Category: compassion

Isolation Journal: Week Twelve – Black Lives DO Matter

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.

– Jeremiah 31:15 (NRSV)

I don’t feel that I have much to offer in terms of perspective and wisdom this week. I know that tragedy and injustice have been done to George Floyd at the hands of one Minneapolis police officer and with the support of three others. I know that the world is in great turmoil and grief. Good people from all political persuasions have spoken out against this, and the president of the United States has not. I know that riots and destruction are not the answer (some rioting and violence was fueled by white people seeking to add fire to an already ugly situation, but much was pure rage and desperation) but I understand from my limited perspective where this fury comes from.

12742649_948627328565182_3877860098209780865_n
from Austin Channing Brown

Here are some of the clearest pieces that I’ve seen (most already shared on FB) this week – from voices much closer to the topic:

I am heartened and inspired by the many people in my world who have stepped up – some briefly and many more consistently – to voice their concern and support for those who are protesting (numerous out there lending their voice and their support in person). Lots of these beloved folks are in the Twin Cities and others scattered around the globe. Additional inspiration comes from those who have been plugging away throughout COVID-19, my healthcare and ministry friends who’ve had to keep putting one foot in front of the other through all of this (including a high school friend with whom I reconnected this week who runs a nursing home). They are weary, challenged, and still determined.

I shared a personal update Wednesday evening (FB post), “I’m dealing with my asthma for past couple of days, so no 100 degree walks for me today or yesterday…. Highlight of the week has been a nice long chat with [my daughter and her family], Minecraft sessions with [my granddaughter] and laughing with [loved ones]…. Despite the painful week on so many levels, there have been rays of sunshine.” There have been other moments of hope and cheer, but I don’t want to gloss over the mess this country is in with much “shine” from my isolated little corner. Things are in tatters.

The good news for me is that the Spirit is with all of us in the midst of all of this. Humans may blame and point fingers, justifying oppression, but Truth is being spoken. The Sacred breaks through in the smallest of gestures and in the courage of the broken and mistreated ones. Prayers, casting the net, meditation, meta practice, Tonglen, all send a ripple of love – a Sacred Breath, you might say – to the planet. Keep your candles burning, and as I often say to one of my besties, “roll those beads, sister.”

We all have homework to do on in order to become fully educated on the anti-racism work that is needed – and no one person will have the full solution. But I’ll start by attending some (virtual) education events in the coming week and see where that leads. I hope you will find your place in this work and share it widely.

Whoever among you sees evil, let him change it with his hand.
If he is unable to do so, then with his tongue.
If he is unable to do so, then with his heart, and that is the weakest level of faith.

– Saying of the Prophet Mohammed (shared by Jamal Rahman)

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Isolation Journal: Week Eleven – Grief

.Reading time 6 minutes.

As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken bones.
Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish, without some pain at the difference that comes between them.
There are two things which [human beings] can do
about the pain of disunion with other [humans]. They can love or they can hate.
Hatred recoils from the sacrifice and the sorrow that are the price
of this resetting of bones. It refuses the pain of reunion.
…
But love, by its acceptance of the pain of reunion, begins to heal all wounds.
– Thomas Merton, “A Body of Broken Bones,” New Seeds of Contemplation

While people are dying in unimaginably large numbers, we are trying to go back to “normal” because it is our right and because we can’t afford to do otherwise. The racism in our country has jumped out at us while we are at our worst. Tragedy upon tragedy. Violence erupting. I don’t have many words today. Just feeling for the world’s pain.

A poem for the day:

06829de08fa5d9ce005e35242be8860fGrief
is the stuff
which drives us
to poetry
and short sentences.
Sorrow
for the world’s woes….
We barely find the will to speak.
O dear planet –
sisters,
brothers –
how we wish to hold you,
how we long
to cradle and rock
’til you are soothed.
“Love,” we sing.
We cast our life-preserving, life-restoring prayers.
O dear planet –
sisters, brothers –
words will not suffice.
Even prayers don’t do it –
only acts of love have the power of transformation.
Songs sung in unity come close.

