Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Yellow Brick Road

  • Ambiguous Gain

    My sister and I are having a wonderful experience with the Magic Eye calendar for 2020.



    We meet via a video call on the first day of each month and we turn the page together. We love the sharing: looking; not seeing; relaxing; looking again; seeing. That is how the process works!

    September was a very challenging image to see. We both had to make at least a half-dozen attempts.

    Relaxing is key.

    Our collective exhilaration when we finally see is palpable.

    My writing time with Southern Circle Poets began with someone’s post about “Ambiguous Loss” that I had re-posted on Facebook:

    Someone once said when you love someone with dementia you lose them more and more everyday: when they are diagnosed, when they go through different stages, when they go into care and when they die.

    This is called “Ambiguous Loss.”

    ‘Rapidly shrinking brain’ is how doctors described it.

    I wouldn’t wish Dementia on anyone. As the persons brain slowly dies, they change physically and eventually forget who their loved ones are. They can eventually become bedridden, unable to move and unable to eat or drink.

    There will be people who will scroll by this message because dementia has not touched them. They may not know what it’s like to have a loved one who has fought or is fighting a battle against Dementia.

    My friend, Claudia, knows this experience well, as does Katey, one of the Southern Circle Poets.

    I wrote:

      I cannot expect you to understand what it feels like to see someone struggle with tasks that once were as easy as breathing. To hear a loved-one say or ask the same comment or question over and over again.

      And to know the truth, “I cannot fix this.”

      Being present with my own inner struggles with wanting it to be fixed is the best I can do.

      I begin a poem:

      You Once Were

      You once were so skillful; and willful.
      You once were so strong.

      The writing doesn’t go anywhere from there, so I begin again…

      Ambiguous Loss

      I wonder when I first recognized you were losing precious skills we had both taken for granted. Like scales falling off the catch-of-the-day, your identity seems to be hell-bent on shedding strengths.

      Crossing the street as the afternoon sunlight was casting shadows, I saw autumn trees on the face of the glistening parking lot still damp from a brief shower. This the first time I had accepted it was me cautioning you to watch your step. Red, yellow, orange and gold…. green now sleeping soundly somewhere.

      I cannot see your world from here.

      Permission granted to enjoy the hint of fall as the breeze blows in from the window behind me, almost cool enough to cause a chill.

      Permission granted to witness the tightness moving mechanically across my chest as I wonder what your future will unfold to.

      Permission granted to be content with both the not knowing and the wanting to know and the soft, sensuous dance between seeming opposites.

      Memory drifts back to delivering my mom to the adult foster care home. Grief at leaving her there as she looks into my face calling me Debbie, and pleads, “Don’t leave me with these strangers….” and the guilt at being my relief to be leaving her there. The years of her decline, the day of her passing—edges blur as they burn a hole in my emotional body, a single heart breaking open enough to hold the whole human happening.

      Profound gratitude now for the dear ones who have walked this path previously, providing a trail of recognition along this treacherous terrain. Remembering Hansel and Gretel and their crumbs of bread being consumed by the birds….

      I make the choice to trust I am still moving toward the center of our being.

    This morning I had a near-identical conversation with two people I love. One was about the news that a job would be ending. The other was about having been at an eye doctor’s office with frighteningly lax procedures for prevention of the spread of Covid-19. Although the content of these two experiences looks dissimilar, the words that came crossed the chasm of delusion: Every experience will be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. We learn from it all.

    I said, “When you have already already felt the pain of the experience, be sure you reap the benefits.”

    Having worked at jobs which demanded so much that life balance was sacrificed isn’t failure. Noticing is gaining insight.

    When a child is burned by touching a hot stove, the child learns from the pain how to be safer.


    Now, this is “Ambiguous Gain…”

  • Fly Eyes

    Society evolves not by shouting each other down,
    but by the unique capacity of unique,
    individual human beings to comprehend each other.
    ~ Lewis Thomas

    I started having flies in the master bathroom. We pretty quickly figured out where they were getting in, but it took me a while to catch and release them all.

