Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 49

Spoiler Alert: details about the last episode of Homeland at the end of this post.

The day starts with a Zoom mtg for a retreat I’m leading with a couple of friends. We were meant to be teaching together in the Scottish Highlands. Now we’re doing it from our respective homes; my one bedroom flat in London, a caravan in Callander, Scotland, and a house in Hadfield, in the north of England.

We have our planning mtg and then it’s straight into the first session with participants.

My co-leader in the caravan keeps breaking up and it’s hard to hear her. There was no problem when it was just the three of us, but now in a group of 15 clearly her internet is struggling.

I immediately notice the opportunity for practice. Over the years I’ve trained myself to engage with moments of stress, frustration or annoyance as teeming with potential. There’s a lot of energy there.

First, I do a bit of coaching on myself. Right now, there is nothing I can do about this. I can’t fix it. The best I can do is acknowledge the difficulty and do my best to try and repeat to the group what I think she’s saying.

And by acknowledging the difficulty I don’t just mean telling myself this is hard. I mean feeling into the tension in the body and breathing space into that narrowing, before it takes over me. I take a deep breath.

On the next breath I tune into her, watching her closely and listening deeply. She’s full of inspiration and energy, despite everything, which comes through clearly, even if technically we can hardly follow her.

In the brief moments of clarity, she is smiling and her eyes are wide and you can tell she really believes what she’s saying and it’s important to her that we do too.

I smile back at her, I nod and laugh. Even though I can’t make out the words, the essence of what she is trying to communicate is still breaking through the fog.

I can tell that it excites her, being on Zoom with a group, when normally she spends her days alone in her caravan and walking the extraordinary landscape around her. Which is also delightful, although a different kind of delightful.

After the session she sends us a video of the loch where she lives.

From the way she’s moving the camera and how quiet it is, I can tell she’s fully enjoying herself and taking it all in mindfully. It’s exactly what I imagined the loch looking like just now.

I eat some lunch and then spend the early afternoon writing. Around 3pm we decide to go for a bike ride.

As we’re heading out the door we see a card in our mailbox. It just has our names on it, no address, no stamps or stickers. It must have been hand-delivered.

It’s a thank you card from a friend who came around for dinner back in February, a month before we went into lockdown. She says she is still reflecting on the things we talked about.

The card is covered in bright red lobsters. What our friend doesn’t know is that lobsters hold significant meaning for me.

When my partner and I were first getting together I was away visiting family in the USA. It was summer in New England, a time and place where lobster bakes are as common as daily afternoon thunderstorms.

My parents had ordered a bunch of lobsters for dinner and I was telling my partner on FaceTime that I was going to have to eat one. It would cause too much upheaval to refuse.

My partner leaned in close to the camera and reminded me that I was an ordained Buddhist and had taken a vow of non-harm. They encouraged me to stand up to my family.

That night I went down to dinner and announced I was not going to eat the lobster. I’m sure my brothers would be happy to share mine. My step-mother immediately started laying into me.

How dare I not support the local economy? People’s livelihoods depend on fishing and selling lobster.

Instead of arguing back, I took a deep breath and calmly explained that I didn’t think my choice to not eat the lobster was going to have an effect on the local economy. She kept going.

Then something surprising happened. Instead of getting angry I simply started to cry.

This broke through the tension and my step-mother immediately started apologizing profusely. To this day she’s never tried to force me to eat lobster again.

We now refer to the incident as lobstergate. It was an important moment in my practice, my relationship with my step-mother, and with my partner.

After opening and reading the card, I put it on a shelf with a couple of other cards we’ve recently received, we pump up our tires, and we’re ready to go.

My partner’s offered to meet a friend at a hospital appointment tomorrow morning. Their friend is worried about a lump in her breast. She was supposed to be getting married but it got called off because of coronavirus.

Then her finance had to fly to Hong Kong because his father was dying. He didn’t get there in time, and now he’s in Hong Kong self-isolating for 14 days.

Today’s bike ride is dedicated to mapping out the route to the hospital that they’ll take in the morning.

We head towards the Olympic Park. I know the way now after our recent excursions. There aren’t too many people out, as its overcast and colder than it has been.

We continue east along the Greenway, a four-mile walking and biking trail between Hackney and East Ham. It was built over the embankment of a sewer and apparently when Gandhi visited London in 1931 he used to walk it daily.

When we’re almost to the hospital we stop at a crossing and notice a sign on the gate. It says:

Warning

Attackers are robbing

Cyclists at knifepoint on

The greenway

Be extra vigilant

When we get home my partner googles it. Apparently because the Greenway crosses multiple boroughs and doesn’t have a post code the police can’t assign crime to it and therefore can’t detect a pattern.

They worry they may not be safe on their own in the morning. We discuss it and come to the conclusion that 9am is probably the safest time of day to be on it and that they’ll be extra vigilant, like the sign advises.

Right as I’m about to get on FaceTime for my regular Sunday night date there’s a knock at the door. It’s our upstairs neighbor with frosted lemon fairy cakes.

I thank her profusely and tell her that I have never felt more disappointed about not being able to give someone a hug as I do right now.

She’s got a bigger tray of the fairy cakes that she’s bringing round to her goddaughter who is turning six. Both her parents are essential workers so she’s still going to school. She’s one of only fifteen kids in the whole school and she’s loving it.

She’s not only getting tons of attention from the teachers but also from the older kids, who greet her by name on the street now. We both wonder how it will be for her when things go back to “normal”.

After my FaceTime call it’s time for a bath. Then dinner. Before we know it, we’re setting up to watch the last episode of Homeland.

Carrie somehow manages to not only successfully stop a nuclear war but also make things good with Saul.

In the end, she gets to have her fairy cake and eat it too.