FINDING BALLAST, DELECTABLE AND PROFOUND\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
ballast: (3) something that gives stability, esp. in\ncharacter<\/em>. American Heritage Dictionary<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These days I feel like a whirligig, the child\u2019s toy that is continuously spinning. The Pandemic affects everything. I wake in the morning, and for an instant, all is enchantingly predictable. Then I remember. \u00a0A heavy feeling comes over me, often expressed in the most trivial thoughts. I can\u2019t drop into Office Max and buy Post It notes willy-nilly. My children and granddaughter have made it abundantly clear we are not to sally forth, under any circumstances. One daughter ordered grocery delivery for us, and we stared at the packaging: do we dare touch it? Whose hands carried those bags, what unwitting carrier selected the avocados?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I glance at the stack of New Yorkers on the back of the commode, \u201cWell, if we run out of toilet paper\u2026\u201d We aren\u2019t hording toilet paper, but do panic at the thought of running out of coffee. Then we turn local news, or Rachel Maddow, with her passionate outrage and footage from Italy, and we feel the pain of our global suffering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This teeter-totter instability reverberates not only in our material lives, but deep within the part of us just beyond our conscious awareness. This is the twin of our sensory experience, the country of the soul often called the Unconscious, producing its own images, wisdom, and sense of humor!<\/p>\n\n\n\n If ever there was\na time to listen to your intuition and your dreams, it is now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To\nillustrate: a few nights ago. I had a dream that I was back in my childhood\nhome, and it was being remodeled. All the walls were bare, and newly-painted white;\nsweeping glass windows, tall French doors. A much larger and more elegant home\nthat the one I grew up in. I walked\ninto an alcove and touched the white wall, \u201dThis used to be the pantry,\u201d I say,\nsomewhat wistfully, \u201cThere were rows of spices on small wooden shelves…\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, I gaze out the picture window\nat the sumptuous back yard. A magnificent chartreuse-green weeping willow sways\nin the breeze. Next to it is a monumental tree, its leaves darker its trunk broad\nand deep and ancient. It could be an oak, or a maple, or a tree not specific to\nthis earth. \u201cIt is Mother,\u201d I whisper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I woke from this\ndream with a sense of peace, and profound gratitude, to my dreaming\nUnconscious, a force of nature embedded in the Collective Unconscious that\nlives in us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I later told this\ndream to someone who said that the willow is a fragile tree, often losing all\nits limbs in a wind storm. From this I gather that the willow symbolizes our\ntemporal bodies: destructible. The Mother Tree is the eternal grounding of life\nHerself. Indestructible. Our temporal bodies are vulnerable at this time and we\nare living in a \u201cremodeled\u201d house of self. a house where the ordinary spice of\nlife has been replaced by the blank white wall of the unknown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh,\nand did I mention the Unconscious has a sense of humor? The night after the\nbeautific dream of the Mother Tree, I dreamed I am sitting in a small office,\nworking on a manuscript. Barack Obama comes through the door, fresh out of the\nshower, a white bath towel wrapped around his waist. He has a mischievous grin\non his face. \u201cI have cracks, \u201che says, pointing to the crow\u2019s feet around his\neyes. \u201cAnd here,\u201d he says, pointing to the creases around his mouth—\u201cAnd you\nwant to see the biggest crack of all?—\u201d \u201cSeriously??!\u201d I gasp. \u201cWhy not?\u201d he says,\nwhirling around and whipping off the towel as he shows me his back side. We\nlaugh, and laugh, and laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\nwill leave you with this. I\u2019m howling as I write it. May you find ballasts in your\nloved ones, your community, your own dear self, and in soul images like the\nMother Tree, and in the joy and humor from the likes of my mooning Barack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FINDING BALLAST, DELECTABLE AND PROFOUND\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ballast: (3) something that gives stability, esp. in character. American Heritage Dictionary \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These days I feel like a whirligig, the child\u2019s toy that is continuously spinning. The Pandemic affects everything. I wake in … Continue reading