Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: masks

  • In My Life

      You CAN attend to these things — to the blizzard, to the hurricane, to the forest fire, to the automobile accident, to the volcanic eruption, to the political hate-throwing — with an open heart. You can respond to these with a consciousness that refuses to be drawn in with fear, but instead comes forth to attend. It’s very helpful to remember, as it’s often said: ‘This too shall pass.’ But you cannot hide yourself and say, ‘Well, it will pass, so I don’t have to pay any attention to it.’ It will pass, and it still must be attended to. ~ Aaron

    Sweeping under beds, cleaning beneath cushions, emptying the jar with a half-teaspoon of salsa…. I am mindfully paying attention to pre-packing and cleaning in preparation for our heading home. Always mixed feelings about leaving Florida, but before the pandemic these snowbirds’ twinges of leave-taking were tempered by the lovingly longing to be with family in Tennessee and visiting with friends over breakfast or lunch in Indy.

    The Beatles long ago named a song (In My Life) after the title of this blog post. Here is the opening:

    There are places I’ll remember
    All my life though some have changed
    Some forever, not for better
    Some have gone and some remain

    April, 2020, John and I drove straight through from Florida to Michigan, and did not even stop in Tennessee.

    November, 2021, we stopped for one overnight but stayed in a hotel. Our brief time together was somewhat stressful. Only the cats seemed unaware of the unspoken perspectives that separated us more than the safe-distancing and masks.

    John and I are now 9-days post our second vaccine, and we will be just under the recommended two-week wait time when we get to Smyrna on Saturday.

    We are so excited that when we get home on Monday, we will be able to come together safely with others we love who are also fully vaccinated. Look out Janis and Larry. It is going to be one heck of a hug-fest!

    Yesterday morning as I placed puzzle pieces and sipped tea, a “stream-of-consciousness” came through. I shared it with John, and with Linda B/G, who said, “Maybe it is important to share this now. Last year, lots of people were speaking up about this. Not so much right now, but it needs to be said.”

    As she spoke, my iPhone popped in with a “notification” of the federal government having to consider a mask mandate. People are ignoring the guidelines, refusing to avoid non-essential travel. Continuing to gather in large numbers without safe-distancing or masks, and the numbers of covid-19 cases sadly are increasing again.

    This is what came through:

      Open letter to my friends, family, neighbors, and total strangers who have chosen not to mask, safe-distance and/or be vaccinated to help curtain the spread of this coronavirus.

      I am a 71 year old woman enjoying an amazing quality of life given how I began. My mother had syphilis when I was in utero. She spent her entire pregnancy with me fearful of any damage this sexually transmitted disease might do to me, a result of my father’s indiscretion.

      When I was five years old, I was hospitalized and treated for polio. Never having spent one night away from my mother previously, I was placed in the pediatric unit at the hospital in isolation. When my mom would come, she was on the other side of the glass wall. At the ripe old age of 71 years, I can still feel my spindly legs holding me up as my urchin thin arms reached toward her devastated face.

      A serious auto accident at age 12, resulted in months on crutches, and I still wear the scars from the stitches necessary to reattach the flesh to my forehead.

      At age 62, a 22 cm ovarian mass was removed, along with all of my feminine parts. I spent some time in the cardiac intensive care unit, what I call the high rent district, a result of aFib, most serious of the post-surgical complications.

      My blood pressure can spike and my pulse will routinely be well over 100 at just a routine doctor visit.

      Am I afraid of dying? I don’t think so. Do I have PTSD around medical processes? Obviously…

      I have spent the past 12 months doing everything I can to avoid “getting or giving” this novel virus that has killed so many, left many others with life-limiting complications, and wreaked havoc with our global economy, but my investment in living a long and healthy life didn’t begin in 2020.

      I have spent 71 years, 72 if you count the time I was in my mothers womb, choosing life.

      This may be the first time in my life I’ve ever asked you to help take care of me. I know the masks are hot. I know the bands pull on my ears. I know voices are muffled, and deaf people can’t read lips.