    I have been able to catch flies in my fingers for as long as I can remember. I speak to the flies, saying, “Slow down. I will let you out where you have more access to food. Easy… easy… almost there.”

    The fly totem meaning is quick and abrupt changes in your thoughts, emotions, and endeavors are afoot.

    Fly eyes are immobile, but the spherical shape and the eye’s protrusion from the head produce an almost 360-degree view of the world!

    The message from fly is, You must use your keen eyesight to see the way.

    Lewis Thomas, author of the opening quotation, was an American physician and researcher, a scientist who wrote essays and reflections on topics in biology.

    Nature has so much to teach us…

    Barbara Brodsky was a civil rights activist in her teens. She was trained in nonviolence. She tells of having been sent into a small segregated town in the deep south with an adult Caucasian couple, and a black teenage girl. Every eye was glaring at them as they entered the busy cafe, but they felt victorious that they were allowed to take a seat.

    A waitress came over and took their drink orders.

    When the waitress came back with their beverages, the ice-filled contents were poured over the head of the young black woman! Chairs were instantly kicked back and patrons filled with hatred and anger were on their feet. It was impossible to know if they would get out unharmed.

    1 Peter 3:9
    Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

    It took patience and a genuine commitment to DO NO HARM to get every one of those flies out of my bathroom alive. It took that and more to get Barbara and her companions out of that small town alive….

    Abraham Hicks said, “There isn’t anything that I cannot be or do or have, and I have a huge Nonphysical staff that’s ready to assist me, and I’m ready.” (Excerpted from Boca Raton, Florida on 1/12/97)

    It is time for kindness and wisdom and patience and commitment to do no harm. We need the help of all of that nonphysical staff so every sentient being on this planet can inherit a blessing.

    I am ready.

    I hope you are ready too…

  • Meddling Mind

    The world is changed by your example, not your opinion.
    ~ Paul Coehlo

    As I was feeling befuddled by boredom, I happened upon a dharma talk by Kyoun Sokuzan. Sokuzan, a fully transmitted monk in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition, was speaking about meddling mind.

    Adyashanti (born Steven Gray in 1962), an American spiritual teacher and writer, says, “To have enough curiosity to start to question your deepest identity is absolutely vital and essential to spiritual awakening, and to the realization of peace and freedom.”

    When I say “I stumbled upon a dharma talk,” I mean that I still have no rational understanding of how I got onto the live stream. Oh, I know this teacher is the head of the SokukoJi Buddhist Temple Monastery, in Battle Creek, Michigan. A mutual Buddhist friend has attended events there before Covid-19.

    From the Website:

    America has Zen all the time. Why, my Teacher, should I meddle?

    April 10, 1938

    We have here the very same breeze as the remote spring at Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha.

    The very same mist hangs over the evening garden as it did over the ancient woods of Asoka trees.

    There is no spot on this good earth which is not the birthplace of a Buddha.

    I had not gone to their website, or their Facebook page, nor signed up for anything with this group. But the morning after I heard the dharma talk on meddling mind, I had a deep discussion with a dear friend about the danger of delusion. Very shortly after that conversation I read these powerful words of a writer-colleague:

    “Doodling Without Concern for End-Gain”

    By letting go of fantasy, desire, and ego, which all come from inside ourselves, Paulus suggested opening to the energy of nature, a model of abundance and non-possession coming from outside ourselves.

    ~ Zan Lombardo

    (NOTE: This is a chapter for a collaborative book being written by a group of people who were strongly influenced by Paulus Berensohn (1933-2017), dancer, potter, poet, artist, deep ecologist, teacher and former director at the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina. Zan’s work is not yet published work, and has been shared here without her expressed permission.)

    P.S. I found this “Ball and Box” analogy explaining grief relevant. It was posted by a friend who lost her 35 year old son recently. If you find it helpful, please share it with others.


    Grief related to a recent loss can stimulate fairly constant pain. The ball and box analogy allowed the author of the article to understand why it is normal to still be experiencing intermittent feelings of grief even years after recovering from the initial shock of a loss.

