This video explores the question “How do we be OK with everything NOT being OK?” Where do we find refuge and security with such an uncertain future?

Transcript of video

Today we’re going to be looking at the question of how do we be okay with everything not being okay

The idea of this video came from a conversation I had with a friend of mine Tim in Australia. During this pandemic crisis, someone in street put up a sign that said “don’t worry everything is going to be okay” Now this sign annoyed my friend, which I kind of get. He wanted to write a response to it saying “you know what, no everything is not going to be okay” As it annoyed him and I can understand why.

Because their reassurance of everything I’ll be okay in the midst of a crisis is both facile and disingenuous. Because the truth is we don’t know. there is a possibility that things will get worse, on a lot of levels, politically, economically, and in particular environmentally. we don’t know if everything is going to be okay. we might want that reassurance. Yet in getting that reassurance, what we’re are asking for and wanting, is things will go back to being comfortable. I won’t be inconvenienced. I will not suffer. I can just go back to living my life not being bothered by all these things that are getting in the way of me individually being happy.

That everything is going to “be okay” is often a reassurance of that. Yet the truth is we don’t know what the truth is. For most individuals like myself, I’m not involved in the levers of government, I am not the CEO of a large corporation. I have pretty much have little, to no bearing of influence on how this world institutionally and systemically is run. I’m busy putting bread on the table for my family, looking after my teenage daughters, day-to-day things, normal things. So I have no control or real meaningful input on affecting the global changes that affect me.

So if I have no control little bearing on determining whether things will or won’t be okay, then how can I be okay with that? And this from my end at least is what I’ve come to understand or where I take refuge. As I take refuge in two aspects or two things.

One is developing an experience of inner silence or interior quiet. As I go deeper into my interior silence, I feel more connected and more attuned to what you call it God’s love, whether you call it the beingness, presence, awareness what whatever you are most comfortable calling it. That I can anchor myself in that, has a sense of solidity to it, far more than putting my hopes and expectations on these external things.

The second thing that I take comfort in, or I feel okay with, is the knowingness that I do have love in my heart. That I love my kids, I love my community, I love nature, I have kindness inside of me. Yeah I have my selfishness and I have my issues and fears and shame and worry, of all those but fundamentally there is a love inside of me that’s their day-to-day. I look at people suffering and it hurts inside, you know I have love inside of me, and whatever it does it doesn’t happen out there that remains day to day, day in day out I can come back to that. To be clear that that is consistent and I can depend on that.

So for me to be okay with things not being okay, consists of coming back to that interior silence and taking refuge in that and remembering and bringing my awareness to the fact that I have love in my heart and those two things. I can depend on those two things. I can anchor myself in everything else that is above my paygrade, outside of my control.

The more I make peace with that,the more I just patiently accept that the easier it is to witness and to look at this uncertain future through the lens of a certain kind of optimism. It’s not an optimism based on me remaining comfortable or things going the way that I want. It’s an optimism that comes from being connected to something deeper and more meaningful, than just everything being a certain way externally. In addition to that, I can grow the feeling I can keep working on it being more aware and less selfish, be more loving be more kind connect more deeply to that inner silence. so I have the space to grow that feeling and build that feeling, so I can be more supportive to others.

Maybe do feel a bit more freaked out or more scared. That’s what I’m doing here I mean to share that feeling and communicate that to others that that is where a refuge lies that is where our safety lies it isn’t in having everything externally fixed in a way that we feel in control, rather comes from feeling intimately and constantly connected to God’s love, to our love and sitting in that and being with that and letting that permeate our actions and interactions our way of viewing the world.

So for me, that’s how I get to be okay with everything not being okay.

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