How do I open my solitary, fearful heart
to your rage, your pain and despair?
How may I not drown in its torrents?
Grandmothers,
we call on your powerful love.
Great-grandmothers,
we call on your strength.
Ancestors,
we need your perspective and hard-won wisdom.

Holy One,
only you know how
to hold the cries
of rage, of anger,
hatred and retaliation.
100802115_1219493608412007_1974709581971980288_nOnly you
know how to
sing to us,
how to stitch us up
after we are torn to pieces.
Dear One,
the tearing is awful and ugly,
revealing all that we’d rather hide.
Teach us
how to see the wounds
and not cover them.
Teach us
how to heal the deep injuries,
without hiding our brokenness.
Vulnerable now,
don’t let us tidy up the mess.
Let it be seen
and felt.
Time to weep.
Time for honesty.
Only love –
the kind that knows and sees woundedness with honest eyes –
will do.
Then,
may the sacred thread of Spirit
begin the long process of
stitching up
our tattered souls.

Love, Reality, and Vulnerability,
Karen

Favorite thoughts of the week:

Pentecost, Prejudice, and Pandemic by Diana Butler Bass

If We Had a Real Leader by David Brooks

From Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“…it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?…It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

From Nina Jonson, Robbinsdale, MN (Facebook post):

“My heart is as heavy as the air this morning, as heavy as the clouds of smoke.

It is not enough, but here is a prayer I shared with the children, youth and families from our church yesterday.

Everything right now takes away breath. Fear sucks it from our lungs. Viruses drag it out of our reach. Smoke wraps around it poisonously. People forcefully eject it from our throats. I have no answers today, but for those who can breathe, let every breath be a prayer.
Breathe support to the family of George Floyd.
Breathe love into our community.
Breathe justice into our streets.
Breathe peace into our country.
Breathe calm into our children.
Breathe safety into our black, brown and indigenous siblings.
Breathe joy into the space around you.
Breathe strength into our elders.
Breathe patience into yourself.
Breathe compassion into each other.
Breathe dreams for a better future into reality.
May it be so.”

 

Isolation Journal: Week Four (I think that’s right…maybe….)

.Reading time 10 minutes.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.
We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem,
but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.
They come together and they fall apart.
Then they come together again and fall apart again.
It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room
for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

– Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Things do seem to have fallen apart and there is still room to fall some more. We feel like we’re on one of those elevators that begins to fall, stops, then falls some more and stops again. We don’t know if we’re at the bottom yet. I look around at this precarious juncture, feel terrified, and think, “Maybe it’s time for a cup of coffee” or “Time for another Hallmark movie or Britcom.”

Often, during this roller coaster ride (yes, mixing metaphors is allowed during lockdowns) it is easier to distract oneself, to find tiny avenues of comfort (coffee, movies, blankets, showers, food, walking) rather than to stop, sit still, and take in this moment’s reality. This week, with the support of some of my favorite people* – online and by telephone – I’ve had the opportunity to sit still and take in the moment. Despite my internal resistance and intense addiction to distraction right now, I’ve had moments of collective stillness and illumination with these folks, moments of deep peace.

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from Sufi Scribe, Facebook

On this day, there is global heaviness unrelated to the pandemic – it is both Good Friday and the third evening of Passover. Humans will take themselves through very painful memories concerning suffering, human failings and cruelty, and will recall those few women and men who found a way to be compassionate and present even during such times.

Moments of illumination, where we can find them, help us to shake off the cosmic heaviness and the “briefings,” “summaries” and alerts coming through the news media. One part of us takes in the data, the news, while the moments of stillness, acceptance, groundedness, and turning toward the Sacred help us to take in something else.

This morning the Friday Summary that popped up in my email was very grim – illness, death tolls, lack of resources, potential food shortages, economic meltdown, political stalemate and so on. As I took my shower following that mental jolt, the phrase that popped into my head was from Byron Katie’s “Four Questions” – “Can you absolutely know that it’s True?”

Katie points to the same reality as Pema Chodron – but she arrives there using a different set of tools. Katie suggests that you identify your stressful thoughts using her “Judge your neighbor” worksheet. Once you’ve written out your fears, stressors, and bald faced complaints, you apply the four questions to what you’ve written. The first question: “Is it true?” The second question sometimes brings one up short, “Can you absolutely know that it’s true?”

