I shall stand for love

I have come to dread reading the news. Almost everything is bad news. Violence, hatred, greed, climate change, the fascist resurgence, genocide, natural disasters… Was it always this bad? It feels like doomscrolling is a fact of life. How should we respond?

We have to stand firm, and maintain our own personal integrity, and do what we can to reverse the tide. Our own little may not be much. But it's better than nothing. And doing nothing, or turning away, is an inner death.

Going inside to draw on your inner reserves – the whole spirituality thing – is one way. Another is to look outside, and celebrate goodness where we see it, and find strength in identifying with it.

This is where poetry comes in. If a poet is someone who writes poetry, then I am not a poet. But I read a lot of poetry, and I find meaning in poetry, and it nourishes my soul. Poetry expresses what it means to be human and it helps me to make sense of all the chaos that surrounds me.

Here is a beautiful poem that sums up how I feel. It's by the Belgian poet Dorothy Oger (pictured above) and she published it about 10 years ago. It's called 'I shall stand for love'.

I shall stand for love,
Even with a broken soul,
Even with a heavy heart.

I shall stand for love,
For the world is wounded.
Not just my little piece of land,
Where I am mostly safe,
Where I am mostly well,
But our world, everywhere
Every day.

I shall stand for love,
Because we need more light,
Not more deaths,
Not more power,
Not more bombs.

I shall stand for love,
So that our children are safe
So that our friends are sheltered
So that our borders are open.

I shall stand for love,
Even with a broken soul,
Even with a heavy heart.

Postscript: in an article on the Guardian website on 6 September, Simon Tisdall also commented on the state of the world and all its bad news. He reached a similar conclusion to me:

The future lies not in the hands of political thugs and killers, of dictators and megalomaniacs, but in the hands of ordinary people everywhere. It depends on millions upon millions of individual daily acts of kindness, selflessness, faith and courage. So don’t lose heart.