      I know we can’t see one another smile.

      But this morning I got to see the moon and the sun in the sky together. I got to wake up with my husband of 55 years lying in bed next to me snoring.

      I know I won’t stay in this body forever, but I really don’t want someone’s political view or stubborn independent streak, or aversion to temporary discomfort to end my life unnecessarily. And I don’t want to end someone else’s life unnecessarily.

      Is it my destiny to have you give me a deadly virus? Perhaps…

      Or perhaps it’s my destiny to ask you not to….

    All these places have their moments
    With lovers and friends I still can recall
    Some are dead and some are living
    In my life I’ve loved them all

    Some are dead from this virus…. including my dear friend, Bonnie, the first casualty in my life. And Fred, the second. Patty’s mom. Four high-school classmates (all in one week in December). And Jackson’s Paw Paw…

    Perhaps it was their destiny to die of something preventable.

    Some are living….

    In my life I’ve loved them all.


  • Two Wings of Mindfulness

    Deep Spring Center
    Thought for Today

    If one never were to experience this
    dark night of the soul,
    one’s compassion
    really would be limited.

    One may have a belief,
    ‘I can be compassionate
    with that which is light
    and beautiful and loving
    in myself and others’
    but one has never tested it
    to see if
    one can also extend that compassion,
    even to the utmost of darkness.

    ~ Aaron

    This morning I did something I rarely do. I followed a link and read an article after the headline caught my attention: Deadliest place in America: They shrugged off the pandemic, then their family and friends started dying.

    Dinkel says too many people are refusing to do their part to protect the elderly from COVID-19.

    “To sit there and say they are old that they will die of something,” she says, “Well, they wouldn’t have died of the flu. My dad wouldn’t have been in the hospital for a month if this was the flu.”

    Despite the efforts of local public health officials and experts, many residents aren’t taking the deadly pandemic seriously. Bearded farmers stride defiantly down Main Street past signs requiring them to wear masks. School is still in session and churches are open. Someone threatened to blow up the home of a pro-mask county commissioner.

    Nicholson, the ambulance worker, is also co-owner of a restaurant and brewery on Main Street, and she’s had customers swear they’ll never come back after she reminded them to wear a mask when picking up food. She doesn’t want to wade into the middle of a political dispute. She just wants her neighbors to live.

    But this post is not about COVID-19, even though four of our high-school classmates died of the coronavirus in just one week at home.

    This post is about how mindfulness is like a bird — both need two wings to fly. The two wings of mindfulness are wisdom (clear seeing) and compassion.

    Compassion is a result of seeing life’s experience clearly, therefore not everyone’s experience generates compassion. Life’s experiences reveal our world view.

    The people in the deadliest place in America justify not wearing masks by saying the people who are dying are old, and people die in God’s time. The kernel of truth in not only toxic, it is deadly.

    Sunday morning I went to the only grocery store here on the island. I had read “masks required” on the ad, and I checked out the website of the company to read the same thing. “Masks required” was also on the entry doors. However, customers were coming in and shopping and getting service without a mask.

    Numbers in this small community on the south end of the island are climbing, yet, the Ragged Ass Saloon still hosts live music and welcomes wall-to-wall (if you can use that term about a parking lot) patrons not wearing masks or maintaining safe distancing.

    As human beings, we all try our best to bring about a world based on kindness and compassion. What seems to go wrong, however, is that what I want, what I personally would like, becomes more important than the benefit of the whole community.

    Yes, death will come to each of us. That is not failure. The bloom is the bud’s undoing…

    We are capable of spreading our wings and soaring to the heights of wisdom and compassion.

    As the Buddha said, “If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.”

  • The Things that Frighten Us

    Denial and lies are
    almost an intrinsic
    part of an epidemic.
    ~ Nicholas A. Christakis

    On the heels of the previously expressed idea that John and Debra (and you and yours!) truly are the macrocosm and microcosm, soon after my blog was posted yesterday morning I saw a post John made Tuesday on Facebook: The Dems and the media are so corrupt. Vote Red and encourage your friends to vote Red.

