The Delta breeze that swept into Sacramento last night comforted me post-dinner as I conversed with two friends, folks I’ve known more than thirty years. Good-hearted people. Progressive people. White-bodied people. With social justice passion simmering beneath my calm exterior, I posited a simple scenario. You can jump right into this moment with me. Imagine we’re sitting in my peaceful backyard. We hear the gate un-latch, a white man comes into view. How does your body respond? Notice. Breathe. Now, same scenario, except a black man comes into view. Question: was your bodily response the same in each scenario?

Wow…feeling the impact of taking time off in every part of me. And it did feel really good to show up last weekend and teach. But I’m headed back out for more time to be close to the earth, lean against trees, kneel in the grass, dangle in running water, sleep with the sweet smell of pollen wafting around me.

The study of epigenetics reveals that stresses felt in current time alter our genetic makeup. Which makes utter survival sense. Except for some ways we stress out are not very healthy adaptive. No matter. Our response to stress is visible in our behavior AND will be passed along to future generations. Trauma is inherited generation after generation.

Feels like a chapter, this chunk of time spanning pandemic initiation until now. I didn’t know it was a whole book. The first few pages found many teachers cobbling together a way to teach on line. I hopped right in, this early scramble motivated by need: a clear calling to support community and to personally remain creatively alive through the uncertainty.

History from the safety of arm’s length is lofty reflection. Last week I wrote “we are shaped by and dragging the bounty and burdens of 5000 years.” About the onset of patriarchy and how slavery emerged in its wake.

Through the miracle of current technology, while stretched on a Sacramento hammock, I watched the sun go down at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England this summer solstice. These stones, carefully aligned around 3000 BC, mark the turning of seasons and supported rituals tied to agrarian survival. See witchcraft 101 for more on that. Right now the sun is far north in its east/west trajectory, beaming abundant energy to nourish all living beings. Good to remember in the heat of these dog days.

I know exactly when my childhood reverence for the natural world galvanized around nature-based practices. On a high plateau in Death Valley, alone for three days, fasting, feeling everything. The sun just a month past spring equinox, low in the south, I tracked it through each day as guidance to any available shade. Sixty mph gales swept through me west to east one night as I traced the constellations in their revolution around the North Star. Which happens every night. But up until this moment I had been clueless. Over the course of ten days, the natural forces that guide indigenous cultures worldwide began their journey into my bones, my blood, my breath.

Through the lens of injustice, my life has been a long and steady haul. My grandparents fled eastern Europe to escape genocide, the specific eradication of their culture. They arrived on Ellis Island with a burning desire to blend in, grateful to quietly dissolve into the melting pot of early 20th century America. Like all immigrant groups they found assimilation a mixed bag. Much loss for every gain. But their white skin granted them privilege other groups did not receive.

Maybe you feel current events hitting you like a ton of bricks, the rage of injustice deeply stirred. Yet again. Maybe the news propels you into a morass of numbness. Sinking into safe folds of oblivion. Yet again. Maybe your belly contracts in anxiety, new fear heaped upon the old fear. Yet again. Some of us waft into confusion as chaos comes calling. Others put the brakes on wherever control is feasible. Yet again.

Just a few moments ago, instead of sitting down to write, I aimlessly wandered the internal cocoon of my home, putting things away. This belongs here. Throw this away. Change this to here. As if. My subconscious having a field day, putting the thousand things to right in my little controllable world. Spinning dreams out of my frustration and my longing and my agitation. Triggering my emotions in novel and unfamiliar ways. And I keep listening to you. I am not alone in this.

David Kessler quote, the man who collaborated with five stages of grief Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. This grief warrior continues to mine her classic stages and recently added stage six, with the permission of Kubler-Ross’ family. Moving in my studio yesterday, spinning round and round, I felt myself turning in a spiral of grief. Again. A movement experience I’ve had any number of times in the past and failed to remember. Just like the spiral of grief itself, I seem to return to this notion again and again. Perhaps the gift of a memory less linear than it used to be

In these few lines from a poem by John ODonohue, the word threshold leapt off the page right into my lap. A friend defines threshold as an edge we tolerate before something changes. We are all on this edge. There are moments I yearn to retreat from it and a minute later I am aching to step over and out. Maybe you are feeling this, too. The call for tolerance feels too much to bear.

Woke up yesterday in steep hangover. Total alcohol intake for my birthday toast? Two ounces of champagne. Nested safe under cover, I reflected on all the celebratory fullness, so not the ocean-filled decade passage I’d planned. Yet being with all my children and grandchildren then six-foot front yard mingling with friends I hadn’t seen for weeks…truly brilliant. A memorable day, for sure.

There’s a narrow plot south side of my studio, the only remaining place receiving full sun in a yard purposefully forested over the decades. Twice a year I double dig the earth-wormed soil, add nourishment, cultivate hope.

Exactly a year ago I was moving through a gloomy health chapter. Post-surgery, post-radiation, lengthy bronchial infection,15 day unexplained fever. Each exacted their toll pressing me to build back my decimated immune system. If some prescient angel whispered in my ear, foretold the scenario we are moving through exactly one year later…well I would never have believed. Would you?

Leaning in. Right? That’s what’s called for. Mostly I’m plunked down right in the discomfort, tenderness, vexation, despair, confusion, distress. It’s breath-taking to bear witness to such a variety of emotional onslaught.

Captivated by a headline: A Brooklyn I.C.U. Fighting for Each Life I sipped a steaming cuppa, sank into the nightmare of front line health care delivery. Because this is my work. Health care delivery. And I really wanted to know what the reality was out there. This bird’s eye read fundamentally shifted my perspective. Contributing to this shift is my formidable opinion about the state of our national health care delivery. An opinion that has been brewing for decades.

I hoisted the two-wheeler on my shoulder, descended the first flight of stairs. Made a half turn at the landing, surprised at the revelation of a second flight. Each subsequent landing led to the next descent. My breath was labored and I wondered how long until I reached bottom. And what was down there? And why was I sure this was the way? After an untold number of flights I paused. I looked up. I knew there was no way I could return to the top. There was no elevator. I didn’t want to go to the bottom either. I woke up.

In the old days (like two weeks ago), coffee in hand, hubby and I perused the newspaper, tossing stories back and forth across the breakfast field. You could count on a “hell in a hand basket” story periodically. Sad tales of planetary suffering, travesties perpetrated by leaders in a position of trust, indications that things were moving downhill at an accelerating pace. That a global crisis loomed was evident. Belly fear undercurrent always simmering for my children, my grandchildren, all youth. Calamity has hovered imminent, but I kinda assumed I wouldn’t live long enough to experience it.

I’m home. Maybe you are, too. Feeling life spread out in a volatility that seems different than my own history with chaos. Any childhood innocence about predictability was shattered at age eleven by the death of my sister. Which coincided with the erratic uncertainty of omni-present nuclear annihilation: drop drills, backyard bomb shelters, food hoarding. The theme of unforeseeable continued: assassinations, civil rights riots, Viet Nam war. In California several years-long droughts. The death of my mother, my brother. My son’s cancer. 9/11. Deadly fires. My cancer. The death of my papa.