Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 55

I sleep in which is divine. I think I get at least 10 hours. After coffee I get ready for the second session of an online retreat I’m leading for experienced meditators. I notice I’m more nervous than usual.

When I feel into the sensations and listen deeply to what’s there I realise that it’s mostly about the technology. I know that something weird is going on with Zoom mtgs with registration. For last week’s group I had to resend the link for the second mtg when my co-leaders texted me saying they couldn’t get in.

I thought I had solved the problem for this week’s group by sending them the link ahead of time and asking them not to try to use their registration link a second time.

At first it looks like things are going to be ok. People are joining no problem. But then the emails and texts start coming in. Some people can’t get in. The link’s not working or they’re getting a message saying the mtg hasn’t started.

Someone who is already in says it worked for them to type the Meeting ID straight into the app so I suggest this and it works for some, but not all.

While I’m trying to help those struggling to join the session, I also tell those already in the mtg that the real world equivalent to this would be that we’re all sat in the shrine room while others are banging on the door trying to get in, but can’t.

Somehow seeing it this way helps.

Magically everyone eventually gets in, but it eats up 10 mins and half the group is pretty frustrated by the time we get going. It is only through people’s tenacity and ingenuity that they all manage to join the mtg.

We take three deep breaths and begin with a poem. Poetry is a great device to help shift and settle disturbed energy:

For the Interim Time - John O'Donohue

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born."

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

From there I start teaching and all goes well. Then it’s time for lunch. My partner has re-heated my pizza from a couple of nights ago and has made me a gorgeous salad.

I spend the afternoon doing a whole bunch of admin for the retreat. It’s more work than I had thought it would be but also enjoyable. I feel well used up and absorbed in something that feels like the best use of my energy in this lifetime.

And I’m deeply grateful for that. To have found something that feels so congruent, an authentic offering of my energy to the world.

I’ve asked retreatants to share what or who they are dedicating the retreat to on the Facebook group I’ve set up for them. But I haven’t yet had a chance to reflect on my own dedication.

It doesn’t take long for me to know to whom I’m dedicating my retreat. I open Facebook and write a message saying the retreat is for my sister and all health care professionals and their patients.

As soon as I’ve posted my sister calls.

She’s just getting up and looks exhausted, but she’s in good spirits.

Sadly my niece, who has just turned 17, has been told she can’t do her summer internship because of my sister. She’s told them that my sister works with COVID patients so they’ve turned her down.

Apparently, It’s too high risk for her to be around other people when she could be getting exposed to coronavirus every time my sister comes home from work.

I think about myself at 17. How angry I would have been about anything getting in my way. My niece is taking it all in her stride but I feel sad for her. You’re only 17 once.

I ask my sister about one of her COVID patients that wasn’t doing well the last time we talked. She says she has no idea what’s happened to him. There are so many nurses and they are all being rotated in and out of the COVID ICU on such a regular basis that you often don’t see a patient more than once.

After our call it’s time for my afternoon session. Everyone connects no problem because I have sent out a brand-new link with no registration requirement.

Afterwards I do some writing and then it’s time for dinner. Leftovers. Then our walk around Hackney Downs.

There are families out having picnics, ball games and Bob Marley playing in the background. It’s a gorgeous, warm evening and there’s a lot of drinking and smoking going on.

A group of eight police walk through the park looking intimidating but we don’t see them actually move anyone on or even talk to anyone.

Tomorrow Boris is going to address the nation and the hope is some of the social distancing will be relaxed. But I’m not holding my breath.

I spend half our walk on the phone with a friend who has been struggling with being furloughed. I’ve been coaching her for weeks now. She is in a much better place tonight. I tell her I’m proud of her and she thanks me for being such a good friend.

We bat around some new ideas for teaching we might do together and the challenges and benefits on doing it online. Then my partner gives me a look and I know it’s time to end the call. They say they’d like to spend at least half of our walk together.

We hold hands, our fingers entwined, and stop every once in a while for a kiss and a hug.

We get home and decide to watch 1917. It’s stunning. Two hours all taken in one shot, or so it seems.

I studied film a bit at university so I know the tricks film makers employ to build cuts into what is meant to look like one long shot. But those are few and far between. 34 cuts in total.

It’s a tender film about friendship, bravery, human resilience and the horrors of WWI.

Horrible still is the rise of fascism after the war and its growing popularity to this day. Just this week a video surfaced of a Black man named Ahmaud Arbery being gunned down by two white men while jogging in his own neighborhood in Satilla Shores, Georgia.

Apparently it happened back in February and neither of the killers were prosecuted. Later it was discovered that the local district attorneys had serious conflicts of interest.

So even now, during a global pandemic and while the whole world is in lockdown, this bullshit rolls on. I only hope that coronavirus means more people will pay more attention. More people will see through the ridiculous attempts to justify a modern-day lynching. More people will begin to question the systemic and institutional racism that perpetuates mental states fueling this kind of hatred and violence.

I can only hope. And do my part to support the liberation of myself and others from such destructive mental states.

There’s a clear intention in that. May it be so.