How to Breathe in Uncharted Times: A Case Study
Is time running out?
Am I being urgent enough?
Or, am I taking things too seriously?
What’s next?
Will there even be a “next”?
When I encounter the unknown, the unpredictability of it, I often feel paralyzed. I felt some of this upon graduating from YDS with no fixed career plan in place. I felt it even more when, less than a year later, everyone’s lives upended in a global pandemic. I even felt this paralysis when trying to host a Zoom meeting for the first time. Some paralyzing events are microscopic: my heart skips a beat. Other occasions are all-consuming: my mind goes blank.
Beyond the microbiome of my body, this “embodied pause” has been a constant companion in my vocational path. Perhaps paths would be a better term. Or multi-vocational. To inhabit the life I live is to carry a rotating collection of vocational hats. I have a sweatshirt that says Yale Divinity School, a T-shirt that says Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and an actual hat, in red plaid, brandishing the words: Yale Forestry. My first few years after graduation, whenever I would find myself at a figurative crossroads, I would often ask: which hat is best suited for the space I am about to enter? There is only enough room, I told myself, for one version of Anna at a time. Anna of Religion, Anna of Ecology, or Anna of the Arts.
Crisis feels so confident, so precise. And yet. I believe the space between hope and dread is an invitation.
Many encounter these micro- and macro-paralyses, in one shape or another, whenever we gaze toward the horizon of our shared future. We are inundated with reports of unsuccessful climate negotiations, of environmental conservation targets unreached, or of the news that microplastics flood our bodies on every level. These are not mere day-to-day concerns; these uncertain conditions now shadow entire lifetimes. How could we not feel paralyzed by such unbending uncertainties on a collective, planetary scale? By collective, I mean it in the fullest sense possible: how can we, as a human species—immersed in the more-than-human web of relationships constituted by insects, fungi, plants, animals, and all other materials in our universe—find meaning when our prophesied “finish lines” seem so dire? Is there any way out of this posture of ecological grief, or are we perpetually painted into its corner?
Vague Hopes, Precise Fears
All this takes its toll. Despite our human capacity to imagine yet-untold futures of any shape or color, so often we fall in step with what the French poet Paul Valéry describes: “We hope vaguely, we dread precisely.” This tends to manifest acutely in the alarmist narratives that cross my path, mainly of environmental gloom. Crisis feels so confident, so precise. And yet. I believe the space between hope and dread is an invitation. It is this space, the liminal reality between anticipatory knowns and anticipatory unknowns, where I have learned to breathe. Not only to breathe, but to breathe deeply, restoratively, and imaginatively.
One of my favorite “deep breathing” experiences in recent years:
A few months after finishing graduate school, I joined the board of directors for a small tree-planting nonprofit in my city. Over the next year, as we transitioned into pandemic-era urban reforestation, we brainstormed how our organization could tend to both planet and people. While my environment degree afforded me a seat at that table, my divinity degree amplified my capacity to be creative: I called up a former YDS classmate, who had done her CPE at my local hospital; she connected me with the hospital’s Director of Spiritual Care. This director and I spoke on the phone for almost an hour, she reflecting on how spiritual care had evolved during the pandemic, and me asking whether the chaplaincy team might like some donated trees. That conversation led to many more. What began as an offer of some trees blossomed into the establishment of a healing garden in the inner atrium to honor the hospital’s healthcare workers.
An Odd Sight
We decided on Nurse Appreciation Day for the tree installations. Along with fellow nonprofit volunteers, I helped coordinate deliveries of trees and shrubs. We laughed, under our masks, as we wheeled the trees down the hospital’s hallway. It must have been an odd sight: instead of patients being transported in wheelchairs, it was dogwoods and a serviceberry tree in wheelbarrows.
The Director of Spiritual Care also advocated fiercely for healthcare workers to participate in the tree plantings. Incredibly, hospital administration agreed, and, during their shifts, teams of nurses were able to rotate away from patient bedsides to the earthside of this garden-in-formation. I directed these teams of nurses, still suited up in their scrubs, as they dug holes and learned techniques to roll trees into their designated spots. A comedic highlight was when a cluster of ob-gyn nurses battled over who, after their tree was planted, got to cut the cord wrapped around its branches. We all cheered when the cord was expertly cut, the branches fanning out from the trunk. These trees had completed their long journey from greenhouse to hospital garden. They could finally breathe.
