COVID-19 – Risking Interbeing

What I did…

… over my Covid-19, um, “vacation.” Vacation in quotes in part to not take the situation in any sense lightly, and in part because we’ve kept ourselves quite busy. For myself, I am currently only working on the drawings for the gut renovation of our lake house, while deferring another job until I have our house drawings done. I am also fortunately not teaching this semester (i.e. I am not currently going through all of the craziness that every other professor is going through to move all of their teaching online). That gives me until the fall semester starts to focus on our own projects, which are requiring all of my attention at the moment. The brief update on our lake house is that work proceeded a couple of weeks ago and they now have the new basement walls poured! Here is what it looks like now:

That also means that we will be switching gears tomorrow from work on our tiny house/mountain retreat to work on the lake house. And as I say that, I have to acknowledge how incredibly fortunate I feel to have two amazing places- dream places really- to work on, or with as the case may be. We are super excited about how things are evolving up on the mountain. At the same time, we know that the lake is going to be equally amazing and challenging and will also ultimately help us to feel deeply at home in the world. It’s a ton of work, but again, how lucky are we?

Shannon has been off of work for the last month as well, but is returning to work tomorrow. That doesn’t help so much with our house cause, but again, so much to be grateful for. I know that not everybody gets to say that they will be returning to their jobs. I know this disruption won’t be a simple blip in the map for anyone. In the coming rearrangement, I hope and hold intentions for everybody to find meaningful work that allows their true gifts to come through.

In the meantime, we have used our free time tackling our long list of projects up on the mountain. This list, incidentally, will literally never be done. It’s already longer than two people could achieve in the time we have left on the planet, and it just gets longer every day. The lake list is equally long, so like… we are already seriously double booked! Ironically, I like being done, so my penchant for imagining more and more to create doesn’t really help that cause. Add Shannon’s penchant for the same, and well, let’s just say that we have a wealth of things to do for the rest of our lives! It’s a great practice for me to just be with taking one step at a time, enjoying the process, celebrating each little milestone, and watching it evolve as it does.

That’s the lead in. Now for the fun stuff we have been up to! First off, hats off to Shannon for the fruitful month that she has had. I am thoroughly enjoying the fruits! I honestly can’t believe how much she has done. What I really love is that she has loved every second of it. It started with a bunch of tweaks to the interior of Tiny Drop to improve storage and functionality. Then she moved to building the little shed that we needed to house the outside unit of the composting toilet. Then it was on to the big stuff.

The first of these was the front entry to Tiny Drop. The way these things typically go is that we get an idea for something and then one or the other of us sketches it up. We have a pile of sketches. Fortunately, we had also already accumulated materials for some of these projects. That means we had piles of stuff we were wanting to get cleaned up, and the way to do that was to build! Did I mention Shannon is a champ??? Check this out:

In the process of building the whole thing gets tweaked and new ideas added. In this case, what we needed was a place to get dry and take off our shoes before entering the house. We also wanted an outside bar to mirror the bar inside. That means that when the french casement window is open, we can have an intimate dinner for four! Of course there is shading and weather protection involved here, but the grand last minute act of creativity came from Shannon. She added a star gazing seat that we can access out of the roof windows from the loft (not to mention to help with egress in case of emergency). I mean seriously, how cool is this?!

The other big building project Shannon completed is our first trail bridge. We are focusing on the trail up to the sanctuary, and this is part of that. We didn’t have a sketch for this one, but had seen something similar to this on one of our hikes last fall. Shannon used the materials that we had on hand to make it happen. I only provided peanut gallery consulting on this job. We love it:

We really love that it beckons us to come up from the porch of Tiny Drop.

O.K., o.k. So you are probably wondering what in the hell I was doing as Shannon was doing all of that. It turns out my job might best be described as ditch-digger! At least digging a bunch of ditches was the prerequisite to putting these next visions into place. The first was part of what I have described previously as an effort to slow down water as it comes down the mountain. When I asked the mountain what it needed, this was the request. So I chose one particularly swampy spot to start a pond. This is still a work in progress as we give it time to see how it is working, but here is pond #1 in the works (which Shannon thankfully helped me to dig):

This will ultimately be a micro zen garden along the path to the sanctuary. We are imagining many more spots such as this. Another such spot is just beyond the Moon Gate. I had started garden beds, a retaining wall, and the first steps of this trail to the sanctuary with stone left over from the Moon Gate, but hadn’t finished it yet. So that was next on my list. Here goes:

It went so smoothly and the garden made me so happy that I just wanted to keep going! I have long had a vision for a terrace garden on the slope just beyond the Moon Gate, but I thought that project would be a ways off because I envisioned needing a lot more stone for the project. But rather than wait we figured we would just see what we could do with what was on hand and what we might find as we started digging.

I had a lot of help from Shannon on this one too, first on the initial leveling of the ramp and digging of the first gardens beds, and then thank God as I started pooping out on day 3 of moving dirt on the next level up. For all of you Houston gardeners, you know how incredibly hard it is to work with gumbo clay. It’s hard! Most of what we were digging through here was also clay, and while not as hard as gumbo clay, it was hard instead because water is literally leaking out of every inch of this mountain! That means that I had to use my best permaculture tricks to dig trenches and build berms to get the water to go where we needed it to go. Good grief, I did a lot of digging. So far it looks to be working. From there I built stone retaining walls for the landings and beds. Then we ordered a truck of good soil and a bunch of seeds. Soil is now in place and here is what it looked like before and after:

We were going to plant the seeds on Sunday, but then it snowed Saturday night!!! When is it going to stop snowing on us?????!!!!!!!!! O.K., I just had to get that out. So seeds aren’t in the ground yet, but hopefully soon.

That leads to our new favorite form of entertainment at Tiny Drop: movie night. Movie night consists of downloading movies onto my computer (only downside is that it takes way too long to do so down in town), setting ourselves up in the loft, pulling the blackout shades, sending the sound through our bluetooth speaker, and of course making popcorn, hot chocolate, etc. It’s the greatest! It’s like having the theater all to ourselves with the best seat in the house and surround sound. Of course this also has led us to thinking that we need to permanently install a screen on the ceiling that can tilt down for this purpose. And you know one of these days we will!

Our other favorite form of entertainment has become listening to podcasts. On that front, I have to give a shout out to Brene Brown’s new podcast: Unlocking Us. So, so great. So great that I am going to leave you with that tidbit and encourage you to take a listen:

Unlocking Us

Oh, one more thing- I just ordered a ton of books. The one I am most excited about is Glennon Doyle’s new book Untamed. More on all of this soon. For now, I hope you all are finding your own restorative, creative inspirations during this timeout.

Foundations

A funny thing happened on the way to fixing our foundation… a pandemic brought our project to a screeching halt. If I had a different life experience to date, I might be inclined to deem it incredibly bad timing. We hit the green light on the project in early February and then spent the rest of the month prepping. This involved packing and shifting our contents, demolishing the front porch, clearing the site, finalizing our construction loan, and moving ourselves out along with a few possessions that we would need over the coming months. All of that had to be done by the end of February for the March 1 start date. Over the next two weeks our site team lifted the house ten feet into the air. Then the word came down. Vermont ordered all non-essential businesses to shut down. Besides that, our crew couldn’t get concrete to pour the foundation. We were at a standstill. Our partially demolished house has now been lowered back down to a reasonable height as we wait. There is no telling when the project will resume, much less when construction will be far enough along for us to move back in.

In the meantime, we had just moved in to the basement of our friend Jean’s house when COVID-19 took the U.S. by storm. And here we thought that the hardest thing we would face would be keeping our dogs separated. The dogs were indeed challenging with two dogfights and multiple injuries to show for it, but honestly the high anxiety of our human situation was worse. Imagine being quarantined at home, only you are not at home. Therefore even the slightest bit of remaining control that any of us might have- control over our own domain inclusive of our response to the situation- was also lost to us. While we are truly grateful to Jean for opening up her home to us, we knew we needed to find our own space and give hers back to her for the wellbeing of us all.

