Look at Where We Are, Look at Where We Started

What do you do when everything is changing? Right now, my life is undergoing massive change - I am finding my space in my Baha'i community, my husband is immigrating to Canada from the States soon (tomorrow!), everything feels full of promise and uncertainty and joy and confusion. It's intimidating, a little, not always knowing where to put your feet down or what your tomorrow might look like. It's a lot to take in, and a lot to adjust to.

I am this amazing mix of absolute joy and utter terror, all at once. I'm not great at change, I don't like when my routines are disrupted, I am worried that I won't be able to make everything work. And it's hard sometimes, to sit with that. I bounce from delight to shaking fear, and I have no answers. I can't tell myself how any of this is going to go.

So how do you cope? How do you find a space to breathe amid all of the changes life is so fond of throwing at us, both good and bad? As Abdu'l-Baha reminds us, "now the new age is here and creation is reborn. Humanity hath taken on new life. The autumn hath gone by, and the reviving spring is here. All things are now made new". Life is made of change. Flowers bloom and die, seasons change, change is everywhere. 

Baha’u’llah urges us to “Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday.” I try, now, to see if I can't frame my changes that way - how do they make the next day better? If they don't make the day better, because they're not good changes, how can I maybe make a tiny good change to make things a little better? Shoghi Effendi reminds us that "He urges you to persevere and add up your accomplishments, rather than to dwell on the dark side of things. Everyone's life has both a dark and bright side. " We just have to try to find the good stuff, however small, amid all the things that might seem impossible scary hard.

Tonight, it's easy. Tonight, I will (eventually, maybe, hopefully) get some sleep, and tomorrow my day will be better because for the first time, I will get to pick my husband up from the airport and I won't have to give him back for a long time. Tonight I am just sitting with this not knowing what the next day or the next day or the next day is going to look like, because I know some important things - I know the feel of my husband's arms around me as he hugs me tight, I know we will talk through the hard things and the simple things, I know that we have survived all of the days that have taken us to this point. It's not going to be perfect, but it will be ours - my husband and I will figure out what our lives look like together, one moment at at time. There will be love and joy and prayer and tears and questions and everything in between.

It's gonna be okay. 

Whispering a Prayer in the Fury of a Storm

Full of mixed emotions tonight. Recently, I had to step back from an internet community I put a lot of love and tears and energy in for a long time, because I couldn't sustain the sheer demand on my spoons that it was requiring, with all the changes going on in my life. I'm not the same me that I was, and that's....kinda to be expected, but it's still hard when it's the community that gave me a large number of my friends, it's where I met my husband, it's indirectly responsible for me coming to find the Baha'i faith. So it was a hard thing to let go.

On top of my personal stuff, it meant that the leadership had to look for new humans to serve it, which is done through an election using the Single Transferable Vote model. It's not a perfect system. It never has been, and never will be. It's better than First Past the Post style stuff, but you've still got people campaigning and you've got politics and oh, it's a mess. But election went on, people nominated themselves, they declared their "platform" (such as it is), people voted, people were elected.

So here we sit, where I'd ideally be feeling like oh hey, cool, the community is safe in the hands of the best people that the site could find to lead itself. Except...the community is unhappy. The election was...messy, and while the people who were elected are good people, there's still a lot of upsetness and worry around what this means for the site/community now, because the approaches of the new moderators worry some of community, for a variety of reasons.

And honestly, this post isn't about my feelings on the issue in terms of the site itself - the election went how it went, the people that got elected know how things work, they know how to handle the things they need to handle. But it just has me thinking a lot about how election systems as a whole are kinda broken - this whole thing about campaigning and trying to convince people you are the best thing they need, and sometimes there's lies and sliding the truth just a little sideways, and I can't help it, all I see is how unhappy and confused the community is now. They thought they were getting what they needed, and now they're not sure, and everyone's kinda on edge as they try to figure out what is going to happen going forward.

That got *me* thinking about the other election I've been a part of recently-ish, my local community's yearly election for our Local Spiritual Assembly. (If you don't know how Baha'i elections work - any Baha'i in good standing over the age of 21 is eligible to both vote AND to be voted for. There's explicitly no campaigning, no nominations, you're really not even supposed to discuss who you're going to vote for with others (discussing the sorts of qualities or ideals etc that you might look for in the sorts of people that your community needs to lead them is a separate matter, however, and that is something you definitely should be trying to figure out together!). It's basically supposed to be between you and God to figure out who you feel are the nine people in your community best suited for this role.