    Grief is something we get through…. not something to get over.

    Meddling mind would have us believe or deny or act out feelings, thoughts, and opinions related to grief and loss. Coehlo expressed it so powerfully: the world is changed by our example.

    The pandemic is generating and amplifying feelings for people. Awareness allows us to be more skillful, compassionate, and wise with ourselves and others.

  • What Are You Doing Today?

    The farmer may only be planting a seed,
    but if he opens his eyes
    he is feeding the whole world.
    ~ Omaha Bee

    This opening quotation kicked off a precious story about a three-person construction crew who was approached by a man asking what each was doing. The first said he was working for pittance and was getting tired, the second said he was laying concrete, the third (a woman, in the version I read) said, “I am building a hospital where people will receive needed medical care and many lives will be saved.”

    The man responded, “Yes… You are building my hospital.”

    The man was the benefactor, and he made the woman head over the entire project.

    I don’t know if this story actually happened as it is written, but the essence of this story is happening all over the planet at every moment as we are either working for a pittance, laying concrete, or saving lives.

    What are you doing today?

    Deep Spring Center
    Thought for Today

    You ask why there seem to be increasing obstacles. If you’re muddling around thinking about being more loving and caring and connected in your lives but not really doing much about it, negative polarity can relax. They see you’re not really getting anywhere. Since WWII, there has been a tremendous move toward positive polarity in the world. Many old souls are coming into birth, especially in the past 30 years. Here are many beings really intent on finding a way to live with love in the world rather than with an ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ doctrine. Negative polarity looks around and says, ‘What’s happening? This is getting out of hand! Look how loving they’re becoming. Let’s toss in some opposition here.’ ~ Aaron

    Deep Spring has a new blog! Here is a link to the first post: The Vibration of Love is Protection from COVID-19

    Sign up to receive all of the posts real-time!!!

  • Order, Disorder, Reorder

    Twelve minutes late coming to join the Southern Circle Poets writing group, I have been transplanting some flowering things that have been blooming beautifully along the left edge of our driveway all summer. We are scheduled to have work begin tearing up the old concrete and blacktop, and putting in a continuous concrete driveway from the sidewalk to the door of our barn. John hopes it will work for shuffleboard!!!

    Yesterday when I mentioned my desire to transplant the flowering things, he queried as to if they were wildflowers or weeds. “What is the difference?” I asked. “Perhaps we just call them weeds because no one sells them at the garden shoppe.” They are beautiful, they are healthy, and they are contributing oxygen to the planet. It is worth a try to keep them alive….

    Simultaneously, I have been going through major disorder in my front bedroom/office/meditation hall. My HP PC crossed the rainbow bridge. (English: My desktop computer cannot be repaired.) I had big stuff tied to that PC: a big tower, a huge monitor, an external camera, a professional Brother laser printer, great-sounding Bose speakers. The PC’s valued accessories generated a need within me to hold onto it all when we downsized three years ago. And now what was is no more.



    Things have changed, and I am now working towards freeing up space. I will use my laptop as my ONLY computer. Unless you count my iPhone….

    So for days now I have been purging files to get the contents of four two-drawer file cabinets down to three.

    I am still somewhat in grief about my Brother printer. This has been a fantastic printer. I have cranked out client intake forms, NLP certificates, myriad lunch-and-learn handouts, and lots of poetry.

    Perhaps it has not yet been determined what will go or stay. Not only is this printer quite large, but the installation is on a CD and my laptop does not have a CD player. I know one can purchase an external CD player but I just don’t know if I want to accommodate the size of this printer.

    I will figure it out as I go along. I did determine that I can use my Bose speakers with my laptop when I want really good sound.

    Things are in disorder around schools. Two Midwestern universities announced on Tuesday that they will be modifying their fall plans because of the coronavirus pandemic. University of Notre Dame has suspended all in-person classes for at least two weeks due to the swell of coronavirus since students returned August 10. A letter from the President of Michigan State University stated: “Effective immediately, we are asking undergraduate students who planned to live in our residence halls this fall to stay home and continue their education with MSU remotely.”

