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:
Continue readingSix months or more into the pandemic there is a term for one of its side effects, which I am experiencing. “Experts Say ‘Coronasomnia’ Could Imperil Public Health,” according to this Washington Post article.
Evidently I am not alone in literally losing sleep over everything that is happening. I wouldn’t say it’s just the virus but rather the perfect storm of racism, deep political divisions, looming authoritarianism, and pandemic that wake me, achy and jittery, every night around two or three a.m. or prevent me from going to sleep in the first place. My body discomforts feed right into low terror about the country I will be bequeathing to my grandchildren.
I have been on a driving moratorium while we’ve been sheltering in place. The last time I got into a car was four weeks ago tomorrow. But I broke my fuel fast today. I went to a grocery store.
I know, I’ve said that I’m happy to get my groceries delivered. But there are certain things that my regular grocery, the Meijer store where I’ve shopped for years, doesn’t have. The main one is my favorite breakfast oatmeal, Better Oats Steel Cut Instant Oatmeal with Flax Seeds. Original. That is, unflavored, unsweetened. I don’t know why Meijer doesn’t have the unflavored kind. I’ve asked for it repeatedly, to no avail. So I always get it at Martin’s, another local chain. Continue reading
It is amusing and a bit mysterious how I reach a set point when it comes to taking on things. I am willing and willing and doing and doing and then suddenly—too much. Something pushes me over my limit. The French have a word for this: le comble, the ultimate, the “too much,” the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Continue reading
A few days ago I learned that the community On-Site Prayer Ministry was scheduling a vigil at the location of the shooting of Traychon Taylor, the one that took place practically in our backyard a few weeks ago and that I’ve written about here and here.
Since I’ve been doing my own vigil in my backyard rather sporadically (I’m easily discouraged by weather), this seemed like a next step in whatever might be unfolding. I looked forward to it. Continue reading
When you start out on something that seems promising but outside your comfort zone, you can easily lose momentum, chicken out. You hear the countering voices. What was I thinking? I am making too much of this. I’ve been feeling this about my little Traychon project, about the young man who was shot behind our house, which I wrote about just two days ago. Nevertheless, I have persisted in following my impulses or perhaps the Spirit. Continue reading
So this happened a week ago Sunday night, at around 10 pm as we were watching a movie at home: a pop-pop-pop that might have been gunshots or firecrackers. Fifteen minutes later I looked out a kitchen window and saw police cars, lights flashing, crime-scene tape, cops with flashlights behind our long backyard, in the street and in a parking lot that belongs to a business at the back edge of our property. Definitely, it had been shots.
My handicap tag quietly expired 9 days ago, marking six months since my knee replacement surgery. The last time I hung it on my rear-view mirror was a few weeks ago when I had to make a quick stop at a shop with no parking spaces open nearby except the handicap spot right out front. I tried to look a little crippled when I edged out of the driver’s seat in case anyone was looking, but I’m not handicapped that you could notice. Here is a six-month progress report. Continue reading
I am just back from a 3-day Wisdom School on the Law of Three and I am seeing triangles everywhere.
Law of Three, in the Wisdom tradition of Christianity, is the theory that the most basic, most pervasive dynamic of life is a triangular dance among three kinds of forces: FIRST FORCE– affirming (positive, active); SECOND FORCE—denying (negative, passive); and THIRD FORCE—reconciling (neutralizing, transforming, catalyzing … etc.). The first two forces may end up in opposition but Third Force is present (though hidden) in the stalemate, and when it comes into play, change happens. Something new arises. Still, all three forces are necessary for that to happen.
This waltz is how things evolve on every level, from the subatomic to the universal. It is in the very nature of God (think Trinity as process more than persons). It operates at the level of the individual human psyche and in our interactions with each other. Continue reading
Last night as I was getting ready for bed I noticed my right hearing aid was missing. I have not lost a hearing aid for a very long time. I have developed hearing-aid awareness, that is, I can usually sense when one has become dislodged and might be about to drop. So how did this happen?
I went through the clothes I had just taken off and tossed in the laundry basket. I went through the whole laundry basket, twice, scrutinizing and shaking everything. I checked the chair and its surroundings in the living room, where I’d been watching TV with headphones and had just removed them. I checked the kitchen, where I’d prepared dinner. Vic had cleaned up nicely so I decided to go through the garbage and trash he’d discarded as well. That was messy, but I felt my way through all the coffee grounds and kale stems. Continue reading
the practical mystic 