Finding Solace and Grounding Amid the Destruction

Week 4 ends, week 5 begins

In her poem, Diving into the Wreck, Adrienne Rich suggests that even in the face of destruction, there are treasurers that prevail:

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed.

In the heaving turmoil of the last week when so much of what I rely on for ballast has shattered and fallen out from under me, I have been searching for places inside myself to land, for memories of experiences of solidity and strength which offer me something enduring and unfaltering to hold onto.

Here’s a story that emerges from that search:

I learned to sea kayak forty years ago. After only a few hours of instruction in a protected cove, we set off for five days of kayaking across some of the most beautiful and remote parts of Maine’s coast. We stayed overnight on Islands, our lives immersed in rolling ocean, in the endless blue of the day sky, the dark majesty of the star filled night sky, the high call of artic terns, osprey waking us in the mornings and dolphins breaching beside our boats in the day.

My memory of that time is not just of all that beauty which will outlive all of us, but of how novice kayakers like me met the challenge of the sea’s dangers. In those first few hours of instruction, the wind kicking up foot high waves in our little cove, our guide literally turned my world upside down. With ten minutes of instruction about how to do a wet exit, one by one we each rolled our boats over. Upside down in the dark frigid Maine water, the boat over me, I had to find a way to survive in that disorientation. Holding onto my paddle with one hand, I used the other to pull my legs out of the shell, to push myself out of my seat and free myself from the boat. Once on the surface, I had to right my boat, then use my paddle to secure the boat from overturning again when I crawled back into the kayak.

There are two ways to tell this story of my experience that morning. One is the way I just told it to you from the point of view of the courage of the rugged individual overcoming the perils of nature.

But let me tell you the story another way.

When I rolled my boat, I was surrounded by other kayaks and cheering people there to help should anything go wrong. There were arms ready to reach in and pull me out or pull me up, there were people coaching me about how to position the kayak to reenter it. I wasn’t alone. I survived.

When we all finished our baptism of rolling our kayaks and left the cove for the open ocean, one of the paddlers was almost paralyzed by fear. No one told her not to be afraid. Instead, we sang to her. We sang her across the waves, we sang her across the currents, and up onto the beaches we landed on.

The lesson in this is clear. We can’t do this alone. We must come together and support each other. We must join things. Support our school boards, our climate action groups, our local Indivisible groups. We must sing each other across the perilous waves and the hidden currents, sing each other to a safe landing.

I return to this memory because it is embedded in my bones and muscles and nervous system as an experience I can call on to navigate these rough waters. I urge you, readers, to scan your own past and find those moments of grounding and connection in your life and set them out on the table somewhere as charts to help you plot a course through this storm.

I’ve also felt the need amidst all this breakage to find something to hold onto that would sooth and calm me. When cleaning out the basement last week, I found stuffed inside an old trunk, the tattered yellow and white quilt which one of my children used as what we called a binky. A binky, a pacifier, a warm thing you can hold close to your heart that reminds you of your mother’s singing you to sleep at night, of your father carrying you on his back. In mental health jargon it is called a “transitional object”, something that allows you to feel a sense of safety and trust in those times when a parent is not available to you. It could be a blanket, it could be a stuffed animal.

Or it could be a t-shirt with an image printed on it.

The image of Bishop Budde speaking to Trump from the flower-strewn pulpit and invoking the idea of Mercy is that image which has consoled me, inspired me, given me courage in the last month. Feeling the need to have that image close to me, I asked Colin, my son, an artist and illustrator of this newsletter, if he could make a design that I could have printed on a t-shirt and wear close to my heart. My own binky for the dark times.

He said he’d give it a shot. A few days later he sent me this image:

Colin Sullivan-Stevens, copyright 2025

A week later he sent it to the Director of Public Advocacy for the Maine Episcopal Diocese who wrote back immediately saying it gave him the goosebumps. Colin and I have since met with him in the Church’s vaulted office inside an old Victorian mansion on State Street in Portland. They are very excited to use the image and spread it far and wide. Plans are afoot for them to do that.

I have a hunch there are people all over this country who might find this image comforting and inspiring as well. But time is of the essence, as the saying goes, and we are looking for ways this image, printed on t-shirts, buttons, posters, lawn signs could reach a much larger audience than the one either Colin or I are able to reach.

So reader, I am asking for your help and your input.

Would you wear this as a t-shirt, a button, or post a copy of it on a billboard?

Do you know of a trusted organization that might help distribute this image?

Thank you for accompanying me on this journey, reader. When I surface from the dive into the wreck you are there in your boats with an open hand, a song.

And here I am, with Bishop Budde now close to my heart. Thank you Colin for bringing back to life that moment when the Bishop stood atop her pulpit and dared to remind Trump, now one day in office in his second term as President, that “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land".