O is for ONE

October 13, 2025

Life keeps on keeping on. Unspeakable horrors and cruelties and indignities occurring side by side with courage and strength and joy.

I vacillate day to day about where all of this is leading. Some days I am very pessimistic - it’s gonna get a lot worse (probably true) before it gets better.

But it IS going to get better - this is the other thought that I have, the one that I cling to.

Today I listened to The Best People podcast with Nicolle Wallace - she was interviewing that wonderful human being, Martin Sheen, both actor and activist. He shared many stories about his activism during the sixties and beyond, working alongside movement leaders and ordinary citizens like you and me, always working to lift the country up to be the best it can be, always using strategies of non-violent civil disobedience.

Martin rues the loss of humanity we are witnessing, in the Oval Office, among ICE and others, within our citizenry. The loss of humanity. That is what we need to regain, to reweave it into who we are, to never lose sight of.

With the recent losses of Jane Goodall and Joanna Macy, I am reminded again and again of our interconnectedness, our interdependence, our oneness - not only between humans, humanity, but between humans and the rest of the world of living and non-living earth beings. One.

What lifts one person or being up, lifts everyone else. What destroys one affects us all.

We are hurting here and across the globe.

I have no certain answers. I only know what I can do.

May we each do what we can do each day to lift us all up.

One of the hymns that always brings me to tears is “Song of Peace,” with lyrics set to the Finlandia music by Sibelius. I encourage you to find a recording of this. Here are the lyrics:

This is my song, O God of all the nations

A song of peace, for lands afar and mine

This is my home, the country where my heart is

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine

But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations

A song of peace for their land and for mine

Amen.

Hope to see you at the No Kings event on October 18.

Photo: One Leaf. Mingo Creek, October 13, 2025.

This single leaf brought me such joy and hope. Each of us can be that beacon as well.