Yesterday morning Reddogg and I walked across a five acre field that led across to an even larger field enclosed by a wire fence. Still covered with a thin layer of ice and packed snow beneath, I imagined the field was what it would be like to walk across the top of a firm, baked pie shell, on top of a cherry pie covered in white sugar, only occasionally my boot crashed through the surface and into snow, not cherries. The snow and fields went on and on and everything was still except for a small, brown leaf that turned over and over, skipping across the snow covered grasses till I could no longer see it. I paused and stood silent with Reddogg beside me. Even my mind stilled, and the awareness of that made me smile to myself. It was a relief because my mind had been turning like that leaf, like a squirrel on a wheel.

I had been thinking, thinking, thinking. I had forgotten the power of now. Sometimes I do that you know, though as I spend more days on this beautiful planet, as each year passes I try harder to remember the old adage: “The counsel of one is a fool’s counsel.” I am referring to things I hear, things I see, and what does that tally up to as far as the opinions that come to my mind. I have found the more aware I am of my thoughts the more I am willing to question them. I can rein them in because I begin to realize sometimes I really don’t have enough information to come to a conclusion or form an opinion. I find that many times I am grateful to simply tell myself, “Joan, you don’t know what you are talking about.” That helps me erase any thoughts I am already forming, and if it is important enough to me I will do some research, ask some questions from a valid source.

This morning I was once again back out in the snow, with Reddogg happily walking next to me. He loves the cold weather. I was very much in a prayerful mode, and once again thinking. I had the Los Angeles fires on my mind, and all those people dealing with tremendous losses and grief. And how fatigued they all must be, firefighters included. I can only imagine. I have never been exposed to life altering traumas such as all-consuming fires, a hurricane, or perhaps the results of my country being at war right here on American soil. In my mind I was asking once again the question why? These challenges in life, the ones when you can’t even really get your arms around the main event, much less the whole picture, can really hurt our hearts.

I do believe we care and I believe we care because we all are truly connected. That connection is what gives birth to the idea of how can we help? What can we do? As I continued to walk this morning these are the thoughts I was thinking, knowing there are millions of people asking the same questions. Yet my mind can be so fickle. Even as I was thinking how wonderful it is that all beings are somehow connected, at the same time I was feeling so powerless.

I walked back home and did two things. I reviewed the news about the California fires and what was needed. Already they report no more clothes are needed at this time, and no more food is needed. Part of this equation is because you need a basic organized plan, along with a distribution center and volunteers to distribute the clothes and food. And volunteers need to be trained. So I concentrated on what I could do. I put my mala beads, my prayer beads, around my left wrist to remind me to continue to pray for everyone involved and somehow affected by the devastation the fires have brought to this west coastal state. Then I turned on YouTube on my phone and once again listened to the song, “The Prayer”, this time sung by Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion. To comfort me. And hearing words like “faith, grace, and safe”, did comfort me.

Once I allowed myself to receive this song and its marvelous message deep down inside myself I could send it back out, through the next person I met, and the person after that. And they could do the same thing…all the way to California. We are deeply connected. I believe in the power of prayer, and in the power of us. I had changed my thinking which changed the energy I release, either on my prayer walks or whenever I enter a room.

The power of a sentence that ends with a question mark. I like it a lot.

c   Love, Joan