OOOOF.
I liken us to standing in a wind tunnel, our features blown back into flattened grimaces, hair streaming and for some of us, falling out. How to find solace while whatever we are standing in/on swirls around us politically and emotionally, far and wide?
I have experienced what I don’t wish on anyone, a time of lying awake — between surgeries, diagnosis, outcomes — and wondering what time is left. But importantly, how, if I was given it back, would I live my life. In the darkness I knew for certainty a few fundamentals:
I cannot change what is happening.
But I will remember this dark, deeply disturbing place and how I got myself out of it.
I made some decision, followed some roads, continue on the journey still staying healthy enough and always, always breathing.
But I feel this darkness again.
Sleepless this week I got up and read, coming across this passage from The Comfort of Crows, written by Margaret Renkl:
”The world is burning, and there is no time to put down the water buckets. For just an hour, put down the water buckets anyway. Take your cure from the bluebirds, who have no faith in the future but who build the future nevertheless, leaf by leaf, and straw by straw, shaping them into the roundness of the world.”
I am not a political or opinion blog, just a navigation tool, if it speaks to you. In the midst of it all, the shouting pundits, the heart breaking news, the inconceivable debates between friends and foes, how will you turn it off and make your future in the world — ensure your deep breaths?
Are you screaming, throwing things, building something, hugging, learning, speaking, sharing? All of this is ok. All of this builds your nest and will weather this world.
Please, tell me.
Eagle rising off Restoration Point, Bainbridge Island.
Alexandra Dane 
Your voice is an echo, cried out by so many in these times. Temporary respite is found in watching that eagle, in gazing out to sea, in watching the swallows spin circles around the tall fir trees in the late afternoon, in bunnies hopping across the fields, turning off the news, and in following my breath, in and out, and remembering the teachings of the Buddha. Clinging and grasping is the cause of suffering and there is a path to end suffering. And in understanding that there always has been suffering and there always will be suffering; that history goes in great cycles, big breaths of destruction and big breaths of beauty. It is. But, alas, I’m far from an enlightened being, and I hear your cry here in Kingston, WA, because it is mine also. I have found solace in paying attention to what I cling to and letting it go.
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As soon as my mind takes a left turn down Crazy-Making Lane, I seldom get far before such thoughts are the trigger to follow my breath, in and out, until the thoughts go on by. At first they’re like a stallion on hind legs, pawing at the space where the thoughts arise, stirring them up, but again and again I return to my breath. Eventually, the thoughts that take hold are more mundane, more like a mare grazing in the pasture of life, “What should I eat for lunch? I’ve gotta go pee. I’d better bring in the laundry before it rains. I wonder how my friend is?” I savor a sip of water and watch the sun dance with the leaves of the forest, and I step forward to commune with that which breathes me.
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