A Constant Tension

At the end of my time in Mali, I picked up a book called, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice and Beauty to the World, by Paul Hawken. It is a thought-provoking and inspiring chronicle of the synergy found in the intersections of the social justice, environmental protection and human rights movements. In the intro to the first chapter, I found a quote that blew my mind. I had been trying to put into words a set of conflicting ideas and emotions, and this quote from Barry Lopez in Arctic Dreams nailed it:

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the the midst of such a paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

And from the same book:

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed
I have cast my lot with those
who, age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

- poet Adrienne Rich