We have some guidance, as Shoghi Effendi reminds us  - "Hence it is incumbent upon the chosen delegates to consider without the least trace of passion and prejudice, and irrespective of any material consideration, the names of only those who can best combine the necessary qualities of unquestioned loyalty, of selfless devotion, of a well-trained mind, of recognized ability and mature experience... Nothing short of the all-encompassing, all-pervading power of His Guidance and Love can enable this newly enfolded order to gather strength and flourish amid the storm and stress of a turbulent age, and in the fullness of time vindicate its high claim to be universally recognized as the one Haven of abiding felicity and peace."

And yes, spiritual election is vastly different than internet community moderatorship election, but it just made me think about how different the election felt. Yes, we had far from a perfect turnout at our election, and yes, I am sure there are people who disagree with how it ultimately went, and I am sure you could poke holes in the logic of how it works if you wanted to . But it very much felt like my community was doing it's best to come together and find a group of people that represented all our needs, and who we felt could help guide us through the next year as we kept walking the path that Baha'u'llah has laid out for us.

So now I just kinda find myself sitting here, going  "Okay, well, now what? How do I sit with all of this? How do I keep this weird guilt at bay that the unhappiness is my fault for saying I couldn't keep leading?" and I think the only real thing I can do, is remind myself that sometimes, saying you can't do something is the most important thing - knowing when you no longer have the same capacity to love/care/give of yourself as you used to is a very tricky thing. I can sit with the community, I can love on them, I can help remind them of their good bits, and maybe, we can talk about what we can do, regardless of our feelings about the leadership body, to both respect the position and role of those who are serving as moderators, but also keep making the internet a better, kinder, welcoming, supportive, useful place. It might feel like "All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon" style labour (h/t to Shakesville for that one) but if all of us have teaspoons, maybe it will not be so bad.

Every Single Day, I Walk Down the Street

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to truly love myself. It's something I struggle with a lot, and I know I'm not alone in that. The world tells us to love ourselves, to pamper ourselves, all of those messages about self-care and bubble baths and crushing that workout at the gym and treating yourself to that one thing that will make you feel better.

But what do you do when you don't have money for fancy pedicures or massages or trips away or bubble baths? What do you do when you work weird hours and have no tub and can't afford to take time off work? How do you love yourself when you are exhausted and stressed beyond all belief?

It's not easy. Some days I just feel like everything's impossible, that there's nothing good left in me. I can't summon up the energy to heat up a Cup Noodle, let alone anything else, and that mountain of cardboard that needs to go to the recycle is threatening to take over the kitchen again, and it all feels like it is just too much. I don't have the time or the wherewithal to do any of that "self-care" stuff, it's all I can do to just get home, curl up in bed, and hope the next day will be better (or at the very least, different).

Something I keep clinging to is this idea that it's okay to not love all of myself every day. Some days are easy - I put on my swishy black bellydance pants and I go out and I feel like I can conquer the world, or I pull on my patch covered denim jacket and dance my way through my errands. Other days, I might just love a tiny bit of myself. Other days, I have to trust that even if I can't see the good, it's still in there. And other days....other days I gotta turn to something outside myself.

One of my favourite Hidden Words is "O SON OF MAN! Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty." I love holding onto that - this idea that God loved the idea of a me SO MUCH that He couldn't bear there not being a me in the world. So here I am, born out of such a great love. So how can I not love me, if He loved me enough to make me, just as I am, in all my awkward strange frustrating beautiful ridiculous miraculous wholeness? He knew I wasn't gonna be perfect, because none of us are, but He made me anyhow. Doesn't matter how many people barked or mooed at me as I walked down the street, or how many people told me I was too much or not enough or that I'd never or that I always - at the end of the day, there's something bigger than all that for me to hold onto.

It's not perfect - there are days where I sit and am like "Okay, God, but why did you create me just this way, with these problems or tricky bits?" And I probably won't ever know the answers to all that. But that's alright. I just put one foot in front of the other, and trust that God's holding onto me, and He'll see me through. (And maybe I also raid the change jar for enough money for ice cream, because that's good too.)

