As a species, we’ve set aside certain dates to make resolves, to settle differences, to celebrate with festivals, and to renew vows of spiritual, ethical, and religious practice.

We call these the New Year, Nowruz, Holi, and many other names.  We’ve been observing the earth and the skies and the tides and the revolutions of the seasons for millennia and creating calendars based on them that acknowledge our collective need to begin again.

Everyone who makes art and is touched by art begins again. These activities of art-making and appreciating art are embedded in us, part of our human heritage. This is true for each of us today.

Making art and contemplative practice are human birthrights, deeply encoded within each of us. Sharing them is also part of our fiber. I find myself reflecting on this again when the shadow side of human nature—our fear and anger—threatens to cover even the sun. Then I turn to the poets and artists, ancient and contemporary, and to contemplative practice. 

I turn to the meditative practice of breathing with whatever arises to allow the natural compassion we also share as humans to arise from the silence and the intention to see clearly. I turn to these fundamental arts and practices because they are what has sustained us and allowed us to survive. I turn to them from the conviction of my own experience that, as an early Buddhist poem phrases it, “Never is hatred conquered by hatred,/but by readiness to love alone./This is the eternal law.”