I cannot say how fortunate we truly are. We happened to have a backup. We have Tiny Drop, our tiny house located on our off-grid mountain retreat. The only complication was that there is still two feet of snow on the ground. We can’t even drive up our steep driveway yet. Our water supply is fed by a spring that runs down the mountain. As soon as we realized we needed to make our move up here sooner rather than later, our first order of business was to find out if the spring was running and if we could get it flowing through the pipe down the mountain. The spring was running, but the pipe was still frozen. Fortunately, again, we had enough extra pipe sitting around that we were able to divert water from the existing inlet to get it down the mountain far enough that we didn’t have to hike all the way up to the spring every day to fetch water. Good enough. We made our move.

We relocated a week ago. Certainly this life isn’t for everyone. In some ways, life here is the equivalent of “glamping.” But it is perfect for us and for our dogs. It is perfect, especially, for riding out a pandemic. Our place here is completely off-grid with no cell phone connection or internet connection. (This post is coming to you from my car via the free internet out of the Free Library in Brandon.) We literally have no connection to the outside world other than the cars that we hear go by down below. That alone has been a huge relief from the constant flow of collective anxiety jamming up every artery of our hyper-superficial-connectivity. Then there is the social distancing, which frankly can’t get any better than this. We have no neighbors. But the very best thing about it is that it puts us right into connection with the very thing that we need more than anything right now- nature.

Mother Earth. You’ve got to love her. Snow, rain, cold… bring it on. When the sun comes out it is nothing short of glorious. We feel so incredibly grateful that we are going to be here to watch the season change in this place that we fell head over heals in love with over six years ago. If I haven’t made this clear already, spring hasn’t arrived on this side of the mountain yet. It’s beautiful in all seasons nonetheless. Although I have been warned about mud season, so perhaps I should hold off on such a bold declaration until I have fully experienced that. It will be here just as soon as the snow melts. In the meantime, I have a long standing tradition of posting photos of my Vermont “office” to irritate all of my Houston friends. Not to disappoint, here ya go!

Now that you have the picture and the update, let’s talk. Nobody knows how this thing is going to go. Yet I think it is safe to say that whatever we considered “normal” will likely never fully return. We will come out if this profoundly different than we were when we went in. It is possible that this moment will catalyze a full on paradigm shift. Then again it might only be a significant pre-tremor to the full on quake to come. If we are being honest with ourselves, however, we must realize that a paradigm shift is imminent. We simply cannot continue to inhabit the earth in the way that we have since the dawn of Western civilization. That game (of separation) is over, whether we are ready to admit it or not.

And that is downright scary. It’s terrifying to not know what comes next. It is disorienting when our foundations crumble beneath us and our sense of home becomes completely compromised. Trust me. I get it. Many of us, most of us, will fight to rebuild what was in order to get back to normal. Yet I will remind us, as many others are, that our “normal” has been extraordinarily out of balance for a very long time. When we live in an unhealthy situation, it is very difficult to see that from within it, particularly when it is all that we have ever known. Our best chance of gaining perspective is to get outside of it for a bit. This is that chance. It might be the only chance that we get before full on collapse, if that collapse doesn’t come quickly.

While paradigm shifts seem to come out of nowhere, they actually don’t. They are the result of a slow build up of pent-up energy that knows a better way. When that storehouse reaches a tipping point, the system literally gives way to the better understanding. The change seems sudden and certainly catastrophic to life as we know it. Yet it has been coming for a long time. I think the critical thing to understand at this moment is that we are not alone in this. That is to say that the “better understanding” is not something that has to or has been coming from us alone. Gaia will have her say. If we continue to insist on “othering” her, we can be sure that we will not like what she has to say. She has the power to vote us off the island. How silly would our conception of this being the era of the Anthropocene seem then?

On the other hand, if we move to heal our relationship with Gaia, if we move into an awareness of interbeing, then we will have a very good shot at being a healthy part of the new paradigm. That paradigm will be more joyful, more loving, more harmonious, and safer than the one we have been inhabiting. That paradigm will support the evolution of the system as a whole. It must. That is the way of life. We can only dodge the way of life for so long. Again, time is up for that charade. This new paradigm will look nothing like anything that we are used to. It is time to open ourselves to welcome this new reality, as frightening as it may be to leap into the unknown.

