Coronavirus: Month 3

We are three months into the coronavirus, and the only thing that's different now than when all this started is that now there are over 2 million cases of coronavirus in the U.S. - and rising steeply - and almost 11,000 cases in New Mexico. And we miss each other.

The kids are antsy and want to see grandparents and friends. I want to see friends, too.

But nothing is any better. Actually, worse than 3 months ago, so what's to justify loosening our stay-at-home strategy? If there's anything worth emerging for, it's Black Lives Matter protests.

Instead, it's lots of walks. Lots and lots of walks. And work. And church. And games. And reading.

Which isn't a bad life. Just small. And scary. And claustrophobic. I'm not feeling brave like other families who are heading out camping and backpacking. That would probably be good. But I barely have the energy to make it from waking up to bedtime. How would camping go?

Hard to have the energy for much more than survival mode. And feeling thankful for that.

Song - Love One Another - words and music by Jason Shelton

Alicia Hawkins - Quote Collections

Alicia Hawkins, beloved community member from First Unitarian in Albuquerque, New Mexico, passed away yesterday.

A year or so ago, Alicia mailed me a collection of quotes that she had been amassing for 15 years or so. She organized the quotes under topics: Perfection, Wounds We Can't Heal, Trust, Shadow...

In thinking of her, and in the spirit of sending out love and light into the world, as Alicia always did, here are a few relevant quotes from her brilliant collection:

Here's one of Alicia's own poems, which she categorized under "Living the Questions."

Don't tell me your answers,
tell me your doubts.
Don't drag out your expertise
tell me what baffles you.
Let me wander around in your realness,
not in your carefully mended mask.

Under "Sorrow/Suffering," these words from Mary Oliver:

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
That this, too, was a gift.

Under "Perseverance and Courage," these words from Jane Hirshfield (who wrote the poem "Optimism" - a real favorite of mine):

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

Under "Letting Go," these words from Christine Robinson:

Practice all the letting go's you can. From letting go of your thoughts in a meditation practice to letting go of your attachments to things and relationships that leave our lives constantly, practice letting go. Every goodbye you say is a practice for the big goodbye. Don't let a day go by without letting go of something!

Under "Death," these words from Rainer Maria Rilke:

The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.

And these from Kahlil Gibran:

When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And finally, these words from her dear friend and collaborator in three books, Christine Robinson:

The only legacy we leave is the light that shines from our life. 

Song - Comfort Me - words and music by Mimi Bornstein

This recording is from “Not Your Mama’s Hymns” by Unfolding (Laura Weiss and Sarah Jebian)

I Am Legend

I am being haunted by vague memories of this scary movie in which a global pandemic leaves this man living alone in his house with his dog, surviving the best he can while looking for a cure and for other survivors.

• I Am Legend (free withAmazon Prime)
• Plot summary (wikipedia)

I've been thinking of it so much, I figured I needed to just watch it to get it out of my head, like exposure therapy.

I got to the first really scary scene where the dog enters a dark building where you know the infected people must be. The thought of losing his one live contact in the world sent me reeling, and I fled to my balm of choice - Fixer Upper, where the most drama is just how annoyed Joanna will get with Chip's antics, and the most danger is whether they will find mold or pests in an old, old house.

I've heard people have been rewatching Contagion and Outbreak and other pandemic movies, but I hadn't heard I Am Legend mentioned. (One of the Late Night hosts I watch repeatedly used a clip from the end of The Hot Zone where the Julia Margulies character is infected with Ebola through a gap in her containment suit.)

It's unusual that I've seen I Am Legend. I haven't watched the other pandemic films. I avoid them. I Am Legend came out in December 2007. I can't remember whether I saw it in the theater, but that's hard for me to believe. I would have been just recently married, and this isn't the type of movie we would have picked together. Doesn't really matter. I've seen it, and now I can't get it out of my head, but I can't watch it, either.

It's brought a feeling of panic into my daily life that wasn't as on-the-surface before. It's compounding my reaction to Trump wanting the economy to open May 1 and to the conservative tea party extremists rallying to end stay-at-home orders and to the thoughtless hedonists in Florida flocking to the first open beach. Why are these people not scared into hunkering down? Are they really okay with the idea of tens of thousands of deaths? Survival of the fittest? Essential workers as replaceable?

I don't get it. And they scare me more than the virus. I'm scared for my family and my community and tribal communities and communities of color and my country and my world.