    I grabbed my journal and wrote: “I feel the tension in my body.”

    As I sat with that tension, I could see my listening to the Rabbi’s talk and choosing to include it in my blog. I had not acknowledged the Rabbi’s admonition but I knew he had one, and I included the link to his talk.

    When John and I walked later in the morning, I told him I could see where my choice — my action — was spinning the karmic wheel. I asked him if he had realized how he could have agreed with the sentiment of the post he was commenting on, but without adding to the poisonous political climate plaguing our nation by singling out the “Dems” and liberal media as liars, and going even further by telling others how to vote. He said he had not been able to see that at the time.

    As we walked on together, we articulated more skillful ways of commenting. For example, “I saw the interview. I’m praying for all the lying to end.” As we explored further we also saw opportunity to speak a more wise world into being, “We all need to work together and support ourselves. The fighting is such a waste of energy and resources.”

      Deep Spring Center
      Thought for Today

      All of you, as you come through this series of human lifetimes, are going to find yourselves as teachers of compassion in the universe. So don’t minimize what you are doing. It’s not about you. It’s not even about your country or your world. It’s about love and the transformation of everything through love. And you are at the heart of this. There are so many beings that appreciate the efforts that you make and support those efforts. ~ Aaron

    John and I grew up in a world of double standards nobody questioned and few even recognized. In 1966 when he and I conceived Stacey and got married, he was allowed to finish high school. I was banned. It took both of us to get pregnant, but only one of us was held accountable….

    Often the most subtle of distortions have the most toxic ripple effects.

    This post’s opening quote is by Nicholas A. Christakis. He says, “Everywhere you see the spread of germs, for the last few thousand years, you see right behind it the spread of lies.” You can listen to a 47-Minute NPR interview with Christakis about his book Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live. Warning: It is not easy to hear the possible impact.

    Christakis says the coronavirus has come at a time when we are very vulnerable because of the polarization. He encourages us to let the science do it’s job. Either masks help or they don’t. He says, “Let’s get the science straight first.”

    The things that frighten us just want to be held.
    ~ Mark Nepo

    Mark Nepo, author of The Book of Awakening.
    In 1987 he discovered a lump on the back of his head that was eventually diagnosed as a rare form of lymphoma.
    He is now a two-time cancer survivor.

    The interview closes on an encouraging word:

    We are a remarkable species…

    We have so many wonderful qualities, we humans.

    These include the capacity for love, the capacity for friendship; that we cooperate with each other; that we make sacrifices even to benefit strangers.

  • Bless the Sea Snakes

    Joel has been having ongoing challenges with his gmail account. I reached out to Rebecca, our wonderful webmaster, and she is on it. When he wrote saying, “I think I must have been cursed by the gods of the internet. What did I ever do to them….” I wrote back:

    “Well, bless the sea snakes!!!! Rebecca is going to see if Geek Squad can help her help you!”

    The following morning, Joel responded:

    I don’t remember how the sea snakes got in this. They play a prominent role in Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.” Everyone on the ship has died except for the “hero,” and the ship is floundering and adrift. The only person left alive on board is about to die. He has to bite his tongue to have enough moisture in his mouth to speak, but with what he thinks will be his last words, he blesses the sea snakes surrounding the vessel. With the blessing, the wind comes up, and the ship makes it back to England.

    Recently I was listening to a dharma talk by Kyoun Sokuzan. Sokuzan met Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, in late 1973 and became a student. In 1974, Sokuzan attended the first session of Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. In 1975, he established the Dharma Study Group of Battle Creek, Michigan. The group is currently meeting via Zoom. When someone asked Sokuzan if we need protection from the coronavirus, Sokuzan answered, “You don’t need protection, but you ask for protection. You participate in the realm you are in.”

