Grounded Hope

I woke up thinking about the Earth recently. Maybe it was because I had been thinking about the wildfires in Canada, particularly the fires in Ontario, and seeing images of landscapes burning, animals running and lives being impacted. I had also recently talked with Martin Sampson about getting “everyone outside together”...about our relationship with the natural world and what happens when we spend more time in it. And then here was this other side of nature. Fire. Destruction. Massive change.

Checking in with my feelings…there was fear there and concern for all of life impacted. And then, as often happens for me, I started thinking about what I know about nature and its inherent resilience and found myself reflecting on the times in my own life when it felt like everything was changing. When the landscape I knew suddenly didn't look the same anymore and I couldn't see what was coming next.

So I paused and sat with what I know from years of observing the natural world.

Nature is extraordinarily resilient.

A landscape can be devastated and still hold the possibility of life. Forests change. Ecosystems adapt. Seeds that have been sitting dormant emerge. Life returns...although perhaps not in exactly the same form it existed before.

And I wondered...what if this is one of the things nature can teach us?

Not that everything will be okay or return to the way it was. Maybe that's not even the promise we need. Maybe the reminder is that change is part of being alive and resilience doesn't mean returning to what was. Sometimes resilience means adapting to what is. Becoming something new. Finding a way forward when the landscape you knew no longer exists.

And because we are nature, isn't the resilience I see in the living world also part of me?

I've been through fires of my own. Not literal ones, thankfully, but times when parts of my life seemed to be burning down and I couldn't imagine what could possibly grow in their place. And yet...here I am. Changed. Not untouched and definitely not returned to exactly who I was before. But still here. Still growing.

I talk a lot about listening to nature and I think this is what I mean. For me, listening is often about noticing. Looking for the pattern. The metaphor. The lesson. Asking...what does the living world know about this that I may have forgotten?

That kind of listening grounds me. It calms me. It gives me hope.

Not the kind of hope that says, “Don't worry. Everything is going to be fine.” Something more honest than that.

Grounded hope.

I don't know what happens next. This may be difficult. Things may change. The landscape may never look the way it did before.

And...life has an extraordinary capacity to adapt, regenerate and continue.

Of course, nature's resilience is not permission for us to ignore our responsibility for the conditions we are helping create. Maybe listening also means being willing to hear the things we'd rather not hear. To pay attention to imbalance. To notice the patterns. To ask what conditions we're creating and what needs to change.

We humans can be extraordinarily smart. We research, study, build models and create incredible technologies. And we need those things. But I wonder if being smart and being wise are exactly the same thing.

The Earth has been here a very long time. Life on Earth has experienced fire, ice, flood, extinction, regeneration, evolution and adaptation. What might all of that experience have to teach us?

Maybe wisdom isn't only about knowing more. Maybe it comes from paying attention long enough to recognize patterns. From experience. From patience. From relationship.

I don't want to become less smart. I want to become wise enough to know where else to listen.

When I saw the fires, I felt fear. And then something larger than the fear became available.

Faith. Trust. Hope.

Maybe grounded hope is not looking away from what is happening, but finding a way to look directly at it without being consumed by fear. Remembering that destruction and regeneration can both be true. That grief and possibility can exist together.

When the landscape of your life changes...where do you look for hope?

Maybe the Earth doesn't promise us that everything will be okay.

Maybe she offers us something more honest. A reminder to hold the both/and…the paradox of being human and our capacity to hold two things as true at the same time. Fear and hope. Destruction and regeneration. Grief and possibility.

And maybe in learning to hold both, rather than needing one to cancel out the other, we find the steadiness we need to move forward.