Category: Uncategorized (Page 8 of 39)

It could be our finest hour…when we respond to the sadness, fear and unpredictability of what is happening in the world right now with love, patience and kindness.

Or, it can be a time of paranoia, anger and lack of concern for others.

Amazing what a virus can do. Take a world full of people and turn them upside down. Laugh in the face of our superior technology, mega-malls and endless gluttony. Remind us we aren’t in charge of anything. Render us helpless.

Maybe Nature has had enough of floating garbage in the oceans, rolled-back air pollution standards, drilling on sacred indigenous lands, and the cavalier attitude so many take towards natural resources.

Have you heard….the earth is actually flourishing without us stomping all over it these days. I’m not surprised.

A little less violence and narcissism would do wonders for us all. I for one am a little tired of being reminded about how “great” things were.

There’s never been anything “great” about acting as though only we matter. There’s nothing “great” about arrogance, ignorance and lack of empathy. There’s certainly nothing “great” about ignoring science, facts and the truth, and creating a false reality that serves only your desires.

Quite frankly, it’s stupid. Destructive. Dangerous. (Yes, that’s a personal opinion. This is a blog. If you disagree, you can write your own.)

Generations around the world have been through tough challenges before. Wars, poverty, disease, persecution. Nuclear weapons. Airliners hitting skyscrapers. Concentration camps and mass graves. Always, the world did its best afterward to rebuild, heal, and rethink a new future.

We could do that. We could reach inside and find the strength and spirit to help pull us through the darkness. We could explore new sources of energy. New ways of doing business. New approaches to health and wellness. We could wear our masks in public and respect one another.

But it’s going to take patience—and working together.

So maybe you can’t go to the movies for a while. That haircut might have to wait. Really wanted to go to the lake this summer? Well, maybe next time.

Why? Because maybe doing those things could cause someone else to die. And maybe doing those things could cause you to die.

Staying home is hard. But isn’t knowing so many people are dying hard?

It’s time to be smarter. More patient. More loving. Turn off the propaganda and listen to the doctors. The nurses who are working 24 hour shifts. The researchers who are cautioning everyone to be careful.

I just don’t understand how anything else could be more important than coming together as one to solve this crisis, instead of spreading false emails about which country or culture is to blame for everything. Supporting divisive arguments that ultimately devastate those struggling to find food or pay their rent. Or using the oval office to tweet raging messages filled with insults like a four-year-old on a playground.

Our nation needs a national day of mourning, healing, reflection. It does not need an egomaniac spewing hostility and bragging about good ratings.

In the midst of the terrifying death counts, there is something to be grateful for. And for me, that would be everyone who is on the front lines of this crisis. Those who raise, grow, stock, deliver and sell food. Emergency responders, police, firefighters, EMTs, ambulance drivers, bus drivers, delivery people, doctors, nurses, and anyone else putting on a mask and going to work to help others.

I’m grateful for Dr. Tony Fauci for tirelessly contributing intelligence and reality. For Dr. Sanjay Gupta, always ready to offer information and guidance. For New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for his honesty, compassion and common sense and his willingness to stand firm in the midst of the noise. I also am grateful for experienced, ethical, hard-working, and responsible journalists who endure gaseous and unseemly insults regularly from an empty suit.

These times are hard. It’s okay to be exhausted, sad, frustrated and even desperate at times. It’s also okay to find moments of joy during the day. Laugh at a joke. Tease a friend online about her unruly hair.

But I confess I do not understand how anyone can think it’s okay to incite violence over the freedom to go bowling when so many are fighting for their lives.

One day, our scientists and physicians will find a way through this for all of us. Let’s hope we emerge as better people, in a cleaner world, with a lot more empathy for each other—especially those who aren’t carbon copies of us.

Isn’t that what those who claim to follow a higher power are called to do?

“We rise by lifting others.” Robert Ingersol

“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” Abraham Lincoln

“It is amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit.” Harry S Truman

What to say at times like these? When everything seems turned upside down and we can’t touch our friends and the four walls are closing in and days blend into each other?

We’d all like to say we are using the time to become better beings. Discovering invigorating exercise classes online and working out for hours. Finally tackling that 500-page tome we’ve wanted to read for years. Writing that novel that’s been lurking in our minds but we’ve never attempted because there just wasn’t time.  Painting more. Meditating more. Becoming a better person.

Wouldn’t that be great?  If you’re doing any of those, congratulations.  You are a warrior.

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But if instead your days feel heavy and lazy, with too many trips to the candy jar, too much television time and too little spiritual growth, don’t add shame to the mix.  There’s something about all this strangeness that really does want to rob us of our energy; our motivation to make every minute count.

Maybe it’s that we naturally like to feel in control, even though we’ve always known somewhere in our brains that we’re never in control. Maybe it’s actually something telling us that we let our lives get too regimented, too clock-specific and too filled with outside stimulation and now our soul is relishing the quiet. 

Maybe we’re just scared. Uncertainty will do that to you.

Author Pema Chodron has some thoughts on how to live with uncertainty in her wonderful book of essays entitled, “When Things Fall Apart”.  Here are some excerpts:

 “Things falling apart is a kind of testing, and also a kind of healing.  We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.  They come together and they fall apart.  Then they come together again and fall apart again.  It’s just like that.  The healing comes from letting there be from for all this to happen; room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy….

“The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell….”

“Life is a good teacher and a good friend.  Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it….Sticking with uncertainly, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path…” 

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Going inside for peace is something we’ve all been told many times, but honestly, it can feel so hard when there’s so much noise and pain around us. Even now, when the neighborhood is quiet, many are having a hard time “turning off” the noise in their head…scary headlines, arguing politicians, terrifying images from hospitals and nursing homes.

There is no easy answer, and what works for one may not help another. But here are some comforting thoughts from both ancient times and now that might help:

 “We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.”

“Your heart knows the way.  Run in that direction.”

“When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”

                                                Rumi

 “Don’t hurry.  You are going to live forever—somewhere.  In fact, you are in eternity now, so why rush?  Don’t worry.  What will this thing matter in twenty years’ time?  You  belong to God, and God is Love, so why fret?   Emmet Fox, Find and Use Your Inner Power

“There is the path of fear and the path of love.  Which will we follow?”

“Wherever you live is your temple if you treat it like one.”

“If you wish to know the divine, feel the warm sun on your face and the warm sun on your hand.”

Jack Kornfield, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book

And if just sitting still is doing nothing but adding to your anxiety, consider what you can do to help.  Maybe it’s helping a sewing group make masks. Or emailing your grandchildren and sharing stories from your childhood.  Calling friends you haven’t seen for years and checking in.  If you’re able and are practicing safe measures, maybe it’s dropping off grocery items for an elderly neighbor.  Or even just leaving a note on a door letting someone know you’re thinking about them.

“Nothing diminishes anxiety quicker than action.”

                        Walter Anderson

We truly are all in this together. But it’s easy to feel alone and overwhelmed. Let your mind rest and maybe give yourself permission to have some lazy time. Then challenge yourself occasionally to get up, dance to some old music (even if you’re chairbound), tackle that sock drawer, or pull out that book you haven’t looked at in years. 

Your spirit is willing. Your heart is pumping. Your light is still shining.  

“Sometimes I wrestle with my inner demons.  Other times, we just hug and eat cheesecake.”

       Anonymous

Take a walk outside today and look in the eyes of anyone you pass. Some people wave. Some look at the ground. Others communicate their fear through wide eyes.

Others seem blissfully unaware of everything.

It’s okay to be feeling some fear. Fear isn’t something to run from, because you probably won’t get far from it. Unless you meet it head on, armed with truth. With faith in yourself and in your beliefs. With respect for the universe itself.

Having accurate information from experienced, educated, recognized medical and scientific professionals is one way of keeping fear from paralyzing us. Get the facts. Do what these people advise.

Let the rest—no matter how loud they bark or misconstrue reality—rave on.

If each of us can come to peace with the mix of feelings we have inside, maybe it will be easier to be a force of calm for others, including that stranger we pass.

Author, writer and Franciscan friar Richard Rohr has been expressing some wonderful healing thoughts these past few days:

“….We know that we are all in this together. It is just as hard for everybody else, and our healing is bound up in each other’s. Almost all people are carrying a great and secret hurt, even when they don’t know it. This realization softens the space around our overly-defended hearts…”

“…..Now is no time for an academic solidarity with the world. Real solidarity needs to be felt and suffered. That’s the real meaning of the word “suffer” – to allow someone else’s pain to influence us in a real way. We need to move beyond our own personal feelings and take in the whole. This, I must say, is one of the gifts of television: we can turn it on and see how people in countries other than our own are hurting. What is going to happen to those living in isolated places or for those who don’t have health care? Imagine the fragility of the most marginalized, of people in prisons, the homeless, or even the people performing necessary services, such as ambulance drivers, nurses, and doctors, risking their lives to keep society together? Our feelings of urgency and devastation are not exaggeration: they are responding to the real human situation. We’re not pushing the panic button; we are the panic button. And we have to allow these feelings, and invite God’s presence to hold and sustain us in a time of collective prayer and lament. 