One of the scenes in I Am Legend is the Will Smith character hunting deer who have taken to flocking downtown Manhattan. I remember feeling incredulous that deer would pick this of all the other places on earth they could go. But I've been strangely tickled at the stories of wildlife taking back cities around the globe.

• CNN

It's like watching the forest come back around Chernobyl. A reminder that the earth really doesn't need us and doesn't care much whether we live or die. In fact, maybe has a slight preference to life's variety if we all perish, or at least, lose our place on top of the food and resource pyramids. (I've also been hearing the Hugo Weaving character - Agent Smith - ranting to the Laurence Fishbourne character about how humans are a virus, a plague that's taken over the earth.)

• "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."

And what is the countermeasure? 

• The Good News according to John Krasinski
• Zoom services from First Unitarian
• Brene Brown's podcast Unlocking Us (particularly the episode with Glennon Doyle, talking about Untamed)
• Cleaning my house, which I need to stop and do right now

May all things be well. May all measure of things be well. Namaste. Breathe. Be grateful. Don't yell at the children when they're only having fun. Go for a run outside (try not to hyperventilate while wearing the mask). Try not to think that this may not be temporary. Try not to miss hugs quite so much.

Poem - To Build a Swing - Hafiz

You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare --
Don’t mix them!

You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard
For God.

That sounds
Like a hell of a lot more fun.
Let’s start laughing, drawing blueprints,
Gathering our talented friends.

I will help you
With my divine lyre and drum.

Hafiz
Will sing a thousand words
You can take into your hands,
Like golden saws,
Sliver hammers,

Polished teakwood,
Strong silk rope.

You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them, mix
Them!

Week 1: Coronavirus Quarantine

We just finished our first week -- not even a whole week -- at home together social distancing to flatten the curve, lowering the infection rate of the coronavirus to stave off medical disaster from all of us falling ill at once.

Most things have been shut down now. Restaurants are mostly closed or only doing walk-up or delivery, if they are open at all.

Stores are still open, but some shelves are bare.

I've been out once for groceries. Eric has gone out most days to buy something or other that we need. He gets stir crazy. I am fine nesting and being very grateful at the moment not to need to go out.

The kids are doing well with a new normal of an arbitrary structure of a daily schedule and help from Caroline on Mondays and Wednesdays, some help from Brenna, and some steering from us on the other days.

We've kept up game night and screen days. We fell off the wagon a bit this Sunday and last, watching more tv than we would have otherwise, but both days we worked on puzzles as we watched, so that *almost* counts.

I'm growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of real information. I don't even know what they think the infection rate is here in NM or whether the moves we've taken are helping to flatten the curve.

I work in City govt., yet I know nothing and have heard nothing from leadership since Sarita's email ordering us back to work one more time for "more direction."

I'm still resentful that I was made to feel like I was overreacting when I asked that my team be sent to work from home after APS cancelled school. Yet all the things that I mentioned in my email will soon come to pass as the standard routine, I think.

And I feel stupid carrying that resentment when there's a bigger picture that's much more frightening and warrants our full attention: the potential for this to be months long and millions of deaths in the U.S., thousands of deaths here in Albuquerque.

But even that's not worth worrying about beyond staying home and washing hands and surfaces, since it's impossible to get info about what measures the govtments are taking to build fever centers or even wings in the hospitals so that staff isn't carrying the virus from floor to floor.

Heidi seems lonely. Mom seems ok. Shelle told me Katon had come home from Spain and is under quarantine for 14 days.

I feel so grateful for everyone I know being well, and for being able to work from home, and for kids who still like learning and who aren't tearing each other apart -- yet.

And for Beckett's therapist, who is still coming to the house 5 days a week -- for now.

Heading into week 2, I want to remember more times during the day to take a breath and feel grateful and meditate to bring me back to now. To here. To safety in the ever-present now. For this to be enough.

Song - All Will Be Well - Meg Barnhouse

Julian, you are holy, you are holding my hand. (x 2)

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

I said, "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about:

• sorrow
• pain
• hunger 
• shame?"

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

I said, "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about:

• loneliness
• disease
• cruelty?" 

I said "Julian, it's too much. It brought me to my knees."

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about:

• sorrow
• pain
• hunger 
• shame."

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about:

• loneliness
• disease
• cruelty. 

I know, it's too much. It brought me to my knees, where I heard:
'All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well.'"

