I am back. Since I no longer have the “distractions” of part time work (just for now, I hope), travelling all over, doing workshops and retreats, all my usual activities, I am finally turning my attention back to my badly neglected blog.
I am starting out with “The Calamity Blogs”, since we are in a prolonged, slow motion disaster with Covid. I wrote a short piece about our current calamity in April. When I wrote that one, it made me think of the one I wrote during the fall of 2001 when the ruins of the World Trade Center were still a pile of smoking beams and ruined concrete and my mother was dying from congestive heart failure. She went on Hospice in August of 2001, and crossed over on March 30, 2002. I wrote this piece BEFORE November when I got a call that she was dying and left everything behind to go to Jennersville, Pennsylvania and care for her myself. (I spent six weeks straight there, and then was there more than home for the rest of that time. That’s a difficult story for another time.)
Over the past year, ads kept popping up on the internet for “Calamity Ware” – sets of mugs and dishes that look like that old “Blue Willow” pattern from a distance, but when you look up close, the scene is full of apocalyptic images – robots, dragons, pterodactyls, pirate ships. I finally caved and bought a set of four for myself, then in February, sent sets to two of my friends who have birthdays that month. Everybody liked them. Now I feel like we are living in that scenery.
For me, this “stay at home” thing is not over. I am almost 69 and a cancer survivor, so I do NOT feel safe going out a lot. I go to stores with a mask. We have gone camping once in our trailer and plan to do so at least two more times. Now that it is warm weather, we have visited with friends on decks and in yards. Due to the mass stupidity exhibited at the federal level, and by some of our fellow citizens, I do not expect this virus to be contained any time soon. And so I am reviving my sadly neglected blog in the meantime.
Calamity Blog 1, Fall 2001: These times…..
This period of my life, amid these times, is like a surrealist painting – maybe Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” or maybe something by Max Ernst…. The landscape of my life stretches out seemingly endless in front of me. Is it a barren plain reduced to ruins smelling of jet fuel, dust, decaying dreams? Or is it really a solid wall painted to look like space leading to infinity? As I approach emotional ground zero, ground between the heavy stones of personal loss and national calamity, what I see ahead is neither a barren plain nor a concrete wall. What lies ahead is not the ruins and destruction that assault me at first glance.
My first clue was this – words of prayer: “may God be with us”; and words of response, describing the indescribable: “chaos” – written on dead windshields by human fingers, written in the dust and ash of our national fantasy that we were untouchable, insulated from human misery. Beamed by news cameras into my living room in the deepest part of night as I watched sleepless, caught by the images like a deer in headlights, these words showed me how essential, how human is our need to record and express experience, even when it is too big to fit into our psyches whole. It was those words, scrawled in the ash of burnt concrete, steel and human flesh that provided me a glimmer of hope in those first hours.
Now I am holding onto two words: love and fear – and the balancing act between them that our lives have become. We can respond with fear based hate, or we can respond with love. I can allow myself to sink beneath the stinking sludge of depression or I can keep moving forward, one step at a time, facing the dual tragedy of my mother slowly dying of heart failure and the fiery sacrifice made by thousands of souls on September 11. These two losses –one impending, personal, part of the expected life cycle, the other, literally out of the blue, crossing all boundaries-are part of this period of my life, so unlike any other.
This period of my life is calling me to draw on every single resource within me – all the wisdom of my 50 years on the planet, and to look beyond myself to friends, family, and the universal spirit of love and mercy that is known as God, as Goddess, and by so many other names. In this period of my life I continue to draw comfort from nature, reading from the text of spirit as it is written in the movements of wild creatures, in creek music, in cloud shapes and starlight.
In the midst of grief and turmoil, I am focusing on the outpouring of love and compassion that has flowed from every corner of the world to our damaged city, our damaged nation. I am thinking about our common need for prayer, and on what this all means in terms of spiritual evolution–mine and the planet’s. This period of life is one that is forcing me to confront separation versus unity, personal/universal, love and fear, life and death.
During this time I have become painfully aware of how many other travelers are beside me walking the road of loss and sorrow, seeking a path to healing. As all of us crawl across rubble toward grace, I see the thread of our lives now as strands in a great thick braid of light – the umbilical cord of what makes us human, connected to a great mother force. I am humbled by the mystery; I am in awe, grateful that today, just now I can look beyond the packaging to the messages at the core of this extraordinary time. For this one moment, I can see beyond the destruction to what it might mean if all of us were to become true citizens of the world, working together to repair, renew, restore all communities, all nations, all environments on the planet.
Judith Prest, Fall, 2001
Calamity Blog 2, Spring 2020: Pandemic Musings
Each day that I watch spring unfold, every bird I hear or see, each hour I spend with my hands I the dirt, I feel hope. I am so grateful that this began in the spring, because watching nature resurrect herself after the winter gives me hope. I have observed that the sky is bluer, the atmosphere less hazy now with fewer people driving. The road is usually empty when I walk.
There is so much now that is uncertain, unknown. A virus has brought us humans to our knees. It is mysterious, baffling, unpredictable. It has crossed all borders. I remain grateful for home, land, family, cats, friends and for this time to write, create and weed the garden. I have abandoned attempts to whip myself into productivity. Maybe I will clear clutter, clean the house, get organized and maybe not. I will cook, write, garden, play with the cats, make art and connect with friends and family in whatever ways I can. Zoom has become a welcome addition to my modes of contact.
I realized a week or so ago that the characters on the TV shows I watch at night have become new friends. I look forward to spending time with them each evening. How weird is that? And yet I find it comforting to end the day by escaping into stories that have nothing to do with the current calamity. They are fictional and yet the characters embody the humanity we share. I refuse to watch “action” or apocalyptic dramas – too much like real life right now.
I have become used to living in this holding pattern. And I am mostly able to make peace with the uncertainty. I will not be participating in the world in the ways I used to for the foreseeable future.
This virus keeps manifesting in new ways – hitting new populations, popping up again after someone tested clean, erupting in new and different constellations of symptoms. Our so-called leader and his ilk continue to fantasize, brazenly lie and obscure the true picture of what we are facing. The virus has been a catalyst for yet more racist, violent, frightening behavior by some Americans. The virus and our corrupt and morally bankrupt administration have dumped fuel on the fires of intolerance and hate.
And yet, I keep looking for the helpers (Thank you, Mr. Rogers). I keep myself attuned to the kindness and compassion that is also manifesting in response to this catastrophe. I try to keep my focus there.
I do not know what will be. I only know that this pandemic will alter us individually and collectively. I pray that humanity will turn toward saving the planet, that many of us will adopt more life affirming beliefs and behavior in the wake of this upheaval.
Judith Prest, May 19, 2020