Fundamental to fostering a state of interbeing with Gaia and all of her constituent parts is to once again acknowledge her and every aspect of her as sentient. We must meet her as an actual living being. Not metaphorically, but literally. As I mentioned in my last post, this is extremely hard to do from within the confines of Western civilization. I am imploring each and every one of us to find a way to break out of those confines. I offer this reading list to support us in getting there:

The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, Charles Eisenstein

Earth Acupuncture, Gail Reichstein Rex

Please, please take this opportunity to read at least one of these. They all very clearly describe where we are, how we got here, and where we might go from here. In short, they point to the underlying worldview, the foundation, upon which we have built the world as we know it. This worldview has put us on an unviable path. Nothing short of examining and reconstructing our worldview is going to get us onto a viable one.

If you are able to get out into nature, perhaps start by greeting her as you would a person. In fact, practice greeting anything that you never would have spoken to before as if it is a living being. You may feel crazy, but that’s only because our existing world paradigm has taught you otherwise. If you had grown up in an indigenous culture, developing such relationships with all aspects of Gaia would be a very natural and essential part of your existence and wellbeing. At this point in the game, I would argue that you have nothing to lose and the world to gain.

Last things last. I have to say that in this moment I could easily feel like the world is out to get me. I don’t. On the contrary I feel incredibly and perfectly guided, supported, and protected. I sense that I am exactly where I need to be at this very moment in time. I hear humanity awakening to and asking for the higher understanding that we are needing to face this moment. I hope that in your quiet moments you feel the same. Godspeed.

Generations

So this is what we’ve come to? Generational warfare? All I should really need to say is seven generations. Seven generations, people. But with everything flying around this past week, I’m going to have to clarify lest you think that I side with Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. If you aren’t familiar with his comments, he said on Monday that our elders should be “willing to take a chance on (their) survival, in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren.” The America that he is arguing for has nothing whatsoever to do with a healthy socio-ecological system or the wellbeing of his grandchildren. In fact it is quite the opposite, which makes the hypocrisy of his comments readily apparent (I hope). More on this in a minute.

I in no way agree with Mr. Patrick as will become clear. But if warfare isn’t what we are after, then we need to start by elevating the conversation. Let’s start by reading, or rereading, these insightful words by Kristin Flyntz:

“An Imagined Letter From COVID-19 to Humans”

She has beautifully expressed the gist of the message that I received in the midst of COVID-19, which I opted not to share as I explained in my last post. She also said it a hell of a lot nicer than the words that came to me! The message, however, is the same. Here’s the thing in a nutshell. Nothing short of realizing a state of interbeing is going to work. The problem, all of our problems- pandemic, social unrest, economic failure, ecological meltdown, climate crisis- are based on one and the same thing. Our worldview is off.

We have to get this through our heads. Now. The world is a conscious being. Her name is Gaia. Gaia is part of an even larger being that many of us call God, or the Universe, or Consciousness, or the All That Is, etc. In the same way that Gaia is an aspect of God, we are an aspect of Gaia. That is easy enough to conceptualize, right? But this can’t remain a concept in our heads. It has to become our reality. That means that we have to start treating Gaia just like a person. Oh, and while we are at it, we should start treating every other thing that makes up Gaia as “people” too- animals, plants, even rocks. Too much? Fine. At least start with the animals closest to you and start to work your way outward from there. Please.

Believe me I understand that this is a hard leap for a culture that has at least since Descartes (370 years) thought the world to be a machine that is essentially as dead as a doornail… which is in itself an outmoded expression because in our forthcoming worldview not even doornails (not even doornails!!!) are dead. Descartes was wrong. Deadly wrong. The death that we now face is how deadly wrong he was.

The world in its entirety is alive. I will offer a simple definition of life, that otherwise easily veers off into arguments in the weeds while missing the point entirely. To be alive is to be conscious. To be conscious is to be aware, responsive, thinking, decision-making. Every single aspect of reality is conscious. That’s not what we were taught, is it? Hard to imagine a rock as thinking, right? With our current worldview it is nearly impossible.