“I hope this experience will force our attention outwards to the suffering of the most vulnerable. Love always means going beyond yourself to otherness. It takes two.” 

We each have a story to our life that includes pain and fear as well as joy and wonder. We must remember that when we look into the eyes of that man or woman on the street. That’s us we just passed. That’s our brother, wife, grandmother, best friend.

Take a breath. Go within. Connect with the power of Nature in some way. Spring itself is proof life is victorious after decay and desolation. Find a way to smile (they really are showing the National Rock Skipping Championship on TV). Pull out some old photos and go down memory lane.

Maybe it all will result in a kinder, gentler world. Maybe the hate-speak of ignorance will finally gasp its last breath. Maybe life will become even more precious to us all.

These are serious, scary times for sure. But maybe if we give a smile to that worried person in the park, the clouds won’t seem so heavy for just that one person—and maybe they will pass it on. Let’s give it a shot.

“Give a smile, lift a heart.”

There’s a lot to be afraid of these days.  If a highway shooter doesn’t get you, the newest virus will. Danger lurks in the Cheetos bag (because who can eat just one) and sugar and salt are hidden in everything you love (which is why bad foods taste so good). 

Politics are resulting in people going to the emergency room with heart palpitations and spikes in blood pressure.  Anyone who actually watches the stock market probably either keeps a glass of gin by easy chair or has started mumbling incessantly. 

You can’t win. It’s beginning to feel like the world is getting really, really small.

That’s the bad and the good news. Because when we think a problem is just too huge for us to do anything about, we tend to fall into inertia.  Gee, it’s a shame about that, but I’m so far away and there will be people there who can help.

But when that problem knocks on our door, is waiting inside our gym, our wallet, our hamburger or our sinus passages, things change.  Now we are engaged. We are paying attention. 

And we might actually listen to the experts.

Expertise has come under extensive attack in the last few years.  There seems to be a wave of “I know better than you” or “Why should I believe you” that has taken over the minds of a lot of people…many of them younger than us boomers.  In his book, “The Death of Expertise:  The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters,” author Tom Nichols takes a close look at this trend.

He writes:  “Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything. It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.”

That’s pretty scary stuff.  It’s bad enough science is taking a beating.  Textbooks are being rewritten with events and people omitted.  So called “news” channels omit stories because they might be objectionable to their biased viewers.  What really should give everyone pause is how it’s become acceptable to just make up facts. To declare, “well, sure you read or heard that in the New York Times (for example), but they probably made that up.” 

Hang on.

Of course reporters at any publication can make something up.  But at a prestigious, proven news source such as the NYT, there’s a system in place to guard against that. It’s called getting multiple sources. It’s called confirmation.  It’s a legacy of holding to the truth. It’s not some manufactured TV network with pretty and handsome hosts giggling over the latest atrocity committed by the executive branch. 

As Nichols points out, the problem is when we decide we know more than medical researchers, more than the physicists and environmental scientists, more than the experts in climate and horticulture, and yes, more than seasoned, experienced, intelligent journalists.

When did we (ahem)…get so “smart”?

I hope that as boomers and beyond, we can remember how we grew up understanding there are always people shouting on the corner, and there also are people who truly follow an oath of honesty and accuracy.  People who study their professions for years and become certified as physicians, engineers, scientists, economists and psychologists.  They chose to dedicate themselves to achieving a certain level of expertise.

And they deserve our respect.  Because now is not the time to decide we know as much, or heaven forbid, more than they do about such serious matters.

Questioning authority is something our generation knows a lot about.  It’s a very healthy thing to always go. Frankly, I’m amazed that more people aren’t doing this everyday….questioning any blowhard that makes up whatever serves him or her.

THAT is who needs to be questioned.  Not the true experts.

So as the headlines come and go and fears rise about what’s happening the world and right where we are, let’s remember to listen to those who TRULY know what they are talking about.  The rest is just noise.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Benjamin Franklin