Donald Trump's Next Life.....

Watching the impeachment hearings yesterday I was struck (again) by how extremely divided our country is in both perspective and fundamental belief systems. I know there were also politics, financial, and personal interests at play yesterday, but looking beyond the hearings, at the past few decades in our country (the time in my life when I've been actively involved in voting and caring), I can clearly see the ebbs and flows of progressive and conservative. We go from one to the other, back and forth, like boxers, trying to knock each other out. It's exhausting and confusing. For me the only answer here is to draw on my faith. I believe in a collective consciousness. I believe that we are all connected. Our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, actions, all affect all of us. I believe that the universe is a good place, filled with light and love, that the universe has our backs, and we're going to be okay.

Yesterday when my partner Nancy was sharing her deep sadness about the execution of Lisa Montgomery, I felt a surge of anger and hate towards Donald Trump. Donald Trump resurrected federal executions at the end of his term. We haven't had a federal execution in the United States since 2003, yet in 2020, we executed seventeen federal prisoners. Seventeen human beings. Lisa Montgomery was the first woman to be executed in seventy years. Last month, Brandon Bernard, just forty years old, was executed. Why would Trump want to bring back federal executions? What is wrong with him and others who support this barbaric practice? The anger and rage I felt didn't help me and it didn't comfort Nancy in her grief. It just swirled around in me like dirty water. 

As I meditated this morning, focusing on healing and patience, I found myself thinking that, in another life, I might love Donald Trump. To be so vile and venomous in this life, Donald Trump will likely be profoundly kind, gentle and benevolent in his next life because he will have so much bad karma to work out. He might be the antithesis of who is now-- Barak Obama or Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

Last night before dinner, we said a prayer for healing for two people close in our lives who have COVID. One is very high risk and now in the hospital. Yesterday in the car my daughter Lucia said, "Mom, it feels like the virus is closing in on us." She's right. It is. We are in profoundly scary moment. It is easy to lose faith. 

I have so much resentment and anger towards Donald Trump for setting a confusing, divisive precedent about masking, social distancing, and even believing in the Coronavirus. Our friends who are sick, so many people in this country who've become sick and died, could be okay right now. But Donald Trump is a deeply troubled man, poisoned from the inside out, a river of a toxic waste rushing through his veins. He's disconnected from humanity, from the collective consciousness, and so he continues to act in the ways he does, desperately trying to fill his hard, hollow heart.

But in the impeachment hearings yesterday, the overarching message I got was not vile, hateful, Trumpian rhetoric. It was grace in action. The voice of our collective consciousness flowed through. The innate goodness of the universe was present there. I wonder why the bad has to come with the good. I wonder why, if the universe is ultimately a good place, we have so much oppression and violence. I'm still contemplating that, trying to figure that out. 

There is no simple answer to why we are where we are right now. But this morning, as I imagined truly loving Donald Trump in his next life, I had a glimmer of understanding that we are not that different from each other, all of us humans divided. We're all part of a much bigger picture, a picture as vast as the universe. Some of us are in sync with universal goodness and grace, and some of us are out of step right now. No matter how divided we are in this moment, what side of the boxing ring we are standing in, we are in this together. It's easy to get sucked into anger and grief, but I have faith that someday even Donald Trump will find his way into the light.

Trump the Coyote

There have been a flurry of daytime coyote sitings in my neighborhood. I've seen them at 8am and 2pm, and neighbors have reported them all over the place, at all times of the day. I'm terrified of the coyotes, not for me, but for my little 21-pound dog Freckles who walks almost exclusively off leash. Freckles is small and chubby and slow. He would be an easy target for one of the hungry neighborhood coyotes. I used to be mainly worried about night walks on the dimly lit streets around my house, but these days I'm worried about Freckles at all hours.

The coyotes are wild. They've always been in Seward Park, and neighborhood folks know to be careful with smaller dogs in the forest during certain seasons, but this sidewalk coyote fear is new. It feels directly related to the imminent threat we are living under with an insane president. Despite a serious pandemic, the president, and many local leaders in our country, are advocating for behaviors that are literally killing people. 

The other morning as I walked down to the lake, a coyote crossed in front of me on an arterial to Lake Washington Boulevard. She was sauntering, comfortable in the broad daylight, on a widely human-trafficked sidewalk. I had a moment of fear but then settled when I remembered that Freckles was safe in our house. But that moment of fear, that threat, felt so familiar. I experienced a surge of adrenaline and my heart started pounding. I felt briefly disoriented, not sure what to do with the coyote so close. As I neared the coyote she had made her way across the street and disappeared into the overgrowth in a derelict lot. I continued on my walk and though the coyote was gone my heart was still racing.