Our separation of consciousness into “higher consciousness” (the thinking human brain) and “lower consciousness” (our typical threshold to be considered alive), is a primitive misunderstanding of what is what. I know I am cutting right to the chase here, and I’m sorry if this is jarring, but we are at that point. Every single being/entity, cell, atom, particle/wave, etc. THINKS. Another way of saying it is that there is nothing that is not thought into being, moment by moment. Everything that exists is a materialized thought. A thought in action. A thought manifest. A thought in motion. A thought thinking about itself. Do you see?

You might naturally ask who is doing the thinking. Good question. We are. We, as in, God at every level of being: Universe, Gaia, Ecosystem, Human/Animal/Plant/Rock, Organ, Cell, Atom, Particle/Wave. All of us. Us in our entirety, as the One That We Are. You might reread Kristin Flyntz’s words one more time now and take them literally rather than figuratively. Gaia is speaking. She is speaking to us in the same way that we might speak to our heart, or lungs, or liver, etc. Are we listening?

Now back to our little generational tiff. At this moment the majority of humanity is made up of 7 generations: The Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y (Millennials), Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. The first three encompass those of us who are 40 and above, while the latter four are forty and below. I’m a Gen X’er. What can I say, we tend to tell it like it is. So here’s the deal. If I were in any of the younger generations, I would honestly have a hard as hell time with anyone in the older three generations lecturing me about being responsible right about now. Seriously. If you are in one of the older three generations you need to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror before saying a word to anyone in the younger generations who might not be taking this virus as seriously as you think they should… for your sake.

Why? Do I honestly have to answer that? O.K., I will. But you should already know. We have been utterly irresponsible to the survival of the younger generations in our complete failure to deal with the climate crisis, in our complete failure to live according to the seven generations rule. In case you are not familiar with this indigenous piece of wisdom, what it says is that every decision that is made should consider the wellbeing of the seventh generation out. It furthermore says that if we don’t do that, we jeopardize our own wellbeing. In other words, we must consider how every single decision we make will effect our grandchildren if we want to be well ourselves.

Do we do that? Not by any stretch. We never pay the true cost of things. Let me give you a clear example. I was talking to the plumber who will be working on our house last week and he was trying to make the case to me that we will never see the payback on some of the decisions that we are making, like a more efficient hot water system, more insulation, or the solar system that will live on our roof. You know what? He could be right (although when considering the true cost of things he is absolutely wrong). Still, on the surface it depends highly on what happens with the cost of fossil fuels in the coming years. That is to say that if the only cost we are considering is the cost that Shannon and I will bear then we are potentially making foolish decisions. But what we have to ask ourselves is, what price should we put on the survival of our species? What is human life worth to you? What is the life of other species worth to you? And most importantly, are you willing to pay that price?

I personally think that life in all of its forms is invaluable. I am therefore willing to pay any price, and so is Shannon. So we make hard decisions in all areas of our lives that cost us more money than business as usual would. In the end, we will pay whatever price we can muster. That is the true “sacrifice” that every generation should be making for each other and for future generations. It’s not about laying down our lives. If you are here, you are meant to be here. You are meant to be making your own unique contribution for the sake of your own as well as our collective evolution (which aren’t in competition with one another). It’s about facing our shadows and making the hard changes required to support that evolution. Are you willing? If so, use this precious time to examine your unexamined assumptions about the nature of reality. What you assume to be true is what comes true, or at least seems to until we get tired of that reality and make a different choice. If you want something different, then have the gumption to imagine it and the guts to realize it into existence.

As for the partying young folk on the beach, they aren’t going to listen to us elders about how they should care about our wellbeing until we demonstrate that we care about theirs. And, no, Mr. Patrick, continuing with an out of control consumer culture that is devastating the earth will not bring wellbeing to anyone, especially not your grandkids. If you truly care, then think the whole thing through without leaving anything or anyone out of the equation. Only then will we rise to the occasion. Only then will we chart a path toward wellbeing. Wellbeing will come in Oneness if it is to come at all.

