Awakening

Every morning I wake up feeling happy. It’s my first sense, my first awareness. I feel the steady rhythm of joy beating in time with my heart and flowing in the river tides of my breath.

I wake up feeling the enormity of God holding me like the mountains in my backyard cradle. I feel the unseen presence of the ones I’ve loved and I open my understanding to allow them all in–dead or alive.

The steady beating of my heart is the joy drum- keeping that feeling primary- so I can travel deeper, begin to uncover the underside of myself that is the underwater part of my island. The parts that are dark, covered up and hidden begin to make their presence known.

I remember that my Dad died. He really left and I won’t be seeing him. I think of my kids who live very far away and my daily life is full of missing them.

I feel, more than hear, the presence of Andy, the man of my dreams and my reality, and I hold him close in sickness and in health, although the sickness shakes all the trees on my island, down to the roots and reaches as far down as I exist. When he coughs and chokes every day the sound scratches my most raw and unprotected parts, creates ache that never ends. His illness induced silence is a painful truth that we hold together…..and those are only my personal burdens.

I feel six million deaths from a health pandemic. No big deal if none of those six million are your nearest and dearest. Apparently, no big deal because many of these dead were old anyway.

When our planet coughs and chokes, I feel that too, in my underwater, unseen island. I feel glaciers melting, seawater covering up more of the biggest broadest definition of me. I don’t want to be unseen- we are drowning and nobody says anything because we’re not in touch with our unseen, covered up selves.

Parkinson’s is no big deal unless it affects one you love.

Climate change is nothing to worry about unless you understand who we really are, what lies beneath each and every one of us. The trees are not the only ones with roots all entangled together. We live and die as one.

Mother Theresa said about her work in Calcutta, “The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved- they are Jesus in disguise.”

Who am I? Who are you?

I want to learn to navigate my entire island. I want to dive down into the deep and explore what is uncomfortable, what hurts, what is hidden.

I want to explore and bring along my joy, my breath, God, my loved ones-dead and alive. I will keep beating my joy drum every day- in every place I wander.