|
It’s the morning after the midterm election and we don’t know yet who won and who lost in some races. But we celebrate anyway with several neighbors on this morning’s dog walk. The turnout at our polling place is worth celebrating–over 90 percent of eligible voters voted in person, not counting those who voted by mail according to one of the women who worked the polls. We spoke of feelings of relief that the campaign is over, those horrible attack ads, the doomsday predictions, the insane amount of money spent by parties and political action packs. Seems we could solve world hunger and cure most major diseases with that amount of money.
We didn’t celebrate yet what didn’t happen, though if the good news holds, we’re likely to be celebrating the lack of violent incidents at the polls, and the fact that people didn’t stay away as is usual in a midterm election, that they exercised their right and responsibility to vote. As long as that’s the case, our system of democracy, though wounded and sometimes on life supports, is not dead.
In this season of wins and losses, endings, and new beginnings, I’m preparing to head out of my bunker, where I’ve been somewhat sheltered from the worst of the pre-election misbehavior. I’ll be reconnecting with longtime friends, colleagues, and playmates in Texas, which was my playground for 25 years. It’s been 3 years since my women’s spiritually group has met in person, in East Texas, and at least 4 times that long since I’ve been to Austin. Though never lived there I was a frequent visitor, to teach InterPlay monthly during one period of time, to bring InterPlay to a nearby woman’s prison, to pause for shelter and renewal from members of the Austin InterPlay community as I traveled back and forth from Fort Worth to the Houston medical center where my daughter was being treated for Breast Cancer.
We seldom know whether a particular outcome or event is a loss or a win, an ending, or a beginning, until we’re far enough back from it to make that assessment. The long view often reveals elements of both. Our time in Texas was way longer than we had expected, and now I can say the same thing about our time in Pennsylvania. On the election map they seem like different countries, and at times, especially at first, they seemed like that to us personally as well. But as I prepare to reconnect with people in Texas who’ve had my back through rough, tough times, I see that there are people in both places who’ve enriched my life and made wherever I was living, feel like home.
For folks in the Austin area –We know this isn’t much notice, but Christine Gautreaux and I would love to have you join us Tuesday November 15th at 6:30 pm at Interplay leader Barbara Jo Stetzelberger’s beautiful Somatic Arts Studio, Wood Haven ATX, 1165 Angelia St. Austin 78702. https://www.woodhavenatx.com/We’ll be using InterPlay tools to play with what we’ve been up to – writing and publishing books, teaching online, podcasting, and catching up with you and your life of late, on and off zoom. Feel free to bring a friend who is new to us or to InterPlay. We’ll likely have some books for sale. Click here to view the event on Facebook: https://fb.me/e/2bgJMeA3G |