Epi(demi)c

Last time I wrote I was en route to give a guest lecture at the University of Arizona. That was a month ago, so I suppose we have a lot of catching up to do. I think my last post talked to some degree about what I was going to present, so I won’t repeat that here. I’ll just report out that it was well received. Hopefully the ideas that I shared helped everyone present to better digest our current situation with the intent of elevating our individual and collective responses. The feedback indicated to me that I achieved that end. For instance, Robert Miller, Director of the School of Architecture, reported to me afterward that it was “mind-blowing” before wishing me “Godspeed.” He followed up with a hand written note thanking me for an “inspired” and “moving” presentation and concluded that “it makes me feel better knowing you’re out there.” I think that is the most amazing thing that anyone could say to me in response to what I am working so hard to share. I want us all to feel better- about ourselves, about our species, about life.

Feeling better is a big deal right about now, and on every front. So this strange thing happened to me in Arizona. In spite of all of the great interactions that I had, I started to be overwhelmed by this sinking feeling of I didn’t know what. It just hit me out of the blue and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or what was at the root of it. I reported it out to Shannon when I got home, but this looming feeling remained disconcerting. I knew at least that it was in part because I had opened the flood gates through all of the work that I have been doing over the last couple of years to meet and heal my wounded inner child. But still, this seemed bigger than that. I felt something coming, and my usual means of protection were down.

You see I am a sensitive. I am a sensitive who built up significant walls over the course of my life to protect myself. I had done such a good job of it that I had forgotten that I was a sensitive long before I even knew what one was. So for most of my life I have shown up not as a sensitive, but as a stoic. You would have never even guessed that I actually have feelings. Well I do. Even more so, I am intensely affected by what’s going on around me. I pick up on shit. Now I am in the process of unlearning all of those survival tactics that I have used to protect myself, and refiguring how and what to do with the sensitivity. All I can say for now is that I no longer try to run or hide from it. I just sit with it and wonder.

In this case, I wondered what my wounded child might be trying to communicate. I wondered if I was just bracing myself for the impending disarray of the gut rehab of our house (which is in full process at this point incidentally). I wondered if my concerns about how we are or aren’t forming our collective response to our social-ecological challenges was secretly eating away at me. None of those answers seemed to fully resonate, so I just kept sitting with it. And now I know. What I began feeling a month ago is exactly what we are all feeling right about now. When our collective fear over COVID-19 fully kicked in, the feeling of it matched the intensity of what I had been feeling. Mystery solved.

So here is another confession for you. Often times my blog posts come to me in a sort of flash. The entire post essentially downloads into my head, word for word, sentence for sentence. I might wake up in the middle of the night or it might randomly take over my mind right in the middle of something else during the day. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes I might have a general concept or idea and let it build as I go. Sometimes I just start writing having no idea what I might say and whatever comes out comes out. But often enough, it comes in this complete download. I remember the download word for word and simply type it out when I get the chance.

I haven’t written this past month in large part because we were in a whirlwind of moving out of our house and in with our friend Jean all while starting the demo of our house and generally preparing it for the big lift. You’ll hear much more about this in the coming months, but as I mentioned once before, we are gutting and rebuilding our house from the foundation up. The house will be lifted into the air this week. Fixing a house with faulty foundations is not an easy thing to do. It is complicated. It takes know-how. It takes a huge commitment. I say this, because this is exactly what we need to do as a species right now… fix our foundations from the ground up.

But that isn’t what I want to talk about today. Not because I didn’t have a complete post download in response to COVID-19 that spoke to just that. I got that download about a week ago. I elected to overrule. My reason? Well, I felt it was too harsh for the moment. This is something that I have had to learn the hard way throughout my life. Sometimes the stark reflection is just not helpful in the moment. So I am not going to hold up that mirror today. Instead, I am going to share a story. It’s one I believe I have shared before, but it’s a good one and good stories always bear repeating… particularly in times like this.

