Devotion is a remedy for despair

​Devotion is a remedy for despair.
To what are you devoted, and what does your devotion inspire or require you to do?
 
We are living through devastating and disorienting times. It seems like everyone I know is overwhelmed by the relentless headlines detailing the actions of this administration.
Most of us are exhausted.
Many of us don’t know what to do in the face of so much assault and uncertainty.
 
In the midst of personal and political despair, what becomes possible when we return to our own devotions?
What practices and responses come into focus when we reorient our lives around that to which we are devoted?
 
Perhaps you aren’t immediately clear about your devotions.
Another way of approaching these reflections would be to consider your life as a practice or even a ritual and ask: to what or to whom is this practice or ritual devoted?
What do I revere or to what am I committed through this life that I am living?
 
Devotion also brings us into a temporality that is deeper and longer than the urgent crises of this moment.
We remember our reverence and commitments that have guided our paths for many years before, and we ground ourselves in the ways that same reverence and those same commitments will guide our paths for many years to come.
 
This is not in any way to say that we ignore the crises of this moment, but rather it is to suggest that our devotion has the potential to inform our actions in ways that are in greater alignment with the worlds for which we long, rather than constantly organizing ourselves and our actions from a state of reaction to tyrannical policies and forces.
 
I am devoted to spaciousness, slowness, subtlety, and pleasure as some of my most sacred values.
I am devoted to embodiment, personal and collective healing and liberation, nonviolence, and multi-species flourishing on this damaged planet.
I am devoted to learning, making meaning, and producing knowledge as well as mystery, questions that refuse to be fully answered or contained, and the bright Black field of possibility—to use language from Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
 
Each of these devotions informs how I move and respond, both in moments of crisis as well as all the moments that come before and after.
Each of these devotions brings me into greater alignment with the worlds I am working toward and others who are also working to bring such worlds into being.
 
As you bring your attention again to your devotions, may they inform how you move and respond, and may they bring you into greater alignment with the worlds for which you are working and others who are also working to bring such worlds into being.