Dear Nadia, I am struggling with the world’s weight.

(Good Lord, same here)

Dear Nadia, I am struggling with the world’s weight. I know it’s not mine alone to carry, but every bit of bummer-news is like an assault on my heart. How can I serve the world when the world’s condition is so heavy?

-Kathryn

Dear Kathryn,

Do you remember that early video game Tetris? Shapes fall from the top of the screen, and you rotate them so they fit together. When you get it right, a whole row disappears. It was oddly satisfying.

That is, until it inevitably sped up. Then the strategies I used before quickly failed me. The shapes would fall quicker than my brain could figure out how to rotate them. I’d panic, make bad choices, spin them the wrong direction—until I was buried under stupidly stacked shapes.

When you said every bit of bummer-news feels like an assault, that’s the image that popped into my head.

Because it feels like news isn’t informing us as much as it’s landing on us right now.

I used to be able to take each individual shape that fell and maybe place it in context, manage the truth of it so I didn’t feel buried. And the next one would drop and I’d try and do the same. But now that shit is falling on us at dizzying speed and there’s just no chance of managing it all.

So yeah Kathryn, the world feels heavy right now, and like it’s burying us under its stupidly stacked shapes.

It may be a lie that tender people are especially prone to believing: that if I really loved the world, I’d be able to carry it.

But none of us can carry it all, my friend. And yet each of us can carry a bit. Something. A mountain, or a morsel; a whole community or just a wee corner of the world that fits our hands.

None of us are equipped for all of it—but each of us is equipped for some of it.

My best friend lives in the Twin Cities and told me that last week, ICE was setting up in the parking lot behind a Lutheran church, not realizing the quilters were there that day. The women confronted them, asking if they were proud of what they were doing - and suggested that, if so, they should go set themselves up in front where more people could see them.

They left.

So maybe serving a heavy world doesn’t mean absorbing its full weight. Maybe it means setting down what isn’t ours, and lifting the one small, specific thing that is. Tending a body. Telling the truth. Making enough soup to feed yourself—and pouring a little extra into a jar to drop off for a neighbor. Showing up to a demonstration even if you’ve never been to one. Loving fiercely where your feet actually are. Taking a video of anything you see that’s unjust, even if your hands are shaking. Resisting despair and all its empty promises.

That won’t save everything. But it will save something. And that is how we keep going.

May God guide us all to know what is ours to do; activists, grandmothers, lawyers, clergy, teachers, children, and of course, quilters.

In it with you,

Love,

Nadia

p.s. I commend to you this song by the luminous Ahlay Blakely.

I sing this sometimes with and for the women inside the prison. But on the day before my mastectomy, on my final Sunday with them before my medical leave, they insisted on encircling me with this song, and of course I just totally lost it and was teary mess.

p.p.s. I’d love to hear what you guys are doing. Is there a piece of this heavy world that fits into your own hand - and if so, tell me about it!

I recently discovered We Don’t Waste - the take food that would normally be thrown out for not being perfect, and packages it up to be used (for free) by folks who need it. They have an app for volunteers so if you a have a free afternoon you just log on to see what needs doing and sign up! I have a warehouse shift this Tuesday for a couple hours to load pallets and I suspect it will be just what I need to fend off despair another day.