#We’re All in This Together

These images are Process Journey Images – 24 Days to Solstice with Cat Caracelo. The Name of My Journey is To Live in Grace. This is Day 6. This private journey inward takes place with the existing circumstances of Covid-19, changing our way of life and another killing in our black community by a law officer. No Justice – No Peace is where we live today.

My 24 Day Art Journey will also take place in the NOW — within and without. This is a very real time where we all have a chance for a break-through; there is enough compassion, there is enough desire, there is, above all, enough NEED for each of us to have the courage to change what needs to change.

There are many of us who are struggling for more ways to connect, to make meaningful a life lived from soul desire to make a difference — a big difference. And the light from those willing to do the things that hurt, do the things that help, employ the grace of the Holy Spirit for the fire-y guidance that shows forth upon all humans to live as they are created, children of God in all races and creeds. Pray that we do that. Pray that we learn. Pray that we are willing. Pray that we listen. Pray that we care and in that compassion add a little light to a world darkened by hate, violence, and bigotry.

Pray that we admit it HAS to change. We must find our way from chaos to community. We must find more and wonderful ways we can connect. There are enough people in the world that truly want this to happen. Pray that this happens so very soon.

 

Our DNA brings us to this point and in this chaos, we must find the peaceful and just way of moving forward. #We’re in this TOGETHER. There are not many paths, there is ONE path – TOGETHER….but how many WAYS can we find TOGETHER? We all must try.

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It’s Heart Time on the Planet

 

Couple jumping dolphins, blue sea and sky, white clouds, bright sun

 

 

“The full potential of the heart and its intelligence has is yet to be fully unfolded and understood. Much like the electricity changed the outer world, learning to harness the power and intelligence of the heart can change our inner world.”  

During this time of rapid and massive changes, due to the presence of the world-wide Corona virus, Covid-19, we all have a chance to look outward into our external world and inward to our soul, heart and value system. Many people from different backgrounds are experiencing an impetus for positive change in ways they never had before. Other people are desperately sick with the virus itself and very near their last breath. Many families are encased in a private grief of lost dear ones and distanced from others who could give them physical comfort.

These are enormous changes — over a time span of which we do not yet know.. What do we do with this rapidly changing world in our food and goods delivery systems, our at-odds and feisty political parties, our religious worship practices, our education and health systems, our jobs and financial structures? All of these things touch us daily and will be changed forever even when the virus is gone.

One of the most important aspects of the changes taking place is a rediscovery of what’s been hidden in plain sight all along…its the heart. Along with the chaos, there is a new emergence of heart-based awareness and intelligence. I studied some of this in 2012 with Barbara Marx Hubbard, an evolutionary visionary and with the HeartMath Institute.

A unified message is emerging in public service announcements because of the gigantic way of delivering help, services, and companionship.  “We’re all in this together,” and never has it been more clear how inter-connected we are to one another throughout the world. There is a human presence of using the vast internet programs and platforms to build up the human and the human spirit from its loss of many things including free mobility by air, sea, or car. There is a recognition of the sacrifices and struggles of all of the world health care systems, and the nurses and doctors closest to death on a daily basis.

There is singing. There are thank you’s.. There are pep talks, “We will get through this, together.”  There is a remembrance of forgotten populations of our society, the poor, the sick, the elderly and individual efforts to give where it is needed. The commercials from the banking systems, retail, personal services all point toward, “we’ll be back” but in the meantime , “take good care of yourself.”

All of this points to a fundamental fact. Goodness and health is based in the heart. And the heart knows what is best in both our actions and our thoughts. I have signed up for a short course summary of the HeartMath Experience. It will be a good precursor for my cardiac evaluation coming up this summer. I intend to put some of the summary reminders on Napkinwriter so my readers can attune their hearts to wholesome practices and communication. Good nutrition is a great baseline, but there is so much more your heart is asking for.

 

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SHOWING UP FOR LIFE

Today, Napkinwriter posts a guest piece written for DAILY OM on line by Madisyn Taylor. I check in on her writing often because she talks about things that make a difference to me or give me a new way of looking at an old routine. Today is about SHOWING UP for life, and very fitting while we all are on some type of temporary hold in our life patterns because of COVID-19. If we are not on hold, we are either fast-tracked into a day full of urgent needs by the first responders and health care personnel who are overwhelmed by the instant demands of their day, and emotionally bonded to the human loss of life and separation from loved ones as they succumb to the disease despite all of their efforts.

