Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: clouds

  • A Cloudy Day

    The past few days have unfolded very differently from my plans. I had expected to share fish-fry with Linda and Larry and Linda and Fred and play Hand-and-Foot on Friday evening, and to make vegetable beef soup with my mother’s cornbread for dinner on Saturday with Janis and Larry. I planned a visit with Delcy Kuhlman on Monday morning (to see the new retreat space already sporting a bed). The bed is on loan. She says the veneer has slivered off the headboard, revealing the image of an angel. Jane Foster was scheduled to come for lunch on Wednesday.

    Each of those wonderfully wanted experiences were crossed off my calendar when we received a text from Lora at 8:21 am Friday, “Asking for your prayers. John and I have tested positive for COVID.” John and John had gone out for coffee on Thursday morning and in the evening John and I had been with John for about 40 minutes.

    Normally there are 12-20 people at the Thursday jam. When no one else showed up for the jam, we went home.

    On Wednesday the CDC updated Covid exposure protocol. Ten days of precaution: first five – isolation or being with others only with a proper medically-approved mask, even if no symptoms test on day 6, and if negative, continue to mask until day 10. Thursday was our Day Zero.

    Day 1, Friday, August 12, 2022:
    Well before noon, I was painting paneling in the great room.


    Perhaps the job was begun a bit too impulsively since I was using only the paint left over from the previous kitchen cabinet project, without any primer. That paneling was soaking up paint like a lawn after a six-week drought when the rains come…

    I had the wherewithal to stop.

    Friday evening, after a conference call with Larry Britton, I knew I needed to put on gloves and a mask, and make a trip to Sherwin Williams before continuing. I needed supplies.

    I’ve begun reading The Rent Collector, by Camron Wright, in which the main character, Sang Ly, learns to read with the hope of creating a way out of their current living conditions: they live in and survive by picking through garbage in Cambodia’s largest municipal dump.

    Day 2, Saturday, August 13, 2022:
    Saturday morning at 8 o’clock I called Sherwin Williams to say I did not have Covid, but would be coming into the store in gloves and a mask because I had been exposed. “Laney” said that was okay. She did keep her distance, and as she carried the two gallons to my car she told me in two weeks she was going on her first vacation in two years. I told her I understood completely and that was why I could not come in without calling first.

    The name of paint color is Cultured Pearl. According to Wikipedia, cultured pearls are formed within a cultured pearl sac with human intervention in the interior of productive living molluscs in a variety of conditions depending upon the mollusc and the goals.[1] Just as the same as natural pearls, cultured pearls can be cultivated in seawater or freshwater bodies. Nowadays, over 95% of the pearls available on the market would be cultured pearls.

    By dinner time, two walls were painted and everything in the area cleaned and furniture put properly placed!

    Day 3, Sunday, August 14, 2022:

    “That is a wonderful lesson, Sang Ly. Remember it.”

    “What was it again?” I ask, not certain to what she is referring.

    She repeats it for me. “In literature, everything means something.”

    We open the pages and read.

    ~ The Rent Collector, by Camron Wright

    It is cloudy today. My knees and hips are sore from all of the squatting. This is a low job…. I am not sure if I will take the day off or persevere.

    I had anticipated Friday, August 12, 2022. Sixty years earlier, when I was twelve years old, my dad and I were in a serious auto accident — an accident in which I had an out-of-body near death experience (NDE) that has shaped my view of the world. I had expected to write, to ride my bike, to give space to be on a very inner journey. I certainly had not anticipated painting paneling.

    A poem gives rise on the page in my journal.

      A Cloudy Day

      Daily light replaces darkness
      and light begats light
      Where nothing reflected
      now everything does

      Oh, for sure
      you can see perfections
      formerly hidden
      now quite obvious
      but soooooo worth it

      Seeing all in the light
      even the flaws
      are lovely
      each adds an element
      of uniqueness, telling a tale

      Today the sun is hidden
      clouds rule the sky
      But still the sun shines
      and the light is, only
      waiting to reveal its gloriousness

      The sun still shines
      even on a cloudy day

      ~ Debra Basham, August 14, 2022

    P.S. Word came last evening from Gary Zukav, author of The Seat of the Soul, that his beloved, Linda Francis, transitioned on August 6. Linda Beushausen Gunter and I had the honor of spending a day with them some years back. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

      My Dear Spiritual Partner,

      Linda Francis, my Beloved, my spiritual partner, my life partner, my co-creator in everything, my co-author, my inspiration and model, completed her journey through the Earth school on August 6. Her soul returned home to nonphysical reality. When a soul decides to return home, nothing can stop it. I saw this happen before my eyes. Linda was at my side in our kitchen when the stroke came. Within hours an experienced surgeon had attempted three times to remove the clot in her brain, yet it could not be removed.

      I am still reeling. Each time I turn to say something to Linda and realize that she is not here to answer me, and each time I rush home with groceries to be with her again and remember that she will not be there when I arrive, and countless experiences like these are each a source of great pain for me and also an opportunity to create authentic power. Each hurts a lot before I recognize it for what it is – a frightened part of my personality – and move my attention away from “what ifs” and “if onlys” to what is actually happening in the moment, and toward an opportunity to love, to support, to contribute.

      This is not over for me, and it is probably not over for you. I and our precious support team will send you some practical thoughts and suggestions over the next few weeks so you can practice transforming your experiences into opportunities to create authentic power. You will receive your first emails next week. I invite you to experiment with them and to let me know at garyzukav@seatofthesoul.com what happens.

      I hope you are healthy and joyful and appreciating the power and beauty of each moment.

      Linda joins me in sending you love.

