Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I talked to my therapist by phone, as I do every couple of weeks these days, and she wept at one point.  Her compassion for my daughter is so great and her empathy so open that she feels as if it is her own daughter.  What a blessing she has been for me these last few years.  Her guidance has been essential to my well being and wholesome actions, and I trust what she says implicitly.  When she compliments me on something I say, I usually respond that she is catching me on a good day.  But the truth is:  I feel better and more positive talking to her, so the darkness recedes.  I feel we solve things together, as a team, and she's in my head and heart enough that I feel her support at all times.  Therapy is a strange relationship, but I've been lucky with my person, and though I am not normally a trusting person, she has my complete trust.  That is amazing to me.  A gift.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I helped with my younger daughter's kids for five hours then went back home and called my "swim buddy" friend to talk about a dharma talk from Sunday.  We had a delightful time talking about experiencing joy in the cosmos, then my older daughter's amazing intelligence and insight in the face of her biggest challenge, then Hilma de Klimt, the great Swedish painter, then the stars this morning at four am when my friend slipped out to her balcony to wonder at them, then Venus, then my four year old grandson's sighting of the Big Dipper and Venus, then how strange and wonderful and unknowable this universe is.  We fly together and zip through the clouds and dive and soar.   What a Buddhist companion I have, and how fortunate I feel to share our experiences.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Late yesterday afternoon my friend and I met to walk around our neighborhood.  We sat on a bench six feet apart first.  We are discouraged and irritated, as is everyone, and grumbling to each other helps a bit, or seems to.  We are both struggling with a bit too much togetherness with our partners.  Little things show up.  Petty things.  And yet.  Little things see us through.  My husband and I went to a nearby canyon, following our younger daughter and her two little ones, and we reveled in the abundance of wildflowers and the cows.  The cows were great.  They ignored us as much as possible, but when we got too near their water tank, they herded us away to drink.  But gently.  Last night my older daughter called and we had a nice talk.  She was frustrated not about the cancer but her daughter's teenage like behavior.  I was supportive, because this is the stage where everything your mother does irritates you, and you absolutely, positively don't listen to your parents.  My daughter wants this last time with her daughter to be loving and empathetic, but hormones have gotten in the way.  So, a lot yesterday about irritation.  And sheltering, and how that frays patience.  Hanging in there can be hard.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

As I was listening to my livestreamed dharma talk from Anam Thubten, I could also hear the birds outside, as I had my door propped open.  The teacher was discussing opening our hearts to the amazing beauty of the cosmos, and I could hear the echoing of our beautiful world outside.  The birds are happy that the air is cleaner, the noise level way down and their world kinder.  We are grateful for the natural world's sounds and sights.  Yesterday my husband was watering with a hose and a hummingbird flitted in and out of the water wherever he aimed the hose.  We were treated to a close up and personal view of one of the miracles of nature.  When I told this to my four year old grandson via FaceTime, he announced he'd seen the Big Dipper in the sky last night, as well as the moon.  He and all of us are the beneficaries of our clearer skies.  Focusing on the gifts that sheltering has brought us, really seeing them, is wholesome in a time of fear and uncertainty.  Look around and see what is right before our eyes.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We watched "The Hunt for Red October" last night.  In retrospect it was probably unwise, as we're feeling shut in and claustrophobic already.  And they smoked in a submarine!  It was nice to see everybody so young:  Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Sam O'Neill, Scott Glenn and others.  I miss Sean Connery, but respect his retiring and leaving the roles where a forty year younger babe is in love with him.  Gene Hackman also gracefully retired.  Anyway, it was a change to worry about nuclear attack instead of invisible viruses.  And it was a fairy tale happy ending.  Tom Clancy always takes us to the inevitable edge, then parachutes us out.  Yet you know the real ending would be darker than dark.  My husband loved submarines as a boy, and got to tour a nuclear sub as a prize for winning a physics contest.  He also made models of them in his basement.  So I was doing a kind gesture in deigning to watch with him.  Marriage:  it's all about the compromising.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I finished Don Winslow's "The Border" yesterday.  It's almost 700 pages and intense, but a great if harrowing look at the drug "war" in our country and also the corruption in Washington, D.C.  His characters are alive, and his conclusions are profound and terrifying.  One of his characters says in the book that he really thought our country was "better than this".  That is the feeling I had in 2000 when our Supreme Court stopped the counting of the ballots, then when we started the Iraq War, then when Trump won the election.  Now when I see the divisiveness in our country I don't discount it, because really, there have always been these polar opposites:  slavery/abolition, sufferage/denying women the vote, no woman President/the need to women to sit in that seat, prochoice/antichoice, medical care for all/only for the rich, unions/antiunion, etc.  I can't see how we can reconcile these John Wayne myth believers with a sense of community and interrelatedness.  But I know the first step is to see it clearly:  the contradictions, power lines and the poorly educated masses, who have never practiced critical thinking.  We need to be fighting for knowledge of history, of science, of how money moves and what capitalism's pitfalls are.  Everything is a gray area, and black and white will be the destruction of us all.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It's a beautiful, warm day and we took a morning walk that settled us somewhat, but we are a shaky couple right now.  We bickered yesterday morning, then in the evening our irritation with each other flared up again.  My husband went downstairs.  I stayed upstairs and tried to sleep.  By the morning, we were careful with each other, but still nothing had been reconciled.  We are locked in place together, and it is not a pretty picture some of the time.  We are fortunate people, but our minds are no more noble than anyone else's despite it.  Fear and uncertainty are eating away at us and those we love, and while we attempt to comfort each other, we radiate those fears.  Everyone is tired of being careful, and the next bit of time is dangerous.  We're not sure how much the sheltering is working.  We trust our governor, but where is the testing to give us some answers?  It looks like many of us carried this virus much earlier than we thought, and how many are carriers now?  Was my husband's and my flu THIS flu, or another?  And even if we had it, does it provide any immunity?  Nobody knows.  Don't know, don't know, don't know.