Tag: beauty

Excerpt II

To  speak of Personal Power. Choice. Self Responsibility — Is not to be overly Idealistic sans an awareness to those in dire circumstances and Beings that actually lack alternatives. It is not to point fingers or claim one Country’s Health System is better than the other. I think Globally, we can learn alot from one another.  One system cannot be had with the other. It’s like our own internal system.  A whole system in which we tend to fragment and leave others to fix, adjust, brainwash – us, back to a supposed state of balance. Balance. Something we are clearly fooling ourselves into being/having, once one part is “fixed.” Do you ever notice how when you fix something, something else falls apart? Especially when it’s done quickly, in fear, or with a bandaid; with virtue signaling, adverts, drugs, drink, sex, etc?  What happens when you run a marathon post knee surgery, before your body, brain spirit has fully recovered? 

Health, I’ve realized, is not so much in saving/fixing – It is in listening. It is in something as disorienting, as a Pandemic, that affected the WHOLE- visibly, to make us question our ways of living. Listening. Being. It has affected us on every level imaginable. And knowable. We have just been asleep. My thoughts and feelings are not to discount the death; the pain, the PTSD nor the Virus. It is actually to lean into it… more. Because I’m afraid we are going to bypass what is essential for recovery – The actual articulation of the experience both personal and from within the hospital corridors. Those that faced something unimaginable/not in the science books. The unbearable pain of witnessing others die alone. The inability to FIX. Cure. Ease the suffering. The desperation. The bureaucracy, to boot.  

One vaccine is not the FIX/Perhaps it’s an adjunct. The question now is – How are we going to be Healthy – individually and as a WHOLE. How are we going to stand up for things we believe in? What will we eat? Who will we convene with? Where will we live — Now and ten years from now? Where do we put our money? Time? Energy? Will we understand that relationship to our neighbors/village/community is essential for our Balance? Will we understand that everyone has a story, a set of values, history? That people will think and feel differently than we do – And that the beauty is in difference and our sameness. When we cut a human open in the OR, we all have a bleeding beating heart. 

My hope is, we don’t lose the heart. 

Peace

h.

Knowledge

My best knowledge has come from being in the world. From my patients the past twenty years. From community, villages, cities other than the one I was born. Beyond the walls of North America and within. However, mostly from “outsiders.”

I’ve been educated by children. Yes, children. Ironically, I feel the West needs to grow up. I’ve been nourished by different colors, points of view; families full and rich with love. Ritual. My schooling came beyond states of emergency and from facing my own fears. Lessons mostly arrived from Mother Nature. I’ve learned from others’ dream, sorrows, and overwhelming generosity. Dancing, celebrating, eating together regardless of our complexities. And just because — We are Human. Humans with tremendous capacity for intimacy, respect and joy.

Yes, books are beautiful and bountiful and just plain orgasmic, sometimes. But not a thing has made me more FULL and knowing than direct communion with that, that I AM. And sometimes that is an old gas station for yours and my, viewing pleasure.

Loss and Light

I wept for all the loss tonight. 

And all those hearts, 

Thirsty, to make sense of it all.

It started to rain then, cool drops

Falling, on warm desert sand.  

One seemingly dark cloud,

Hugging, my mud brick shelter.

I beheld the sun’s descent

Surrendering, to the mouth 

Of mountains, like paintings.

A bird with grey wings,

Perched on a juniper;

In her company,

We witnessed an ascent of angels. 

I will be intimate tonight, 

With both loss and light.