    A friend who teaches K-12 was struggling with whether or not to take an early retirement from teaching. An important piece for her is that she can now retire with medical benefits — a big deal as she is a survivor of breast cancer.

    So much is going on. Old habit energy is amplified. Some people are paralyzed by panic. Others are already seeing opportunities opening up. I suggested my friend might benefit by creating and using a breath prayer, such as “I will figure it out as I go along….”

    My friend laughed so hard she cried, but the truth is we have all been doing that all along. In this ‘disorder’ phase we can see that clearly. It allows you to relax about it.

    I have found things in this office space while purging that I did not even know I had. You do want to keep the important stuff. As you anticipate reorder, notice what is truly important. Let go of the everything else. We will figure it out as we go along…

    Look at all the space that is being created!

  • Mario’s Italian Market Remains!

    In response to “When Everything Falls Apart, What Remains?” posting, I received a precious email message from a Florida writer-friend.

    Thank you, Paul, for igniting my heart by sharing your powerful writing of your poignant experience.

    (Soft edits only!)

    Welcome to the Yellow Brick Road, and please come again….

      Dear Debra,

      I stared at the title of your recent blog for moments before I opened and read the email.

      The title described exactly, in a few short words, what I’ve been feeling for weeks. Seems that we’ve experienced a string of negative events these past few months that have made July/August 2020 among the most unforgettable in recent memory.

      I’ve tried to remain positive, yet have found this challenging.

      Although not the root cause, COVID-induced separation is a likely contributor to a nagging sense of disconnect.

      I wonder sometimes if we’ve gotten too good at “social distancing.” We stay at home; work from home in separate rooms; spend all day in different mindsets. We frown under our mask if someone is shopping in the wrong direction in the supermarket aisle. We are cautioned to avoid people who are sick, when we used to be encouraged to do the opposite.

      E.M. Forster begins his novel “Howard’s End” with the words “only connect.”

      A final thought on human interaction and connectedness: One of our favorite activities since moving to Southwest Florida is shopping at Mario’s Italian Market in Fort Myers.

      Having grown up in Brooklyn with parents who were raised in Little Italy, I feel qualified to comment on the salumeria experience in America.

      The magic of Mario’s is that everyone there—regardless of ethnicity or nationality—is for that moment bound together by a familiarity and fondness for this food. We make sure that number 75 doesn’t answer before we hold up our ticket number 76. We ask the woman who ordered the long-hot peppers if they’re really hot; she replies with a smile and left-right wag of her hand. The counter man offers a sample slice of Calabrian salami—an inducement to order a half-pound instead of a quarter. We discuss the merits of gorgonzola versus blue cheese with a stranger.

      Perhaps this is what will remain when everything falls apart.

    Perhaps, when everything falls apart, what remains is everything that is loved….

    You are loved, Paul!

  • When Everything Falls Apart, What Remains?

    I am technically practicing silence in a meditation retreat at Heartwood Refuge and Retreat Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina. But I am attending via Zoom and my fingers are on the keyboard. The focus of this retreat with John Orr is When Everything Falls Apart, What Remains? This was John’s blurb about the retreat:

      Our world has seen a massive upheaval as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the continuing racism and political divisiveness. We are all having to deal with changes in our lives and the communities we live in. At times it may seem like everything is falling apart and we are left with a profound feeling of uncertainty. Now more than ever the dharma and our meditation practice can be a refuge to meet the present challenges.

      During this retreat we will explore the ancient teachings of:

      The Don’t Know Mind (making friends with uncertainty)

      Impermanence (this too shall pass)

      Dissolution (when everything falls apart, what remains?)

      Non Duality (Something isn’t separate from Everything)

      Our meditation draws on Mindfulness, Vipassana and Pure Awareness. Clear instruction will be offered for all levels.

      Loving Kindness and Compassion Meditation and chanting are also part of our retreat together. A special focus will be how to practice and hold our hearts open with the inconvenience, discomfort and uncertainty of today’s world.