For example: If I write, “The world is falling apart. Everything is horrible.” Is it true? Yes. From my perspective, this is true and the news says it’s true. But can I absolutely know it is true? Hmmm…. Well…I suppose not. People are being extraordinarily heroic, sharing resources, sharing their lives and livelihoods. The earth and its creatures are having a IMG-0376hay day. Mountaintops are visible, waters are running more clear. Goats, deer, and sheep (even javelinas) are romping through towns unobstructed by traffic. And actually, now that I think of it and look around, it is a sunny day, flowers are blooming, I have fresh water to drink, I have adequate food, I have shelter, I even have enough TP for the next week or so – and chocolate. So, maybe I can’t absolutely say it is true that everything is horrible. (There are two more questions and interesting turnarounds on the worksheet. Check it out.)

But for the time it took us to write this stuff down, to apply the questions and sit with them, we have held our fears and faced them. We’ve looked at them from one side and another. And we’ve come out in another place. Even in much more dire circumstances, there is some miraculous transformation which can take place as one applies these questions – to any and all situations.

Pema Chodron writes:

“Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it. We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, open bodies of sea anemones and they close up. Everything spontaneously does that. It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
“If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.”

So, my summary of Week Four of my journal is that:

  • I’ve had moments of mindlessness – distraction to the point of forgetting which way I was going and why more than once (I also found my measuring tape in a most unlikely place).
  • I’ve had some very low moments of grief. The overwhelming death toll numbers in New York City, illness numbers here in the Navaho Nation, and the death of John Prine was an individual low point – he has been one of the sensitive and accurate narrators of life during my time – and I have just always liked his melodies, humility, hope, humor and grit.
  • IMG-0335I’ve had irrational fears (Do I feel odd? Am I getting sick? Did I remember to bleach the door handle after I washed and bathed the groceries?) including a dream about bugs and worms getting into the house, the food.
  • And I’ve had moments of joy – phone calls from grandkids, kids, friends, and walks with Johnny. I’ve even had some moments of enlightenment – thanks to my favorite shamans, gurus, ministers, and friends.

Several years ago, when I was really grieving and struggling with my sister’s cancer, my daughter sent me this quote from Pema:

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation
can that which is indestructible be found in us.

I cried and cried and was deeply comforted by this truth. We can’t get to the core of things by floating around carefree. We find the indestructible connection, we find the eternal by coming face to face with our own impermanence.

As a collective, we have the opportunity to face this together. I am so grateful for taking this journey with all of you.

Love,
Karen

P.S. Another unlikely “winner” we’ve noticed during all of this. Trampoline sales appear to be skyrocketing.

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* Some favorites this week (in no particular order):

– Contemplative Monk on Facebook (Bob Holmes)

– The Four Winds Society (Alberto Villodo) on Facebook – livestream shaman updates

-The Psychology Babes on Facebook

– Rumi, Saadi, Hafiz (Poems & Quotes) on Facebook

–Netoflight.org (website)and Facebook (Sharon McErlane) – have enjoyed livestream events

Isolation Journal: Week Three (needing some Love)

.Reading time 10 minutes.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence
and take not your holy Spirit from me.
Give me the joy of you saving help again
and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.
–     from Psalm 51

IMG-0220I am in a religious-y mood today, which probably makes sense. In two days it will be Palm Sunday which marks the beginning of Holy Week, the most solemn week in the Christian tradition. Passover begins next Wednesday – the Jewish celebration of the Exodus from slavery in Egypt and God’s sparing of the children of Israel from a deadly plague. It is a religious-y time. Undoubtedly, much will be made of the experience of suffering and the ultimately hopeful messages in these traditions in the week to come and parallels to our current situation will be drawn.

I am no longer tasked, though, with helping to make sense of such things for others (as I was in my ministry). I am, like many others who are now mostly retired, left instead to simply live the experiences life brings me from day to day. Primarily, the task for me now is to find meaning in the rhythms of the day. This is a challenge for those of us who have found our worth in serving others, or just in doing.

