeit slowly, happening, the "flowering" of the climate leadership; the passionate involvement of women and youth; the all of a sudden broadening appeal for the Green New Deal. 

And, she says, you can indeed be taken seriously and recite poetry. 

Ferocious Love. 

Of course.