Another blogger summed it up in a post called “Our Collective Exhaustion.” Patricia Pearce writes, ‘The body-blows that the daily news delivers are almost more than we can handle.  Day. After day. After day. After day. It has been relentless.’

She goes on to say that our exhaustion comes from trying to hold back the inevitable:

Our consciousness is being pummeled with the undeniable truth of our oneness—from burning forests, to melting glaciers, to a virus that will not leave us alone. We are trying so very hard to hold back this irrefutable evidence, to reassert our insularity. We are so desperately clinging to our ideas of “other,” of “enemy,” of “judgment,” all of our tried and true ways of maintaining our mind’s illusion of separateness.

In my household we’ve taken a further measure to protect us elders from the virus. We are masking and distancing even in the house when our two lodgers come into the common area. They’re out and about more than we are, Sandra is working, and infections are increasing again in our area, so they might be bringing something in. It seems a little crazy, though, a very artificial separateness and not the way we want to treat them.

It may be futile. It’s exhausting.

I would like to believe, with Patricia, that all this chaos is just a prelude to “an immense in-breaking of Love.”

The day is coming when we will collapse, exhausted by this Herculean effort. And on that day we will discover that what we have collapsed into is the arms of Love—and we will also finally understand that’s where we were all along.

I don’t see that happening real soon. I’m afraid there’s plenty of chaos and conflict to come before the arms of Love catch us all in a firm embrace.

A few days ago I told my daughter that I just needed something, some practice, some sustenance, to get me to the middle of November (I’m figuring a few weeks for the consequences of the election to come clear). Daily appreciation and encouragement? Something to keep me going, something to look forward to, something not the news of all the unfolding disasters.

She suggested we invite daughter-in-law to join us in a daily texting practice in which we each share a personal victory, along with affirmation and encouragement for each other. With lots of hearts and emojis.

We started doing that and it’s amazing. I’ve begun planning my days around that victory report. If I get myself out for a walk even though I don’t feel like it, I’ll have something to report. Does making a difficult decision count as a win? Of course it does.

Daughter has won praise for bringing abundance to bear in a difficult relationship. Daughter-in-law, for a freshly scrubbed bathroom. Even the kids get in on the act: 14-month-old takes her first steps and her older brother munches up veggies like a tortoise. Son brags about a guitar solo and Dad about a positive portfolio on a bad stock market day.

A daily something to look forward to. A daily inbreaking of the Love that already holds us.

How are you getting though the next month?