windthread

Weeks now,  maybe more,  but weeks for sure,  i have been groping through everything i have ever learned in my life time trying to find something that seemed as if it could "work" for living in this time.  Looking back,  looking around,  searching.   The words that kept appearing were constriction and expanding that went BACK so far to the teachings of Charlotte Joko Beck,  specifically her book,

Nothing Special   living zen.

i should have taken a pic of it.  it is so ragged,  so full of letters, papers, pictures.  There are letters in there from Alyssia when she was maybe 9 years old.  on and on but the metaphor Joko used a lot was expansion and contraction.  This is easy to apply.  The body feeling of each is clear.  release into or descent into is also immediately and easily felt.  So this came to mind again because the sense of myself has been so Constricted.  So Contracted.   

i could not find release.

i did metta,  i did empty mind,  etc and they gave space.  But there was no release.  It was not possible for me to just turn away from "news",  it's not who i am.   so i kept/keep watching what's taking place.  There were those moment the other day when the aching to just somehow finally Understand the Vast Spaciousness was so acute.  Then waking in the night to the words   "love.  that's all there is to do."  and waking in the morning to print out the pic and write on it…

 

draw on it.  And i knew it to be true.  there was the Felt Sense of Expansion.  And i could begin stitching again….even while continuing to search for something,  anything that would give me some key to how to go.

 

and this morning,  i look at this Cloth…that red thread around the ring finger and how we say,  when we make that Vow,  till death do us part.  More release,  more expansion.   when needing to "title" this cloth,  without hesitation i typed in Always.  The Promise.  and realizing i meant always this hand of Beauty extended to Beauty.  Beauty being Love.  Love being Beauty.

i stitched the black and white magic on the cloth and came and went from the computer,  reading how the Yellow Haired Man had said this morning on some news show  that he remains "open minded on environmental issues"…and how no one screamed.  how no one screams in grief, but simply reports it as how it is.  I felt a scream inside me…for giraffes.  For their extinction.  Like canaries in the coal mines.  How children are down the line.  My own blood.  I will be dead.  But the children of my blood will not.   

and it  was full of the thing of hypocrisy…. how as a child i had learned it's stink so well in that small town baptist church.  The hypocrisy of all the news feeds….not screaming.  How my childhood family was nothing but hypocrisy and how i'd learned not to scream.  But Goats scream.  Goats scream over anything that is scary  or creepy.  Dogs don't.  they are stoic and hope for the best.

so…i can go on and on here but i'll jump to the chase.  I found THIS.

 

 

Abstract

The pace of climate change continues to accelerate, and it now appears inevitable that the Great Anthropocentric Extinction currently is unfolding, will include the end of life as we know it.  Characterizing this  "Great Dying" as equivalent to a terminal diagnosis for the human race,  and assuming an ecopsychological perspective that sees a close relationship between planetary health and mental health, the author applies the stages of grief to this Great Dying,  exploring connections retroactively and prospectively between societal mental health trends in the US ,  our awareness of the severity of the threat we pose to the planet, and the stages of grieving the loss of life,  and questions the role mental health  professionals should lplay in this context.  Looking ahead from this same perspective,  the author asks if it is possible to alleviate the pain and suffering that will be associated with the widespread extinction,  mass mortality, and forced migrations tha are anticipated by scientific experts as a result of climate disruptions,  beginning with the idea of what a "good death" would look like in relation to the end of life as we know it, applying principles from hospice and palliative care.  Finally he offers a hopeful vision that, with an expanding planetary hospice movement and appropriate containing myths,  it might be possible to re-cast this Great Dying as a difficult, but spiritually progressive, death/rebirth experience for home sapiens.

the intro duction

There have been five great extinctions in the history of planet Earth during the 540 million years since complex life emerged.  ACCORDING TO NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY!!!!!!

according to National Geographic Society  "we are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction,  an event characterized by the loss of between 17,000 and 100,000 species each year.  (nat geo 2012)

 

THIS HAD me.  National Geographic…my touchstone,  my truth,  my tribe,  my clan,  my family,  my true Blood.  in those gold and black covers with all the incredible photographs about what was really

TRUE.

 

OK.  I'm tired now.  But, also,  i am FREE

FREE

to just go.  What's different?,  not a lot,  really.  It's like the message of the dream.  It's just Love.  That's all.  But even tho i can face what it really IS,  it IS just love and i have always Loved.  I WILL and CAN love and become ever more Fierce in that Love.  and not deny.  I guess it's not denying that is making the difference for me.  How it goes will be how it goes.  Maybe there will be some miracle.  Maybe.  But if not,  Love is Love.