That feeling I had with the coyote was like a burst, a momentary amplification of what I've felt every day for months. As I watch Donald Trump misinform people and encourage dangerous behavior, driving our country into destruction, I vacillate from incredulous to petrified. He is like a coyote on the loose, unchecked, sneaky and predatory. Coyotes are said to represent tricksters, but they also represent a revealing of the truth behind illusion and chaos. 

The progression of COVID-19 is the truth behind Trump's trickery and lies. His made-up stories are becoming less and less believable in the face of this pernicious virus. Behind his smoke and mirrors is the truth, that people continue to spread the virus, that people are dying from it. The neighborhood coyote sitings have helped me to make sense of my fear of Donald Trump, to put it into a larger equation. The coyote is a symbol of our times, a symbol of the truth. The fear we feel is real and, if we use it well, it can be our guide to the other side. My fear of the coyote eating Freckles reminds me to keep him close and mind his wanderings. My fear of the virus (and Trump's negligence) keeps me vigilant about wearing a mask and maintaining social distance. 

The coyotes are just doing their job, finding food for themselves and their pups. I am growing used to their presence in my neighborhood. But Trump is a bad coyote, a bad man, who's not doing his job. And I will never get used to him.

The Lessons of Our Teachers

My first grade teacher Ms. Koehler was my least favorite teacher and my second grade teacher Mrs. Fruchter was my most favorite, but I remember them both with equal detail. During first grade my parents got separated and I went a little crazy. Typically a pretty shy, reserved kid, that year I stood on the toilet seat in the girls' bathroom and peeked over the stall. After getting punished for that, I peed at my desk because I was afraid to ask to go to the bathroom. We had reading group EVERY day. Ms. Koehler, in my mind was a mean, ruler-wielding, scolding machine. Mrs. Fruchter, on the other hand, took us to the Jay's Potato Chip Factory and the Lincoln Park Zoo. We did tons of art in her class and I don't remember reading group. I loved Mrs. Fruchter.

In life, we gravitate towards teachers that feel good, loving, compassionate. It's easy to relate to these teachers. They energize us, inspire us, make us feel good about ourselves. The harder, less relatable teachers are ones we don't seek out, but they teach us just the same, maybe even more.

At The SweatBox, my home away from home, I am blessed with many wonderful teachers who nourish and inspire me. But this month, a new, uninvited teacher showed up. After a pretty good streak of no injuries, Voilà, I'm smacked with a shoulder injury that screams and yells at me all day long.

Yesterday I went to a physical therapist, a holistically minded healer who, after seeing me for about an hour said a few simple words that shone a big bright light on my situation. "Injuries are our best teachers," she said with a smile, "the teach us everything we need to know." My shoulder injury had rendered me helpless and filled with self-blame for doing something wrong, making a mis-step in my yoga practice, going down a road I shouldn't have. But when this healer reframed this for me, I was able to see things from a new point of view.

This teacher, my shoulder, is telling me to slow down. A lot. Not only should I just move more slowly, but this injury reminds me to pay attention to other aspects of my life that are out of balance.  I don't like this teacher. It is causing me discomfort, pain and confusion. But I am learning from it. For example, after doing a few hours of work at the studio today, I left to finish up at home because another class would be starting and the temptation to practice was too great. On the way home from the studio as I felt sorry for myself, I thought, "Laura, you've not been writing. Take advantage of having time off of your yoga practice to write!"

Today happens to be inauguration day as well, a day filled with fear, sadness, and hopelessness for many. This morning at the studio as a few of my teachers and I bemoaned the state of our nation, I couldn't help but think of the parallels with my shoulder. I don't want to have a shoulder injury. Who would? But what can I learn from it? I don't want Donald Trump to be president, but he is.

Some people have speculated that now that we are in this profoundly despairing and frightening political climate, maybe we can step into a greater place of action. This uncomfortable, unfamiliar experience of shifting leadership can now be our teacher. What can we learn? What changes in our own lives can we make to bring things back into balance? Back to a place where we (and our communities) feel healthy and whole again? That's a much longer blog and a very personal journey for each of us, but it is a worthwhile thought. Who are your teachers? In what forms do your teachers show up in your life?  Teachers are not all good or perfect or loving, but truth be told, Ms. Koehler's the one who taught me to read.