Dear ones-Just done hosting a morning meditation for my dear teacher who is traveling. It' s so lovely to sit first thing in the morning. It's a bright sunny day and for the last few days a neighbor and I have been getting in the lake at 6 AM with the other lunatics. The water is 65 degrees at the moment. Not as cold as it will get. Not wetsuit weather yet. We're gonna go later in the day today.
Tuesday I caught a baby and called 911. It was, how to say, a true emergency. Everyone is fine, I visited the family on Thursday, as they got home from the hospital. I'm very curious now about the intersection between faith and science because this situation had both. The family, devout Christians, prayed. I used medications and techniques I know how to use. And in my way, I wasn't praying exactly but I do believe in cause and effect (called co-dependent arising) and I have my own dialogs with the BVM and Kuan Yin. So who's right? Neither? Both? The family firmly believes in the power of prayer and that the situation arose as it should. In other words, it was preordained. From my perspective, yes, they're right. What I never know is how it will go, what will happen. Will this mother bleed? Will the baby struggle to breathe? I'm alert for all the irregularities but resting on normalcy. I don't believe there is some higher power directing the activities of humans. Or do I? If we're mere specs, I would think a divine being would not bother with us individually.
I also think we live on an intelligent biosphere. As an aspiring green chaplain, it seems evident to me. As we inter-are, as Thich Nhat Hanh worded it, there is this vast web that in indivisible. We form and unform and reform into and out of the elements. We never die, if you will. We just become something else. As Ram Das' teacher Neem Karoli Baba said about his own death, "Where would I go? I'm not going anywhere. I'm just leaving my body." As long as we believe that we are these skin suits, we get stuck. So we've got our ancestral DNA. Calling on the ancestors seems right. And this family was doing that too. So are we that different?
Well, I wasn't planning to go HERE this morning.
I'm watching a junco eating the shriveled grapes outside my window. She pecks at the bunch, knocks one to the ground, hops down and eats it, then goes back for more. I missed the grape window this year. I was away getting married.
Ah well.
Enjoy your day.
Love,
Shoun (Luminous Cloud)
2 comments:
I think that in a situation like this people react as they have been taught and/or come to believe. I personally do not believe in any supernatural intervention at all. I have no idea what happens to us when we die but I do know that energy is neither created nor destroyed. So...what does that mean when it comes to death?
Don't know. Frankly, I don't think anyone does.
Recently I heard Neil deGrass Tyson's response to someone who asked him what he thought happens when we die. He asked the questioner if he ever thought or worried about where he had been before he'd been born. The questioner said that no, not really. And Tyson said- so why do we concern ourselves so much about where we go when we die?
I loved that answer.
But of course, as humans, we desperately want to believe that our loved ones and we ourselves will still be around in one form or another. And maybe we will. But no one really knows.
Mostly I just want to say that I'm so glad you were the midwife at the birth because of your vast experience, knowledge, and training with which you were able to deal with the complications and knew when to call for help. Because of that, mother and baby are alive.
Thank you, dear Mary. where does all that knowledge go after I retire? My young colleague (who bought the practice) has been crying in my arms with thoughts of my retirement---she has said she has always depended on me and and my wisdom to support her. I would say, my love for her and the work.
XXX
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