My Killing Community:Credentials to Speak

Recently I sat at our annual holiday family dinner with people from fourteen to ninety-two years old. Some of the people in their early twenties and thirties were American born and some were recent immigrants from Yugoslavia.

We were talking the state of the world, especially the U.S. occupying Iraq. The conversation was getting heated between those justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq and those opposed.

“What would you do, as head of the government, if someone in the world had something you needed for survival, like oil or water, and wouldn’t give it to you?” My nephew asked me.

“Talk. Use diplomacy.” I said.

He leaned over the beautifully set dining room table toward me. “What if that didn’t work?”

“Keep trying.” I said.

“That’s crazy. They have no right to not give us what we need.”
Although I was stunned by his attitude, I thought, it’s the same as our government’s, but expressed more forthrightly by my nephew.

Where does the idea come from that the U.S. Government is entitled to take whatever it wants from anyone at any price? Privilege? Ignorance? Arrogance? Military might?

At the heart of the matter lies the tacit assumption that it’s okay to kill people. We are participants in the take-it-for-granted killing. I’m talking about killing and violence as strategies to solve problems. In our country and others there is no question about whether or not killing is an acceptable strategy. It’s a government strategy of, “Whatever it takes to convince the people, that what we want to do________ (fill in the blank) is right.”

I no longer care what the details are in filling in the blanks because the details are supplied by the governments to make us, the people, agree to illegally invade and occupy Iraq, to kill Palestinians in Gaza, turn our collective backs on genocide around the globe. This strategy has a history and it’s called PR, public relations, or propaganda. Lying.

What if our first and only strategies were peace and diplomacy? What if in our communities violence and killing were unacceptable, illegal and the people who did it or ordered it to be done were held accountable? Why is it that holding people accountable is depicted by the Obama administration as not moving forward and therefore dismissed?

What if the billions of dollars we spend on the military each day went instead into creating peace, to educating our kids, providing healthcare to everyone? Our communities might look different.

How we see and understand community today is inseparable from politics. When it’s politically convenient the government, local or federal, paints community as inclusive. People are encouraged to talk about the positive values of community; it takes a village, the benefits of the extended family, community gardens, and Neighborhood Watch. We are encouraged to band together, take things into our own hands and make good things happen, safety and nourishment of our children.
But when that view is politically inconvenient community becomes exclusive and the notion of community is used by the government and their mouthpieces to shut people up and out.

“You have no legitimate right to comment because you aren’t in Iraq, because you aren’t on the police force and don’t know all the details, because you aren’t in the State Department or the CIA so you don’t know what’s really happening, and because you aren’t a part of those communities, you have no legitimate right or credentials to speak.”

Guess what? My legitimate credentials are that I’m a member of the human race and everything that happens to my people affects me and I’m a part of it all. My people are being killed with impunity and are killing with impunity. Everything that happens in our community affects us. We are not innocent bystanders. We are complicit in killing unless we object. Unless we speak out.

Oscar Grant was shot dead while lying face down on a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) platform on New Year’s morning, 2009 by a BART police person in Oakland, California. Chauncey Bailey, a journalist, was shot dead on August 2, 2007 in Oakland, California while investigating Your Black Muslim Bakery. And what about Lavelle Mixon in Oakland in March this year shooting dead four policemen and himself? What about almost sixty people being murdered in my country, the U.S.A., in the last month by rampage gunmen? What do you mean I have no credentials to speak?

Since I live in Berkeley, which borders Oakland, am I allowed to claim only this geographic community as mine to comment on? Community is universal, inclusive. Oscar Grant, Chauncey Bailey, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Darfur, East Timor, Gaza, Sri Lanka, mountaintop removal, rainforest destruction, Tibet are all part of the same Killing Community. Our community. We are its members. What do you mean we have no credentials to speak?

I’m tired of the words people use to legitimize killing. “They broke the cease-fire, they struck first, they are killing their own people, they are a danger to us, we can’t allow them to reject our rules for them.”

