Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: life after death

The Power of Love: Gecko and Cockroach

The following article, titled “Athleticism,” was written, proof-read (by my amazing beta reader, Linda Comerford) and submitted many (MANY) weeks ago. It was scheduled to be published in our local newspaper today, December 7, 2024. The email containing the article either was not received, or it was received and misplaced or deleted because it was received so early. Given that the message was/is tied into Pearl Harbor Day, I decided to deliver it via the Yellow Brick Road.

Sri Chinmoy said, “World-peace can be achieved when the power of love replaces the love of power.” A bit of information about the person who wrote this inspiring opening quotation might be helpful. Sri Chinmoy was born in 1931 in East Bengal, British India, (now Bangledesh). He lost his father to an illness in 1943 and his mother a few months later. Chinmoy began the practice of meditation when he was 11, and at age 12 he joined his brothers and sisters at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, where he spent the next 20 years in spiritual practice and study. After moving to New York City in 1964, Chinmoy taught in the United States — advocating a spiritual path to God through prayer and meditation and athleticism — including distance running, swimming, and weightlifting. You might be curious what running or swimming or weightlifting (athleticism) have to do with your spiritual wellbeing.

I looked up the meaning of athleticism, and in “What is Athleticism: The 10 Components You Must Know,” an article by James Breese, I read: Athleticism is formed by ten key components that make up balanced physical fitness, or what we refer to as complete athleticism. They are strength, speed, power, agility, anaerobic capacity, aerobic capacity, mobility, balance and coordination, mental resilience, and stability.

It is fascinating that a “spiritual” teacher would be encouraging students to become physically fit.

The answer is to be found in thinking about these ten key components. Strength. Speed. Power. Agility. Anaerobic and aerobic capacities — anaerobic activities are of short duration and high intensity; aerobic exercise is a rhythmic and repetitive physical activity that uses your body’s large muscle groups. (Examples of aerobic exercises include walking, cycling, and swimming. Aerobic exercise reduces your risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.)

Mobility. Balance and coordination. Mental resilience. Stability.

The Christian New Testament says we are to think on whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, or whatever has virtue or praise (Philippians 4:8). Look how these ideas overlap.

In the article “How Training the Mind is Like Riding a Horse,” Ed Halliwell tells us that good equestrians know the best way to ride a horse is by not trying to control it with fear, force, or frustration, but by listening and responding to the horse’s needs for reassurance, guidance, and gentleness. We adjust our journey based on the horse’s needs without losing sight of our intended destination. “In this way, rider and horse can travel in harmony, each taking charge according to its strengths.”

The modern world we live in is not the world of our ancestors. Most of us do not ride horses as a primary mode of transportation. However, we know human behavior, even in this current environment, is still similar in this way to animals. We have been seduced by social media, manipulated by Madison Avenue, held hostage by hordes of happenings, and tricked by the telling of tales darkly distorted so that they have very little to do with what is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report, virtue, or praise.

Strength. Speed. Power. Agility. Mobility. Balance. Coordination. Mental resilience. Stability. Perhaps these qualities from Philippians really are key. The scheduled publish date for this Insights article was December 7. When I saw that date, I remembered Pearl Harbor. On that day in 1941, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base, killing more than 2,300 Americans.

An online inspiration, The Daily Tejaniya, articulates the truth so elegantly: “We need to learn our lessons. There is no shortcut. If we don’t learn our lessons when they present themselves, they will come up again and again until we give them our attention, and learn from them.”

World-peace can only be achieved when the power of love replaces the love of power, but world-peace can and will be achieved BECAUSE the power of love replaces the love of power.

John and I arrived safely at our winter home about 7:00 pm on Wednesday after a totally wonderful visit with John’s music mentor (and guitar benefactor!!!), Ed Bennett, his wife, Dee, and other great friends.

