Emberlight Values Series: Adaptability and Resourcefulness

Art credit: “Inside/Outside” by Brigit Benton

Last month we sat with Embracing the Unknown, the willingness to stay present where certainty runs out. Adaptability and Resourcefulness is what curiosity looks like once it starts moving out of that stillness. It is the value that asks: now that we are here, in this moment we did not predict, what do we do with what we have? And how can we do it together?

There is an old fable about a mighty oak and a slender reed growing at the edge of the same field. The oak boasts of its strength, certain that nothing could bend it. The reed says nothing. When the storm comes, the oak stands rigid against it all night, refusing to yield, until it splits and falls. The reed simply bends low with each gust, again and again, and is standing in the morning. Its strength was never in resisting the wind. It was in its willingness to move with what arrived.

Adaptability and Resourcefulness is the practice of meeting a changed circumstance without needing the circumstance to change first. It is not improvisation for its own sake. It is the trust that we can respond well to what actually arrives, rather than only to what we planned for.

At Emberlight, we have lived this value in ways large and small. When Hurricane Helene reshaped our roads, our routines, and our sense of what was solid beneath us, we did not wait for things to return to how they were. We found new ways to reach the people who needed us. Volunteers rearranged their lives. Neighbors became lifelines. We sat under Grandmother Oak and held one another, played music together, lifted our voices in the unity of song. We opened our doors to all for showers and laundry and hot meals cooked by volunteers. We housed those who were displaced and sheltered workers who had come to help in the relief. We heard stories of destruction and loss and we sat with those sharing their grief. What we had was enough, because we were willing to sit with the uncertainty and meet it with our own resourcefulness.

This is true at the bedside as well. No two dying seasons ask for the same response. A volunteer trained one way may find that what a resident actually needs tonight is silence instead of song, a story instead of stillness. Resourcefulness, here, is not cleverness. It is listening closely enough to the moment to let it tell you what it needs, and having the flexibility to give it. It is about developing a sense of attunement to what is and what is needed.

Our gardens teach us this too. A frost comes early, weeds pop up, a plant meant for one corner of the property finds it can only thrive in another. The land adapts without complaint. It simply grows where it can. And we tend it with watchfulness and presence. With our capacity to be fully present with what IS, not how we think things should be.

This month, we invite you to sit with this question: Where in your life have you needed to work with what you have, rather than what you wish you had? What did that teach you about your own capacity?

If you are a volunteer, ask yourself: "When has a plan changed on me recently, and what did I discover about myself in the adjusting?"

***This 18” x 24” encaustic piece is available for purchase for $1600 with 50% of the proceeds donated to Emberlight.

Emberlight's values series is brought to you by the BE= belonging + equity team and this month’s offering was written by Courtney Smith.