Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

The day before yesterday a friend from the Midwest called and said she'd had a difficult few months and several friends died or were very sick and her mother was deteriorating rapidly.  Yesterday my best friend called and a woman in her apartment complex had died.  Just gone to sleep, and though her husband called 911 and she was rushed in the ambulance, she died soon after arriving there.  And yesterday I was talking to my friend about her CT scan and whether her cancer drug was still working.  Another friend just returned last night from visiting her mother who, in her nineties, is failing rapidly.  This is hard stuff to talk about, and describing it hardly does justice to the complex of emotions these losses arouse in us.  We are of an age that mortality looms.  And this being Fall, and the harbinger of holidays, family memories, and in my case anniversary of family deaths:  my mother's and father's, my brothers and dear friends, a certain gloominess easily descends on me. 
Now add the election, world conflicts, climate change, and even flu shots.  The world seems sick, and in need of a nice cup of chicken soup and and a good book.  But how to administer the medicine?  Compassion must be our response.  First toward ourselves and then all others.  I feel a lot of compassion for trees right now.  I live in a drought area and I see them dying off, being cut down.  Today I will concentrate on the trees. 

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