pandemic Archives - Debra Basham

Being of Genuine Service

Tuesday evening while still in the post-overnight-drive malaise, I tried to log on as Zoom host for our Dharma Path class. It said “username / password incorrect” so I tried again. Same thing. Then the foggy thinking took over and I questioned if the link was set up on one of the other accounts. I tried both, but neither of those worked either, so I tried the main account once more.

Up popped, “YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN LOCKED FOR 30 MINUTES DUE TO FIVE INCORRECT LOGIN ATTEMPTS.”

About 15 minutes late opening the room, and about 15 minutes before the class is to begin, I used the student link to log in as a participant. That worked, but I was unable to support the class as host by making the teacher/s co-hosts, muting, spotlighting the teacher, recording the class, etc.

I asked one of the other students who is also a volunteer host to give it a try. He got the same message. I sent a text message to the Zoom team leader who was not attending the class. Perhaps she could help.

Barbara said we would begin and we would just rely upon audio recording with her iPad.

About 15-20 minutes later, the Zoom team leader was successful logging in as host! She was able to make me host, and I was able to perform my hosting duties.

You so want to be of genuine service….

I was very aware of the significance of Aaron’s opening illustration about a young child’s coming to dinner and lamenting, “I don’t want that black stuff on my potatoes.”

Note* I am allergic to black pepper. It gives me a sour stomach and “juicy” burps.

Aaron had Barbara share her experience at age 17 of being on a freedom ride with a group of students from the north who went into the deep south working toward the end of segregation. When Barbara voiced her fear in anticipation of the following day’s event, an elder church member said to her, “WE would not want you to do this if you were not afraid — you need to recognize the harm that could be done so you can already forgive them for any possible harm.”

It is like Jesus saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

The following day their bus was run off the road. It was tipped on its side. The angry mob was breaking the windows. Glass and rocks were raining down on them. Amidst this shock and risk a single voice began to sing, “We shall overcome…” before they all joined in.

Barbara remembers that as a pivotal moment.

Great harm or even death may have come to them if not for the arrival of the National Guard.

Many of us are old enough to remember segregated movie theaters, drinking fountains, schools. Forward movement is not always a straight line.

A substantial theme of the class was this path of genuine service while navigating an ongoing pandemic and divisiveness. We were asked how we would (or could) respond if a neighbor’s child fell on the sidewalk and was obviously seriously injured. The parents of this child had been very hostile toward social distancing, wearing a mask, or getting a vaccine. Perhaps one of the parents currently had Covid. Several student were able to describe ways to tend to the needs of the child while still protecting themselves from potential exposure to the virus.

During the Q&A, sincere anger and frustration was expressed about a grown son who refused to get a Covid test for his mother to be comfortable coming to and assist the family with a toddler and an expectant mom. Aaron used the example of saying a firm “no” from a place of compassion as one would do if a teenage son had been drinking and wanted to drive the car.

Aaron responded to the anger and frustration with such wisdom and loving kindness.

“Compassion does not make you weak.”

Another person expressed fear around the deepening of positions of humans around alternate views.

“They are not here as destroyers of each other, they are teachers for one another.”

As this last month of 2021 unfolds, my sister (Janis) and I continue to use the 2020 Magic Eye calendar as a spiritual template for the upcoming month.

December’s is a lovely holiday scene.

As you let your focus relax, three deer appear in the foreground. The one on the left is looking toward the right. The one on the right is looking toward the left. The one in the middle is looking forward.

Varying slightly from culture to culture, symbolism of deer is gentleness, awareness of surroundings, unconditional love, and mindfulness. A deer represents innocence, kindness, grace, and good luck.

May all beings act from these qualities that are within each of us.

That is being of genuine service….

December 3, 2021

Disappearance of Dogma

If the definition of “dogma” is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true then I wonder what we call the state of not seeing anything as incontrovertibly true? Perhaps that is the disappearance of dogma….

I have been listening to Kelvin Chin, who was a test subject in the first medical studies on meditation in the U.S.— conducted by Boston cardiologist Herbert Benson, MD in 1971 (published in Scientific American, 1972). One of his teachings is about what happens when we die. What he teaches produces an effect on me. Until recently I had never heard of Kelvin. Now, I feel compelled pay attention to what he is saying.

