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Originally prepared for 100 th session of SHELTER in GRACE – a Sound meditation for your ONE WILD & PRECIOUS LIFE July 10th, 2020

The NEW by line is attributed to Mary Oliver in her most well known line from THE SUMMER DAY.

ATTRIBUTIONS:
1)    The best dancers by EM Claire – Silent Sacred Holy Deepening Heart
2)    Hafiz I got Kin – the GIFT – translation Daniel Ladinsky

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Have you seen "On the Basis of Sex..."?  The thing is...it all started with a caregiver.

It's a well done movie–relevant recent history about gender equality. But the thing is...the revolution started with a caregiver.  A good son was caregiving his mother and he got slammed by the IRS saying THAT deduction was only for men.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the ACLU found it to be a perfect test case to start challenging all the laws that we now take for granted.  All of you caregivers out there will relate to this poor guy's daily grind. Mom in a chair, dementia eating away at her, him stuck in the chaos and he's got another battle with the IRS.

Go see the movie.  It is an important and healthy distraction...while you do it...remember what you are doing matters. 

I have started a daily practice of gathering serendipitous wisdom from the day.  I have a plan to create something more public–perhaps a video or audio daily live chat called "The Good Enough Daily". It is on a long list of possibles: TBD.

But until then, let me tell you about them on the hopes that it may inspire you to do the same. Here are some I use...there are so many card decks out there...

• (various) Unity's card decks - link Amazon
  
• Louise Hay's Power Thought Cards - link Amazon
• Cheryl Richardson's Grace Cards - link Amazon
• Self Care Cards - link Amazon

I draw cards as part of my waking up process...usually with coffee.  They are part of my own spiritual practices each day to help me taking care of myself...and keep my inner balance as I take care of many each day as a hospice chaplain.

This is also for the fifteen MILLION unpaid caregivers who are doing the daily, chaotic work of caring for their infirm loved ones.

Much like my weekly sound meditations in San Francisco, I listen for what is 'in the room'.  There I ask people to <quickly> check in:

• How was your week? Your day?
• What came up for you? What is troubling you? Sticking to you?
• Any celebratory events or challenges?

Then I paint the watercolor of what the sound, silence and poetry might be of support to those and what is 'in the room'.

It's a form of meditative improv in service of love. So is drawing cards every morning.

Improv 'What is" is one of the rules in the Fieldguide. Any of its many forms of implementation is a good practice for me. You see my (prairie, bootstrapped) inclination is to want to get 'it' perfect and over prepare for whatever... 

Life is not that way. All I (and you) have to do is show up knowing we are enough...and worthy to be participating in what is in front of us.  Then we do the best we are able. Both (preaching) ministers at my Unity Church in San Francisco are stellar at improv on the stage...but for me it is a learning edge.

Because we all have our edges.  At last Sunday's meditation, several people spoke about the edge between what shows up in the world and what shows up inside us...and then there is the pause.  This is the place of choice...do we choose to react, respond? Are we triggered?  Are we needing to be right?  This is the same edge for us all.

Reading the Day
It is in same way that I draw several cards from my various (and lovely) spiritual card decks each morning and take a moment (but not too many moments...) to see if there a pattern to the cards drawn.   I then read this wisdom and speak about it for eight minutes, because who has a lot of time in the mornings?

...and I have theme music, too.  "Good Enough" by Karen Drucker.  She is awesome, if you are not familiar with her as both a songwriter and a performer.  Check out her song if you want a lift to your day.

The Kaiser palliative RN symposium where I was speaking about resilience for pro caregivers...and my book...was easy (and went quite well) once I stopped reading my notes and spoke from my heart.  I don't know how many times I need to learn this lesson—speaking with people, not at them.  

It is so easy at bedside in hospice (or supporting my bereaved) to still my noisy mind, listen deeply and respond from that place...or let the space be empty.  In good design, they call it "white space".  

But... it feels so different when sixty-five palliative nurses are watching you, waiting for my amplified words to fill the gap between us—my words.

Oddly, it's not. As a chaplain and a woman of (growing all the time) faith, I agree with the radical French Jesuit theologian, paleontologist and geologist, Teilhard de Chardin, when he said: 

                            "We are spiritual beings, having a human experience."  

If that is true (and I have ample life, bedside and death bed evidence of this), then there is just one of us here, or at minimum we are nuclear family. My point about speaking up (and speeches)  is that we are all among family—all the time.

Sweet, right? (And, it's a better tactic than imagining  all of you/us naked...)

I am preparing a collaborative series of presentations around my new book and working with a dear friend to accomplish it.  It is great (chaplain) fun to find common ground between the sacred wisdoms and with the highly actionable nature of neuroscience research. 

Heart and head are powerful partners which change the planet...and certainly our lives.

This day long symposium is on resiliency in nursing.
These beautiful professional caregivers experience much of the same stress symptoms as their unpaid sisters and brothers on the front lines of love.  But the opportunity to work with a true friend when doing this work (that matters...) is an exceptional thing.

My father was a wise man: John W. Hager
He is gone from this earth and has been for decades, but his words are alive in me. His saying about the quantity (of friends) that make one's life rich, flies in the social media's face. As a new author, I am validated by how many people sign up for messages from me (...and by all means, please sign up).  Having said that, however, the magnitude of a nearby friend, one that shows up with treats when they hear a twitch in your best "I'm fine" survival voice, is measured on an earthquake scale.  

The 4.8 earthquake (which woke me up last night) is felt by all. But only one more richter point and it is feared by all.

A true friend is a wonder...they gently turn post-traumatic-stress from disorder to order...and growth. 

(or maybe even some fun.)