IMG-0266Most of this week has been quiet, with moments of true contentment in our sweet little life. We putter around, we clean and cook, we chat, we go for our walk. We had one joyful delivery of food and one mildly frustrating delivery (the frustration lies in the lack of control over things). Spring – nearly summer here in Arizona – brings beauty and new life. John and I are also celebrating 10 years of being back in contact with each other in just over a week – a reunion for which we are grateful each day.

We are all also living under stress and new circumstances – which change somewhat every hour. We have new rules, new routines. We have new challenges and fears. And we are bombarded with numbers, stories, theories, and fears by the dozens. We see people rising to heroics and people hoarding and buying handguns. We wonder where to look for wisdom and leadership.

So, today, I am sad. There’s no one particular reason. Mortality and the exhausting efforts to stay healthy have worn me down a bit. The world’s grief is palpable, loss is palpable. Danger lurks around every turn.

IMG-0248Oddly, I think part of it is also that my birthday is coming up, too. In adulthood, I have often had an emotional “dip” around my birthday. I don’t think I’m sad about getting older at birthday time. It feels like a grief about how life and gifts and things aren’t able to soothe the soul. Grief that stuff like food, presents, activities don’t deliver joy or healing.

When melancholy sets in like this, I’ve found only the most basic steps will help.

  • Being gentle with oneself. Curling up with a blanket and a book or movie, taking a hot bath, having a cry as needed, then a nap. Sometimes writing helps, music helps.
  • Subtle, real nourishment. Comfort food helps only a bit, but real nourishing food – like soup or stew – seems to help the healing along.
  • It helps to tell a friend that you’re feeling blue, feeling low. It especially helps to talk to a friend who won’t try to fix us, who will just walk with us and be with us as we find our way.
  • Words and prayers like the ones in the psalm, above, help me. This psalm has been one I have resonated with since my early 12 Step days. The words recognize that the one speaking them is off kilter – perhaps based on actions, or perhaps based on attitude – but they remind us that the Sacred is waiting, in fact invites us, to reunite and get back on track. Divine Love is waiting for each of us (as needed) with open arms. And I have learned again and again and again that there is nothing (yes, nothing) that can separate us from this Love.

I think we all need to give ourselves a little break right now. A break from high expectations. At least a momentary break from the rigors we are putting ourselves through. Spiritually and emotionally, we each need to be held for a moment in this divine Love and Compassion.

This reality brings to mind a chapter in a beloved book, Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott. In this memoir, Anne tells of the death of a beloved friend in her eighties and how it had really brought her to a low point. It was springtime and had been rainy, but her friend, Nashama, suggested that they go for a walk – so they did. Lamott writes:

Suddenly…the ground and vegetation at our feet began to get a little watery, and then we began to hear sucking noises, swampy quicksandy sucking noises, and pretty soon my overpriced walking sandals had been swallowed up by mud…

“Let me help you there, little lady,” I said. “I’ll go up first and then give you a hand.”
        …
“Is this a good idea?” she asked. “Are you braced?”

“Yes,” I insisted, and pulled her toward me, and she lifted up off the ground and moved upward a couple of feet, until I started sliding back down toward her and we both landed noisily on our butts in the mud….

I was laughing so hard that I felt maniacal and not at all sure that I wasn’t about to cry. But I felt like air was bubbling into a place inside me that hadn’t been getting much lately….

Against the sparkly black screen behind my eyes, all these people appeared, like people in a come-as-you-are fashion show, strangers to each but beloved by me. There were all the sick little kids we know, and all the friends who had died…and the old people in my family and church who had grown so suddenly frail.… And I thought to myself, “Well, no wonder you’re this sad.” The silence of the marsh was…profound….

When Neshama and I finally got up to go, I was still sad, but better. This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we’re most sure that love can’t conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds. It struck me that I have spent so much time trying to pump my way into feeling…solace.… The truth is that your spirits don’t rise until you get way down. Maybe it’s because this – the mud, the bottom – is where it all rises from…. At the marsh, all that mud and one old friend worked like a tenderizing mallet. Where before there had been tough fibers, hardness, and held breath, now there were mud, dirt, water, air, mess – and I felt soft and clean.   (Traveling Mercies, Pantheon Books, NY, 1999, pages 257-265.)

