Channeling Peace
Most mornings, I open my eyes, and I remember to ask God (or the universe, or my heart, or my higher power, or whatever I feel like calling “it” that day) to make me a channel of peace. I ask for that, not out of altruism, but because I need to feel peaceful inside in order to keep functioning as a human. I am finding that stranger things become in the outside world, the more instinctual it is becoming for me to look to the inside world.
Labor Day Weekend crept up on me. I was so consumed with reorienting myself to the new reality of in-person teaching during a pandemic, both at Parkway Center City Middle College and at La Salle University where I teach an evening class in their BUSCA program, that I wasn't thinking about keeping my own kids busy during the five day weekend (including Tuesday’s Rosh Hashanah). Molly and Catherine don’t return to school until Wednesday. They’d been really bored while the two of us were working. At the last minute, Tom saved the day by booking two-day passes to Dorney Park.
I was never into amusement parks. Even as a child, I was never at ease in most lighthearted settings. I was born with a heavy heart. My senses have always been finely tuned to suffering and injustice. For most of my life, I would not have been able to enjoy a water slide during a week of hurricanes, flooding, and death. But something is different in me now. I don’t know if it’s years of yoga practice, grace, age, or the surreality of being a human being on planet Earth in 2021, but I was happy yesterday in the roaring rapids. I wasn’t scared by the steep slopes. I wasn’t chilled to the point of discomfort by the cold water. I didn’t worry about the environmental waste I saw or the unhealthy food I ate. I just let myself be. When I was in the crowded wave pool, I started to think about the Delta variant that must have been all around me and my kids. But then I stopped myself and instead looked at the hundreds of faces around me. Nearly all of them were smiling. And so was I. And I thought of Kate Tempest. And I was thankful for her words.