    Continuing, “Everything is temporary. Work with it however it shows up in your neighborhood.”

    This all comes as I see my mind grasping for a safe way to be with friends and family. I hear Sokuzan say, “Go into the darkness. That is where the light is.”

    Human experience is polarized. I was one of those odd ducks who was anti-abortion and pro-legalization of abortion. A woman desperate not to birth a baby will take dangerous measures to end that pregnancy. Coat hangers are just one… Truth. Some people argue that making abortion legal motivates more women to choose that option. This is just not truth. The same argument is happening around the legalization of marijuana. Truth?

    Sokuzan: “It’s all relative truth. You can’t see the truth.”

    A friend stopped by briefly yesterday, willing to do me a huge favor. I had placed the two chairs on our front porch at the furthest distance. I donned my cute little kitty mask (a gift from my sister, Janis) and went out onto the porch. As my friend got out of her car, she saw me in my mask. “Do you want me to put a mask on?” she asked. She had one in the car. I said I would appreciate her putting on a mask.

    My friend was obviously not comfortable in the mask she was wearing. Every few seconds she would need to adjust it. The mask just did not fit her face well. As I watched, I had the thought it was more like a thong than a bikini. I hate when my underpants ride up in the crack of my butt. I have never understood someone wearing a thong. Maybe it is like Erma Bombeck’s having said she does not eat chocolate cake — she just smears it on her hips and thighs because that is where it is going to end up!

    Early in the pandemic, I began making masks that are fun. Many of those iterations have been shared in previous posts. Why? Because, as Sokuzan says, “It’s all relative truth.”

    If my friend or I had been an asymptomatic spreader of the virus, would our actions have been enough to protect the other? Sokuzan said we don’t need protection but we do need to work with things however they are showing up.

    Sokuzan used a Buddhist teaching term I had not previously run into, unless I had heard it and did not yet fully embody the dharma these words are pointing to. Trycycle has an excellent article on the teaching if you are interested. Here is the link: “Drive all blames into one.” From the article:

    “Conveniently, blaming others allows us to avoid looking into our own role in the problems and conflicts we encounter. We look outward, but we do not look within. And even in looking outward, once we have assigned the blame, we go no further. So we do not get to the root of the problem. We stop short, satisfied that we are off the hook and someone else is at fault.”

    I think a lot about my family. I take drive all blames into one to heart. If we went for a visit (as we soooooo want to do) and one of them was an asymptomatic spreader, and John or I got ill and/or died, who would be to blame?

    “This slogan {drive all blames into one} is quite radical. Instead of blaming others, you blame yourself. Even if it is not your fault, you take the blame. It is important to distinguish this practice from neurotic self-blaming or the regretful fixation on your own mistakes and how much you are at fault. It also does not imply that you should not point out wrongdoing or blow the whistle on corruption. Instead, as you go about your life, you simply notice the urge to blame others and you reverse it.”

    If my action exposed me to the virus, not even the virus is to blame. But if my action exposed someone else to the virus, I am responsible. It is simply how things showed up in the neighborhood. Drive all blames into one….

    “Pay attention to how blaming arises and what patterns it takes. See what happens when you take on the blame yourself. Notice what changes in your own experience and in what you observe around you.”

    A friend rented a hotel room near her daughter’s cottage as the extended family gathered for the Labor Day weekend. My friend took her own provisions, and she was masked and maintained safe-distance as she joined them for the wonderful celebration of her grandson’s 25th birthday.

    Other friends are leaving this weekend to visit their son and family out of state. They, too, will stay in a hotel and enjoy time with the family out-of-doors.

    Soon, in the Northern hemisphere, it will be winter. “What then?” you might ask.

    Bless the sea snakes….

    Everything is temporary.

  • I Concur

    The weather changes very quickly. At 8:45 today, my friend sent a text suggesting we cancel our 9 a.m. bike ride. Rain and thunderstorms were in the forecast. My response: “I concur.”