Then the greatest number of us are in a “hold” pattern until we get into the staged re-entry of our lives as they were in January and February, knowing that even then we will be entering into a “new normal” before normal ever appears in our life.

Yet, we still have to show up in our life which means new routines and creations to keep physical and mental and emotional areas healthy. We have to move forward in some way that is meaningful to us. And so, most of us do just that. I offer you a few thoughts on that.

Showing Up For Life

BY MADISYN TAYLOR
If you show up for yourself in your life, the universe will show up for you.

The way we walk into a room says a lot about the way we live our lives. When we walk into a room curious about what’s happening, willing to engage, and perceiving ourselves as an active participant with something to offer, then we have really shown up to the party. When we walk into a room with our eyes down, or nervously smiling, we are holding ourselves back for one reason or another. We may be hurting inside and in need of healing, or we may lack the confidence required to really be present in the room. Still, just noticing that we’re not really showing up, and having a vision of what it will look and feel like when we do, can give us the inspiration we need to recover ourselves.

Even if we are suffering, we can show up to that experience ready to fully engage in it and learn what it has to offer. When we show up for our life, we are actively participating in being a happy person, achieving our goals, and generally living the life our soul really wants. If we need healing, we begin the process of seeking out those who can help us heal. If we need experience, we find the places and opportunities that can give us the experience we need in order to do the work we want to do in the world. Whatever we need, we look for it, and when we find it, we engage in the process of letting ourselves have it. When we do this kind of work, we become lively, confident, and passionate individuals.

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Right Now Normal is Abnormal

 

Today is a special day in Spirituality. No matter what I’ve claimed and left behind in the traditions of Catholicism today IS Palm Sunday. I am in a dress with makeup on and I will bake something special. I am playing old CDs with the musical doxology and other songs of a spirritual nature and I will create here at home and the nearby outdoors for I am grateful for the gifts of faith and family freely given to me.

Today also begins what the scientists and CDC is also the beginning of two of the hardest weeks of sickness and death due to the pandemic virus COVID-19 attacking the world, and has been focused on the United States of America for the past four weeks, having arrived here earlier than that.

Healthcare in NYC, the epicenter, of the disease in America, is scrambling to provide adequate hospital space and the necessary PPE Personal Protection Equipment to the growing need. Healthcare professionals are coming in from other states to help the overburdened system. Ventilators are in such high demand and number needed so high, they are in a race to get one before a patient dies from the respiratory virus that shuts down the lungs.

And I know I shall rise and persist upon my own path of life. They say we have an unknown future. But we have always had an unknown future as those so fully know when an instant tragedy bested them. What we have is now and our actions and thoughts in this day.

I don’t know. And becoming friends with “I don’t know” is grace, itself. This is the second set of words that confirm me today. The first was another writer/artist speaking and she brought a quote in that said, “You can’t make the abnormal, normal. It is NOT normal.” I think therein, I give up the fight. I do not try to trick myself by doing “what is normal” to do. What I do is what rings true for me within this abnormal time. My interior world feels fairly normal. But as my gaze and my hearing focuses in on the outside world-wide — it is anything but normal. And that is what it is.

I do not know the future, but then I never have. A normal future is palatable. An unknown future leaves so many questions in its wake. Most of us try for the most normal we can manage for this abnormal time of Covid–19. We are plagued with the big question— how long? Someone tell us please when we can return to normal

With a return to normal, will survivors (because that is what we all are now) go back to the jobs they had? Will they, once again, work from an office rather than home? Will small businesses be there for the employees to return to? Will the economic structure hold for ourselves and our families? Will we bring the good, bad, and ugly back with us in our ways of life, or has this forced “time-out” reshape us in ways that we want to continue with and shed other stuff we would see as of no value?

This all remains to be seen. But for today, Palm Sunday, I am raised up, in the spirit of Resurrection, because others have reached through “social distancing” and touched me with their normal thoughts and actions. And for me, today, that is enough. It is normal.

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