We can’t begin to know what next week will bring. But we can   b  r  e  a  t  h  e.

Is it possible that a week has gone by already?  According to the calendar, it has, and yet, when an image of a sweet-faced little groundhog popped up on my computer screen this morning, it felt familiar.

Another week of too much news from too many different directions. Everything all at once! Horrific news on top of happy news! While the lives of a lot of our fellow humans were busy with spying and fighting and making up crazy stories and outright lies, some 6,000 of our fellow humans lives ended in the bitter cold pre-dawn hours and the ones that followed … and on the other side of the world where it is summer, a friend’s first grandbaby howled her way into an upside-down world!  These are the bittersweet pairings that make our life our life. We can’t escape them. We can’t wish them away. We can’t outrun them. We can’t begin to know what next week will bring. But we can   b  r  e  a  t  h  e.

So this morning I pulled on my Big Girl Underpants, laced up my tired old mudboots, and decided to bring you this week’s words through the voices of others.  A dozen voices to hear, with words to consider, perhaps to ponder and then maybe even google to learn more.

Here we go, then, with a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Here and there a poem, maybe a song.  Wade through it all or pick and choose (or not) !!  Names to go with the voices will be posted at the end.

Who said?

1. “Mostly I like being a grownup. I love that we know we’re here for more than shiny things and Instagram likes. I love that we know and recognize it’s our responsibility to do our part before we die to simply make the world better.”
2. “To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”  (A good writer, not James Crews, but you might want to read his poem, “Winter Morning.”)
3. “We are committed to having the best and brightest in our classrooms educating our students.” Here’s a hint … also said “Florida is where woke goes to die,” and where high-schoolers menstrual cycles are being tracked for …
4. “My reading at Biscuitville was me walking my talk … If I’m going to talk endlessly about how poetry is everywhere and about the importance of finding poetry in unusual places, Biscuitville was a great opportunity.”  (Part of a nice Black History Month spread in YES! Magazine.)
5. “… trying to come up with something to say… something poignant, something inspiring, something that tries to make sense of yet another wave of mass shootings and fatal police beatings. But I don’t have the words. I’m stuck … stuck in my own paralysis … I don’t have a rallying cry that can inspire us into collective action. I just don’t know what to say, or what to do.”  Feel familiar?
6. “… at our best. Optimistic. Hopeful. Forward-looking. A nation that embraces light over darkness, hope over fear, unity over division, stability over chaos.”
7. “As Chair of my local school board, I want to make decisions that reflect what I want our schools to look like … I want to be courageous on behalf of our students. I want to have faith in my community that we will be civil, that we will honor our shared humanity through dignity and connection to a common purpose.”  You might be surprised by what school district this is.
8. “If I weren’t living through it, I wouldn’t believe it’s happening.”
9. “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.”
10. “…  eight time zones away an earthquake registering 7.8 broke too many countries into too many pieces … “
11. “We must end the merciless, relentless, senseless war on nature.  ….  that war is putting our world at immediate risk of hurtling past the 1.5 degree temperature increase limit and now still moving towards a deadly 2.8 degrees.”
12. “But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how / except in the minds of those who call it Now? / The children. The children.  ….  Who were many people coming together / cannot become one people falling apart. / Who dreamed for every child an even chance / cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.  … Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child / cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.”

And how about this for a song?

And now for their names.

1. Jamie Lee Curtis at AARP’s “Movies for Grownups” gala.
2. Herman Melville. And here’s a link to James Crews “Winter Morning.”
3. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
4. Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina’s first Black Woman Poet Laureate
5. Wendy Cluse, Co-Leader West Hills UU Fellowship’s Social Justice Steering Committee
6. Joseph R. Biden, President of the United States of America
7. Chelsea King, West Linn-Wilsonville, Oregon School Board Chair. Note: Chelsea will be our “Conversation With Friends” guest on February 26^th. Watch for more about her next week, and in the meantime, perhaps read her essays in Oregon Humanities.
8. A Florida parent & substitute teacher
9. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee-Sanders
10. Maya Stein, this week’s “10-Line Tuesday”
11. Antonio Guerres, Secretary General of the United Nations
12. Miller Williams, from his poem “Of History and Hope.”

Until next time, May All Be Well for all of us, for all those we hold close, and for all those that we don’t.