A new day, a new beginning

Clearing clouds

Last February, on one of our Trailblazer hikes, it rained almost the whole day (not unusual),  but just as we were beginning to head back down the old logging road, the clouds cleared just for a moment, just long enough for me to capture this view of Mt. Baker and the Twin Sisters. Just a few minutes after I took this, the clouds again obscured them, but I will always have the photo to remind me of that moment.

This morning I woke from a very realistic dream that lingers in my mind. I dreamed that I was with a man whom I had just met, but we bonded very strongly. I didn't know his name, but I could tell that the feeling was mutual. We held each other in a long hug, and then he turned away to walk through Security in some crowded airport or other. I called out to him, "Will I ever see you again?" He stopped and looked back at me, and I realized I was mistaken: it wasn't him at all but someone else who looked like a younger version of the same man. Where was the mystery person I had recognized as my soul mate? This morning as I sit here with my laptop, I can recall his protective touch, his smell, and the look in his eyes. A sense of loss filled me as I woke from the dream.

And now, as I enter this new day, the dream fades and all I have left is a vague memory. It's similar to the memory I have of the day when I took the picture: it's still there, but it's just a glimpse as the clouds cleared away, enough to remain tucked somewhere in the recesses of my mind, not enough to have a clear focus, just enough to remember it happened. Dreams are funny that way.

Today begins the eye drops I'll be adding to my soon-to-be-operated-on eye. Tuesday is the big day, and I wake in the middle of the night and spend some time thinking about the event. Almost everyone I know who has endured cataract surgery gets through it just fine, so why am I so anxious? Perhaps it's because I made the mistake of researching it thoroughly on the internet and know all the things that can go wrong. Although it's a very common surgery, I'll be glad when the next month has passed and I'll be on the other side of both events. Next week I'll report on the experience of the first eye. It's the bad one, the one that has already lost some vision from AMD (age-related macular degeneration). I spend some time wondering whether the increased vision from the cataract removal will make the vision loss more acute, or less so. In any case I won't have the wonderful clear focus that people without AMD receive. I have no choice but to deal with whatever I end up with.

I almost decided to talk about the weather and went over to the website to check it out. I listened to the wind blow, hard, all night long, and the unusual warmth that accompanied it. But no, that's not where I want to go today. It's tempting, because it's a safe subject, but not at all where my mind travels when I stop to think. No, instead I reflect on the awful terrorist attack that took place at a Sufi mosque in Egypt. More than 300 people were mowed down in a few minutes. Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam, believing in love, peace, and tolerance. This article will introduce you to it, if you know little about Sufism. From that article:

 “It is nothing more than the spiritual dimension,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told the New York Times. “It is Islam, but we focus on meditation, on chanting sessions, which enable the Muslim to have his or her heart open. The myths people have about Sufis are analogous to the myths people have about Muslims.”

When I was a young woman living in a hippie commune, we practiced Sufi dancing once a week in the ballroom of the old mansion that had been repurposed as our community home. I have lovely memories of dozens of us in the dim room walking through the simple steps of the dance and chanting together. Never in my wildest imaginings would I have believed that anybody in the world would see this gentle practice as heretical. But to Muslim extremists, it justifies killing hundreds of people. My heart goes out to those who survived this massacre and who will likely never fully recover. I just pray that it doesn't turn these believers in love and tolerance into their opposite. It's hard not to think of revenge.

We live in a violent world, with terrorist attacks having now become an almost daily event. All around the world, people are frightened and afraid. That means, to me, that the terrorists are accomplishing what they set out to do. They believe that the Apocalypse is imminent and they are going to see us all return to medieval times, and they are hurrying it along. That's my belief about the Islamic State's goals, anyway. A really good article about Islam was written in 2015 in the Atlantic. I learned a great deal from it (What ISIS Really Wants). It's long and thorough, but it doesn't make me feel any better about what's yet to come. It did make me realize why ISIS believes that love and tolerance are heretical ideas.

It's hard for me to imagine what I, a single person, might be able to accomplish in the world today, but then again, I know that it's not possible to remain ignorant and aloof from the trials we all face, each and every day. I believe in love and tolerance as the way I can go towards wholeness. I have known suffering and loss, and there will be more of it to come, but I will not turn away from love. In fact, I found this lovely quote from Elisabeth Kugler-Ross that says it all for me:

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths. 

Bringing myself back to the title of this post, "A new day, a new beginning," I will endeavor to find a way to spread love and hope for a better future around in my little corner of the universe. And now it's time to spend my day with some coffee, a scheduled massage, and a movie with my friend Judy. I wish you and your loved ones a stress-free, wonderful day. Until we meet again next week.