    On Wednesday afternoon before the retreat began, I had yet another tender conversation with our daughter about our diverse approach to precautions related to this virus. We did not argue, but we make very different choices. A few hours later, during the opening introductions, I received news from a good friend–also attending via Zoom–that she was not feeling well. Here is the rest of the story, posted on Facebook a few moments ago in response to another friend, Kate:

    Kate posted:
    I feel like I’m one of the few people still practicing social distancing, and sheltering in place. FB is full of pics of people out to restaurants, at pools and beaches or sharing space with relatives they haven’t seen in awhile. I would love to see our kids but I can’t guarantee I’m not infected nor can they. Am I just over sensitive to this?

    I responded to Kate:
    Kate, THANK YOU! I could have written this post. Today I would add that another friend, thinking the same way you and I have been thinking, relented and got together with her family.

    Her adult children drove in from out of state, each household traveling in separate vehicles, taking proper precautions along way.

    Each household brought a tent. My friend rented a party-potty and set up an outdoor kitchen. My friend’s family did not enter her house, and when the family went hiking each family drove in his/her own car. They maintained social distance along the trail.

    Shortly after they arrived, her daughter’s partner received a call from work that his colleague had tested positive. He got in their vehicle and drove to the nearest location and had a Covid test.

    Of course the results from his test didn’t come back until AFTER he was already back home, and not until AFTER he was already symptomatic. His test came back positive.

    On Wednesday evening, gathered via Zoom, my friend reported that she had a “wicked cold” and had gone to get a Covid test. She would know in a week.

    Yesterday, she sent a private message via Zoom chat, “I tested positive. I have COVID.”

    Even the precautions level that you and I are committed to, may not be enough….

    Kate, keep teaching by example! So much to learn from this.

    ❤️🙏🏼🦋

    Deep Spring Center
    Thought for Today

    It is not the teacher who is the authority; it is the dharma that is the authority. It is sati, mindful presence, which is the authority. It is awareness, which is the authority. It is the deeply loving and open heart that is the authority. It is the Ground of Being, the divine essence of each, which is the authority. The teacher who has done his or her work, understands the practice and has developed a depth of realization of how things are, has no need to be the authority to another, but is willing to offer what he or she knows with a certainty, offering it for the guidance of others, but with no need to say, ‘This is it!’ If it really is it, others will discover that through their own practice. ~ Aaron

  • Transformation

    Recently, I included some information about transformation from J. Krishnamurti in my clergy “Insight’s” article.

    Transformation is said to occur only when NONE of the following are present:

      desire to change the experience
      judgment
      analysis
      justification
      grasping
      selfing
      resisting
      believing that “I am witnessing”

    Since the coronavirus stay-safe-at-home order in March, I have done daily yoga with Kathy Zerler. We started out by phone, but when it became obvious that the YMCA could not safely and legally hold the classes onsite any time soon, we started recording her yoga classes using Zoom. Kathy’s videos are available on Youtube by putting “Kathy Zerler yoga” into your search engine.

    This morning I had a heart-felt experience of transformation — exactly as Krishnamurti describes it — during the guided meditation at the end of class. “Your World is Your Greatest Creation” was published in Kathy’s Joyful Meditaions:

    Imagine yourself on a solitary beach at sunset. You are very relaxed after a long day…

    You come upon a raft that is half on the beach and half in the water. Your name is written on a flag that waves from a mast in the center of the raft. You understand that this raft is yours to use for as long as you need it. You decide to load up every person who has ever hurt you. Politely, you help each person onto the raft. When they are all seated, you toss in the baggage they have heaped on you along with a few things of your own that you no longer need. You push the raft out toward the setting sun and watch as these people and their baggage float out of your life.

    You are allowed to let them go. Just let them go….

    I have heard Kathy do this guided meditation several times before, but something truly remarkable happened today when the only person that got into the raft was me!

    I was alone in the raft and I could see clearly that only my distorted thoughts, beliefs, attitudes had hurt me.