Yesterday my back was hurting and I could not find my Nikken mag roller. It usually travels in the outside zipper of my carry-on bag, and it usually lives in my sock drawer when I have landed. I distinctly remembered having unzipped and removed it, and the mini-sewing kit that travels with it was already in the sock drawer. I went to the guestroom closet to look again in my carry-on bag, and as I moved John’s guitar case it bumped the metal shelving and out scampered a gecko! I went in search of something to catch the gecko in and called for John to come help me. It was quite comical to watch the gecko stay ahead of me but I was finally successful in getting him (or her) safely outside.

I had a flashback to our first encounter with a gecko in the wild while we were in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. John and I were scared silly and called a friend to come rescue us. When Jim arrived John and I were both standing up in the middle of the bed screaming!

Yes, our lessons will come up again and again until we learn from them.

It has been a bit overwhelming settling in because, much to the embarrassment and regret of the homeowners, the house is still being treated for a roach infestation left by the previous renter. Howard, the technician came Thursday morning. (My dad’s name was Howard.) He walked me through what we need to do for the treatment to be successful. Essentially we need to be fastidiously clean. We have secured all of our food stuffs in clear totes.

We love this house and it’s owners so much…. When they came by late in the day on Thursday, we told them about a previous rental where we learned what we need to know and we assured them we will all work together and do what needs to be done. I also shared with them that cockroaches can have a variety of spiritual meanings. They are known for their ability to survive in harsh conditions, symbolism of the ability to thrive in the face of adversity. In some belief systems, cockroaches represent the cycle of life and death, encouraging personal transformation. They can also signify the need to shed old habits or beliefs to make way for new growth. And a skill that is very timely: cockroach symbolizes reality as contrasted to thoughts, allowing one to acknowledge a larger reality.

This morning when I killed an adult cockroach capable of creating many offspring, I felt such appreciation for its having made itself seen. I was taken back to a first encounter during our initial stay on Pine Island. John and I were both so grossed and freaked out he shot about a ten-foot stream of Raid spray onto the guy.

Reflecting on the unfortunate necessity of killing the cockroaches, I recalled the story of a master who was walking with a student when a dog charged at him. The master whipped off his belt and hit the dog soundly on the snout. The student was shocked, and criticized the master’s unskillfulness. Confidently and patiently, the master replied, “It was skillfulness. In an instant awareness knew the dog would rather be hit in the snout with the belt than the master bit in the leg by the dog.”

As Tejaniya writes, if we don’t learn our lessons when they present themselves, they will come up again and again until we give them our attention, and learn from them. Thank you, gecko; thank you, cockroach.

A beautiful affirmation from Betty Lue Lieber for today:
I care about everyone and everything, including myself.
I easily give my very best to all around me.
I care enough to do the work with ease and grace.
I create Good with all my caring.

Oh, life in the tropics! Everything in life showing us the power of love replacing the love of power!

December 7, 2024
Wicked: Part One

“Some things I cannot change,
but ’til I try I’ll never know.”
~ Elphaba, in Wicked

Becky O’Brien’s review on Cinelix gave high praise for the film version: “Having seen the film, I can’t imagine any of the songs not being there, everything feels integral to the story, and that can be attributed to the film’s phenomenal cast. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in particular knocked it out of the park as Elphaba and Glinda respectively.”

Yesterday (November 27) John and I joined all of our “grand” daughters (Courtney, Christina and Rachel) to see the film before Stacey and Doug and Jackson and Brad and Adam joined us for dinner out celebrating John’s 76th birthday. At the movies we ate our weight in popcorn sitting back in theater seats that reclined, still leaving sufficient room for someone to walk by. It was amazing….

Rachel sent a text mid-morning:

A few fun facts from your fellow Ozain before the show.

Wicked is originally a novel published in 1995, followed by the Broadway adaptation debuted in 2004. Two decades later we have a film adaptation.

The Broadway play has two acts and this movie is act one. Intermission is one year long.

The movie set was built in the UK with minimal CGI. Almost everything you see on screen is real. They planted over 9 million tulips for munchkin land and built a 16 ton train for the emerald city and all the rest of the set is physical!! So cool!!