I've also given myself permission to find the things that feel good to me. I wear bright happy dresses because I like the way they look and feel, I wear pants that swish when I move because I like clothes that move as much as I do. I don't like socks, so I don't wear them (unless it's too cold). I figure that even if I can't fix everything, if I can at least feel good in the things I am wearing, it's a small step. And they might not always be the things that other people think I should wear (when you're tall and fat, people have LOADS of ideas of what you "should" wear), but it makes my heart bubble up with joy, so I figure that's good enough. The rest of the world can just deal with it - God knows, literally, that I am a bright joyful chaos bean of absolute love and delight, and if other people don't like handflaps of joy and holographic nail polish and clothes that make it clear I have a body that takes up space in the world, well, I can't help that.

So, sit with yourself. Find just one tiny thing you love. Think about how the universe put you together just so, so that one thing or three things or however many things could exist. I promise you, even in the darkest dark, when you can't find a thing to love about yourself, someone does. Maybe you don't see it as God loving on you, maybe it's just how your friend says they love your smile or your partner compliments your cooking or your kids tell you you are soft and good for hugs. Whatever it is, hold onto it. Write it down, somewhere you'll see it. Don't worry if you can't do the bubble baths and wine or the mani-pedis or the trips to faraway places or massages - there's plenty of room for small joys too.

Emotion, Devotion, to Causing a Commotion

Every day, a million million things yell for our attention. Buy this car, eat this sandwich, wear these clothes, put on this makeup, go to this vacation spot, and EVERYTHING WILL BE BETTER. Your skin will glow, your dog will stop using that corner of the living room as a bathroom, your kids will stop fighting over who gets the last Pop-Tart, you'll be happy and everything will be perfect.

We all know it doesn't work that way. It would be great if all my problems could be magically solved with some fancy cheese and the right pair of shoes, but...having consumed a lot of string cheese and walked right through a whole bunch of flip-flops, I'm still waiting for that magic moment. 

So what now? What do I do to make the world better, to make myself better, to get even a tiny itty bitty fraction closer to whatever it is that we're supposed to be striving for? 

Step one, I've found, is realizing that it's never gonna be instant. You'll fail, a LOT. You're gonna let people you love down, you're gonna let yourself down, the community that's supposed to love you and walk with you is gonna let you down too. Because oh hey, we're all just ridiculous meat people trying to figure out this giant cosmic mess. It's a pretty big thing to be trying to do while also making sure the kids are dressed and the cat's fed and oh hey did someone drink the last of the milk again? 

The best part about this, for my Baha'i self, is that it's....kinda expected I'm gonna suck at stuff sometimes. Why else do we have loving Writings that tell us stuff like "Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday."? Sure, fine, today sucked, you messed up, you tripped and fell on your face, but...hey, guess what, tomorrow is a brand new day. You can try again.

I think that's something we forget a lot, this sort of kindness. Obeying the rules (whatever they are to you and however they look) isn't easy. If it was easy, we'd not need them written down and laid out for us. There are "rules" of the Baha'i Faith that I know are a struggle for me. Like Baha'u'llah's reminder to " let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path". Some days I don't want to be loving and kind! I want to be angry and stompy and knock over buildings like Godzilla. But He knows that, and He's made room for it, as long as I pick myself up, dust myself off and keep walking the path He's set for me. 

Maybe we gotta do that for ourselves, too. It's so easy to compare ourselves to our family or friends or that stranger down the street who REALLY seems to have it all together. It's easy to think they've got it all sorted, that they're following all the rules and they're not spilling spaghetti down their shirt and ending up with mismatched socks. But maybe their yesterday sucked, and we're just seeing them in their much better morn. Even if we aren't, even if we are seeing them in their default state and we don't feel like we could ever measure up, we owe it to ourselves to remember that in the end, that's not what we're here for! We're here for such a short time, and we have so much to do and to learn and so many ways to grow and so many tiny little miracles to experience. 

It's good to know what the rules are, what we're seeking to achieve. But it's also good, I think, to acknowledge that knowing and doing are vastly different things. After all, we're told "let deeds, not words, be your adorning," for a dang good reason I think. Words are easy, doing's the tricky part, and to keep doing and keep trying even when we have scraped our knees for the hundredth time (I have the scars to prove it, I can show you)? That's where the real love is. 

That's the answer, I think. Find the love that drives you. For me, it's the love of God and Baha'u'llah, for you it might be something else entirely. But it's in there. Love yourself enough to keep trying, to keep doing the things out of that love that drives your very soul, and that's what obedience really looks like.