In the summer of 2023, I engaged in a drawing journal. Each day, with clean art paper before me and a collection of colored pencils, I invited an image to come forth and speak to me. I would draw with no notion of what I was drawing until it told me that it was complete. Then, sitting before the newly birthed image, I would ask it what it’s message was to me.

This is one of those images.

When I asked about its message, this is what came to me:

All diversity and unity on the outside exists always first on the inside.

I recently revisited these images, and this one leapt out at me. We are now done with another presidential election, and regardless of which side one is on, it has been troubling, divisive and does not promise anything for the coming years that is not also troubling and divisive, to say the least. Over the course of the last few years, our nation has withdrawn its collective support for movements, programs, ideas and activities which support diversity, unity, compassion, inclusion, equity and intercultural understanding. As a national collective, we have retreated from these things as if by silencing them, the difficult things they ask of us will go away.

The message of this image, for me, is stark in face of all of this, and promising.

The stark message is this: all diversity, equity, inclusion, compassion and kindness exists always and first, inside of us before it does outside of us. By trying to silence those things in our external dealings with each other, we are systematically attacking the very core of who each of us is as an individual and as a member of the larger community. Collective division, hatred and animosity is a mirror reflection of the struggle in our individual hearts. We all contribute to the collective.

The promising aspect of this message, I hope, become obvious. Banning programs and activities involving compassion, kindness, diversity, equity and inclusion doesn’t remove them from us at all. Such misguided actions simply move ALL OF THAT WORK back to our core, to our hearts, each of our hearts, all of our hearts, even and especially the most hardened of hearts. Collective healing, unity and strength is a mirror reflection of the work we do in our individual hearts. WE all contribute to the collective.

And, until that work is done, we won’t find our way forward. The hopeful way of saying that is this: when we engage in this work, we will find our way forward. I feel the deepest gratitude to every single person who continues to work compassion, kindness, diversity, equity and inclusion in their heart.

~Robert Patrick

If these kinds of questions and experiences sound familiar, you might find spiritual direction a good way to explore them.  Click here to get started.