I said, "Julian, you are holy, you are holding my hand. (x2)
And so, All will be well, all will be well; all manner of things will be well."

She said, "Babygirl, do you not know, do you not know about:

• tenderness 
• friends
• the Spirit?
• it's only love that never ends and so,

all will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

Song - We Shall All Be Known - Karisha Longaker (MaMuse)

Original by MaMuse:

Cover by Thrive East Bay

We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth
It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love

We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth

It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love

- Words and music by Karisha Longaker of MaMuse

Pandemic (poem) by Lynn Ungar

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live. 

--Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

Living Charly

One of the most captivating and disturbing storylines to me is the backslide from some height of achievement. Remember the young adult book Flowers for Algernon, where Charly is a kid with a mental disability who takes some drug and becomes brilliant only to realize that the drug will unavoidably fail and leave him potentially worse off than before?

I fear my life is going to play out that story. I felt like an old soul as a kid. My family drama asked me to step up and take care of myself and my mother's emotions way too soon, and I felt valued and competent when I could do that. I spent the first 20 years of my life feeling confident and superior, together and driven and never second-guessing. Everything was black and white, and I was passionate about denouncing what I saw as wrong, unflinching in judgment about myself and everyone around me. In short, young. And terribly unwise and unkind, but feeling like I knew everything.

And so the last 20 years have been about learning to question myself and the easy first-reaction judgments. I've been reading Thinking Fast and Slow for the last 6 months. I can only read a few pages at a time, because it's an indictment of my youth and my continued first instincts. Our intuition is our System 1 brain in Daniel Kahneman's explanation of how our brains work, our feeling and judging brain that reasons with stories in which there is a hero and a villain (guess which one we all think we are?). That brain has built in shortcuts necessary for us to function minute by minute in a world of overwhelming stimuli that surrounds us. But those shortcuts have built-in errors, and if we don't slow down to question, to breathe, to zoom out of the myopia of our own first-person stories, then we literally don't see things correctly. Our System 2 brain can reason, considering multiple competing factors, but that brain is lazy and defers to System 1 unless pressed into service.

Which is all to say that I am facing a tough conversation with a member of my team on Monday, and I'm scared about how it will go. I have been picturing myself staying calm, centered, and curious. I've been re-reading Brene Brown's Dare to Lead. Clear is kind; unclear is unkind. The cave you fear hides the treasure you seek. So this conversation is a key to growth for me as a manager, as a leader, as an introvert tasked with connecting with a team every day.

And perhaps scariest of all, this is about what I can control and what I can't. I can't make someone like me, or improve performance, for that matter. I can't change the triangle dynamic of a dysfunctional reporting system for this unfortunate woman. I can't not be hurt and angry and feel powerless and disrespected when she cultivates the relationship with my boss's boss, who continually undermines and overlooks me. I can't control how this woman feels about me and my part in this mess. I can't control her interpretation of my actions or the assumptions she's making about me and my motives. I'm less nervous about that part. I can feel myself slowing down, breathing, staying grounded.

It's scarier to think about having this hard conversation and nothing changing. Either having to have it again or never getting to have it again and things going from bad to worse.

But I can only do what I can do. She is doing her best, and so am I. Perhaps we are not a good fit for each other. Maybe I haven't been brave. Maybe she feels ashamed that she can't do more and do better right now. Maybe all of that and more is true.

I'm guessing it comes down to me not valuing what she's contributing and her not feeling that her contribution is valued. There's a whole conversation about assumptions and goals that needs to happen and sounds really hard, and long, when what I am feeling is panic at how much there is to do in so little time.

And then there's the personal questioning of why I don't know more, feel more confident, when I used to live in that certainty and self-righteousness. And while I simultaneously understand that recognizing how much I don't know is wiser and kinder, I hate not trusting myself, not relying on my first instincts to be unerringly right and true and just.

And so middle age is arrived at.

I must remember: more love. My only job is to figure out how to best use people's strengths in the service of the bigger picture, how to support them in bringing their best. Brene Brown asks: "What does support look like?"

I hope I'm about to find out. Together.

Utterance of the Timeless Word (prayer) by Angela Herrera

You bring yourself before the sacred,
before the holy,
before what is ultimate and bigger than your lone life
bigger than your worries
bigger than your money problems
bigger than the fight you had with your sister and your aches and pains
bigger, even, than your whole being, your self who is

part of
and trapped within
and blessed with

a body that does what you want
and doesn’t do what you want
and wants all the wrong things
and wants all the right things... 

