Musings from Deeptime

  To Carry This Burden Upon Your Shoulders and In Your Heart Alone. Is to Be Forever Changed. Today's (2/24/21) NYT Opinion Section had a 15 minute film on nurses in an Arizona hospital's ICU/COVID unit. The producer strapped body cams on the nurses in an effort to literally experience what they could only share as no one but the nurses were allowed into the unit, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/opinion/covid-icu-nurses-arizona.html The producer should win some sort of an award as he doesn't play up the emotional aspect, or do the normal finger-pointing. He uses ICU nurse Sara to speak for all Covid unit ICU nurses. Sara does not so much speak as she just bears witness. After watching the film I was left deeply moved. There are skills and insights that only come after innumerable repetitions - consistently sinking a 3 point shot from afar only comes from hours and hours of repeating the shot. Sara exhibits the same type of proficiency but in a much grimmer arena.

  Sunday Morning Meditation; 2/21/21 Thoughts on “The Great Commission” becoming an evolutionary dead end. In Chapter 10 in the Gospel of Mathew, we see the wellspring from which all Christian  evangelizing efforts, all missionary programs originate; In Mathew 10, after calling out 12 local citizens to quit their day jobs and to follow him and be his students, a short while later, (Math 10:1) “... he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them (unclean spirits) out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” Jesus then instructs them (Math. 10:5-15) in where and how they are to employ these these gifts from him; “ Jesus commanded them “ ...Go not into the way of the Gentiles, (or) into any city of the Samaritans … (instead) “...go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Jesus then made clear the message they were to relate saying, “ ... and this is the message you tell to everyone, preach, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” ”.

  2/17/21 Bucket Moon After a night of high winds and blizzard conditions and a day of chasing nearly a foot of snow off driveways and sidewalks, I sat well into the night watching a bucket moon silently arc across the icy black sky. There was a line from a poem written by a native American that says; “When the moon is turned upwards like a bowl waiting to be filled We must fill it.” This was written while the young poet was attending boarding school run by white missionary's whose mission from their God and their government was to, “eradicate the heathen Indian culture, once and for all.” I thought what it must be like to be abruptly taken from your parents' side, your aunts and uncles and nephews, your woodland lodge, your prairie tepee, your garden patch and your berry patch, your place by the fire and your place in the universe. You lay on your side facing a smudged and frosty window pane, under you a thin, limp mattress, and over you an even thinner blanket. There is no he

When the Birds Converge Deep in the Thicket  Maybe it is the fact I'm retired.  Maybe it's just that I love icy cold days with a hard February sun.  Last night we had one of those winter storms that blow through about once every 7 -15 years depending on whether you were in the worst of it or on the edge of it.  I went to bed with with the wind chimes clanging and the rusty windmill throwing blades.  I woke up while it was still dark, drank my coffee, pulled my boots on and slipped out into the darkness.  It was the kind of silence that even a hurried soul couldn't help but notice.  Above, the stars were soo bright.  It was like they were caught in a beam of the purest, most intense white light possible to imagine.  And each star shattering that beam into millions of sparkling shards and sending them back out across eternity. It is good to be alive, not alive like breathing and eating, but alive as in being fully aware, of being hyper-attentive not through sacrificing to tun

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