But before we get to that, I want to return to Arizona for just a moment. The day I was leaving I went on a walk through Catalina State Park, a beautiful desert paradise, with my friend, colleague, and host Jonathan (who has been mentioned in this blog before). Imagine me in the midst of this deep sense of impending doom while walking through the full glory of nature rising up through the aridness. It was like the calm before the storm, and I felt that. I took it in so that it might stay with me when the storm hit. The photo above is from that walk. We could all use a little zen right now, so here is another little dose:

Speaking of storms, if you have never been through a hurricane, what we are all going through right now is exactly what it feels like. If you have, you know what I mean. There is the impending fear, the frantic preparations, the anxious waiting, the sense of helplessness, the onslaught that hurls us around, and then the dismount which we hope beyond hope doesn’t knock us on our asses too badly. Loss of some sort is inevitable. Sound about right? The only difference is the noise. Hurricanes are very loud affairs. So loud. This virus, on the other hand, is silent. It’s so quiet we don’t even know if or when it is present. That deserves another zen timeout:

And now for story time. The year is 1979. I am 9 years old. As you know, I was a gymnast. So was my brother. We led very busy lives that involved training every single day. In fact by that time I was already training 3+ hours a day. My mom is a nurse. She worked the early shift at the hospital. When I say early, what I mean to say is that I have no earthly idea what time she got up and left the house. She was long gone by the time I awoke to get ready for school. Now to be honest, even having been a parent myself, I cannot for the life of me fathom how in the hell she did what I am about to explain to you.

My mom would get home from work in the late afternoon an hour or two after we got home from school. Then, because my brother and I had different workout times (at the same gym mind you), she would load my brother into the car and take him to practice leaving me at home. Our gym was at least a good half hour plus drive away. Then she would turn around, come pick me up, and drive back there. This. Was. Insane. But you know why she did it? She did it so that I would have some semblance of normalcy in my day. She did it so that I could get my homework done. She did it to give me just an ounce of downtime, to make space for me that might have felt something like this:

It didn’t go unnoticed. I understood the sacrifice that she made for me every single day. Retrospectively speaking, I just don’t understand how in the hell she did it. Yet she did. So on this one particular day, September 18, 1979, I had a plan. The only thing more dangerous than a kid with a plan is me with a plan! I had been working on this plan for weeks and now the day had come. My mom arrived home and I anxiously awaited for her to depart with my brother. I had a plan! Only the weather wasn’t exactly cooperating. There was a torrential rain falling outside. The streets were starting to flood, as they do in Houston. My mom was hedging, but in true form she determined that the show must go on. A little rain wasn’t going to stop her! She and my brother dashed for the car and off they went. I watched as the car disappeared down the street and then I dashed for it myself.

I darted across the street to my neighbors, the Hackmeier’s. The Hackmeiers are a family of three sisters and a brother (who was at that time yet to come, I believe). The oldest sister, Missy, is my age so we hung out quite a bit. Just let me start by saying, I love the Hackmeiers. They are beautiful people and a beautiful family. Missy and I got back in touch a few years ago when I was with my PVAMU Race to Zero Competition team in Golden, Colorado where she now lives. She met up with us for dinner and the first thing she said when she sat down was, “Have you told them (my students) the story??!!” This is THAT story. It’s one of those epic ones, kind of like this:

So as I was saying, I ran for it as soon as my mom and brother were out of sight. I got drenched, but that didn’t matter because I had a plan! Mrs. Hackmeier welcomed me in and dried me off. She was expecting me. She was the co-conspirator in my plan. You see, it was my mother’s birthday. My dad was and had been out of town for a stretch on a consulting job. He was somewhere out in west Texas. So I wasn’t about to let my mom’s birthday just go by unnoticed. I had therefore arranged for Mrs. Hackmeier to help me bake my mother a birthday cake during this small window of opportunity. I wasn’t about to let a little rain get in the way!

Mrs. Hackmeier and I got started on the cake right away, with Missy in on the fun. We didn’t have much time to work with. We hadn’t gotten very far into it when suddenly… it got loud. It got very, very loud. The wind that is, and the objects that it began tossing around. A loud thud stopped us all in our tracks. And then, then… Mrs. Hackmeier pulled out her super power. Mrs. Hackmeier’s super power is: calm. In the calmest voice I think I had ever heard she said something to the effect of “come with me” as she took us by the hands. She walked us into her bedroom and back into the bathroom where her closet was, gathering up the other sisters along the way. Then we all sat dow, huddling in the dark closet together. It was loud outside, but the calm that remained in Mrs. Hackmeier’s voice overrode all of that. It was calm there inside the closet with her. Something like this:

I don’t think we were in there more than 15 minutes or so, although it seemed like an eternity. Finally the noise died down and Mrs. Hackmeier bade us to wait there in the closet while she went to see if it was safe to come out. Her absence seemed even longer. When she finally did return she reached for my hand and said, “Shelly, come with me. I have to show you something.” Something in me knew that whatever it was that she was about to show me was going to be the single most important thing in the whole wide world. Mrs. Calm guided me gently back into the kitchen and then toward the breakfast nook that looked directly across the street to my house.

My family home is a two story house with four tall pillars that support the double height front entry. The pillars had all toppled to the ground. To the right of those on the second floor was my brother’s bedroom. The roof over his room was gone. My room was directly behind it. When I was home, that is almost always where you would have found me. I stared in awe, as the weight of what she was showing me fully sank in. Let that sink in:

I can’t imagine what must have been going through my mother’s head as she pulled back up the street just moments later. But Mrs. Hackmeier was quick to run out and inform her that I was safe. As it turned out, they had only made it around the block before they had to pull the car over and take shelter on the floor boards. A tornado had- without warning- just ripped through our neighborhood. My father drove about 120 miles per hour to arrive home to the wreckage just hours later to begin the long process of securing the house, talking to the insurance company, moving out all of our possessions, and finding another place to live as the house got rebuilt. Tornados are completely disorienting events, and so is the aftermath.

Yet Mrs. Hackmeier was the chosen steward to show me the most important thing in the world that day. It wasn’t exactly the first time that I had experienced it in my life. As you may recall, I barely made it into this world in the first place having nearly died at birth. What Mrs. Hackmeier showed me that day had been with me from the very beginning and no doubt constantly to that point. But this was the first time that I actually consciously experienced being protected. It wasn’t the last time for sure in a life that has since included three hurricanes, a handful of serious crashes in gymnastics, two full speed car collisions plus a handful of several other near misses, and god only knows what else.

But I was given a gift that day. Mrs. Hackmeier gave me the gift of calm. Calm is the knowing that no matter what happens, everything is perfectly alright. Calm is knowing that we are all profoundly safe. Calm is knowing that even death is safe, and therefore life is safe. Calm is knowing how incredibly precise the Universe/God is. I mean just look at the facts. That tornado didn’t touch any of our immediate neighbors. It only hit our house before skipping off down the block. And it did so on my mother’s birthday, while my father was out of town, which prompted me to solicit help from the neighbors to bake her a cake. Tweak any one little detail and you get a potentially much different outcome.

Life is pure genius. It is. Just look at this water moving through the desert:

My gift to you all today is one that I am paying forward thanks to Mrs. Hackmeier. I give you all the gift of calm. Calm is letting go in the midst of the storm. It’s that moment when you realize that you just can’t hold on or fight for your life any longer. The wind is too powerful. So you let go. As my tai chi master would remind me ad nauseam, “Give up.” In that surrender what we find isn’t weakness or hopelessness. What we find is the ultimate protection- becoming one with what is. That is where true power lies. That is where we find safety. That is where we inhabit the profound peacefulness that is calm. I wish this for you all now and throughout all that we have yet to face together.

That doesn’t mean be reckless. Do all that you can. Social distancing is most important. Just please proceed with a sense of oneness and a deep respect for this adventure we call life. I’ll leave you with one more zen photo. This one is not from Arizona, it is from our mountain property where I took this photo earlier today. This moon gate, the icon image for this blog, represents a gateway to a new world. Let us move calmly through it so that we might take the “demi” out of “epidemic” and write an epic story instead. Godspeed.

Tag: COVID-19

What I did…

Like this:

Foundations

Like this:

Generations

Like this:

Epi(demi)c

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: