January

Post New Year visitations, I was one of millions to have a nasty flu over the last couple of weeks. Because I had a flu shot, live in an assisted living facility where I am tested twice a week for Covid, I only deduced from my symptoms that it was more likely a flu than just a bad cold. I had no fever or additional muscle aches than the usual chronic pain I already live with. But the utter languishing fatigue was not due to a rhino virus. For a few days there was no thought of getting up off my bed because there was no chance that I could move at all except under great duress. Then followed the usual misery of packed sinuses and endless draining and sneezing- we have all been there at one time or another.

These days we make plans for gatherings but between illnesses, extreme weather events, and airline woes, we all understand the likelihood of possible cancellations. Staying connected requires more flexibility and persistence than ever. It is difficult to envision a loss of cyber space. We who are enabled to use it, are gratefully dependent on it and must rely on it for our wellbeing, our jobs, education, shopping, entertainment, being an informed world citizen- cyber space is a platform for living. For the many millions who have no means of access to the digital world, they have a different perspective on living, on day-to-day values. They are our world brothers and sisters and children. It is sobering to realize how much wider the gaps of haves and have nots are becoming every day.

The new year is based on our cosmic circular dance around the sun. Observed by our ancestors for many thousands of years, we still use it as a reliable marker for the passage of time, of seasons, and the renewal of our continuing passage from light into dark and back again. At the midline of equatorial life, weather patterns there also emerge from the same planetary cycles. Humans have managed to disrupt the order of those patterns. Life on earth has always moved through cycles of fire and ice, drought and flooding, creation and destruction. Discovering our tiny place in the universe does not seem to have enhanced our humility. We still function under the illusion that we can and will control the long-term outcomes of our chaos inducing short-term lifestyles.

On a daily basis I endeavor to stay grounded in my daily life, my immediate family, friends, and communities. At the same time, I work to open to the larger reality of the spaciousness of love, and my core essence that funds every breath I take and every perception I have, with or without the internet. May this new year bring us surprises and unexpected joys large and small every day.

Song of the Day

Waking up evokes a new love song

to the world every day.

Songs of yearning and loss

discovery and betrayal,

tragic ballads, joyful pop tunes,

blossoming new love, enduring classics,

the music of love beyond love

nurtured over lifetimes.

Love is complicated, messy, tender, ecstatic

rendering hearts vulnerable ripped

by the deepest kind of human grief

when the end comes, as it must-

however, whenever, it comes.

My musical archive is filled with

passionate high and low notes.

My body and brain sing a new song

the moment my eyes open from

beneath the silent lid of consciousness

dreaming in the night.

It all comes down to Love,

awakening to Its’ infinite faces.

Today, I embrace the world

offering my song into

the choir of life.