      Love,
      Gary

  • At the Grave

    Sacred Stories

    A friend saw Hello, this is Meghan, and was moved to share the following:

      The day after Kathy (my friends sister in law ) passed away, her mother and brother visited the cemetery and this is what they saw watching over them:


    Clouds are full of secrets that are not visible to us.

  • Hello, this is Meghan.

    Sacred Stories

    Her daughter, Meghan, had recently passed. As she was preparing for a trip to one of Meghan’s favorite places, she took time to share a sweet encounter on her social media page.

    Of course, there is always a frenzy prior to leaving the country and this morning nothing was going right as far as uploading travel documents. I finally decided to call the airline for assistance. I was talking to Meg out loud.

    After only a one minute wait the phone was answered and I heard a young woman say, “Hello, this is Meghan. How can I help you?”

    What are the odds?

    It’s easy to take clouds for granted. They are almost always up in the sky and we often don’t notice them. But then there are the moments when they command our attention. (60 Cloud quotes)

  • Hand-in-Hand

    With all that takes place in our lives,
    it can sometimes be easy to overlook the fact that
    we’re part of something greater than ourselves —
    a collective consciousness, the Universe, a greater cause.

    ~ Daily Om

    The March 2021 skies over Pine Island, near Ft. Myers, in Southwest Florida (winter home of this snowbird) demonstrate a very important fact: light is present within darkness.


    During the past few weeks of “the season,” instead of the usual blue skies, the horizon was often dotted with dark, billowy, ominous-looking bumps of clouds with amazing streams of light simultaneously peeking out. Some clear, some bright, some pinkish-orange enough to resemble remnants of a dwindling campfire…. Those glowing embers that you only see late, late—late enough that you think you should give up and go to bed. Despite the chill, you are drawn to sit where you are as a witness to what is dying.

    For the past three years I have been in a study group looking at the spiritual phenomena of light within the darkness.

    I am attending and helping Zoom host a meditation retreat this week.


    As I was doing walking meditation early, I saw a black stone on the sidewalk. I noticed it but did not pick it up. Continuing, about half a block up, also on the sidewalk, I found a white stone. Neither of these were located with anything similar nearby. Seeing the white stone, I looped back and also picked up the black one. Light in the darkness.


    ((Confession, this is an article scheduled for publication in May. But the time for me to share it with you is NOW.))

    Every religion, Western and Eastern philosophy, and each individual artistic world view provides commentary on this subject of light in the darkness.

      The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5

      Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness. Anne Frank

      I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars. Og Mandino

      We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. Plato

      Don’t fight darkness – bring the light, and darkness will disappear. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

    In an audio presentation, Living and Dying, Ram Dass says about his work with people as they were dying: I watch some people who are able to open to the new stage and say, “Ah, so….” and those people don’t suffer. And then I watch somebody who looks at the shoes in the closet that they’ll never wear again and sits around feeling sorry because they can’t wear the shoes anymore. They’re holding onto the model of who they were a moment ago. A moment ago, they were somebody wearing those shoes, and now they are not wearing those shoes.

    I have been wondering about a similar phenomenon related to the pandemic. It is undeniable that the coronavirus has brough considerable darkness. (Another of our friends passed the day I was writing this article, in Florida, and then a 42-year-old relative, father-of-five, in Michigan.)

    Have you also been able to see the light this global pandemic has brought to you over this last year?

    My online search of “benefits of the pandemic” produced a lot of evidence of light within the darkness. Reduction of the carbon foot print made every list I read. Improved health and cost-savings from less eating out and more home-cooked meals was another. Parents spending more time with children; partners having more time together; time for reflection and opportunity to reevaluate your life. Within each of these is both light and darkness.

    It has been said about picking up a stick: you pick up both ends.

    What Buddhism calls wisdom mind is the recognition that only light has ultimate reality. Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, says you do not go into a room and look for a “dark” switch. The switch you are searching for is the “light” switch. Of course, with that switch you are either turning the light on or off….

    Ram Dass wrote of a friend’s passing.

    “Well, you know what I know. Probably I won’t see you again in this body, so, stay conscious.” And I left.

    Her husband called me the next morning at 7:30, and said she died during the night.

    And he said her dying was just like ink being poured into water. It was just expanding outward. He said, “I came away from her death with one of the deepest experiences of peace I’d ever had in my life.”

    We are a collective witness to the dark and the light, to what is being born and what is dying.

    Some individuals have hated working from home. Some students have been miserable with online schooling. Some of us have grown calmer, others catastrophically chaotic. Attitudes reflect the moment-by-moment position of the light switch.

    Less and less frequently do I hear people yearning for things to get back to normal, but often people express specifics of what they are eager to resume. I made up a set of rules for “distant dominoes” with good friends that live down the street from us in Michigan and also winter on the same street in Florida.

    While in Florida, the four of us drove across the state to receive our first (and second) vaccines. We expressed excitement to once again safely play dominoes by the original Basham house rules, sitting around a table touching the tiles. We agreed we will all likely needed a refresher….

    This snowbird gleefully anticipated being able to meet our great-grandson, Jackson (born December 28), on our trek north. I could almost smell his baby breath. Almost feel the weight of him. Almost hear his coo….

    *Note – It was exquisite!


    Awareness of the collective “benefit” of our collective glee, relief, appreciation, and joy almost takes my breath away….

    Just as those clouds on the Florida horizon revealed the truth of light within the darkness, we are a collective witness to the dying of what was and the collective welcoming of what is.

    We have no need to fret over an unworn pair of shoes.

    We can join together and blissfully walk barefoot hand-in-hand on the beach….