It took makeup 4-6 hours to paint Cynthia green everyday on set. Elphba and Glinda do all of their own stunts and sing live for EVERY musical number. Talent!!!

MGM still owns the rights to the ruby red slippers, which is why we will see nessa rose with silver slippers. (Just like the book.)

The last musical number defying gravity is arguably one of the hardest songs to sing in the theater. And Cynthia kills it while physically being suspended 40 ft in the air.

Stephan Schwartz is the composer and lyricist of Wicked. He read the book and 4 years later he had the whole musical scored and composed and all the lyrics written. Holy cow!!!

Although Dorothy is not relevant in act one, we do meet the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion in their original form. There are Easter eggs throughout the film to point you in the right direction to identify them.

I have 100 more. But I will bore you later. So excited today!!!!

I am already looking forward to part 2.

As it turned out, Stacey (who had not really wanted to go) would not have been able to join us because she watched Jackson so Courtney could go. It was pretty unanimous we thought Stacey would not have been wild about it. This morning Stacey asked me why I thought she would not have liked it.

That opened up a conversation about the power of myth, handed down from generation to generation via oral traditions and rituals. Myths were the way humans taught universal and eternal truths about life before the invention of writing. While themes reappear time and again in different culture, it is important to realize a myth is bound to the society and time in which it occurs. Thus, the details of a specific myth cannot be divorced from this culture and environment. (For example, a dying-and-rising god as first proposed in comparative mythology by James Frazer’s seminal The Golden Bough (1890). Frazer associated the motif with fertility rites surrounding the yearly cycle of vegetation and cited the examples of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis and Attis, Zagreus, Dionysus, and Jesus.)

Seeing Wicked: Part One was soothing to my soul.

Myth speaks so much more clearly when not shrunk into a literal view.

As we were leaving the theater, I said to Rachel, “You may not know that my blog is titled Yellow Brick Road. I named it that because I saw in the Wizard of Oz the metaphor of the colors of the chakras: ruby red slippers (root chakra); yellow brick road (solar plexus); Emerald City (heart chakra).”

This is a myth I relate to.

I love that it is not set in any actual time or in any actual location.

Fortunately, you do not have to believe it is real to understand the power of friendship as it actually transforms the way our birth and upbringing and culture informs both our pain and power.

Just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, it is true that we are not in Kansas any more. We are in a world where it is possible (and perhaps vital) for us to imagine a world without wars fueled by opinion.

O’Brien writes, “In conclusion, I thought it was really smart of the filmmakers to end the film right at the end of Act One of the musical, with plenty of hooks left dangling for what’s to come in the second half of the story. As big as Wicked: Part One is turning out to be, I confidently predict that Wicked: Part Two will be that much bigger. We only have to wait a year to find out!”

November 28, 2024
Switch to a Different Puzzle
I woke up this morning with Don Williams’ title line of his song reverberating in my head, “I Wouldn’t Want to Live if You Didn’t Love Me”.

The mind worm of the refrain was a likely result of yesterday’s conversation that turned stressful with my daughter, Stacey. We are in Tennessee with her spending time with our immediate family for a couple weeks on our way from Michigan to Florida. Our older grandson’s band had a music gig on Friday evening and we were proud to be Brad’s Gampie and Brad’s Gammie at Hop Springs as Apache Jericho rocked the house.

Brad is the lead vocalist. He has been writing music and performing for years. If you have a premium account with Amazon or Spotify you can shuffle songs by Apache Jericho.

With my fingers on the keyboard now, I am listening to “Essential Grief Education” with Meghan Riordan Jarvis, author of Can Anyone Tell Me? As I hear her speak about the synapses that are ministered to when you use pen or pencil and paper or work with words, I know the value of The Yellow Brick Road to save my sanity.

Thoughts of time spent riding bikes for miles and miles with Fred following the death of my friend, Linda, this summer allows the three key actions suggested by Jarvis to leap onto my page:

1. You need to take a walk. You need to move. EVERYDAY.

2. If you can tolerate connection, do this with with another person. They can walk beside you or behind you or in front of you, but breaking the sense of isolation that occurs with loss ad grief is essential.

