Oct 3, 2017
Resourcing in the Midst of Chaos
“Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you.” — Danny Meyer
So much has happened to us in the past few days, the past few months, the past few years. The knives of oppression have been sharpened on the bodies and spirits of black and brown people, women and gender fluid people, people who do not love in simplistic heterosexual patterns. Extractive industries continue to pillage the earth without acknowledging the cost to everyone. Hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, domestic terrorism, and threats of nuclear war fill timelines and newsfeeds.
And in the midst of what is happening to us, we are invited to search for what is happening for us and with us. How do we affirm glimmers of sustaining hospitality in the midst of struggle?
In The Art of Empathy, empath Karla McLaren offers the concept of resourcing as a tool for opening space around our own suffering and finding comfort for ourselves and others. She writes, “There’s a way that pain and trouble can sort of dampen or silence the parts of you that feel fine, strong, and resourceful; in the presence of pain and trouble, it’s easy to hyperfocus on difficulties and lose your awareness of the fact that you also have sources of comfort inside you that are fully accessible right now.”
Resourcing is not a practice of ignoring or repressing pain and trouble. Rather, it is an invitation to name what is also good and strong and competent in you and in your life at the same time you are acknowledging suffering. McLaren offers, “with resourcing, you can learn how to pay attention to more than one thing.”
My stomach really hurts and my ankle is working well this week. The power is out and I know where my family is. Systemic racism is perpetrating violence and there is a life-affirming resistance awake in the world.
Resourcing can keep us grounded, breathing in and out through struggle, without getting lost in the negative, brutal spiral often induced by hyperfocusing. The practice of resourcing enables us to offer hospitality to ourselves and to each other in the midst of very bad things. It allows us to maintain a sense of agency during events that can make us feel very helpless.
Resourcing is the practical cousin of the more aspirational gratitude practice. While gratitude practice is powerful, it is often hard to access in midst of pain and struggle. For instance, it is much easier for me to practice resourcing than to engage in gratitude practice around grief.
My granny died in the hospital before I could get home to say good-bye. My granny taught me how to garden and I feel a strong connection to her when I am gardening. Both are true. Focusing on both of these things — the sorrow and the strength — allows me to acknowledge my grief and offer myself hospitality for my experience without being incapacitated by regret or having to pretend to be grateful in the midst of my loss.
In a time of rapidly accelerating climate chaos and a political climate of chaos, resourcing is an important skill to practice.
You can take a moment now to practice resourcing. Perhaps you have a been sitting with pain or trouble today. There is so much being done to us. Take a deep breath in this moment and acknowledge your pain and trouble. Breathe out. And then, taking another deep breath, seek out within your being a place of comfort, a place that feels stable and grounded and strong right now. Breathe out.
Breathing in and out, practice opening your focus beyond the pain or trouble that is in hyperfocus within you right now to include the parts of you that feel fine, that feel solid and stable. Continue breathing in and out until you can sense a shift of perspective within you, from a narrowed focus to an inclusive one. Continue breathing in and out, acknowledging your struggle and your strength.
Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen offered this:
True hospitality is welcoming the stranger on her own terms. This kind of hospitality can only be offered by those who’ve found the center of their lives in their own hearts.
Resourcing is a spiritual practice that allows us to find the center of our lives and offer hospitality to ourselves and to each other in a time of rapidly accelerating climate chaos and a political climate of chaos. Chose to practice resourcing, friends. And may we all find the courage and love to offer the hospitality required by these times.