    Concur is one of those words rarely used. It means to agree, be in accord, go along, be in harmony, be in sympathy, see eye to eye, be of the same mind, or be of the same opinion. It also means to happen or occur at the same time; coincide.

    On one hand, I can see why the word is rarely used. On the other hand, it should be tattooed on our foreheads. Case in point, my recent letter to the editor:

    Confusion and misinformation about COVID-19 has run rampant, making matters worse. Individuals have to make their own choices, but our individual choices affect how we come through this as a whole.

    As a spokesperson for and practitioner of what has been called alternative medicine or holistic health for almost 30 years, I see two vital points of clarity:

    First: At any moment, you cannot be 100% confident you aren’t an asymptomatic carrier. Just as chicken pox is highly contagious before a person knows he or she has the virus, many people are being exposed to COVID-19 by individuals who do not know they have the virus.

    Second: Just breathing can spread this virus. Talking, laughing, and singing are as dangerous as coughing. Infectious aerosols can accumulate especially indoors, but also in any poorly circulating air, and can then easily be inhaled into the lungs.

    Studies are being done as quickly and effectively as possible due to collaboration in the global scientific community.

    Initially the CDC said to wear a mask only if you were sick or caring for someone who was sick. But this was due primarily to the global shortage of masks that were desperately needed by those on the front lines. Research has found that wearing masks significantly lowers the risk of spreading the virus, and that many unnecessary deaths will be prevented if everyone wears a mask. Mask-wearing has been widely adopted in Asia since SARS, and has been seen as a civic duty and a signal of “support” to health-care workers and the national economy.

    Myriad reasons exist for not wearing a mask: Masks can be uncomfortable, they fog up your glasses, they are hot, some people feel claustrophobic in them, hearing can be compromised.

    But there is only one reason to do the right thing.

    You wear a mask and safe distance not because of what you might GET, but because of what you might GIVE!

    It goes against our nature to isolate. We are social creatures. It goes against our nature to wear masks. But our nature has been shaped.

    By 9:00 this morning, just 15 minutes after our text concurring to cancel our bike ride, the skies were clear. I called my friend and said, “Let’s get on our bikes and ride toward one another.” We did just that. And we had lovely sharing.

    The previous evening she had heard a talk about why it is vital we bring native plants to suburban yards. A talk by Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at University of Delaware, author of Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants. From Doug’s website: Garden as if life depended upon it. You see, native plants support pollinators and food webs far better than introduced ornamentals, and some native plants support much more life than others. Choosing the best plants for your area is the key to success.

    Heading home from our ride, as I turned onto my road I was gifted an amazing view of nature’s linear wildflower garden! I pulled into the entrance of our park, got off my bike, and walked out to the road to take a photo. (See Sacred Story: Linear Garden.) Right there, without any fertilizer, and no need for irrigation, nature’s gorgeous, life-sustaining plants.

    Perhaps nothing since the Civil War has revealed our ability to see things differently from those we love the way this coronavirus has.

    Some see beauty and perfection when looking at a perfectly manicured lawn with the sprinklers twirling—totally missing the warning signs.

    The neighborhood in which we rode today is proliferated with a variety of evergreens planted widely in many housing developments a couple of decades ago. Those trees are dying a premature death. An appropriate species, but not native to this zone. Pines are among the oldest trees on Earth. Ponderosa pines, common throughout the western United States, have a lifespan of 300 to 500 years, with an 800-year-old tree documented in Utah.

    Shortly after we got home from our ride, my friend sent a text: Raining quite hard here! Lucky us.

    Our nature has been shaped just as surely as have our landscapes. We need the rain. We need the native plants. Right now, we need the masks.

    I so appreciated reading the words of a friend on his Facebook post: “I will wear my mask when out in public to respect your right,” and I also felt the sting that came with the rest of his sentence: “to live out your lives in fear.”

    Noticing the warning signs does not mean one is living out life in fear.

    Where are the bees?