3. We can work on the story of what we are telling ourselves about what happened.

Meghan continues to remind us while we might never be grateful our loved one died, we do gain gratitude for gifts and growth that come.

Grievers say there is meaning that comes….

The point of loss of rapport came in conversation around the issue of abortion. This issue has trailed behind me, having begun in the 70’s and 80’s when I was a delegate to Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church — a church that is no longer united.

In my earbuds, Meghan is sharing about the importance of asking grievers, “What’s the secret terror that you have since this loss?”

I witness now a secret terror in my central nervous system: John and I are standing in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., watching white letters scroll across a black screen giving the dates and actions being taken that led from banning a single book to 11 million victims of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany….

Stacey and I had been working on a jigsaw puzzle when yesterday’s rip in rapport took place and she turned and walked out of the room. Perhaps the puzzle itself holds a clue for us. It is a Advent Calendar puzzle, with the pieces of each section in 24 small, numbered, separated, boxes. I am realizing this puzzle does not feel like fun.
Working this puzzle, it doesn’t feel like we are working together.

Working this puzzle, I don’t like the feeling that things have been artificially segregated.

After Stacey showered and got ready for their evening out, she approached me. I am unable to remember that conversation. That happens with grief. We don’t recall when something happened or how it happened, because what happened is distorted.

I do recall answering a question she had earlier asked me about my beliefs about abortion. I told her the issue of abortion isn’t separate for me from other experiences about life and death. If an adult dies and somehow continues to exist — like her own experiences of loved ones speaking to her (her Grandma Smith and the dutch apple pie recipe or her Uncle Jim about not being a dumb ass) how could that be different for an aborted baby?

I was able to express a wondering about how she had become so black and white in her morality and the concern I felt that the divide in the mind might be too wide to bridge; that being the nature of the mind.

I can feel a tightness in my chest as those words appear on the page.

I am going to ask her if she is OKAY if we switch to a different puzzle….
November 17, 2024
A Different World
“In every age no matter how cruel the oppression carried on by those in power, there have been those who struggled for a different world.

I believe this is the genius of humankind,

the thing that makes us half Divine —

the fact that some human beings can envision a world that has never existed.”

– Anne Braden

I heard these powerful words from Love, Power and Liberation: Angela Davis & Lama Rod Owens in Conversation, moderated by Prentis Hemphill, a fundraiser to support the East Bay Meditation Center.

Anne Braden was a name I did not know, but something about her words resonated deeply in my soul. I share some of that…. envisioning a world that has never existed. I put a lovely THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign on the door to our home over 40 years ago. Members of my husband’s family refused to come to our home. Admittedly, it was a stressful happening at 4230 Lincoln Avenue.

The prohibition of smoking in public places, in places of employment, and in food service establishments (such as restaurants, cafeterias, food courts in shopping malls, and bars) took effect here in Michigan on May 1, 2010, when the Public Health Code was finally amended.

There are many born in this country after 2010 who have no memory of teachers smoking in schools, doctors (and patients and visitors) smoking in hospitals, and patrons, along with cooks and wait staff, smoking in restaurants.

I am profoundly grateful not smoking in public places is seen now as normal.

According to her bibliography on Americans Who Tell The Truth, all of Braden’s activism flowed from a single conviction: she wanted to live in a world “where people were people,” not members of a particular race or class who were treated better or worse because of it.

Recently I have begun to envision radically new ways of choosing governmental leadership. One suggestion was to have a mutually-agreed-upon criteria for civil servants, and any individual who met that vetting and was willing to serve, would toss his or her hat into the ring. There would be no campaigning, no voting, no parties. At a certain date some random process (maybe similar to the way lottery numbers pop into a vacuum tube) would make the selection. Think of the time and money and energy that would become available for important things.

Our leadership would come from a pool of many who are willing and able to live and serve the world in/from servant leadership.

