Dreams are delicate things... born out of hope and desire and air.
They are vulnerable to daylight, as fragile as a moth's wing.
The brush of a hand can crush them.
Dreams also have the power to fuel our journey to the future.
They drive us forth like engines.
Dreams are the bricks with which we build a life we cannot touch.
They are signposts and signals.
Dreams are the promise we make to ourselves.
Call the Midwife, Season 12, episode 8
Every episode begins with a voice-over like this one by the mature Jenny who was a young midwife in Poplar when the series began.
I haven't had much to say these past weeks, but much to take in. Call the Midwife always offers the most wonderful embrace of wisdom and human to human love. So I'm departing from what I'd planned to write about. I'll just name this series an enchantment for me, a warm cozy blanket.
It's been a rough patch. Chronic pain has raised my blood pressure and caused me at times to feel like a virtual hermit, up all hours of the night, then catching up with sleep during the day.
In the big picture of things, it's small potatoes. The world feels is anxious, too, in a chaotic global pain. Innocent people are being killed almost every day in America in places we used to assume were safe. In America--more mass murders than anywhere in the world.
Two young extraordinary representatives named Justin were ejected from the Tennessee state house because they protested against gun violence. People are demonstrating all over the country about injustices against reproductive freedom and gun violence while extreme right leaders are doing everything they can to hold on to their puny pathetic power.
When I feel powerless, I watch (or read, or listen to) something reassuring and powerful. Or I visit, in person, via email, and on the phone with good people. I am rich in knowing so many.
Dear precious people check in with me every day, walk Luci when I can't, bring food or share a meal, offer to go with me to doctors' appointments. Yesterday, Will took me to breakfast and went with me to see the orthopedist, my second pair of ears. It was wonderful to have someone who loves me help absorb information, strap on my new ankle brace, and help me feel peaceful on an otherwise stressful day.
"Meanwhile the world goes on" keeps echoing in my mind, words from the Mary Oliver poem, "Wild Geese."
Way bigger things than mine are going on and on and on. People are losing loved ones to disease and random violence.
I haven't even finished the book I intended to write about on my last post. I've been so absorbed with the anxiety part I haven't even gotten to the "finding enchantment" part. All I know at this moment is the truth of another line in this most recent episode of Midwife: "Go where the love is."
Each episode ends with an epilogue, too, like this ever so timely one:
We cannot predict what the fates will bring.
We can only find strength and hope and survival in each other.
There will be new dreams one day.
There will be reasons to go on.
Let in the truth.
Embrace the real.
Open your arms to the things you did not look for, for you will find what you did not seek, be given what you did not know you lacked, and be lavished with a joy that takes your breath away.
Here are life's riches next to you.
Here, in the faces of your friends... in the laughter of their children... in the tenderness of those you love and work and lived with.
This is community, our end and our beginning.
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