My husband and babe #1 travelled to NYC for a basketball tournament that was graciously cancelled mid-game. Thank you NBA and NCAA for being the first leaders of our nation. For saying, we will stop the March madness and we will respond to what is. Thank you for setting a precedent for our president.
My people are back from this hot-zone, and now we are stuck at home together. We made this decision before the CDC advised it.
Some call it social distancing. Some call it physical distancing. I call it a dream come true.
How long has my soul begged for this kind of closeness with my family? The kind not required by a logistically complicated scheduled trip away from all of our duties and distractions, but rather a settling in, a sinking down, a surrender to our humanness. A call to close loops and finish discussions, to not escape to school or work mid-complicated sentence. To not try to fit in familial relationships among all the external obligations. And the world is asking us to do it.
I feel an ancient itch being scratched, an echoey yearning for tribe time, a longing for community collaboration and solidarity, as we relearn together how to work with the natural elements.
Yes, I feel fear. And panic has reached the surface of my body a time or two. But truthfully the undercurrent of fear has been here inside me for so many years. Fear for the earth, fear for the polar bears, fear for the people in poverty living near the sea. Fear for the glaciers and the grandkids, the forests and the furry ones. Fear for all the things we know and don’t address.
I can feel Mother Earth sighing in relief for the little break we’re giving her, and now I don’t feel quite so alone in my fear.
Now maybe we all look at the invisible elephant in the room. Now maybe we talk about the necessity of universal healthcare, of community gardens and converting our tidy blue-grass yards into life-giving earth. Maybe we address how every action we take as individuals ripples through the community, affecting all.
Maybe we embrace our interconnectedness as demonstrated by the constantly-updating live outbreak maps. Maybe we acknowledge as a culture the inevitable end we all face. Maybe with this acknowledgment we choose to live in more life-conscious ways.
I pray and I choose to believe that this virus can raise our consciousness and our health as a vibrant community. All of us have unique ways of contributing and growing, all of us have work to do at home— both inner work and work with our closest people. For all those who continue to do important and life-saving work out in the community: providing food and medicine, caring for the sick and assisting the compromised and the elderly, —thank you. From the bottom of my heart.