Anne Braden, a Civil Rights Activist and Writer, was born in 1924 and died in 2006. Anne Braden is best known for a single act: In 1954 she helped a Black couple buy a house in an all-white neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. One hundred years from the day Anne Braden was born, and 70 years from the day Anne Braden helped that Black couple buy a home in an all-white neighborhood of Louisville, it is now normal for people all over this country (not just in Louisville) to buy any home anywhere they want to and can afford to live. Regardless of the color of skin.

When I told a friend about envisioning a new civil leadership selection process, he shared an idea a friend of his came up with years ago: A six-year presidential term, with no reelection option. That person saw this as a potential end to a first term serving primarily as grounds for re-election.

Watching “Love, Power and Liberation” I also learned that when much of the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, award-winning author, began writing each other letters — a gesture sparked by friendship and solidarity, and by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe.

From Haymarket Books, about Rehearsals for Living:

When much of the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, award-winning author of several books, including the recent novel Noopiming, began writing each other letters—a gesture sparked by friendship and solidarity, and by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. Their letters soon grew into a powerful exchange on the subject of where we go from here.

Rehearsals is a captivating book, part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers convening on what it means to get free as the world spins into some new orbit. In a genre-defying exchange, the authors collectively envision the possibilities for more liberatory futures during a historic year of Indigenous land defense, prison strikes, and global-Black-led rebellions against policing. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment in the first place, Maynard and Simpson create something new: a vital demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up new ways of ordering earthly life.
In Love, Power, and Liberation Lama Rod Owens spoke such wisdom and grace. He says we have to mourn what is happening and there has to be a place for joy. That joy has to become a discipline and a practice. He spoke historical truth about many people who have faced real struggle, even genocide, and how there’s been joy in these moments. He says we have to continue to choose the laughter and the joy and we have to choose community. He says we have to reemphasize our dreaming. He says we have to stay true to the dreams that we have about what we want the world to look like.

He shared Emma Goldman’s saying, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.”

All of Braden’s activism flowed from a single conviction: she wanted to live in a world “where people were people,” not members of a particular race or class who were treated better or worse because of it.

Perhaps you and I want to live in a different world.

Perhaps many of us want to live in a different world, a world where people are people, a world where joy and laughter and community are a practice, a world where people are people, not members of a particular race, religion, or political party….
November 15, 2024
How Now Shall We Live

On October 17, 2024, a dharma sister sent an email sharing about a free on Youtube documentary titled “Living in the Time of Dying” a film by Michael Shaw that is 53 minutes and 31 seconds on the ‘how then shall we live’ about the climate crisis, but also about so much more.

The email came while I was on retreat, and then Stacey was here for a fast-paced week, and then preparations to go south for the winter began in earnest. This morning I have watched this beautiful documentary that breaks my heart. Now fingers to the keyboard, I am feeling perfect timing of watching on this evening before the polarized U.S. Presidential election. I think if you will watch it you would agree that the parallels are obvious.

Catherine Ingram, an international dharma teacher has an impressive biography and you can watch her TED talk Courage and Acceptance in Troubled Times.

Stan Rushworth is a teacher of Native American Literature, and the author of Sam Woods: American Healing (Station Hill Press, New York 1992), Going to Water: The Journal of Beginning Rain (Talking Leaves Press, Freedom, CA 2014), and Diaspora’s Children (Hand To Hand Publishing, Topanga, CA 2020). Stan says, “This is the end of life as we know it…. This is something that native people have been dealing with since the colonists came…. We have a sacred obligation of how to be in these times.”

“You’ve got to be okay in the uncertainty and the emotional difficulty. We’ve got to be okay ourselves and with each other. That’s okay. That’s normal to be confused and to feel pain in this context. And learn how to hold each other in that and in that calmer way.” ~ Professor Jem Bendell

Lyrics in “Boogie Street” by Leonard Cohen:
So come, my friends, be not afraid
We are so lightly here
It is in love that we are made
In love we disappear

Perhaps this truly is how now we shall live.

