It is my understanding that the Latin root word for  the word Religion, is ‘Ligare’. Which is also the root for the word ligament. It means to connect or to tie onto. With the ‘Re’ it means to reconnect, or to tie-back onto something.

Not being afraid of words can be very helpful. The way I see this as personally useful is at one point in my life when I had made such a mess of it, that I was willing and ready to die on the streets in despair and confusion. At one point I asked for help. A seagull had shit on my shoulder while standing in a line at St. Anthony’s on Golden Gate Ave. in S.F. and that oddly enough was the beginning of my saying “Enough! I don’t want to die like this!”

It takes what it takes.

The help started coming by the truckload, but I was not ready to accept it. I was not through running. I stopped running when I finally saw that no wanted to chase me any more. They had given up trying to help. The drama wasn’t sufficient. Finally I was actually alone

When I started to accept the help, I encountered and accepted a 12 Step program that changed my life, a month into it I declared myself a Buddhist and after almost 37 years I may be catching on to some basic things. Here’s one.

I had a deep hole in my gut and tried to fill it with many things and almost died. Then when I finally accepted help, I began to seek a way to commence a reconnection to that which I seemed to be disconnected from.

Even thoughI didn’t know what That was.

Feeling an emptiness.

Not knowing cause or what it is.

Yet setting out in search of it.

Empty hole,

Must fill! No!

Don’t create or

Excavate to leave yet again ,

An other empty hole.

Allow, to fill.

For this Great Grief,

There seems only to

Be Great Silence.

Within which, a

Small bell, Artesian;

Arises and flows,

Recedes.

And, again.

I lived a lot of my early life in a world where gambling was an everyday activity. Everybody I knew had a bookie, or two, or three, and spent considerable time placing or figuring out bets to be placed. There were odds for anything. In todays world of online gambling I gather you can bet on anything.

It used to be that sports betting had “the official line” (ostensibly Las Vegas legit) which came out every Tuesday; because that gave everybody the weekend and after Monday Night Football to pay off or collect from outcomes of whatever games had played.                On Mondays, for those “in the know” (i.e. degenerate gamblers:), they had the ‘outlaw line” which was just an indicator to see how bets were lining up with balancing of bettors on both sides of a bet. Bookies make money on balancing the money between opposing side because they collect a fee for each transaction. You know, like Wall Street. Which I have been told, ad nauseam, is not like gambling at all.                                        Right. Brokers are not bookies. Right?

Anyway,  the last few years the U.S. has about 38,000 to 42,000 deaths due to gunshots, anually. About 2/3 of those are suicide. Still, a bullet is a bullet. A projectile fired from a gun.

This year, I bet, there are odds being offered, somewhere, about the total Corona Virus death toll. With lots of qualifiers as to determination process of final figures.

So, it crossed my mind this morning that even if this pandemic stuff occurs every year and we never get a handle on it, it’ll never equal gunshot deaths just in the U.S.

What if we gave Three Trillion Dollars to all the people in the gun business to just quit making and selling guns, except for military purposes?

I’d bet they would take it and move on to some other less deadly and socially disruptive enterprise.  Maybe. It really is hard to tell. Perhaps that’s a good ‘proposition’ bet with any bookie working on any Street corner, or bar where brokers  bookies gather.

Delusion is the mind telling

Its self it is not and

Can not be deluded

Because It knows that.

Back in the 70’s in North Beach of S.F. there was a slang usage of the word ‘naturally’ that I always liked but wasn’t used often. Someone would be telling some tale of having left North Beach and gone into the wilds of Marin County, or even deeper into Not-North-Beach, maybe even going all the way into Sonoma County or, God forbid into the Central Valley, and the story would relate to having spent hours driving into the country and back, “on the natch”, with indicated the privation of no drugs or alcohol used for a block of hours away from North Beach. This type of usage always occurred in Bar-room conversations of course.

I have been having a polar opposite experience of being on the natch during this time of consternation we are experiencing. Since I haven’t had a drug or drink in37 years and instead took up Buddhism and meditation I’ve been on the natch by choice. But, there is a natch, and there is natch.

What seems to be naturally occurring for me at this time is a settling into a rhythm of not being in a hurry while actually having no place to go and discovering there is no deep need at all, to go anywhere or do anything. In conjunction with a diminuendo of cognitive ability, as well as short-term memory fading faster than I would like, there is suddenly no real reason to be doing 90% of what I had invested habit-energy into for most of my life.

I’ve been training as a lay Buddhist for many years in conjunction with my sobriety, and have gotten used to thinking that, I go to the temple,  that I go on retreats,  I go and sit in meditation, I go to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha for refuge. These things are all true and have been good to do. But, currently all those thing seem to coming to me; as I just go through each day in a naturally quiet mode.

Many people are dealing with anxiety and worry as their main experience during this time, and I’ve certainly had those arise as well, but they don’t seem to maintain traction.

I suspect that most of us, as we go through this period of seemingly imposed restriction, will find small opportunities in-between the worry and anxiety relating to all the practical aspects of life; like school, work, debts, family, aging and the sensing more keenly the actual impartiality of death and dying. A dying that can be brought on by a loved ones kiss or caress or pat on the head, or a stranger passing by; and we may never know which was the cause.

The other part of this time is the concern and love for others that is moving forward in our awareness, time is a precious commodity and we can never know how much we have left. There have been many families walking and biking all over town, we’re having some nice Spring weather and many young people out or young mothers with their kids.

Bee’s buzzing in cherry blossoms and kids buzzing on all manner of wheeled conveyance. In the future, the High School graduates of 2020 throughout the whole country, will be talking and reminiscing about this Spring/Summer and it will be a fond memory of a nostalgic time.

Unless of course, if after this passes, we don’t seriously get down to business and alter our habits and how we relate to the world and its environment.

We are either in a Teaching

Moment, or just experiencing

 A small taste of things to come.

I’m hoping, Teaching moment.

Please, let’s all learn something

Helpful, and positive.