You stand at the edge of mystery,
at the edge of the deep,
with the light streaming at you,
and you can’t hide anything—not even from yourself,
when you stand there like that,
and then...what?

Maybe you call your pastor and say,

What is this?
What am I looking at?
What do I do?

And your pastor comes and stands at the edge with you
and looks over.
She can’t hide anything either, she thinks,
not even the fact that she doesn’t know the answer to your question,
and she wonders if you can tell. 

She thinks of all the generations who’ve come there before you
and cast words out ­toward the source of that light,
wanting to name it.
Somehow, she thinks to herself, the names stayed tethered to the aging world and got old
while the light remains timeless and burns without dimming.

Meanwhile,

the armful of worries you brought to the edge of mystery
have fluttered to your feet.
Unobscured by these, you shine back, light emanating unto light.
You, with your broken heart and your seeking,
you are the utterance of the timeless word.
The name of the Holy is pronounced
through your being.

To Sit in the Unknowing (prayer) by Katie Kandarian-Morris

By Katie Kandarian-Morris

O God of many names, the personal and mysterious,
We have come to a quiet time, an interior place,
a place for the deepening of spirit, the enrichment of soul.
We seek to know ourselves by knowing you.

Let us have the courage to sit in the unknowing,
To look for the answers even if they are to sit with our own questions,
To be willing to be authentic with ourselves,
To be ready to bring our face to the world.

Let us be willing to know others by welcoming their genuine features,
By welcoming them into the world,
By appreciating the beauty that comes from seeing wholeness and truth.

Let us sit in that quiet depth.

May it be so. AMEN and Blessed be.

Even This Is Enough (Prayer) - Vanessa Southern

So much undone.
So much to do.
So much to heal
in us and the world.
So much to acquire:
a meal
a healthy body—
a fit one—
a lover
a job
a better job
proof we have and are enough
just around the corner of now.

And up against it the reality of all that falls short and the limits of today.

We honor the limits:
If your body won’t do what it used to, for right now let it be enough.
If your mind won’t stop racing or can’t think of the word, let it be enough.
If you are here utterly alone and in despair, be all that here with us.
If today you cannot sing because your throat hurts or you don’t have the heart for music, be silent.
When the offering plate goes around if you don’t have money to give or the heart to give, let it pass.

The world won’t stop spinning on her axis if you don’t rise to all occasions today.
Love won’t cease to flow in your direction,
your heart won’t stop beating,
all hope won’t be lost.

You are part of the plan for this world’s salvation,
of that I have no doubt.
The world needs its oceans of people striving to be good
to carry us to the shores of hope and wash fear from the beach heads,
and cleanse all wounds so they can heal.
But oceans are big and I am sure there are parts that don’t feel up to the task of the whole some days.
Rest, if you must, then, like the swimmer lying on her back who floats,
or the hawk carried on cushions of air.
Rest in pews made to hold weary lives in space carved out for the doing of nothing much
but being.

Perhaps then you will feel in your bones,
in your weary heart,
the aching, healing sense that
this is enough—
even this.

That we are enough.
You are enough.
Enough.

For these and all the meditations of our hearts unspoken in this hour, I say, “Amen.”

The New Colossus (poem) by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


November 2, 1883

Anti-racism - Ta-Nehisi Coates

“These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates. Between the World and Me.

Anti-racism - Toni Morrison

You don’t waste your energy fighting the fever; you must only fight the disease. And the disease is not racism. It is greed and the struggle for power.Toni Morrison

New Paths (poem)

Grateful for new paths that emerge
from dark woods

at the edge of my frustration
and the end of what I know to do to help you,

we take the first steps --
me ahead --

you, knowing less,
behind.

I hold your hand,
still small,

so steady
for one so easily overwhelmed.

-- for Beckett

Prayer for Family Appreciation

May you never lose the excitement of storytelling to a mom listening with love glistening in her eyes.

May this mom never lose the love and pride of listening to your joy in storytelling.

May the lessons we learn playing board games prepare us for a life of cooperation and shared goals.

May I let in love that surrounds me like sunshine.

May the order we create with hard work clear our minds and our lives for the rich messiness of loving.

Civic Plaza Fountain

I tell you not to run
but your joy streaks ahead

to the water
surging from concrete

to meet you
hands up

laughter cresting
between the two of you

in the summer sun
spring breeze

singing this cool May morning
into family legend.