November 4, 2024
Sunday Hawk Sighting

They had worked together years ago.

Their friendship continued for 40 years.

Every Sunday morning they would talk on the phone.

Friday, October 25, his friend died.

On Sunday morning, October 27, as he was driving to the pharmacy to get his medication, the biggest hawk he had ever seen was in the road. That hawk did not move. He had to drive around it. He immediately recognized the sign.

Hawks are known as the protectors and messengers. His friend loved hawks and had a hawk tattooed on his arm!

October 28, 2024
Better Than Ever

On Wednesday, October 23, 2024, when she went to the hospital to visit her husband, he said to her, “I am so sorry I missed our anniversary.”

She told him he had not missed their anniversary, it was coming up on October 31.

He died on Friday, October 25….

A couple of days later, as she sorted some paperwork, a sheet fell out: you are better than ever.

She got a brochure in the mail featuring Backroads 2025 Women’s Adventures.

She looked at the words on a painted rock: What if… everything you’re going through right now is preparing you for a dream bigger than you can imagine.

She feels him right there with her guiding, coaching, and encouraging. Both of them better than ever.

October 28, 2024
Cody: Forever Loving

Checking in with the teachers and his small group while at a meditation retreat, he shared he would be leaving group early to go home for a few hours. A veterinarian was coming to assist their beloved dog, Cody, to freedom from suffering.

He recorded the group chanting as support for him and his wife and their fur friend and, “All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you….”

He was told how others in this group had been supported by this chant as a loved one died. Several times the person’s passing occurred while a retreat or workshop was happening.

He found the chant very helpful each time he heard it and once during the chanting he expressed to Cody that he was free and did not have to stay around to support him. He had a clear sense of Cody responding, “I am chanting it to you!”

From The Dharma of Dogs: Our Best Friends as Spiritual Teachers, by Tami Simon: “The pain of her death was exquisite. I cried for weeks, but felt an incredible joy and comfort that was an equal part of the grief. I was so grateful that I had spent time with her — only with her, fully present and joyful.” (p.163)

RIP Cody…. Forever loving.

October 19, 2024
The Perfect Week for a Retreat
I leave for Holly, Michigan, where I will attend a silent meditation retreat titled “Remembering our Awakened Essence” with Barbara Brodsky and John Orr from Deep Spring Center for Meditation, and sangha sisters and brothers from all over the world. The retreat will be held at The Maryville Retreat Center. This week Barbara’s husband, Hal, had a heart attack and has been hospitalized, receiving a pacemaker. Many know Hal previously had a gravely serious stroke and has been being cared for in their home since Covid. John Orr lives in Alexander, North Carolina, very near Asheville, where hurricane Helene has left his area with roads out, power down, and horrific destruction.

There is a lot going on.

This is not my first rodeo. I have been to MANY week-long silent retreats with this group, but due to the pandemic it has been five years (October 2019 being the last) since I attended a residential retreat. I definitely feel like a newbie. And a lot of rain and cool is forecast. Likely not going to be easy distraction by walking the beautiful campus.

Plus, there is a lot going on this week.

1. John will be staying alone for the first time since he had open heart surgery and the TIA from noon Sunday until Stacey arrives Thursday late afternoon.
2. Our neighbor (Joe) is having heart valve surgery on Wednesday.
3. Friends are navigating the losses and messes following Hurricane Milton.
4. Our friend (Molly) is having a pacemaker.
5. Our friend (Nancy) is turning 80.
6. My long-time client and friend (Jane) is experiencing colon bleeding that cannot be surgically repaired. It is a complication from radiation therapy.
7. Our country is approaching a Presidential Election that has amplified differences of opinions without highlighting the truth that we are interconnected.

In the busyness of preparations for going on retreat, I took time yesterday to watch a video of Tara Brach with Dan Harris. Here are a few nuggets I am taking with me, and since you will be going with me in my heart, from “Timeless Heart Wisdom for our Times.”
It is probably obvious some of the reasons why I am nervous about turning off my phone and not checking for calls or texts or emails.