When our daughter, Stacey, was visiting us here in Michigan we watched Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Very adolescent, mildly offensive, the NASCAR superstar Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) must pull himself out of the depths of despair and restore his honor on the racetrack. We had heard a lot of the lines from the movie, but now we have heard Ricky Bobby praying to 8 pound baby Jesus.

The time with Stacey was a lot of fun. She had a Michigan perfect weather-week. We rode bikes. We walked downtown at sunset. We ate. They drank. We laughed. We cried. The week was also a lot of work. Soul work.

As Stacey and I were shoulder-to-shoulder for hours assembling two 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, not all of our talk about Jesus was as laughable as Ricky Bobby’s 8 pound Baby Jesus. Both Stacey and her mom are obviously experiencing a spiritual crisis of sorts. Growing pains… As Stacey implored me to not take her faith away from her, I spoke the gospel truth, “I don’t want you to give up your faith. I would hope you will go MORE deeply into your faith, beyond the surface level where some are inside the circle and some are outside, to where your faith is an act of inclusion not exclusionary.”

We discussed how mystics of different traditions describe a common “reality” that seems to be summed up as the mystic and all of reality are One. The purpose of our individual spiritual growth is to achieve that oneness in our everyday experience, to transcend limited identity and re-identify with the all that is.

“Can you help me understand how a person who has never taken a flu shot, who teaches that germs don’t cause illness, that our own immune system is designed to keep us healthy came to the conclusion it is best to take the vaccine?” she queried.

“You have to see my world view to understand that,” I responded. “I don’t experience myself as separate from anything. I don’t buy bottled waters because I see the miles of toxic waste poisoning the ocean. I saw the face of my friend, who is a doctor (she and her husband are both doctors) having to decide who gets treated and who does not. I felt the pain of family not being able to be with their loved one who are dying. For me, my heart was so filled with this collective pain, I could not even experience a “personal” point of view. I don’t want to get the virus, I don’t want to give the virus. I want to alleviate as much suffering as I can. Any small personal inconvenience or possible risk was nothing compared to what I experienced as the impact on the whole.”

I went on to share that I had the benefit of personally knowing an epidemiologist who was intimately involved in all of this. He isolated. He masked. He and his wife got the vaccine as soon as possible. I had the experience of knowing a man whose son and daughter-in-law were living abroad working with an international team of scientists to develop a vaccine (knowing this sort of pandemic was inevitable). I had the benefit of the experience — if you would call it that — of losing a good friend and ministry colleague to Covid. She was in the hospital for pancreatitis in March when we went into lock-down. I heard her voice. I felt her fear. I know of the helplessness of her daughter, her grandson, and her husband as they were unable to be with her.

My experience meant I could not make a choice to knowingly risk that suffering for another.

You cannot un-know an experience. All of my experience shaped my choice.

A day or so later, as she was getting ready for bed, Stacey asked me to give her again the Reader’s Digest version of how I arrived at my conclusion. I could feel her desire to go beyond the understanding of her own heart to the ability to articulate that world view to another.

We talked about moving beyond our own effort and inviting nonphysical support in everything we do.

We shared how vulnerable it can feel as you let go of beliefs that have supported us in the past.

I told her if someone had been able to have this kind of conversation with me I may not have had to step outside of the Christianity I loved to continue to develop spiritually.

Kelvin references the different types of near death experiences of individuals quite simply: “Everybody interprets it through their own belief system, their own filters.”

My own near death experience occurred August 12, 1962. 59 years later, to-the-day, it seems I am still processing that all now.

Kelvin says after we let go of our physical bodies we recognize not just loved ones from this life who have already physically died, but also identifiable energy beings (old friends) from previous lives. Many previous lives…. and many old friends….

While out riding my bike I noticed how little “belief” I have access to at this stage of my experience. “I don’t know” could be an appropriate mantra. Maybe I would add, “And it does not matter,” but, of course, that might be a belief!

