Life and Love in the Time of the Coronavirus

Posted on by Radiant Life Center
Like you, we feel the immensity of the changes that our world is experiencing. And like you, much news and varying perspectives fill our inbox and social media feeds. Our last email spoke to the hearts of many and we have appreciated your response, gladdened that we can help. We write today to share some of our thoughts and insights as we ourselves have navigated this pandemic. Whether you fear the world is about to end or that the sacred portals have been opened to our salvation (or you find yourself somewhere in between) we can all agree we are in an unparalleled time. We are living history/herstory like never before. May our thoughts help you navigate this time of great challenge.

Though virtual, there is such blessing in our interconnective-ness right now. When one is listening and paying attention, open to where inspiration and guidance shows up and resonates, this life dream gets so very fascinating. You just never know when a poem, a podcast, a bumper sticker, an article, a Youtube, a TV show or movie is going to speak the truth that you need to hear at a particular and powerful moment. On that note we share a story.

This Is Us

A few years back, when our daughter Grace first came back to live with us she got us into the TV show This is Us. No doubt many of you know it. For many seasons we have been riveted by the unfolding lives of the Pearson family.

Recently, in a season finale, a moment occurred that spoke so poignantly to the current experience on planet earth with a wisdom message of how to hold this time of immense pain.

In a flash back from their early life, the main parental characters, Jack and Rebecca, were visiting the doctor who had delivered what was supposed to have been triplets and one baby had died in childbirth. It is the first birthday of their children and they are greatly grieving the one that died. They visit the kind doctor for any wisdom he can give them to ease their aching hearts.

He shares with them that his first was a still born but that when his wife was pregnant he would sing "blue skies, smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see" every night to his baby that was growing inside his wife. He shares with them how devastated he was by the death of his daughter and how he thought he might never be able to sing that song again. But then, a few years go by and his wife gives birth to a baby girl and he finds himself singing that same song to her. Full circle.

Then he goes on to say "I work in a hospital, these bizarre buildings where people experience some of their greatest joys and some of their most awful tragedies. All under one roof. I think the trick is in not trying to keep the joys and the tragedies apart. But if you kind of let them cozy up to one another, you know, let them co-exist-I think if you can do that, if you can manage to forge ahead with all that joy and heartache mixed up together inside you, never knowing which one's gonna get the upper hand, well life does have a way of shaking out to be more beautiful than tragic."

Wow! Such profound spiritual teaching from a TV doctor. He struck our chord hard. This life is like a hospital filled with joy and tragedy. The practice is of allowing all the magnitude of experience and feeling to live within us. The whole catastrophe, as we often call it. To not turn away from any of it right now. To allow pain, awareness of suffering, ours and others, and joy and immense gratitude to cozy up together and be curious as to what is to come on the other side of this pandemic. And to imagine something more beautiful than tragic. This is our moment. This IS us!

Collective Grieving

As we experience this time of great uncertainty and pause we acknowledge that we are all in a process of profound collective grieving. Be kind and gentle to yourself and others. If there was EVER a time to go easy on yourself, this would be it. So much has been lost. There are the many lives lost. There is the loss of life as we knew it. There is the loss of seeing our friends, of hugging other humans; loss of jobs and income security. There is the loss of easy movement through our world, or the simple act of seeing a show or a movie. There is a loss of the structure of school; proms and graduation ceremonies that will never happen, weddings that have been postponed, trips canceled, and many things that make life meaningful have been ripped away. It's all quite heartbreaking. And there is absolutely nothing we can "do" about it. But we can determine how we will "be" in it.

In an article written pre-pandemic, Poet David Whyte writes beautifully of heartbreak and it's hidden gift.

"Heartbreak is unpreventable; the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control, of holding in our affections those who inevitably move beyond our line of sight."

And yet he continues with something very important ...

"Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream, a child lost before their time. Heartbreak, we hope, is something we hope we can avoid; something to guard against, a chasm to be carefully looked for and then walked around; the hope is to find a way to place our feet where the elemental forces of life will keep us in the manner to which we want to be accustomed and which will keep us from the losses that all other human beings have experienced without exception since the beginning of conscious time. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way."

So here we are in this very human experience together. Here we are immersed in this shared, collective heartbreak. It is our choice to let our hearts break open and care more deeply for what we find along the way, or to shutter, closed in fear. Each day we can make a choice to allow the joy and tragedy to co-exist and come to the other side in gratitude, with our hearts more open to life and love and our human family. At the end of this pandemic, and there will be an end, who is it that we want to see ourselves as having been as we lived through it? Fearful, small and frozen, or open, surrendered and feeling all of it? The latter is where love blossoms.

Personally we are getting through, taking it a day at time. Living and working from home as we do, we have been on some level "sheltering in place" for awhile. But we do miss our friends and have missed out on fun travel plans. We have canceled retreats with the surrender of knowing that we only ever had the illusion of being in control. Our children are both hunkered down with beloveds. Who knew it would take a pandemic to hold a family zoom call?! Seeing them for the first time in person will be a sweetness beyond the beyond.

Please know that we are here to help you through this challenge. We are both accepting new clients and are working with an online tele-therapy program that is as simple as clicking on a link. Phone sessions work too. We are deeply grateful to continue to be of service. May you and yours stay well and safe!

With love,

Trinity and Louis

We end with another poem, written by our dear soul daughter

Kailey Murphy of Boulder Colorado

The turning-

I, too, envision

an awakened world-

a world where the lungs

of the earth

no longer fight to breathe

a compassionate world

a kind world

where love is the language

we not only speak but sing

but first,

there is the burning

of all we have collected

of all we have consumed

there is the fire

we never wished for

but somehow needed

there is the swelling

of smoke until

we cannot see

all the structures

we once deemed worthy

and then,

there is the grieving

the ashes of people

and of power

the families without funerals

holding hearts & holding vigil

there are the tears

buried beneath the terror

the loss of physical touch

with one another

and too,

there is the stillness

the ceaseless silence

full of freedom

if only we sit and listen

and there are the places

within you, within me

grand as mountains yet

clear as the stream

of who we truly are

and what we shall be

and I wish to say,

there will come a day when

you embrace the friend

you have not seen

so sweetly now

as if for the first time

cradling one another

like you are

each other's mothers

and then one morning

when all is past

you will notice the tree

in your front lawn

bestowing the world with

her cherry-blossomed beauty

and you will pause

and you will breathe

and you will worship

before continuing on