It is also probably obvious why this is the perfect week for a silent meditation retreat….
October 13, 2024
Milton’s Mayhem and Message
Last evening we had dinner with two long-time friends. One friend lost her winter home on Pine Island two years ago to Hurricane Ian. As Hurricane Milton is crossing the Gulf of Mexico right now barrelling toward Florida we have friends who are year-round on the island. It felt good for us to gather here in our tiny house and enjoy hearty soup and savory salads. And fresh-baked bread.

The other friend and I will be attending a residential retreat all of next week. She said the retreat comes at an ideal time for her as she is so wrapped up in the political stuff and global conditions.

This morning I sent both of them the opening words of our Florida meditation group who meets online each Tuesday afternoon at 1:00 pm EST. The leader hosted this gathering in her home on Pine Island for several decades until she moved into a senior living center on the mainland. At the time of yesterday’s Zoom gathering, she was there in her apartment.

Her opening words were salve…. “It is a different feeling when I feel that if I don’t like what’s going on right now, I can change it. But the reality is that all I can do about that is change my attitude about it. I can’t necessarily change what’s actually happening. So it’s sort of humbling to sit here in this same space, but it looks much differently because, you know, all the windows are covered up, the doors are covered up. You can’t see out. There isn’t anybody out there to see anyway. So it’s quite a different reality.”

Three of us online with her sat in our homes here in Michigan.

One other friend online with us told us she was staying on Pine Island in the home of friends. The same home and the same friends with whom this friend survived Hurricane Ian two years ago. This friend’s home had been destroyed in Matlacha.

This morning I wake to a text message from another friend who had spent a day with us on Pine Island before Hurricane Ian. He was sending a photo and this message, “With all that is going on in Florida sending you one of my guardian orbs.”

Perfectly round orbs appearing in photos are often interpreted as signs of harmony and purity, believed to represent balanced energy and the presence of a peaceful spirit. Some see them as guardians or guides. They are thought to be evidence of the presence of our departed loved ones who are watching over us.

A while later this morning as I opened email the loving messages continued.
The opening words for our meditation time continued: “And although I know that this particular building, as you know, I’m on the sixth floor, which is the top floor, it’s poured concrete. So all the floors are concrete that’s twelve inches thick, and the walls are not quite that thick, but the outside walls are. Maybe it’s eight inches on the walls. And so it would have to be a really tremendous storm to take any of it out. And I just know that that’s not forthcoming. I don’t think we’ll really even know that it happened. And it will happen between tomorrow, between bedtime and midnight. So they say. I was talking to a friend yesterday, and I said, you know, you and I have had a nice long association in this lifetime, and if you never hear from me again, just know that I love you. And it threw her a bit for me to say that. And I was very conscious of what I was saying, because that’s always true. It’s not just because there’s a storm. It’s true for all of us today, right now. However, our lives usually are focused in a different direction. Thank goodness.”

And as we settled into the stillness, these assurances were spoken: “Yes, this is comforting, and all of you are comforting. And I know that there are many others that are also. And hopefully they have found a place where they can express their own comfort. So if everyone is ready, shall we go into our meditation? So taking a couple of deep breaths, and just feel the breath as it fills our lungs. And exhale. And then with the next breath, fill the lungs as much as they were, and then add a little bit more. And I ask Spirit to be with us, the higher selves of each of us, to guide and protect us, acknowledging that that’s what they are doing all the time. And then as we take that deep breath, and a little more, know that every time we do this, we are a little more of who we are. I don’t know that it’s possible, well, let me put it some other way. I accept the possibility that when we take all we can that we are, and then we add a little more, that there will always be a little more. In the evolution of humanity, of life on this planet, I can imagine there’s always a little more. And it’s not necessarily definable, not something that we can describe. And yet there’s a sense within each of us that knows there’s a little more. So as we go into the silence today, into the uncertainty of how nature will conclude this day, we set an intention to be a little more.”

May all beings find an end to stress and suffering. May all beings know peace.
October 9, 2024