Go easy on yourself and your loved ones right now. We are all raw and hurting. No wonder we are all so sad underneath it all. Life is tough in a big, real way. But love – human or divine – can bring us through. Turn toward love, turn toward the Source of solace, and you will find that you are held.

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Isolation Journal: Week Two

.Reading time 6 minutes.

I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long.
If we’re in each other’s dreams,
we can be together all the time.
– A.A. Milne

IMG-0169Last Sunday, I “attended” two full and one partial live-streamed worship. One was more technically successful than the others (must have had someone onboard who knew how to piece these things together – music, written prayers, speaker). The others, as many people discovered, had issues due to the internet capacity on Zoom and FaceBook livestream having overload issues. But they got their points across – their love and care – and all was done with isolation protocols intact.

Another online worship showed a congregation full of mostly elderly people and a regular procession up the center aisle…and it was live. Shocking! I went away making note of that congregation and observing that they apparently live in LaLa Land, not in Tucson.

Later in the week, I listened to pre-recorded meditations and did some chanting, as suggested by a friend. We’ve now got a list of great yoga classes from teachers I know, yoga nidra, gong bath, and other beautiful opportunities coming up – from Brene Brown, David Whyte, Deva Premal, and others. And don’t forget the “happy hour” (and A.A.) invites!

I find that I can only “fit” a few of these online activities in even living in isolation – maybe one or two a day. Then I need time just to be. To putter around and clean, to rest (even napping now and then), to take a break from social media and texting, to put together some nourishing food, hopefully, to exercise or, at minimum, sit in the sun.

Best moments:

  • IMG-0125More Minecraft with my granddaughter (mostly cheerful, but challenging one day – virtually pelting grandma with glass potion bottles) – pretty much like “real” playtime (LOL)
  • A playdate with my friend in which we spent a couple of hours doing soul collage (virtual togetherness)
  • Chatted and shared spiritual direction by phone with another friend twice. Very mentally and spiritually therapeutic
  • Exchanged numerous texts with family and friends encouraging one another – love, humor, support.

Yesterday:

  • Shared an hour, virtually, with church friends via Zoom
  • Picked up groceries from a grocery store parking lot and drove home the long way – the scenic route – which was scope for the imagination and refreshing to the mind (except for irritation at the pack of sweaty adult bicyclists – 10 or more – riding in a non-socially-distanced clump and clumsily crossing the busy roadway)
  • Unloaded the groceries using our special “outside stuff” gloves, I spent half an hour using the grocery sanitizing protocol from the video by Dr. Jeffrey VanWingen while John used his new clippers and cut his own hair on the patio (actually looks great!)
  • To celebrate, I then went wild and ordered lunch from Chipotle. (They had our food here in less time than we would have taken to get there and back – but don’t tell anyone, I don’t want them to be inundated next time we want to order. Also, next time, I will order food that can be zapped in the microwave – which I don’t generally use – before serving to terminate any virus germs in the food.)

IMG-0132We’ve now made it to the two-week mark from when we visited my sister. I’m relieved that none of us are having any illness symptoms – so it looks like we weren’t carriers as we thoughtlessly traveled and ignorantly left germs in our wake.

Yesterday, I watched a couple of movies, one of which was Disney’s “Christopher Robin.” It reminded me of the gift of slowing down and living simply and didn’t ramp up my anxiety.

Self observation:

  • As someone who generally brings a non-anxious presence into the world, I am very aware of moments (hours?) of turbulent anxiety.
  • I’m aware, also, of a cabin fever-type irritation that rears its ugly head, and I’m not as calm and self-possessed as I’d like to be (like wanting to shout, “Idiots!” at the cyclists we encountered)
  • The scope of our activities has really narrowed. We’re nesting to keep ourselves (we’re both in high risk groups) and others (many in our retirement community are in highest risk group) safe.

Basic self-care and self-love is in order! Prayer, meditation, walking, yoga, hot baths or showers, naps, nourishment and more.

We are all doing our best in slightly different ways. The wave of illness is quickly moving into our home states, cities and towns. Keep those lines of loving communication open. Share what is working for you with others. Patience, compassion, and love are the watchwords.

Do what you can to soak in the love and light – then share them where you are able.

Love you!
– Karen

P.S. When all else fails: Serenity Prayer, Psalm 23, Philippians 4:13, Gayatri Mantra,  Om mani padme hum….

 

LOVE AND LIGHT IN THE DESERT

Isolation Journal: Week One

.Reading time 14 minutes.

All shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of thing shall be well.

– Dame Julian of Norwich

I’ve decided to journal experiences and observations of Pandemic of 2020.  The first entry will probably be longer than the next just to get caught up as life shifts suddenly. Feel free to comment with a similar summary of your week!

Today is Friday, March 20. We’ve been home since Monday. We had planned to now be in Minnesota taking care of our grandkids, after visiting my sister and brother-in-law. We visited my sister and her husband last weekend as planned and watched from the great Northland while the world started to shut down.

IMG-0055We brazenly went out to meals, shopped for groceries, etc. I had been very virus-conscious on the airplane – bringing wipes and precious hand sanitizer for our seats and trays – but once I got to my sister’s I didn’t really protect her from us. At the airport, I had wiped down our table for lunch, in the Northland, we didn’t do that. We hugged. We used my sister’s guest restroom, slept in their guest bedroom, sat at their table. I realized in hindsight that I did strip my sheets when we left and set them in her laundry room…but probably should have put them in the washer on “hot” and gotten them going. I wiped down the bathroom sink with a paper towel, but that’s it. I should have disinfected with my famous wipes. Ugh. Pandemic hindsight. My brother-in-law is in his eighties and has diabetes – so we were not thinking this all through yet – we should have been more careful.

We enjoyed our visit with them but gave them their first real glimpse of the pandemic on a trip to Target where they discovered empty shelves (all the typical first empty shelves). They began to worry.

After visiting from Friday to Sunday, we headed south three hours to the airport to drop our rental car where my daughter picked us up. At that point, my daughter and her husband had cancelled their trip to Italy (for obvious reasons) and were going instead to vacation in Hawaii, leaving Tuesday morning. We drove home, walked to the store, shared a meal, played with the kids and chatted. Hmmmm. Things were changing fast.

The college where my son-in-law is employed had decided to send all of the students home early, before break, taking all of their belongings (emptying dorm rooms). My daughter and her husband were now apprehensive about Hawaii plans because travel restrictions and crossing state borders were beginning to be an issue. They didn’t want to be in quarantine somewhere while their kids were there in Minnesota.

NorthfieldWe came up with the somewhat brilliant plan that we could all head to Arizona (on cheap fares), where we live, for a week or two – on spring break. The kids could play in the sun, splash in the hot tub, etc. That was the fledgling plan when we went to bed, but by morning we had all read some sobering math and articles on the exponential spread of the virus. We weren’t going to unnecessarily expose them all to travel risks. My daughter and son-in-law realized that they were staying home and that we needed to get ourselves home to Arizona. We had a nice breakfast and lunch, took a brisk walk around the campus and headed for the airport. It was a bittersweet goodbye. The kids struggled to understand why we were leaving so soon when we’d planned to be there to play for a week and a half.

Our flight was quiet except for those who were calming their nerves with alcohol. We took a non-stop and watched movies on our phones to calm ours. Our shuttle driver (similar to Lyft) had been able to reschedule and pick us up. He was a bit grouchy on this drive, because his life had changed economically in the five days we were gone. His income had been slashed by numerous cancellations. His frustration and anxiety was palpable. We gave him a slightly larger tip and wished him well. We were thrilled to walk into our home sweet (isolated and not contagious or infected) home. Whew!

We headed right to the grocery store though it was 8:30 at night. This was our first real shock – row after row of empty shelves, freezers, refrigerators. We got what we could to bolster supplies at home. We were grateful that we’d been to Costco and Natural Grocers before we had left on our trip and had adequate non-perishable supplies for a couple of weeks…maybe a month. The store had no eggs, little fresh or frozen meat, little dairy, no fresh or frozen veggies or fruits, little bread (and, of course, no TP or sanitizing products). Hmmmmm.

