Sylvia's Journal

For the last 36 hours my body has been fighting the toxins that came from undercooked wild mushrooms. I lost about 5 pounds and didn’t sleep much. I also couldn’t get comfortable no matter how or where I would sit or lie down. Suffice to say, it was a miserable time.

I thought much about people who experience poisoning of any kind and live in a refugee camp, are on the run, and have no toilets or washing machines. I thought about people who share toilets with countless others. Amidst the bodily turmoil in the midst of a crisis, I counted my blessings and surrendered.

It occurred to me that we are in a similar planetary turmoil and fighting the turbulence. But the fighting doesn’t work, has never worked in the entire history of mankind. Fighting delays healing. One can try to fight one toxin with another – “I’ve got to have that cup of coffee or glass of beer when the body yells ‘no, no!’, and the misery is prolonged.

I see toxins all over the front page of our Sunday New York Times this morning. Greed is fueling unsavory practices in the pharmaceutical industry as there are great harvests to be reaped from pandemic cure-alls. Who would not want to buy the wonder drug? People’s stock portfolios are skyrocketing on the mere suggestion that a wonder drug is around the corner, so better take advantage of that and accumulate more riches.

It’s probably not a co-incidence that someone put the book ‘The Soul of Money’ by Lynne Twist on my path. It showed up on the Miro board we are creating in the Upcreate! project. I could have picked any of the 50 or so books that are on our virtual bookshelf.

I don’t think I would have bought a book with that title. As I was curled up in a ball while my body was busy getting rid of the toxins, I couldn’t put the book away. I learned that Lynne has a long association with The Hunger Project (THP). It is probably no co-incidence, again, that I applied for and have just been accepted as a volunteer coach for a yet to be determined senior staff member of THP in West Africa.

The book is timely in other ways as I work with teams and individuals in the US and in South Africa who are struggling with all the things that are missing. Lynne writes about the lie of scarcity that she claims is at the root of the toxins that have invaded our minds and from there leaked into our bodies, our communities, our countries, the soil, and the air. Today’s NYT magazine (the climate issue) bears witness to what our lie of scarcity has done to the land we rely on for our food and our livelihoods.

The lie of scarcity has focused our attention on everything that we don’t have, as opposed to what we do have. “No matter who we are or what our circumstances, we swim in conversations about what there isn’t enough of.” (Lynne Twist, 2017:43). Not enough time, not enough money, not enough sleep, not enough food, not enough respect, not enough love, not enough support…the list is endless. Yet, no matter who we are or what our circumstances, we do have a lot. And I am deeply and gratefully aware of all that I have enough of:

• a body sufficiently fit to fight the toxins
• a garden and nearby farm stands with fresh vegetables
• a loving family
• an extended circle of faithful and caring friends
• a beautiful and safe home
• a place to be cool in the middle of a heat wave 
• and so much more.

I have enough.

If one didn’t know about system dynamics or complexity, this is a good time to explain what these words mean. We are always in flux, and all part of countless dynamic nested systems – nothing stable even though they may have looked that way. Hopefully everyone now does see how everything, and everyone is connected to everything and everyone, except maybe for the people who ‘don’t believe in masks.’  I watched a lovely video (the Egg) that culminates in the realization that we are all part of each other, all the good parts and all the bad parts.

The pandemic system dynamics play out in hugely complex ways from the macro to the micro.  Because of my travel I have always known that if some policy gets enacted in one part of the globe, people we cannot see or hear and are continents away, are impacted. Unless the media put a spotlight on one of those occurrences, we could be blissfully ignorant. No more.

We had hoped to celebrate our granddaughter’s 5^th birthday tomorrow here at Lobster Cove. All the presents are ready, wrapped and all and the decorations impatiently waiting in a drawer.

Since we are all in overlapping pods, we have to make rules about what we can and cannot do and what our various pods are OK and not OK with – there is accountability on all sides. We are learning to redefine risk. In the pandemic the threshold for unacceptable risks is very low for some and high for others. Negotiating these different thresholds is extremely challenging. When there are infractions, there are consequences. This Boston Globe article shows that many of us are struggling with this reality.

As a result of a few ‘above-the-threshold’ encounters in the last few days, Saffi’s party has been canceled. We are both sad and disappointed. At the same time, we are also relieved as it would have been the largest gathering of people (outside, but nevertheless) since the pandemic started.  We were never totally on board with the size of the gathering, but family dynamics about inclusion and exclusion came into play and we left the decision making to Saffi’s parents. For us it was one of those ‘above-the-threshold’ affairs. Now we don’t have to deal with 5 grandparents, 8 aunts and uncles and 6 kids under the age of 8.  We are going to have a quiet weekend and sing happy birthday over Zoom. It won’t be the first time we miss being physically present during a grandchild’s birthday party. 

