Photo by Taylor Ruecker on Unsplash
I’ve been having a recurring dream (rather feverish, too) over the last few days, where I’m at a certain crossroad on the way to Jerusalem with hundreds of other pilgrims during the Crusades but at different time periods (there were three Crusades during the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries). I ask every pilgrim I can find “Do you know how long this is going to last? All I want is the truth. I just need to know. How long is this going to last?”
No one answers back. They continue silently down the hot, dusty road ahead. I’m stuck standing at the crossroads.
Finally, a group of Templar knights come along, and I ask them the same thing. There is low, groaning acknowledgement with grim and ironic laughter. Everyone is wearing armor and chain mail and I can’t see anyone’s face. One of the knights extends his arm to hoist me up on his horse and says: “Let’s find out together.” This is where I always wake up. On a horse with a strange, unknown knight headed to the Holy Land and knowing nothing.
We’ve been under lock-down for four weeks now, and the different stages of human grief and loss are beginning to play out around the world in our own personal pattern and collective ways while heroic health care professionals, first responders and essential service workers are keeping thousands of people alive and the rest of us safe. We have become fluent in the realm of the unspeakable.
The 13th German mystic Meister Eckhart tells us, “If the only prayer you ever say is “Thank You” it will be enough.” I’m not quite sure if that’s correct when we’re talking about the bravery of those on the front lines of this horrendous pandemic. But thank you. Bless you and your families.
As the bubble wrap of shock and denial has begun to shift, I still want the answer to how long is this going to last? Just give me the time frame. If I have a time span, then I can cope. Everyday I look for answers to my question and every night I go to bed as befuddled and bewildered as when I woke up.
Not knowing anything (except that we weren’t prepared to begin quarantine and still aren’t prepared to end it) has left me confused, disoriented, incredulous and no doubt weighing a few extra pounds since discovering the medicinal power of Trader Joe’s “This Blueberry Walked In to a Bar” cereal rations. However, I don’t want to continue stuffing my anxiety into my mouth and really feel much better when my comfy pants aren’t tight. But I also really want to get a grip on whatever positive ephemeral emotions I can snatch and grab and process, such as “possibility.” But the gift of possibility requires a foundation of patience.
Patience is the art of waiting. Like all high arts, it takes time to master, which shouldn’t be surprising, since patience is the knowledge of time and cycles. How to use time to your advantage, how to be ready before the crisis appears, how to be at the right place at the right time, how to pick your moments, how to bite your tongue. Patience is discovering the mysterious pattern of cycles that cradle the Universe because everything that has happened once will recur. Few humans learn the lessons first time around. Why else the philosopher’s warning that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it? The History channel has created a timeline of 16 deadly pandemics over the last two thousand years for skeptics.
But it’s the possibility I want to embrace today. I want to acknowledge, accept and give thanks for each and every possibility I discover or rediscover during this expanse of interim time.
Perhaps a blessing each of us could hold onto during this quarantine, is the remembrance of prior passions that we abandoned because they weren’t practical. It’s quite illuminating to discover that often what a woman calls the search for true love isn’t a hankering for another person. It really turns out to be the suppressed desire to do something that she loves, something that makes her feel alive and joyful. I’ve rarely had as much joy in my life as the weekend I spent learning on the job how to midwife rare breed pregnant ewes (female in sheep speak) by doing it, rubber gloves up to my shoulders. A weekend and 80 newborn lambs later, I could barely move and spent two days sleeping. But it was the best sleep I’d had since the night my own beautiful lamb, my own baby girl, was born. There’s a soulful connection there, and I’ll find it.
A friend sent me a marvelous link to an article in the New York Times by the restaurant critic Pete Wells featuring the wonderful sustainable farming practice of Shafer Vineyards in Napa Valley, California. They use flocks of sheep to graze the grass growing between their vines. The YouTube clip is over 6 hours long and is called “Relax with Sheep”. As Wells recommends, I also love to keep the browser tab open listening to the balm of baaing, then sitting straight up in wonderment because I can still identify a lamb’s bleating, just as I did once, well, it seems like only yesterday, but time is fluid right now, so it could have been centuries past.
Photo by Tim Woodson on Unsplash
I’ll jot the “possibility” of having a little flock outside my kitchen window once again in the Gratitude Journal.
And just for the record, as well as another story for another day, sheep are very intelligent creatures. Sheep can remember up to 50 faces (both animal and humans) for a decade, whereas we’d do well if we remembered a name and face from a cocktail party. Good Lord, I can’t even remember the last time I attended a cocktail party. I’ll have to get a bottle of Shafer’s wine for my next ewe rendezvous!
I don’t know how or when we will get through all of this, but I know at some point we will. In the meantime hold tight to the memories that brought joy in your past. We will find joy again and how sweet it will be, steeped with the knowledge of just how precious it is.
A heartfelt thanks to everyone keeping us safe.
Dearest love and blessings on their dedication and courage.
And blessings on our own.
XO SBB