I scour the newsfeeds, as if my search will lead me to the thing I seek the most. Hope.
It isn’t there. At least, I can’t feel it beneath the fear that rises up to grip me.
I do not want to feel the fear and instead, turn to my studio, as if in immersing myself there, I will discover hope rising.
I still feel lost in my fear of the fear that stalks me.
I lose myself in a book, as if the words lining the page will somehow make sense of what is happening in the world around me.
I lose my place in the words I read again and again. My eyes blurring with fatigue and worry of fear’s tight grip.
I numb my senses in a Netflix series, as if the ongoing drama of fictitious characters will somehow help me find my place in all that is going on in the world around me.
I cannot stop what is going on in the world around me. I struggle to free myself from this place where fear threatens to drown me.
Holding my breath as if underwater, I fear I have nowhere to go.
I let go of fear. I take a breath. And then another. Life-giving oxygen fills my lungs. Fills my being. Fear diminishes. Courage rises.
I dive deep into myself, breathing into the beauty of this moment where the river flows endlessly towards a distant sea.
Above its steely grey surface, I watch a family of three walking with their dog across the bridge. The leash is held in their child’s hand, taut. The dog pulls. The child rushes to keep up. The dad rushes to help his child. There is fear in his quick steps. I cannot hear them but I can see the child’s laughter. The child’s joyful insistence that they keep hold of the leash. The dog pulls, urging the child to keep going. The child runs after the dog. Laughing. The parents join hands and follow.
I breathe in the joy of this tiny moment played out upon the bridge and feel the heaviness of my fear lighten up.
I watch two geese skim the surface of the river, honking loudly in their flight. Their wings expand and they fly up into the still chilly air of this April morning where spring hides high above in a clear blue sky. A cold front is passing slowly, ever so slowly, through. In the presence of the geese returning from southern lands, I am reminded, this too shall pass. Spring will blossom.
My heart lifts with the expansiveness of the geese taking flight and I feel life flow throughout my being present in their passing by. There is hope here. This too shall pass.
Held in still, soulful silence in the deepness of this present moment, I watch two squirrels chase each other up and down and all-around a tree trunk. They are fearless in their wild flight from tree limb to tree limb. My heart beats wildly. There is joy in their animal kingdom style game of tag.
I smile with them. My heart beats freely. Joy is here. Laughter. Fearlessness. Life.
I scoured the headlines searching for hope.
It wasn’t there.
It is here. Silently flowing all around me and deep within me. It flows like the river, carrying me always deeper into this present moment where the eternal beauty of life fills me up and I flow fearlessly in its embrace over the threshold of this moment, into the next.
And in each moment, I take a deep, life-giving breath and find myself lovingly held within the beauty of this moment right now.
This moment in which love flows freely.
I searched the headlines this morning looking for hope. I found only fear lurking between the black and white words and numbers blurred into incomprehensible statistics beneath my tears.
I wanted to give in to fear. I wanted to dive deep into hopelessness.
Instead, I chose to follow the thread of the river to where it leads me deep within to that sacred place where all I need to sustain my peace of mind in these days of turmoil and grief is that which is ever-constant, ever-flowing. Love.
I wanted to give in to fear this morning.
I choose Love.
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I am sharing this with the Tuesday Photo Challenge as the word this week is Hope. Without hope of this pandemic’s end, the future would be grim.
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I love time by the sea. Time spent with my grandson and his parents – and this trip had the added bonus of my youngest daughter also being there as well as C.C.’s daughter. I love time spent wandering Granville Island Market and Jericho Beach. Time sitting in coffee shops with my daughter chatting and exploring what it means to be a woman, wife, mother, in this time and place. Time alone in a restaurant by the sea, writing in my journal, watching the boats bob on the water and people pass by on the street. And most of all, I love the time playing on the floor with my grandson, reading, playing with his blocks and fleet of toy cars and trucks. 
We drove home yesterday. Up and over the Coquihalla to the interior. Along the vast expanse of Lake Okanagan to the Rockies. We crossed over Roger’s Pass and then Kicking Horse further east. We drove down out of the mountains to the rolling foothills towards the city and home.
Inside, at The Lodge at Middle Beach, we were warm and cozy. Outside the winds howled. The surf surged and trees danced in the storm.
I didn’t do it.
Time called out to the wind as it blew past,
With its memories safely tucked away for a rainy day in the deep pockets of the horizon filled with time blowin’ in the wind, the world kept spinning as the hands of time kept turning.
Caught up in the joy of blowin’ in the wind and the who it was it could not forget, time could not stop. Without missing a beat time kept on passing by as the world kept spinning around the sun and the moon kept rising to greet the dark and the waves kept crashing as time passed by.
Dare Boldly 