Today’s post comes from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D, who wrote the best seller, WOMEN WHO RUN WITH WOLVES.  It is an essay, sent to me by Kristine VanRaden and Molly Davis, two radiant, life-long friends who co-authored the as-seen-on-Oprah-book, LETTERS TO OUR DAUGHTERS, and who are now stashed away in some mountain hide-out, writing the memoirs of their rich and enduring, multi-chaptered friendship.  I thank all these women for their contribution to purety of intention and open-ness of heart in the world. I think you will too. 

 *YOU WERE MADE FOR THIS*

My friends, do not lose heart.  We were made for these times. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

…..Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times.  There is a tendency to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside our reach.  Do not focus there.  That is like spending the wind without raising the sails.  We are needed.  That is all we need to know.  And, though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.  Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul……will help immensely.  It is not up to us to know which acts or by whom will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.  What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing.  What we know is that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second or hundreth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul.  Soul on deck shines like gold in the dark.  The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire.  To display the lantern of the soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.  Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.  If you would help calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.