Take the pain and the fear hold it in your hands breathe with it just be with it. We’ve been dying for millennia, but the energy does not die

We’ve been dying for millennia,
but the energy does not die
it can be transformed
is still here

Turn toward the world you want
Turn toward this world you need

This world is in your body, your bones, blood and skin

Freedom is a place,
a place that we make

Where life is precious life is precious

The world, the past, is in your mouth

Take the pain and the fear
hold it in your hands
breathe with it
just be with it
Be with it when it turns to reveal its other side
it’s other side is love for this world 

Move back-and-forth into this change
this uncontainable of the dark,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses

What would it mean to stand reverently before your grief?  
sit with what it would mean to turn this mourning
bringing you more deeply into the love that lies just on the other side
inscribe the world with justice
turn to bask in hope

Never forget the awe and the beautifully joy of living in this world
be a defining and insistent presence within the world we have to remake ahead of us, 
speak this into being
write this hope into existence
the world, the present, is in your mouth

learn to use the word WE to include all of life on earth
see yourself your body expanding over many generations, those before and those to come

move towards the future you want to inscribe
bringing it into being

embody a wild love for the world
embody the fierce hope that rises irrepressible from this love.

the world, the future, is in your mouth
place yourself in the whole of time. 

Guided and inspired by the words and worlds of
Mary Catherine Bateson
adrienne marry brown
Fourthland
Ross Gay
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Joy Harjo
Joanna Macy
Mouries Collective
Naomi Shihab Nye
Rumi
Krista Tippett
Ocean Vuong

Maria Juliana Byck, March 2026, Athens