Immersed in Meaning
If there is anything a divinity school alum appreciates, it is seizing the opportunity for ceremony. Wonderfully, the hospital’s spiritual care team planned a dedication ceremony for this garden at the end of the day. Chaplains offered prayers, a CPE intern played the violin, and remarks were given. I looked around at all involved—the healthcare workers, the chaplains, the tree nursery landscapers, my fellow nonprofit volunteers—all of us masked and immersed in meaning. The garden dedication concluded, and before everyone dispersed, all nurses were invited to participate in an optional Blessing of the Hands. (Not knowing what this was, I immediately sidled over to the spiritual care director, who explained to me how this healthcare tradition, thought to have originated with Florence Nightingale in the 1800s, is a symbolic gesture in which hands of nurses are blessed and recognized for their role in offering healing and compassion.)
As I helped clean up the tools, mulch, and other material items from our full day, I could observe the nurses line up, and, one by one, a chaplain would pour water over their hands, over a basin, while offering quiet words of blessing. I couldn’t hear the words, but I witnessed the emotion brimming through each nurse’s misty eyes as they stepped away and returned to their hospital shift.
A Blessed Summons
As the line of nurses shortened, my team of environmental workers thinned out as well. When I finally sent off the last of my fellow board members, shovels in hand, I turned back to survey the garden. The sun was shining, and the freshly planted trees and shrubs filled the space with color. I took a deep breath. As the final nurses filed out of the garden, I went to gather my things. However, I found myself stopped by a chaplain who told me: “Come.”
A few remaining staffers ushered me to the NICU chaplain, who had been offering the Blessing of the Hands. She was still standing behind her small table with a bowl and pitcher of water. “We want to do this for you,” they said. Dressed in tree-planting plaid and covered in dirt, I was flummoxed and protested, indicating my outfit: clearly, I am not a healthcare worker, nor am a I spiritual care provider working in a hospital. With great affection, they continued to insist. So I took another deep breath, and held out my hands.
Sometimes there are experiences that seem to exist just beyond the reach of human language. This was one of them. Time stood still those next few moments. The spiritual care team huddled around as the chaplain slowly poured water over my hands. I met her gaze as she began to bless the beauty of my own still-unfolding vocational path. She shared how the spiritual care team had witnessed me at work, and softly encouraged me to recognize my own call to heal in unique ways. She poured water again, blessing me to be a chaplain for the Earth, for all living things.
The chaplain concluded, holding my hands in hers, as we both gazed at each other over our masks. She let go, and I felt almost dizzy with the light that had poured into me.
In Those In-Between Spaces
Never in a million years could I have predicted nor consciously engineered that encounter. Yet my multiple hats brokered a meaningful, momentary partnership between an environmental nonprofit and a hospital’s spiritual care team. In the wake of global devastation and loss, what could that day be, if not one of hope? What would happen if we all keep showing up in the world in our own multifaceted ways?
Among many other things, that blessing empowered me to remain clear-eyed in those in-between spaces. I no longer feel constrained to curate myself as fully one thing or fully another, wearing just one hat or another. Previously I had experienced the space between my degrees, or my vocational paths, as an unmooring. Now I experience that space as a bridge and a deep breath of air. Which leads me to recognize: my positioning gives me permission to live into not only more than one thing at once (divinity and forestry, hope and dread) but to also be in the space that surrounds and holds them in conversation. Whether collaborating with international colleagues at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, or facilitating roundtable discussions on faith with environmental scientists, I have finally realized: this space is my home.
What does it mean to be a tree-planting, meaning-making, creativity-advocating person in the world? No longer paralyzed by this question, and others that persistently appear on my path, I am now fully present to this truth: Though we cannot predict the future, we can be propelled by its mystery in ever-breathing hope.
Anna Thurston ’19 M.A.R./M.E.M. is a Research Associate at the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, Senior Editor at Wayfare Magazine, and Director of Governance and Community Building at Bountiful Financial. In collaboration with Professors Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, she directed the development of Yale’s six online courses on the ecological teachings of world religions. She has a B.A. from Brigham Young University, and her Yale degrees are in the joint program between YDS/Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale School of the Environment. She lives in Connecticut, where her favorite tree native to her local bioregion is Black birch (Betula lenta).