    I gently oared the raft toward the setting sun in perfect peace.

    Transformation….

  • To Open or Not to Open

    Acceptance is the goal —
    acceptance and freedom to choose what we want and need to do
    to take care of ourselves with that person.

    We can become free of the patterns of the past.

    We are recovering.

    Progress is the goal.

    ~ The Language of Letting Go,
    Daily Meditations on Codependency
    by Melody Beattie

    Last evening I received an email message from our local YMCA with a subject line: Action Needed! Ask state lawmakers to reopen your Y!

    This morning in an online news article Dr. Fauci warns of “early signs” that an outbreak could be brewing in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. Right now, 93%, or 89 of Tennessee’s 95 counties, have a transmission rate “above the threshold.”

    Related to the coronavirus, most everyone would agree that progress is the goal. Obviously, however, opinions differ regarding in which direction progress lays.

    A friend heard on the news this morning that risk of exposure in our area is currently 4%. Her comment was that the low percentage may give people the feeling that not complying with guidelines (primarily wearing masks and maintaining safe distancing) is safe.

    I said, “If you want to untangle a knotted string, it is crucial to know which end of the string you are holding.”

    Four percent is a direct result of the strict guidelines that have been in place. The number does not mean, “Oh, we don’t have much Covid, so lets throw a big party to celebrate.” Rather, what it really means is, “Thankfully, our actions are making a difference, and lives are being saved. We can get through this together.”

    I took two photos this morning. One is a stink bug on my kitchen window; the other a moth on my office window.


    Seeing the delicate moth generated an inner smile; the big fat stink bug, repulsion.

    I understand businesses wanting to reopen, but is reopening an indoor exercise facility wise? Is sending out an email message urging members to pressure lawmakers to allow them to reopen a responsible act?

    This morning as I notice my inner preferences, I open email to the quotation from Abraham Hicks:

    If you will simply imagine your life as you want it to be, all cooperative components will be summoned. And even more important, all components that are summoned will cooperate. It is Law. The experience that you have with others is about what you evoke from them.

    Excerpted from The Vortex on 8/31/09

    Our Love,
    Esther
    (and Abraham and Jerry)

    I imagine Tennessee learning from Florida. I imagine Y members writing to the Y expressing the willingness to be patient. I imagine the stinky and the delicate co-existing in the balance of nature. I imagine acceptance and freedom to choose what we want and need to do to take care of ourselves…. I imagine all beings coming to the end of suffering.

  • Queen Stinky

    For this is wisdom; to live,
    To take what fate, or the Gods, may give.
    ~ Laurence Hope

    Wouldn’t it be great to have the name Hope! Or Faith! Cope is the maiden name of a friend. My own name (Debra) means busy bee in colloquialism, and she who brings the sublime light of the creator in the Egyptian cartouche.

    “We can’t control the events of our lives…” was the next line in the daily reading that opened with the quotation by Laurence Hope.

    This was also the theme of Tuesday’s meditation group with Sheilana Massey, who asked us to reflect on whether we are living our life, or letting our life live us. She asked, “When things are not going our way, are we trying to make it do that?”

    Someone shared a Quaker Saying, “The way will open related to that.”

    I asked, “Do we have to make something wrong in order to learn?”

    A woman mentioned how scientists and mathematicians are now coming to the same conclusions about the world spiritualists have long held.

    I have been dancing with demons expressing as insecurity around lack of formal education, comparing my poetry writing to others, and feeling not good enough. Familiar stories….

    Last evening just about dusk we had a surprise visitor at our bird feeder.

    Reading in Animal-Speak, by Ted Andrews:

    Skunk teaches how to give respect, expect respect, and demand respect.

    It is self-assured and confident in itself.

    If skunk has shown up, it can help you with this particular aspect.

    (p. 312-313)

    Yes, I have been dancing with demons but I have come to value the dancing as exercise — not in futility, but fertility.

    This particular skunk is absolutely gorgeous. I have never seen one so white or so fluffy. My sister, Janis, named this one Queen Stinky. I like that name very much….