March 2026 journals #2: Sitting here at my desk, body shaking slightly from an onslaught of catalyst the last few days, mostly minor, for me. I’m finding that my cat, Joey, purring against my chest, helps me quiet my energy! No, he’s not for rent!
I came out to my desk early, before 7, to meditate and finish this letter that I really want DSC to get out tomorrow morning; within 30 minutes, Hal’s call light came on. He was awake and uncomfortable, and it’s well over an hour until his caregiver comes. I left him to come back to my desk to call her, to see if she could come early. I’m not strong or balanced enough to reposition him. My phone had a strange message; “another caller is using your phone line,” and would not work! It’s gone downhill from there! AT&T will come late today. It’s something broken in a line outside my home. My deaf phone requires a landline connection! Of course, I couldn’t call AT&T to report it until the caregiver came in!
We all have these days. These are minor trials yet still become a ground for contraction.
The past few days: two friends/ DSC students and their 4 and 7 year old children took off on a flight from Ireland to Quater, for a connecting flight to Phuket, looking forward to their Thailand vacation. They embarked in peace and disembarked in Quatar with bombs falling, no flights out. They evacuated into the city Doha, into a hotel where all night they heard bombing. The next day they rented a car and drove 7 hours across Saudia Arabia to Riyadh, where there was now also bombing when they arrived, and very few flights… They were able to catch the last flight out, last 4 tickets for Cairo, before that airport was closed. This is definitely not a minor trial! I was able to zoom and email
with them, offer support, but no one can do these things for us, and they take great courage.
Hal’s beloved caregiver, Mamady, has been wrongly incarcerated in a detention center in northern Michigan for over a month, along with thousands of others who have broken no laws and have done everything proper toward asylum; he’s waiting for a Habeas hearing. There is a many-months delay because of the numbers detained and shortage of judges. We have been working to help get him released. We thought it would be 2 months or more for the Habeas hearing but last Friday our son Davy heard from the lawyer that he might have a time for a bond hearing for Mamady tomorrow 3/6. Going from Habeas to bond means raising up to $25,000 for his bond, plus many reference letters needed. It was a feverish weekend of effort. But for Mamady, this is literally a life/ death situation! Again, for Mamady a time for much courage. For me and Davy and others, just work and planning, but with tension.
Full story in the link. https://tinyurl.com/FreeMamady
Please pray for him. Prayers are energy and do help!
Unless I respond to chaos from a place of stillness, I create more chaos. I know that stillness is within me but grasping at it is only more contraction. How do we come to that essential place of stillness, not grasping, just relaxing into it? I’ve been pondering this and think it will be the core of our October week-long residential retreat… relaxing into stillness, quieting into stillness, opening into the stillness…
What allows me access to that stillness? Today, just holding Joey helped; lacking a purring cat, in meditation I ask, where is stillness? This is not a conditioned stillness but opening to the I can never get there by grasping, just by resting in the spaciousness of pure being. This is one reason why I meditate: to come to know the doorway into that great spaciousness and Love.
This morning, I also spent some time just looking at Neem Karoli Baba’s photo, there on my wall under Joey; eyes soft, just open to Baba’s energy and light. I did some chanting. I could see some grasping and noted it; ( “That which is aware of grasping is not grasping” – Aaron)… just resting in awareness. Then back to the work before me to support Mamady. I was mostly (not always!) able to stay mindful, noting grasping energy as it came.