Snippets, Slivers, and Snatches

Dear Friends,

This time is so fluid, so fluctuating, my reactions to things so unpredictable and almost alive with variability.  

This week was so very different from the last.

~~~

Last week
I felt
Consistently
Plugged in,
Driven
By dharma,
Useful,
Part of the solution.

This week, 
I feel
Driven 
By drama,
News having 
Power
To shock me,
To shake me
Down
To 
The 
Floor.
Not quite drooling
But wishing an
Occasional
Drool 
Might 
Drip,
Demonstrating
My 
Feelings 
Of 
Utter
Helplessness.

Last week,
Standing strong
In the solution.

This week,
Weepy and exhausted,
Grieving
Letting 
Go
Of
So very, very much.

Or at least,
Letting go of
The illusion
Of what 
I thought
Should
Be happening.

~~~

Partners in Healing.
Those two words of solace:
Amazon Prime.
I order things,
And
I forget
What 
They are.
Little
And medium
Things
like
Coconut wraps
And 
A battery
For the remote control
That keeps
Warning me,
Threatening me,
Of its vulnerability.

Dry soup mix
Why?
Why not?

More Vitamin
C
As if 
My poor
Stomach
Could abide
Another
Healing 
Protocol.

And consistently,
Regularly, 
There is a surprise
Waiting 
On 
my
Doorstep
Oh!
To be handled with such paranoid caution and delight!
A trepidatious present
Demanding vigilance.

Me from me
Me to me,
Tearing 
Through the packaging
With 
Gloves 
On,
Having
Zero idea
What
I 
Sent 
Myself.

It delights me,
It thrills me.

Yet I flush with entitled embarrassment
As I write this.
I am indulging,
Wallowing
In 
Consumerism
While 
People die?

WTF?

Yet,
How fortunate,
To gift myself
Something, 
Something
concrete
In these
Dry,
Oh, 
So 
Dry 
Of
Times.

My partners in healing,
Amazon Prime.

~~~

This week, I weep for us.  

For New York, my always-home-town.  For lovers not able. For bodies sickened.  For lives curtailed.  For hearts filled with anxiety. For lives interrupted. For journeys detoured. For deception and greed and the politicking of disaster.

This week, I weep for me.

For what I thought would be happening, should be happening, might be happening, has to be happening, for that which I saved up for, that which I imagined, for that intended, for that which I deferred, that which I waited for and hoped and imagined would be mine.

This week, I weep for our country.  For greed and injustice, for white privilege and black and brown lives sacrificed, for deceit and duplicity, for systems inept, for truth ignored, for inequity and inequality and the shame of it, the shame of it, oh, forgive us, the shame.  Of. It.

This week, I weep for our earth.

Our glorious and beautiful planet, how we have ignored, trashed, taken for granted, denied, abused, and injured Her.  Our glorious earth abounding with life, how we have poisoned her and in the poisoning, how we have abandoned ourselves.

This week, I weep for our world.  All of us, all colors and sizes and shapes and languages and differences and distinctions.  We are one. We are one. We are one. And to be so severed from each other makes it so profoundly clear, our impossible and non-negotiable dependence upon one another.

This week is different from last.

This week I weep.

And this week, truly,

Hand in hand,

I have been inspired.

And have been strengthened and freed and liberated from bondage.

I have enjoyed myself and my life and savored the moments.

And I weep.

Oh, how I weep.

It is all true.

It is all sacred.

It is all inevitable.

It is all ours.

~~~

Inspirations to Share

Here are two of the things that touched me strongly this week, that gave to me, that filled my heart with a rush of possibility, of inspiration.

First, this gift of strong, inspired hope from Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, writer, scientist, mother, scholar and plant ecologist, from her book, Braiding Sweetgrass:

The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honor our responsibilities for all we have been given, for all we have taken. It’s our turn now, long overdue… Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath.

~~~

And finally, this kind hopeful inspiration—watch this through—look at the faces of the children: