In the last few weeks, three friends have requested help with someone they love going through treatment for cancer.  I offered my book Breast Strokes: Two Friends Journal through the Unexpected Gifts of Cancer.  Today when I received thanks from one of the women, I opened the book for myself.  

I opened to an experience I shared with my three year old friend Zach.  He was running around with his arms out proclaiming, “I’m an airplane.”  When he came to a speed bump painted white, he flew over it and said, “Look at that cloud!

I smile at the image, and feel my arms float up and out.  “Look at that cloud!”  

I see now why Trump wouldn’t concede and why he’s been, and still is, so cocky about “winning”.

You probably all read Heather Cox Richardson but just in case, here’s the link.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Sobering. Our new president has so much to deal with when he enters office especially with the Trump administration doing all they can to stop him but this was an attempted coup and when I read this on the wife of a Supreme Court Justice, it seems there may need to be some housecleaning done there too. Hopefully Thomas will just resign.

HCR: With the details and the potential depth of this event becoming clearer over the past two days—Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia, tweeted her support, and state lawmakers as well as Republican attorneys general were actually involved—Americans are recoiling from how bad this attempted coup was… and how much worse it could have been. The crazed rioters were terrifyingly close to our elected representatives, all gathered together on that special day, and they were actively talking about harming the vice president. 

And there’s this: Refusing to stop the attack on the Capitol might have been more nefarious, though. A White House adviser told New York Magazine’s Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi that Trump was watching television coverage of the siege and was enthusiastic, although he didn’t like that the rioters looked “low class.” While the insurrectionists were in the Capitol, he tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Even as lawmakers were under siege, both Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani were making phone calls to brand-new Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) urging him to slow down the electoral count.

Tragic and sad!

The news today flows freshly through as liars are shown for who they are as they learn there are consequences for what we say and do.  

This morning my cat Bella lay next to me in bed and I felt her breath moving up and down, and in and out, softly, gently, wholly, fully through the entirety of her being.   She is my guru bed buddy.

The news of the day is allowing  breath to flow through me fully.  I hadn’t realized how much I was holding my breath with the dread of reading what Trump had done each day.  A fresh wind blows gratitude through.

Inspiration this morning comes from Stephen Hawking who when he was 21, was diagnosed with ALS and given two to three years to live.  He was hospitalized in the same room as a boy dying of leukemia, and that woke his resolve to wake up and live.  He lived another 55 years and contributed greatly as we know and appreciate.

 He said: “For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.”

We’re listening now to speech that is true.  Those who’ve lied are scuttling away.  I’m thrilled that Josh Hawley’s book contract is cancelled and that Sidney Powell is being sued by Dominion for false claims about their voting machines.

I don’t know why it’s taken so long to expose these people and their falsehoods but perhaps what we saw on Wednesday has shaken us all to our core, and in the core is where we connect as one and for the benefit of all.

I go to poetry when I’m distressed.  Today I open the book Together in a Sudden Strangeness, America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic.

It’s odd to realize how long this pandemic has been going on.  There are poems about how to deal with Easter and then the Summer Solstice.  

The title of the book comes from a poem by Pablo Neruda “ Keeping Quiet”, a poem that requests a stop, a come to silence for a second.  The poem was written in the 1950’s.  

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines;

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

I feel us all together in a “sudden strangeness” today.  

Nancy Pelosi takes charge with her response: “The president of the United States incited an armed insurrection against America.  In calling for this seditious act, the president has committed an unspeakable assault on our nation and our people.”

Even though this assault has been happening, my heart and gut still reel at this open and violent betrayal. 

I’m trying to wrap my mind around it when I open the book to the poem “Elder Care” by Ron Koertge.  The poem is about senior shopping hours in the grocery store and how the music at that time of day is  geared to seniors.  “Mashed Potato Time” plays and “The Loco-Motion”.  Elders in the grocery move a little faster in time with the music, and then comes Joey Dee and the Starlighters with “Peppermint Twist”. 