Stacey decided she would welcome help from a “Santa” Jesus.

I sent her this image to remind us both of the gifts of our disappearing dogma.

August 12, 2021

The True Meaning of Home

The other evening we were talking about our favorite childhood book/s. Mine was The Boxcar Children. It is a story about four orphaned siblings who must find a way to fend for themselves or risk being separated.The children have a grandfather they have never met, but they are afraid he is mean because he did not seem to like their mother. An abandoned boxcar, near a stream, is luxury compared to sleeping inside a hay stack all day! Working odd-jobs, the children use hard work to cultivate self-reliance until they must seek medical care for Violet, at risk of losing their independence.

After much process and some candid conversation with my dharma sister physician friend, Stacey decided to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine while she was here. It was convenient. She, admittedly, still had some reservations.

As she was waiting for her shot she said, “The first person who thanks me for getting the shot is going to piss me off.”

“Then let me be the first so you get it out of the way. Thank you.” We both cried and hugged.

When she sat down to go over the paperwork, I said to the woman, “She is doing this for her mother.”

The woman glanced at me, “Are you her mother?” When I said I was, she turned back to Stacey and confessed, “I did it for my dad.”

I am not exactly sure why Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny were so memorable, or why I can still FEEL the safety of their boxcar. The relief they expressed upon discovery of a safe place to call home was familiar to me as a child. Having grown up with an alcoholic father, I know that feeling of longing for a home in the core of my being.

Although I loved to go visit friends, overnights often turned into feelings of homesickness. I sometimes feel that even as an adult.

One website addressed “cosmic” and “Lemurian” homesickness: Sometimes you feel trapped in your life, in your body, separated by your skin from the truth of the world and the people around you. Lonely and disconnected. You gaze skyward, knowing home must be up there, somewhere. You long for the feeling of your soul’s most familiar surroundings.

Yes, that is the longing I had during the time Covid (and politics, and religion….) created the feeling of homesickness.

Wynn, from Brentwood Bay, British Columbia, in Grade 5, wrote about home so clearly.

Home means an enjoyable, happy place where you can live, laugh and learn. It’s somewhere where you are loved, respected, and cared for. When you look at it from the outside, home is just a house. A building. Maybe a yard. But on the inside, it’s a lot more than wood and bricks. The saying “Home is where the heart is” says it all.

Home is also where your memories lie. Home is where I got my head stuck under the couch. Home is where I fell in the goldfish pond. I remember sleeping in the playhouse, falling down the stairs and climbing up the apple tree. Without memories, most people wouldn’t be the people that they are today.

Just like memories, home is also where your hopes and dreams are.

August 5, 2021

Lasting Effects of the Pandemic

WORD FOR THE DAY
from Gratefulness.org

The more you sense the rareness
and value of your own life,
the more you realize that
how you use it,
how you manifest it,
is all your responsibility.

We face such a big task,
so naturally we sit down for a while.

~ Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi

I did not know John and I would make a spur-of-the-moment drive to Tennessee and have such a wonderFULL four days with our daughter, Stacey, and her family, including our 6 month-old great-grandson, Jackson. My heart is so full, my eyes keep running over….

A lasting effect of the pandemic.

One of the lasting effects of the pandemic is an open schedule which allowed us to pick up and go. Another lasting effect is the down-on-my-knees gratitude for surviving. Not only have we survived the virus, but we see now how we have also survived the thought-virus of “MY WAY IS THE WAY.”

Ours is not the only family that navigated the pandemic with physical isolation being secondary to the pain of emotional distance, this dynamic having played itself out for many, if not most. This dynamic plays itself out over-and-over in every human life as the eight worldly concerns (conveniently divided into four pairs of seeming opposites): gain and loss, praise and blame, good reputation and bad reputation, and pleasure and pain.

Did the dissipation of distance and the opening of our hearts occur because of our mutual love for Jackson? Caring for him, delighting in him, cooperating with one another on his behalf surely has produced a welcome lasting effect.