That was Monday night. We have now spent the past several days doing our travel laundry (didn’t think of doing it all in hot water…oh well…), resting, and doing other household chores. Yesterday morning we fortified ourselves with lists and headed once again to the grocery store (online orders were not possible anywhere). We got everything we needed except eggs. We discovered that many of our fussy or odd food preferences helps…everything is gone except for the almond flour or the whole grain unsweetened cereal. So we have what we need for awhile. Does that officially make us hoarders? Our freezer is full, our pantry is full.

We came close to many people (social distancing was not possible). I’ve enjoyed talking to people in check out lines and especially to the grocery store and other store workers each time I’ve gone to a store. They appreciate someone asking how they are doing and all have crazy stories to tell of the world gone mad. I keep repeating the first story we heard in northern Minnesota of the woman shopper who climbed up to the top of the pallets, tore open a TP case and started throwing TP down. The young man in the deli said, “So she could have fallen and died, but the TP was more important? Crazy!”

I was glad, yesterday, to observe the check-out workers who heard a woman speaking in Spanish about her daughter’s inability to find infant formula. Within minutes, four different clerks were telling her how to get what she needed at the store. Apparently, they are rationing these things – but the needed supplies were available. Good! Not as good a story as the checker at Safeway who told me they had at first tried to limit some items to two per customer. When she explained this to a customer trying to buy 25 identical frozen dinners, he threw one at her. She frowned and said, “I told him to throw the mac and cheese, not the good dinners.” We shook our heads in unison.

Maybe commiserating with the grocery clerks is my little assignment during these times. I should find something I can give them each time as a thank you. They are risking themselves for our needs and their necessity.

The most fun so far was yesterday, playing Minecraft online and hanging out with my Colorado granddaughter, who is eight years old. My older granddaughter helped me by phone to get into my game and into the correct world with her sister. I haven’t played Minecraft for a year, so I was pretty bad at just moving around – walking running, flying, swimming – and getting through doorways. This kid flew circles around me and ran me through the woods and the basements of dwellings and long hallways as I struggled to keep up. She has created a huge compound of buildings – kitchens, libraries, greenhouses, living and bedrooms, corrals for animals, fields of flowers and bees, lots of crops, woods, mine shafts leading to well-lit corridors and basements, cellars and supplies. Monsters lurking here and there (but we are in Creative mode, so no worries). She laughed hysterically as she led me though the hallways and I banged into walls, doors, lamps and struggled to fly up through the openings. She raced around in loops for awhile because she was so amused at my struggle to keep up. I was laughing, too. After an hour of virtual play, it felt like we’d actually been playing as we used to in her house when she set the rules and I needed to just participate in the process. Best virtual moment so far. Then she introduced me to the four baby chicks her mom bought when she heard school was cancelled – Sunflower, Blackout, Hiroko, and Copper.

My worst moment so far was last night reading a statistical prediction of the numbers who will become ill. My heart was very heavy for a bit.

Then a friend sent me a worldwide online event* that’s happening this weekend and I spend a little while listening to Deva Premal chant the Gayatri Mantra. That brought me back up. (Yes, I’m praying, too and sending and receiving love and light out there. But this was a connection to a wider community for a moment. That helped.)

I played some Boggle with my Colorado daughter last night online – we’d welcome suggestions for fun apps (without as many ads) of good word games.  She has an Android and I’m on an iPhone. One of my friends and I set a “play date” to do Soul cards together by FaceTime this week. Two of my favorite yoga classes are going online. I just have to set the time aside and do it! How great!

AZ doorwayMy Minnesota daughter says that they are easing into a relaxed home school schedule and looking to plant some spring seeds, etc. Amazon just delivered a 6-part warrior cat series that I’m going to read and discuss with my MN granddaughter. My friend is doing something similar with her grandson.

I guess that’s all for Week One. What was your best moment? Worst moment?

Peace, friends! Love you!

*Deva Premal & Miten online Global Meditation event tomorrow.