breaking news…

I was excited and oh so grateful to show up for the Sunday Sweat.  As a student.  As a dancer.  As another body held in community’s sweet lap.  It was a hard week for me.   Maybe it was for you, as well.  The literal weight of the world was dragging me down.  But for me, engaging in practice offers a guaranteed prescription for deliverance. And I was fully weighted on Sunday and so ready to let go of the whole week, the whole month, indeed a great deal of 2024 as well.

Guaranteed deliverance was not what practice used to offer.  Just as many who come to the dance floor on the regular, years were devoted to shedding buckets: old stories and even older tears, frustration and persistent habits, deeply rooted fears and surprisingly stubborn resistance. When people share about an inability to drop in to the dance or the challenge of being with difficult emotions or the ache of dragging themselves to the venue…I totally get it.  Over the years I’ve cried many tears for myself.  But it is different now. In some ways I now feel so old that I have no tears left for me. 

But this last Sunday I could not drop the weight of the world at the door and I could not move with it either.  The easy access doorway of my body felt locked.  When I looked out at the beloved folk around me, all I could feel was that old dreaded veil of numbness slipping over me. Nothing was coming in.  Or out. 

After two wretched hours it felt mighty good when tears began to flow.  They were tears that had nothing to do with me. They were universal tears, a gush of human pain, hurting and helplessness. The phrase lacrime rerum has been rattling around my mind. Latin for “the tears that emerge from the heart of things”.  I was weeping because of and along with the world.

“Though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken:

that is why God sends sorrow into the world.”     Oscar Wilde

There is no hiding the bright shine of tears.  They are a visible, embodied signal of deeply felt compassion.  Salt water that trails down our cheeks and opens us to the suffering of others.  For me, a whimpering release from numbness, an invitation to really look at the people beside me, recognize our connection and be astonished at the essential divinity surrounding me.  

I would like to say that I came home feeling much better.  No.  Unabated weeping coupled with the hard earned knowledge that isolation would keep me stuck.  And so I reached out.  This time to my brilliant daughter who listened to me wail about my worries for the world and then asked the most practical question: how, and more importantly, why are you taking in the current news? 

I am not a crazy news junkie but I’ve been spending easily an hour a day reading about the latest shenanigans.  I am filled with disgust and fear and rage.  And then I go about my day with all that simmering on a back burner.  That’s the “how.”  But why do I stay informed?  The answer surprised me.  I grew up in such a politically awake and aware family.  Dinner table discussions, the LA Times, Time magazine all through my teens.  My hubby was a poli sci major and we share this interest.  And I truly feel it is my place as an elder to actively witness what is going on.  I cannot turn away.

But then this came out of my mouth: my community depends on me to stay informed as if somehow this could offer magical protective safety.  Hmmmm.  Pretty sure those illogical dots do not connect. Brilliant daughter’s suggestion?  Mom, take a news break.  When she said that, I quivered.  Could I?  I committed to 24 hours.  Incredibly, in that confronting moment, it felt like the best I could do.  But now I am closing in on three days and I’m still alive.  And I’m actually feeling back to a stable baseline.  Other than being on retreat or forcibly out of contact because of no internet service, I have never given myself this kind of space.  I have a vague sense of guilt.  But it is very vague.  Not sure when I will hop on the news train again.  But I will.

There is so much good to focus on.  And It’s not in the news.  From where I sit, the sun is gracing my rhododendron bursting with buds ready to open.  There is much needed rain on the horizon for later this week and this feels so good.  I talked with a dancer in Santa Rosa this morning who wants to come to Tending your Dancing Body and I can feel how excited and grateful I am to be offering this juicy medicine.  I’ll go to San Francisco this Friday and celebrate the birth of this daughter 45 years ago.  So Much. Good. 

Well…I’m done rambling. I just know we will move through this. Together. ❤️Bella