When I captured this photo of Jackson’s face-palm, his mom shared that this was his pose in the ultrasound images while he was in the womb, and his dad said that was the pose as he entered the world! The gesture is found in many cultures as a display of frustration, disappointment, exasperation, embarrassment, horror, shock, surprise, exhaustion, sarcasm, or incredulous disbelief. One friend commented that it is was his way of saying, “What have I gotten myself into?”

A lasting effect of the pandemic likely has all of humanity experiencing some of that feeling….

But, everything holds its opposite, as is seen in this photo of a very contented Jackson in the arms of his Uncle Adam.

“We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality…. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.” ~ Buddha / Kalu Rinpoche

And the older I get, the more thankful I feel, for the life I’ve had and all the life I’m living still. My heart still rings with John’s playing guitar and singing those lyrics from “The Older I Get” by Alan Jackson.

Another lasting effect of the pandemic!

The Older I Get

The older I get
The more I think
You only get a minute, better live while you’re in it
‘Cause it’s gone in a blink
And the older I get
The truer it is
It’s the people you love, not the money and stuff
That makes you rich
And if they found a fountain of youth
I wouldn’t drink a drop and that’s the truth
Funny how it feels I’m just getting to my best years yet
The older I get
The fewer friends I have
But you don’t need a lot when the ones that you got
Have always got your back
And the older I get
The better I am
At knowing when to give
And when to just not give a damn
And if they found a fountain of youth
I wouldn’t drink a drop and that’s the truth
Funny how it feels I’m just getting to my best years yet
The older I get
And I don’t mind all the lines
From all the times I’ve laughed and cried
Souvenirs and little signs of the life I’ve lived
The older I get
The longer I pray
I don’t know why, I guess that I’ve
Got more to say
And the older I get
The more thankful I feel
For the life I’ve had and all the life I’m living still

June 26, 2021

The Collective

When I picked up the spoon off the napkin to stir my morning tea, a huge ant fell out onto the kitchen counter. I carefully picked it up with the napkin, and carried it out onto the porch.

Looking up “ant as animal totem” I was surprised to see a reference to MOLD:

The plant spirit medicine of mold is in partnership with Ant medicine and it teaches of the psychedelic dimensions of Earth.

The insect nation is in direct communication with such dimensions which is why it is often very disconcerting to encounter Dragonfly, Ant, Spider, and all the other tiny crawlers of Earth.

(Regular readers of Yellow Brick Road know we had quite the dance with mold.)

Coming back to get my tea, I saw a long-legged spider in the sink. I grabbed a tissue and carefully delivered the spider to the porch as well. Very unusual happenings both of these….

The following morning, another (near-identical) spider was in the sink!

Over the past week I have been gifting contents from my professional office. While it was not an easy decision to give up a formal practice space, I have already had many confirmations that opportunities abound to love, serve, and remember, as Betty Lue and Robert (Reunion) taught us to sing.

My massage table went to Tina at Creative Therapy School of Massage.

The elephant statue was dropped off to Kimberly.

It has been my hope that the love and healing related to each item and all of our history will continue to bless the world with remembered wholeness.

I had an odd interaction when I dropped off the door name plate to one colleague. Knowing she had last expressed not having been vaccinated, I put on my mask and offered a hug. “No hugs,” she replied. “I have to protect you.” The words did not match the energy.

“I am masked to protect you,” I responded.

“No hugs,” she repeated, shaking her head.

I got back into my car feeling some sadness. I was very grateful our next delivery was to drop off the afghan with Jesus surrounded all the forest creatures. It was a wonderful visit…. complete with hugs.

One of the members of the Zen Empty Circle shared the stressful situation with his in-laws, who neither mask nor choose to be vaccinated against the coronavirus — understandably wanting his young daughter to come spend time with them. They miss her. He does not feel comfortable allowing her to go. The meditation teacher said, “Remember you are not keeping her from them, you are protecting her from the virus.”

In our own family we have this dynamic.

In many families, this polarized world view expresses itself.

What will our post-pandemic world be? The wondering comes if we will we be like the Sneetches (Dr. Seuss) and get over ourselves, but at a cost like when McBean drives away with the Sneetches‘ cash, exclaiming, “They never will learn. No. You can’t teach a Sneetch.”

It did not feel as though she refused a hug “to protect me” but I do know she is not a Sneetch, and neither am I….

If you want to go fast,
go alone.
If you want to go far,
go together.

~ African Proverb
(The tag line on the ant totem reading.)

May 30, 2021

Specimen of Transformation

I woke up this morning thinking about a beautiful woman, who happens to be the daughter of a dear friend of mine. A remarkable feat of love — her going this past weekend to visit her biological father on his deathbed to assure him of forgiveness for his abuse.

That same woman is undergoing surgery today.

This is how I came to ponder the life cycle of a butterfly.

Amazing words leapt off the page as I read under the heading: Do butterflies remember being caterpillars?

The study showed that memory, and therefore the nervous system, stays during the complex transformation from the caterpillar to the adult moth.

So while a moth or butterfly may not remember being a caterpillar, it can remember experiences it learned as a caterpillar

This woman’s life cycle as a daughter is no less remarkable. While her nervous system has stayed during the complex transformation — so she remembers the experiences she learned — she is definitely no longer the victim of abuse.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Just like the butterfly, we can remember our experiences and benefit from the learning even as we are being transformed. My meditation teacher speaks a lot about our collective transformation (from negative polarity to positive polarity) and assures us we are moving to a stage of consciousness where we not only learn from our own experience, but we are truly transformed by the collective learning.

Becoming a Teacher to Others

When you begin to work with other people as a teacher, that is a very dangerous point. Unless you are willing to learn from students—unless you regard yourself as a student and the students as your teacher—you cease to be a true teacher. You only impart your experience of what you’ve been taught, a package deal. And having done that, there’s no more to say—unless you repeat yourself again and again.

Excerpted from: “The Bardo of Meditation” in Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos, by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (page 63)

Last evening, her mother and I were talking about how hard it is for all those facing surgeries during the pandemic. I had been to my primary care physician for the first time since the pandemic earlier in the day. EVERYTHING is so much harder.

People are dropped off at the door.

Family has to wait elsewhere.

When notified, they pick up the patient.

I was remembering ALL of the support I received when I had the abdominal mass removed in November, 2012. A friend came with John and me. She stayed with him until the mother of this remarkable woman arrived to relieve them. I had a revolving door of caregivers.

It was not just easier on me. Every act of support and care provided to me by this “care team” was support for those employed to care for me.

My heart was filled to overflowing as I watched the extra effort everyone at the doctor’s office had to take to make sure we are all safe. My doctor’s husband is an ER doc. She expressed her hope that humanity will pull together so we will all be able to enjoy communal life again. She said, “I am so looking forward to being able to hug you when I walk you out.”

This admitted “white-coat syndrome” sufferer had a blood pressure reading of 122/70 in that atmosphere of love. That, too, is no easy feat.

Today, I bow to each beautiful specimen of transformation.

April 27, 2021

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….

April 13, 2021

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:

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.

March 30, 2021

Muy agradecida. Muy agradecido.

How can I wish for myself
what I do not wish for everybody,
including those I think of
as my worst enemies?

~ Aaron

Another drive across the state of Florida, this time for our second vaccine, and this time we know where we are going. We are going to an ALL Spanish-speaking pharmacy near Miami. (See: A Dios Mio )

I have been transcribing Ram Dass speaking about Living and Dying.

So, now once you want to be free—at first you want to hang out with people that keep you high—later, you want to confront the fires that catch you, you want to purify through those fires. You just find yourself drawn towards the things that are still catching you, so that you can get to the point where you can be in them but not lost in them. Where you can keep your space even when you’re in them.

And dying is one of the big ones that sucks everybody in, and so part of the work is developing the ability to be with somebody that’s dying, or be dying yourself, and stay very clear and very present because those that are from religions that focus on the moment of death, which is most of the religions that have reincarnation in them, see life as a preparation for the moment of death

Many people in this culture don’t want to talk about death. They resist aging. They want an easy way out of something that is inescapable. So, there is suffering….

Our Canadian friends, Davey and Eli, had to leave Florida and go back to Canada or risk losing their medical coverage because he had been hospitalized with diverticulitis. The night before they left, we rang their doorbell, stepped back, and when Davey opened the door, John and I began to sing: Davey, Davey, give us your answer true, we’re half crazy, all for the love of you. Courtney’s won’t be a stylish marriage, without you there in your carriage, and we’ll be switched if she’ll be hitched without Davey and Eli there, too.

His eyes met mine…. and he said softly, “The best part of your singing was getting to see your smile.”

Davey has not seen me without a mask for over a year now.

Dass says any time there is suffering, it’s a clue to where your mind is holding.

My mind is holding to the question of how to see/be with my family (and meet our new great-grandson, Jackson) who are all in Tennessee. It is right on the way from Florida to Michigan. Visiting with them has always been what made leaving Florida something to be embraced. We saw Stacey and Doug and Adam and Brad and Christina briefly on the way down, but we have not seen our grand-daughter, Courtney, since November 2019. We have yet to meet the baby in person. We long for things to be normal again. To see smiling faces. To eat at the same table. To touch the same playing cards as I win 500 Rummy….

We will do what we can to help us all be able to gather again without fear of getting or giving a virus that humans don’t yet have herd immunity toward. A virus that ended the life of our grand-daughter’s other grandpa. Paw Paw was in the hospital with the coronavirus and he did not get to meet Jackson.

How can I wish for myself what I do not wish for everybody?

Dass says when Mahatma Gandhi was dying he walked out into his yard, an assassin shot him three times. Our image of an assassin in America – we think of the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, always there is horror and violence connected with it, and we imagine (if we can the imagine) that the moment someone is shot they are stunned or confused. Gandhi had just as much time as the others when he was shot, but when he was shot and falls over he just says, “Ram.” He goes out on the name of God.

We, too, go out on the name of God. We will again drive to Florida’s East Coast.

And for that we are very grateful….

Muy agradecida. Muy agradecido.

March 22, 2021

DO What YOU Can

“I don’t know what your destiny will be,
but one thing I do know:
The ones among you who will be really happy
are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
~ Albert Schweitzer

Tapping with Scarlett Lewis of The Forgiveness Project during the World Tapping Summit, my heart opened deeply related to a stream of past energies. Scarlett’s 6-year-old son, Jesse, was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the deadliest mass shooting at a school in U.S. history.

Interestingly, soon after tapping in forgiveness with Scarlett I was gifted some precious stories demonstrating what happens when you do what YOU can do.

That toad rode home in her passenger seat. She “turned the heat off and the music down.” He was safely placed in her monarch cage before she searched how to care for toads in captivity. Following instructions, she added a pan of sand and a bowl of water. The next morning he had dug down in the sand and covered himself with leaves. “K” put him in a dark cool part of house and he remains in hibernation. If he wakes, she will feed him. She hopes to keep him until spring and release him.

“K” did what she could do. She truly is a shaman. I sent her the toad totem meaning: Toads have always been ascribed supernatural powers and they are believed to have a special connection with invisible dark forces we people cannot understand.

“BJ” is a CNA working in hospice care. Covid-19 has certainly had an impact on patients and those who care for them. Standing at the bedside (gowned, masked, and gloved), a dying patient looked into her eyes and said, “Can I please hold your hands?” She felt like she was being touched by an angel for those short moments the patient held her hands before thanking her, and afterwards found a quiet place to reflect.

“BJ” just does what she can do. Every day she is present with patients, family members, co-workers and HERSELF, providing support and a safe space.

Born at the beginning of the pandemic, she has spent her life without many of the things we had believed we needed to be happy.

But, at just 12 months old, “A” can wave and say bye-bye.

Her mother sent a video of her waving and saying bye-bye over and over! It was soooooo cute.

And then her mother asked if she wanted to say be happy. “A” smiled her biggest world-winning smile right into the camera and said clearly, “BE HAPPY!”

You can only imagine what gifts “A” will bring the world as she continues to grow…

We are not expected to do it all.

We are not expected to do it right.

We are invited to seek and find ways to serve and to be happy.

The surest way to do that is to just DO What YOU Can….

February 28, 2021

Tag: pandemic