Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico » Reflections

Post-Waterspout Thoughts in the Night

Rosana — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:12:45 +0000

Sept. 13, 2007 — It began raining gently as we prepared for bed last night. Then it picked up a bit,and there was a little distant thunder. Kelly was soon sound asleep, but not me. The rain, with always such a sweet and welcome sound, had become enemy as well as friend.

I lay awake for hours, thinking, thinking. Those beautiful steep green mountains behind us seem to move over our house in my imagination till they formed a steep cliff, almost a tidal wave, ready to engulf us and the whole town.

I am no stranger to post-traumatic stress and caught myself here. Okay, you’re over-reacting, I said to myself, really our house is not in the path of the arroyos. That was abundantly clear when we were out and about.

I still had personal fears off and on (What if we had to evacuate? Couldn’t get all the animals in the Jetta… etc.) but as the hours passed, my mind moved more and more to the big picture. How many people here were wet, cold, or far more frightened than I about their futures? What would come out of this for San Juan Cosala, a town we’ve come to love, with its many resilient and deeply caring people?

I thought of the many millions of people all over the world who have lived through disasters of all kinds, whether they became the kinds of victims you see on the news ever so briefly, or the ones like us who were just there but not seriously affected. I was briefly grateful this hadn’t been an earthquake.

Certainly nature has ever been erratic but I couldn’t help but mull over the many ways that we humans have changed the face and the climate of the earth. I thought ruefully of my neglected website, simplegreenliving.com, that hasn’t quite become a top priority for me. Maybe that will change sometime soon. I thought about the 8,000 mile road trip that Kelly and I had taken. We’d felt bad about the effect on the environment, and after we got home here, I found a website — driveneutral.com — where I could choose the distance driven and make and model of car, and make a donation to offset our carbon emissions. I had been suprised that the cost had been less than the cost of one tank of gas. Not that I recommend this approach as a reason to drive a lot, but we had felt better after making that small donation.

Finally, after my mind rattled on and on, and the rain subsided, I turned to prayer. I have recently been reading several books about quantum physics and how it ties in with the power of our individual awareness.

So I prayed and prayed, giving thanks, asking for guidance, and holding the situation here in San Juan Cosala in the Light. That’s a Quaker phrase I have always loved (I became a Quaker during the Vietnam war) and my new readings of quantum physics made the phrase even more powerful. Feeling the Light in and around all of us, I finally slept… not long before Kelly woke up and was awake for hours doing his own inner processing.

2 Comments from the old blog:

At September 13, 2007 macmember said…

I know that all of us that read your blog faithfully are holding you and Kelly “in the light”. Maybe you should not worry so much since your Brothers and Sisters are with you. You are never alone.

I am so grateful that you and yours made out so well in this disaster. Try to remember that it could have been sooooo much worse for all of them.

Hope to see you soon
Beverly
I said…

Hi Beverly — thanks for your thoughts, much appreciated. It all looks much better in the light of day. And yes, we are all keenly aware it could have been a lot worse.

Post-Waterspout Thoughts in the Night is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

The Blanket on the Highway

Rosana — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:50:28 +0000

August 19, 2007 – I just drove home to San Juan Cosala after attending church in Riberas del Pilar. St. Andrew’s is a large Anglican — think Episcopal — congregation, with many of its members coming from a variety of Christian backgrounds. (I’m mainly Quaker in my Christian background, though I sometimes went to an Episcopal church when I was a child.) The priest at Saint Andrew’s turns out to be a Stanford classmate of mine, and his sermons are worth the trip… I’ve been twice now. I’ve never enjoyed sermons so much before! (Have I ever even enjoyed a sermon before? Hmm…)

On my way home, I was mulling his comments over, feeling that they were helping me to put in perspective the grief I often feel about our world, the injustices, the suffering, the ecological disasters.

West of Ajijic, traffic slowed down. There had been an accident, long enough ago that police were there and if ambulances had been needed, they were already gone. Only one of the two lanes of this highway was open, and the other lane was coming through. I waited for a couple of minutes, doing a Quakerish kind of prayer, “holding in the Light” the whole situation.

A number of Mexicans were standing by the side of the road, serious in demeanor. I felt that some of them were in prayer too.

When it was the turn of my lane to go through, next to an emergency vehicle I saw a blanket on the highway, with an unmoving body beneath it. (I later found out that a teenage girl had been hit and killed by a truck.)

I felt sad. I also felt grateful that I had just come from St. Andrew’s and had my mind more on the larger picture, rather than just coming from grocery shopping or something like that. I couldn’t help but think of another death that touched me this week. Gerry, a much-loved resident of Crestone, Colorado, had been taken off life support (as he had previously indicated he wished) after a serious heart attack and stroke. He’d been brought back to his home, where he could see the mountains and his friends could come by, till he peacefully passed on one evening.

I was sorry not to be back in Crestone (my hometown for most of the last decade) for the celebration of his life. But as it happened, on the day of the service for him Kelly and I were celebrating another life down here. A new friend of ours, Bill, had just been declared cancer-free by a PET scan, after having had quite a bout with cancer. He and his wife invited several other couples to have a spontaneous celebratory meal at Pedro’s, my favorite restaurant in Ajijic. There was a lot of joy around that table!

So when I got home this morning, Kelly and both dogs greeted me wildly — the dogs especially. My eyes brimmed a little with how dear they all are. Kelly was cooking up a pancake breakfast and had Beethoven’s 9th playing. Life is sweet.

The Blanket on the Highway is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico