Calm the Storm

This post was inspired by my early morning reading of Barbara Brodsky’s most recent blog about the summer she could not swim because of an infection in a toe bone and the risk of amputation. Reading what she wrote of her experience, along with her appreciation to again be basking in her love of swimming, I had memories to share.

I told her of a time when I had briefly overcome fear of deep water (in this lifetime generated by a near-drowning while a pre-teen). I was taking an adult non-swim course at the YWCA in preparation of leading high school youth on a wilderness canoe/camping trip. Buoyed by confidence, I quickly enrolled in the next level class. But that class had a different instructor.

Something about the combination of that teacher’s style and the tasks required for this next level set me back…. by the end of the session my competency had digressed. Fear had set in again. I have not yet regained the joyful jaunting Barbara thoroughly enjoys.

I told Barbara how much I appreciate the way she and John Orr teach the dharma by telling their own experiences. The term “dharma” has no single-word English translation, its exact meaning depends heavily on the context in which it is used. Derived from the Sanskrit root dhr — meaning to hold or to support — dharma is the truth of what is. Dharma represents the truth of an underlying order that sustains the universe.

Last Sunday’s sharing as guest pastor at St. John United Church of Christ in New Buffalo was about “Mindful Morality” — differentiated from morality as a concrete idea. We were not looking at something always being right and another something always being wrong. We touched on an understanding of how the insular cortex processes physical disgust (like tasting rotten food), and also lights up during moments of moral disgust (like witnessing unfairness or cheating).

I told Barbara when John and I were here in our 42-year-old mobile home while tornado warnings were going off last evening, I calmed myself by sweeping the floors. I could not control what was going to happen. I could only do what I could do in the moment. I remembered the story of Jesus calming the storm. I remembered when my colleague/mentor Dr. Mary Jo Bulbrook had a group of indigenous healers from all over the globe at her place in North Caroline with a hurricane coming. They created a healing circle and each did what he or she drew from his or her lineage to “calm the storm” both literally and figuratively. That hurricane dissipated all around them! The group gave great gratitude that they did not even lose electric power.

Before the storms came through last evening, I had filled a bucket of water to be able to flush toilets if we lost power. John can use that to water flowers in a day or so.

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” ~ Edward Everett Hale, American author and clergyman