Duluth saw the summer solstice in with a thunderstorm that circled around and around and around again for four hours, almost guaranteeing no sleep! I guess that's oddly fitting for the longest day of the year.
Last week, a friend of mine passed away after a long cancer journey. It was a shock, but not a surprise, if you know what I mean. She was literally the guidepost angel who first said, "Why don't you try Duluth?" when I was driving a little red car around the country; we were out of touch for years, then reconnected. It was so important to circle back round again, and I'm glad to have had the new opportunity to tell her how life-changing it had been to meet her. She was a wise soul with a very, very beautiful and distinctive speaking voice.
The concept of things being shocking but not surprising seems to fit a lot of things right now. I've been noodling around on paper with yet another essay about all the violence in our world, but it is wrong for today. So maybe the best thing to say is this; I play around more and more with the idea of life being "music". The more beautiful the music some of us sing or speak or write (or dance or paint or sculpt...or express in any form), the harder it is for others (those with less access to Divine Love) to function. They cannot sing, they can only lash out in frustration at not being able to sing. They cannot bear beautiful music in any form. The results are shocking, and so painful, but not surprising. What a challenging fine line -- to feel the pain of our times but still sing/vibrate with wisdom and love...and to keep doing it on whatever side we are on of that sliver of a divide between life and "death".