I read the words and feel a wiggle, a twirl, a twist, a smile.  

We will come through this “sudden strangeness” as we have come through upheavals before.  

I was at UCLA when tanks thundered down Wilshire Boulevard to plant themselves on campus.  

We orchestrate change.

My local community has been working to support Black Lives Matter.

Today, at my beloved Good Earth grocery store, I saw this:

I was with my grandson yesterday, my Super-Joy, so missed what was going on as it happened.  I discussed it with my sons but couldn’t take it in, and then, this morning I watched and read and I sit here now sobered and sad.

I believe Trump should be impeached or the 25th Amendment invoked.  Will that happen now that the adrenalin has subsided?  

The damage Trump has done is impossible to calculate.  I reach within my toolbox, find an etch-a-sketch there, and want to erase his last five years, and that can’t happen and shouldn’t.

Each of us is touched by what’s happened.  What leads us now?  What guides?

This time of transition continues. Tomorrow is the Epiphany, a Christian holiday, and yet I feel the need for some honoring of change from December to January, especially this year, when all is so unsettled and strange.

This offering from Jan Richardson comes my day today. She writes:

There is a custom, rooted in Ireland, of celebrating epiphany (January 6, which brings the christ- mas season to a close) as women’s christmas. called Nollaig na mBan in Irish, women’s christmas originated as a day when the women, who often carried the domestic responsibilities all year, took epiphany as an occasion to celebrate together at the end of the holidays, leaving hearth and home to the men for a few hours. celebrated particularly in county cork and county Kerry, the tradition is enjoying a revival.

whether your domestic commitments are many or few, women’s christmas offers a timely op- portunity to pause and step back from whatever has kept you busy and hurried in the past weeks or months. as the christmas season ends, this is an occasion both to celebrate with friends and also to spend time in reflection before diving into what this new year will hold.

The women’s christmas retreat is offered in that spirit. within these pages is an invitation to rest, to reflect, and to contemplate where you are in your unfolding path. Mindful of those who traveled to welcome the christ child and who returned home by another way, we will turn our attention toward questions about our own journey.

If this speaks to you, here’s the link:

https://sanctuaryofwomen.com/WomensChristmasRetreat2021.pdf

My father died 52 years ago today in an accident.  I was in Mexico City and had to return on a busy holiday weekend.  The American Embassy stepped in to get me on a plane.  Tears come even now.  Though our cells change, live and die, something of grief and shock is held and brought forth at different times of year.

For me, each year since I was 19 I’ve honored this day, this drawing forth of a new year even as there’s pain.  I know it is to balance the fullness of living, to follow the path, the passage of each breath.

Each breath, in and out – like a kiss – 

It’s raining today as it did after both my parent’s deaths.

I have to admit that this with Trump continues to shock me, to shake my inner being.

My father was a B-17 pilot in WWII.  Shot down, he was in a prison camp in the north of Germany and yet he never judged the guards.  He knew, they, like him, were caught in a segment of history.  When a group of them tried to escape and were captured, the punishment was standing in isolation, in water, underground, and again no comment or complaint.  My mother only overheard it when one night her brother and my dad were discussing what they endured during the war.

My father was a life-long Democrat and yet could argue both sides with my uncle who was a Republican.  I can’t imagine what either of them would think of this, of the lies and threats.  This isn’t about political parties.  It’s about morality and ethics.

Now it’s really raining.  May it cleanse!

I just watched this homage to the three of them. Truly touching and inspiring.

I listen to rain’s soft drops, come to Mark Nepo’s Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred and read that there are over seven thousand living languages on Earth.  Might there then be seven thousand ways to listen.  

I pause, welcoming and allowing breathing to flow. Tissues wake and skin tunes. Reception opens antennae like eyes.  

Abraham Heschel:

[We] will not perish for want of information;

but only for want of appreciation …  What we lack is not

a will to believe but a will to wonder …. Reverence is one

of [our] answers to the presence of mystery.