Beautiful Days
So many things are happening around our city and the country that are confusing, difficult to understand and often display a certain degree of ugliness about our world. There are more people on the streets who are homeless, mass shootings, a rise in Nazi and fascist groups, the East Wing of the White House has been torn down, and ICE agents continue threatening and arresting our neighbors.
And from around the world, we’re dealing with climate change, wars in such places as Gaza and the Ukraine, and pandemics.
In times like these, how do we create and embrace beauty? How can you and I uplift the beautiful spirit that flickers in all of us, even in those darkest moments? How do we represent our better angels and bring beauty to our city by the lake?
Maybe, it begins by asking a simple question. How do I stay human? In a world of angry rhetoric, divisive politics, impatience, noise, growing disparity, self-absorption, and isolation, how do I stay human? The first steps could be embracing our humility, a search for meaning beyond our personal lives, and the resilience to find a moral compass that guides and directs us.
In his book Master of Change: The Case for Rugged Flexibility, Brad Stulberg wrote:
A lotus is an exquisite species of flower. Its colors are bright and striking, its petals open and inviting. What makes lotus flowers so fascinating is that they grow out of mud. They taught that suffering is like mud. But we can transform suffering into a beautiful and radiant lotus flower: compassion. It’s a transformation that does not usually happen when you are in the thick of a trying experience. But if you can keep showing up, over and over and over again, eventually you’ll get to the other side. Once you do, odds are you’ll have gained a fair share of compassion along the way. With each significant cycle of order, disorder, and reorder we endure, we become a bit kinder and softer towards others. If anything comes of suffering, it is this.
In the mud and suffering that seems to be everywhere we turn to look, where can we plant our lotus flowers? How can we keep showing up with a deeper sense of compassion and kindness? With each cycle of order and disorder, how do we reorder ourselves to endure and keep our commitments to bring more beauty to the greater community of Duluth in these difficult and challenging times?
There is so much suffering today. The immigrants are suffering. The LBGTQ community is suffering. The poor and homeless are suffering. The disabled and elderly are suffering. Also, there are teachers, students, environmentalists, healthcare professionals, scientists and other groups in our society who are suffering because they value critical thinking and making wise choices for the common good.
Think about the next 24 hours in your life. And think about the arrival of 2026. And then explore how you could possibly plant a lotus flower in your home, your neighborhood or somewhere in this city. How could you bring more compassion or kindess to your friends, neighbors or the vulnerable people in Duluth who are facing and struggling with homelessness, poverty, unemployment, medical issues, addictions, racism or mental illness?
As we say goodbye to 2025 and welcome a new year, let us take every opportunity to create a more beautiful city by the lake.
Francis Weller, in his book In The Absence Of The Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty, talks about how we move forward in life with courage and faith in uncertain times like these. Weller wrote:
Courage to keep our hearts open to face the world as it is and faith that something meaningful lingers in the descent. How can we, once again, come to see the holiness that dwells in the darkness?
In these dark days, there is so much we know little or nothing about and there are so many things that we have little or no control over. But we do have ourselves and our individual and collective abilities to act out of hope for a more compassionate, creative and courageous city. Let’s keep showing up to help create and sustain a more beautiful Duluth.