The disappointment is placed in the basket with the others (our wedding anniversary in Holland, my planned travel, a wedding in Colorado, our annual Easter party, the Memorial Day celebrations and visits to the ancestor graves, etc.). 

The ants continue to show up in my life. If they are messengers, something I like to believe, then I have to work on my patience. This morning I nearly ate one. It had joined my thyroid pill in the tiny Chinese cup that sits on my bedstand. I take the pill before I have my glasses on. That’s how it landed in my mouth. I spit it out and it scrambled – we had the exact same intent. I squished it and I won. Life is a power struggle.

David Attenborough’s must-see documentary (available on YouTube and Netflix) has a scene in it from a floor of tropical forest that shows how the larger ecosystem keeps populations that get too dominant in check. The scenes are rather gruesome and hard to describe dispassionately (but Attenborough does). Two remarkable quotes, spoken in his soft soothing voice: “The more numerous a species is, the more likely it is to fall victim to the killer fungus.” And: “Checks and balances like these mean no one species can dominate.” Replace fungus with virus, and there we are.

There are also checks and balances in my own head: the daily news headlines and our president’s desperate attempts to dominate the narrative of life amidst Covid-19 drag me down. I feel it in my insides, a knot in my stomach. My body’s telling me something is not going well. But then I am lifted up by the new connections I am making with people from all over the world who I meet in various conferences I have been and still am participating in: The Gaia journey that culminated in the 2 day Global Forum of the Presencing Institute, The Wise Democracy group that my daughter Sita introduced me to, and the UpCreate! Journey that has just started me on 7 months gathering that will take place every month on the day of the new moon. Three overlapping cohorts (Europe, Americas and Far East) are playing on a virtual field (powered by Miro), thinking together, encouraging each other, learning how we can best take advantage and bend the course of history away from greed and selfishness towards caring, nurturing and creating environments in which all can thrive.

I am turning the short breakout conversations with interesting people into more lasting and deeper conversations. Yesterday Maty, from Senegal, and I spoke for an entire hour about our lives, our hopes, our tests and tribulations, and most of all our resolve to make something of this moment in time. We agreed to talk every first Tuesday of the month. On Friday I am meeting with Ying from China – we discovered we do similar work in a short breakout session during the Global Forum. I am so very excited about all of these encounters. Paradoxically, the familiar parental phrase (“go to your room!”) has liberated us and connected us in ways unimaginable even half a year ago. 

True, a stable internet connection and electricity are critical ingredients, and thus make us vulnerable to serious isolation if these ingredients disappear (or, as for some, were never there in the first place). But these are technology problems (complicated but not complex) and I suspect that somewhere, someplace, there are smart people trying to figure out new technology constellations that do not harm the earth and bring us together. On a human level (complex certainly), all these thousands and thousands of people who are connecting with each other, are weaving the great web of life. Those who dominated will be caught in the web or consumed by a fungus. If you don’t believe that, watch the Attenborough clip. 

Our grandson and two ants found their way into our sugar pot. We knew about ants liking sugar. And we are more than a bit amazed that these two enterprising ants were the first two to have found the pot since we moved in here 27 years ago.

That our grandson (8) found it is no surprise as it is a bit below eye level for him (and he has known about its existence for at least 4 years). Faro is attracted to sugar like an ant. His parents have put him on a low sugar diet (not because he needs to lose weight, he is thin as a reed, but because they are convinced he should not be eating much sugar). My parents did the same with me, but I managed to find sugar anywhere, knew exactly which of my friends had candy jars or mothers who were less strict about sugar. I ate more candy than anyone I knew and still have a sweet tooth. My 123&me genetic profile claims my haplotype prefers sweets. This is not a surprise.

We are taking the ants outside where, as our granddaughter remarked, the ant’s family resides and is waiting for the return of their curious son or daughter. I like the idea of a family reunification.

We are not killing the ants. For one, as someone told me, when you squeeze them to death, they leave a scent that bring out the burial brigade. I am not sure whether this is true or not, but I like to imagine the ants outside sniffing the air and knowing one of their own has died and needs to be taken care of.

There is another reason. Ever since I learned (from Jamie Sams’ Animal Medicine) that ants carry the message of patience, I stopped squishing them. I say a brief thank you and then take them outside, where they belong, so they can carry the patience message to others, since patience is a hugely important quality these days. 

Aside from the patience we need to have with things unfolding in the age of COVID-19 (can’t travel, can’t go to visit my relatives in Holland, can’t do this, do that, yet), we will also have to be patient with a major renovation that starts tomorrow with the demolition phase. We have decided to ‘age in place,’ and in order for this to work we are reconstructing a fully equipped bedroom downstairs – fully equipped meaning that I won’t need to get up and down stairs to go to bed, to brush my teeth, to do the laundry, etc.

The demolition crew arrives tomorrow. I am a bit anxious about it, but also very excited – we have been planning for this to start for over a year now.