This Is Not the End of the Story

Back from a rough retreat. Isolation on top of isolation. Ha! I felt very supported. The forest was beautiful as were (was?) the doe and her yearling which I saw almost every day. 

We do take our baggage with us wherever we go, y'know? Deeply buried family stuff came to the surface and it was intense.  I don't really wanna write about it here, or not yet anyway. Letting it settle. I spoke with my teacher every other day and that was most helpful. Boy o boy, our sorrow and grief. This human experience is surely a wild ride.

A few friends and I are going to keep each other company for election night-African peanut soup, biscuits, some kind of dessert with birthday candles for Judith and pillows to scream into if necessary. 

Maya and I talked about Bend, Oregon. Could we move there? How are property values? Could she go back to the Bay area to cut hair twice a month? Milo will be launching soon so she can contemplate what's next. Bend is beautiful and importantly, farther north from California. 

I listened to a Dharma talk with Jack Kornfield while I was on retreat. He said something that stuck with me. "This is not the end of the story." All the mishegoss (Yiddish for crazy) we are currently experiencing will change and morph and become...something else. It's a universal law. The children know. The young activists know. They are thinking and working and building community and a new world because we are on the brink of, we don't know. 

The metta prayer:

May all beings be safe and protected from inner and outer harm.

May all beings be happy just as they are.

May all beings be healthy in their bodies and their minds.

May all beings  have ease. May all beings be surrounded by compassion. May all beings be free. 

I say this every day. For myself and everyone else. Everyone. No exceptions. (That's the hard part) It is what I can do.