Be the Light in the Dark of This Danger ‘til the Sun Comes Up

Be the Light in the Dark of This Danger ‘til the Sun Comes Up
March 5, 2025March 9, 2025
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Latest posts by Sulima Malzin (see all)

Hope sleeps in our bones like a bear
waiting for spring to rise and walk … Marge Piercy

These words are from Piercy’s poem, Who Shall Bear Hope and the words above my friend Jean’s photo are the final lines of a beautiful song titled A Safe Place to Land, performed by Sara Bareilles and John Legend in a video at the end of this missive.  If your heart needs warming and you choose to read nothing in between, I encourage you to check out both the poem and the song.

With so much rapid-fire news coming at us from all directions, my ideas for today’s Light Waves have been many. Each time I thought I had pinned down what I most wanted to share, I found myself in what my dear friend Maya calls “the messy middle” or what an old teacher used to refer to as “hangin’ out in the dangle’” … uncomfortably close to the edge of despair.  But then I remembered another teacher, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, telling us: Do not lose heart. We were made for these times…..For years we have been learning, practicing, been in training for…and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

Deep breath. Deep breath. Deep Breath. Seriously? Did I really sign up for this “plain of engagement”??  Maybe so. As Willie Nelson likes to say … “We didn’t get this far by being stupid” and “Don’t mess with old people; the threat of a Life Sentence doesn’t mean much to us anymore.”  But as the days flew by, splattered as they’ve been with more and more shit hitting the fan, I questioned my ability to feel hope, much less be a bearer of it.  Then out of nowhere came this quote from a 1947 speech by Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian Independence Movement: In the midst of darkness, light persists. And the very next night on Turner Classic Movies, there it was … the Oscar-winning film, “Gandhi,” starring the late Ben Kingsley. Out of nowhere had come the light wave I didn’t even know I was looking for. I find this happens a lot if I remember to keep my eyes open and not turn away.

Next, along came Joyce Vance, who ended her Civil Discourse of February 25th with Thomas Paine’s famous words: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”  Joyce ends that post with: “There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeeds, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice.”

And finally, after the Oval Office’s made-for-tv circus performance on the last day of February 2025, a powerful recap by Heather Cox Richardson, which she closed with this from Liz Cheney: “Generations of American patriots, from our revolution onward, have fought for the principles Zelenskyy is risking his life to defend. But today, Donald Trump and JD Vance attacked Zelenskyy and pressured him to surrender the freedom of his people to the KGB war criminal who invaded Ukraine. History will remember this day—when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for.”

Perhaps the most powerful and helpful words for me (besides Marge Piercy’s poem and Sara and John’s song) these past weeks came from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s reminder that Hitler’s takeover began with the rapid growth of seeds of distrust, hate, blame, and despair, and took Hitler’s Nazis less than one month to do away with what had been Germany.

For us now as Americans just six weeks into Project 2025, led by a convicted felon, a misogynistic hillbilly (no offense meant to the majority of honest, hard-working Appalachians) and a hopped-up-on-ketamine billionaire determined to abandon all we stand for, let’s hope with all our hearts that it is not too late for US (that is us as in We the People) to stomp out the rising flames of fascism / nazism threatening to become a wildfire in the coming weeks.  Let us Hope Together for a Safe Place to Land ‘til the sun comes up.

Sending Blessings, Much Love, and Unrelenting Hope,
Sulima