Yesterday I found myself moist with tears.  I read what it is to be a nurse in the ICU right now.  It’s horrifying what we’re asking of these people as they deal with the pandemic, and then, they go outside and see people refusing to wear masks.  It’s so simple.  It’s like seatbelts.  At first, we resisted, and now most of us can’t imagine driving without one.  Now, I can’t imagine not wearing a mask.

When I read that Jimmy Stewart used his PTSD experience flying B-24’s out of England during World War II to film the intense parts of the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I realized I’d never seen the movie.  I watched it last night.  More tears.

Yesterday I read that “A herd of elephants marched twelve hours to the home of Lawrence Anthony after he died – the man who saved them. They stayed there in silence, mourning for two days. Exactly one year after his death, to the day, the herd marched to his house again.”

How do we explain that and do we even want to?  Simply receive.

My healing mantra today comes from Malcolm X:

When we change the ‘I’ for the ‘We,’ even Illness becomes Wellness.

Ellen Bass’s poem “Ode to the Fish” concludes with these lines.   

But beyond the cliffs

a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic

ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,

I could swim through into its thousand pound heart.

Yesterday my heart felt heavy.  Today I allow it to expand like the blue whale heart trusting the ladle and scoop.

In the Winter issue of Orion magazine, Rose Thater Braan-Imai offers “notes on living in kinship with nature”.  Each “note” is a treasure.

I offer one. 

When the senses are open,

they can freely come to agreement

about what is being perceived, or consensus.

In an experience of harmony

with the natural or temporal order,

can come an experience of certainty, 

you can say that you “know”.

That experience, embedded in our cells,

is the memory of that field of harmony that births all life.

To live with time as an ally is to be in harmony with life.  

I spent the day decorating for the holidays, always such a joyful journey down memory lane.  That contrasted with lockdown starting tomorrow and a red flag warning of fire danger from wind and dryness, so I was out watering again today.  It’s odd to hum Christmas carols and think of snow while the windows and doors are open and the plants all say, “Water, please!”  

I think of the word evening. I suppose each day lately is an evening, balancing, and smoothing our outlook as we balance new rules and restrictions to wipe the virus out.

We’re again moving into tighter restrictions.  I think of touch, of how we need to cultivate touch within and with ourselves.

I come to this wonderful poem by W.S. Merwin

“Separation”

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

A friend asks how we give to ourselves amidst so much going on.

I come to this quote by Albert Camus.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Giving all to the present includes including ourselves. 

Starting there, feeling within. 

What’s birthing within as we enter and dwell in the beauty, wonder, and awe of this new day?

This morning I refresh on the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye.  

Tears and resolve come and then I read of the shooting death of 15 month old Carmelo Duncan in Washington D.C.

Perhaps the only way to meet these days is with tears, tears of liquid love honoring connection and the wells of grief that spring.

Merriam-Webster announced that “pandemic” is the word of 2020. “Pandemic,” they wrote, “is the word that has connected the worldwide medical emergency to the political response and to our personal experience of it all.” 

Also, Quarantine originally meant “40 days,” which was 226 days ago and counting.  

And from an unknown source:

Forget “dance like nobody’s watching”.  Dance like a toddler.  They don’t even care if there’s music.

Enjoy this fourth day of December as you honor what calls you with kindness and trust.  

Right now a friend’s discarded shell of a body is being cremated at a nearby cemetery.  I look into the air, receive transition, matter to air.  

My neighborhood is decorated both naturally, berries on the trees, and with wreaths and lights.  I love this time of year, the falling leaves juxtaposed with our, just like the trees, need and desire to open to light.

In his December newsletter, Michael Lerner from Commonweal called yesterday Wisdom Wednesday.  I think of today as Tuning Thursday, tuning myself ever more delicately for this play of dark and light.

In his newsletter, Michael wrote:  Many of you know that four months ago I had a major surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm at UCSF Medical Center. The surgery and the recovery have been a life-changing experience. I was catapulted into a new stage of life.

At 77 I am exploring in new ways the joys of what I could call active elderhood. I feel vital. I feel clear. After over half a century of thinking of myself simply as being useful, I am now discovering what it is like to take more time simply being.

Simply being – that is my tuning fork for this day.

It’s the first day of December, and those of us who love Advent calendars can open the first window.  It’s also Giving Tuesday.  We reflect on what moves and expands us as we choose what and where to share.

The fog floated in softly this morning.  Yesterday I heard leaves falling.  Today the tree is mainly bare, open to the light.

I’m with these words of Thich Nhat Hanh: 

Not talking, by itself, already can bring a significant degree of peace. If we can also offer ourselves the deeper silence of not thinking, we can find, in that quiet, a wonderful lightness and freedom.

May this play of light and dark move in us like branches in the wind.  

This full moon is known as the Beaver Moon because it’s cold and the time when beavers finish building their lodges to prepare for winter.  In their honor, I put a second, heavier comforter on our bed.  

I think of how devoted we are to our calendars when the weather and light let us know what’s happening.  We’re releasing into the dark.

A friend passed away recently.  She had fallen and found unconscious, had lost much of her memory but she lived in a sacred place and felt and could say her body was no longer serving her.  She fell again and became more and more luminescent as she let go, each breath a journey to what comes next.

I think of her when I read these words of Alan Watts.

“You have to get away from all that madness for a while because we become insane, we get confused with our roles, as being who we really are. Man is not his role. Man is something deeper than that. So, go into the forest or some place ALONE in nature, all by yourself, and find out who you really are! And when you no longer confuse yourself with your particular temporary body, but identify with the entire process of nature and the whole cosmos… When death comes, what a funny thing that will happen. Death comes, and will find no one to kill.”

Sharon Salzberg:  Paying attention is one of the kindest things we can do – for ourselves, for others.

We’ve been with our 13 month old grandson.  What a way to pay attention to vibrancy in ourselves, the environment, the world.  Heart soars and aligns. Gratitude!

We enter the season of dark, seasoning in candle and firelight. Entering within, we align even more generously and acutely with the community of life we share.