20 years

Today is the 20th anniversary of my mother's murder.  The killing blow was struck on August 22, 2024, she died on the 24th. I miss her.

We just had a family reunion.  Not all the family could attend but there were 9 of us, nieces and nephews came.  One of my nephews I had never met before.  I love them all!  Each one is a great person I am glad to know.  Being with them made this month so much better.  In the last 19 years, August has been rough for me, to the point where sometimes I literally would see the world in black and white, no color.  This year none of that happened.  I was with people who also are affected by what happened to my mother, and that made all the difference.

Why share this?  Because being with people whom we love, who love us, who "get it" whatever "it" is, matters.  It makes a difference!

If you are suffering and can connect with others who understand, it helps.  If you can't be with people who understand, know that somewhere in this world they do exist!

We see the suffering of the people in the world who are under fire, whether it's Gaza or Ukraine, the people of Myanmar, the people of Yemen, Syria...women in India, Afghanistan, the United States...the list goes on and on, people who are being oppressed militarily, politically, culturally.  We see, we feel, we hope and work for Peace, it is the ongoing work of humanity to learn NOT to be violent, cruel, oppressive, greedy.  

Everyone can do their part by practicing self-awareness, by practicing kindness, by deliberately NOT seeking power over others, but instead sharing the beauty of power-with. 

On the metaphysical side of things...

There have been times in my life when, through meditation or ritual or just for no apparent reason at all, I have experienced what Ganesh Rajagopalan calls "the other dimension," a different reality.  I have been in a place where everything is made of light.  I have been in a place where time was nonexistent.  That may sound strange to some, others may relate.  The point is, though, that in my "regular" life, neither of those qualities are prevalent if they are present at all. So being in "regular" life, the world can seem very dense, and slow, and dull.  That doesn't mean I don't experience beauty and inspiration, I do, but it's all pale compared to being light in a place that is all light.  "Regular" life can be depressing when remembering these other experiences.

When I was in my late teens I was living in San Anselmo, California, renting a room in a house.  The guy whose house it was, in his mid 30's, told me he'd had an experience 10 years earlier, a spiritual awakening, and since then he'd been waiting for it to happen again.  He had a job, but he did that job and he waited.  That seemed really sad to me at the time, it still does.  I don't see myself as waiting.  I do see myself sometimes as trapped in a place that is slow and thick and dull, not joyful or ecstatic, but tolerable, and sometimes just barely so. I know others who have similar experience.  Today I am thinking that part of the task is to learn to live in the slow thick dense dullness without being diminished by it.

Politics this week...

Part of the strategy of fascists, not just the Republicans in the US but Hitler, Mussolini, Ceaușescu and others, is to overwhelm their opposition with propaganda declaring their victory and greatness, even when they are not great and are not victorious. That is what the Republicans did this week at their convention. Lots of fanfare, lots of self-congratulatory speeches, behaving as if they have already won. They haven't.

It is critical that we not buy into their narrative. The DNC is coming up. It looks more and more like Biden will not run. Whether it's Biden or not we must stay focused on anti fascism, on exposing the Republicans disastrous plans for the US. If Biden is going to step down, or be deposed, the focus has to be on who can run and win, not on hand wringing or circular firing squad or any of that.

It is not a foregone conclusion that Trump will win, far from it!

Travelin'

I've been traveling again. In December, I learned that I can't get residency in Jamaica until I'm retired and have a pension, and that's a few years off, so I am in transition. Dear friends welcomed me in Portland for four months, wow, and then I went on a hiking trip in Ireland and visiting friends in England, and now I am visiting my brother in Hawaii. I am essentially homeless, but not destitute, and not without friends and family and resources, so I am very fortunate.

All this has led me to reflect on ideas like home, permanence, and impermanence (again), and the effect of uncertainty on my equanimity. It kind of does a number on it. Which offers me this opportunity to see that, and not allow myself to get sucked into a panic about my future. I don't know what's going to happen, but the reality is even when we have lives that feel very settled and we think we know what to expect next, anything can happen, and does. So really this is just me getting to be pretty real about it.

There are so many people in the world who have no home, who have no place where they feel welcome, where there is violence at their backs and uncertainty and likely hostility in front of them. This is a difficult time. There are so many humans and there's so much greed-driven war and other exploitive and brutal forces being foisted upon regular folks. Not to mention the crazy ideological extremism that we see coming out of the Abrahamic religions all around the world.

I got to visit a really fantastic food forest earlier this week, just beautiful. 6 acres of fruit trees, and flowering plants just all kinds of stuff, all organic, all Permaculture gloriousness!