On the other hand, the words I want to use to express my feelings about the killing, the slaughter, the massacres, the genocide, the torturing to death, the starvation, the destruction of natural resources, the lack of universal healthcare, and the rape of women and children are outrage, horror, illegal, inhuman. But even these words don’t convey the profound dismay, anger, despair and sadness I feel as a member of our Killing Community.

The devil is in the details.

Does devil mean capacity to lie? Capacity to engender terror? Capacity to betray one’s soul, one’s integrity? Are we trading our collective soul for a return in oil, land, water, lumber, money, a pound of flesh? You may not trade my soul.

People use the details of a situation to argue about who has the moral upper hand. Examine the so-called legal, legitimate arguments for why it’s necessary to torture someone to death, to do extraordinary rendition in order to allow another government to torture someone, why it’s necessary to slaughter, why a government has the right to invade and take over a people in another country and bomb them into submission, starve them out, destroy their culture. Is it okay because the violence is collateral damage, expected, and accidental? All are litigious details.

While men and women in suits argue semantics, some person’s blood drips drop by drop into the earth they lie on, gushes from an artery, soaks their clothes, human dead bodies of adults, teenagers, children and babies and pieces of them are strewn about the earth, thrown into secret mass graves, and buried by family members. White phosphorus silently eats the skin of the living and dead. Yes, the devil is in the details.

But the devil is not an alien being. The devil is us. That’s how the destruction is happening. We have the capacity for betrayal of our souls and we’re exercising it. It’s me. It’s you.

What aspects of me shall I exercise? Fear, revenge, and domination, or can I exercise compassion, courage, and cooperation? We need to look to compassionate guidelines and international agreements to support us in seeing a more hopeful humane possibility. We need to study and practice peace and compassion.

You can’t see the forest for the trees is the sister of the devil is in the details. While governments argue the semantic details, of what constitutes torture, who is allowed to intervene on genocide and who isn’t, and what specifics constitute war crimes, people are being blown up. The trees, branches and leaves of semantic justifications, obfuscate the forest of killing.
The damn forest is lost. It makes me feel like screaming. KILLING living beings. Is it ever justified? And I don’t want a legal response. Get the picture. Smell the stench.

You don’t want to read about it and I don’t want to talk about it. But we must.
For the last two decades preschools and elementary schools in this country have been teaching “use your words” to children when there is a disagreement. Just because you can’t have everything you want, don’t resort to a physical altercation as a solution.

This apparently is a teaching only for the young because so soon as one becomes an adult, solutions to disagreements rapidly escalate and narrow to using force, military, psychological, and physical. Bomb them, threaten them, torture them.
On the other hand, perhaps the disagreement between Iraq and the United States may have been easier, more amiably, and equitably resolved if Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush took personal responsibility for their disagreements by engaging in a bout of fisticuffs together. They could have enjoyed taking responsibility for and the consequences of every blow struck. That would have been more to the point and the whole world could have rooted for their favorite fascist. I would have watched it. The market may have soared.

Let’s look at who we’re killing. The enemy. The one inside us or outside us? We’re exercising the enemy inside us when we kill and as we exercise our internal killer capacity, it gains strength. We’re killing compassionate parts of ourselves, growing noncompassionate power.

We become people without compassion, people without peaceful choices, people who can only exercise military and physical domination, we become rigid uncompromising and brittle. We suffer.

Do we really want to continue trying to create an empire through death and destruction? I will not trade my soul for oil, land, money, one ounce of flesh, or anything else.

Do we only have credentials to speak about our own local communities, our own countries, even though we are citizens of the world? And who decides if we have the credentials? Who will print our words in our newspapers? Who will post our words on their political blog? What government representative will answer our letters. Who will invite us to talk on the radio or television? ? We are all responsible.

Women in Afghanistan spoke up on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2009. They wore blue ribbons as a symbol of peace.
Virginia Wolf said, “As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” We can legitimately speak about everything that happens in the world.

In five days it will be March 8, 2010. Have we changed?

We need compassion for ourselves and for everything living. We need to figure out how to nurture life, ourselves, each other, our communities. We need to speak up, act up, write our opinions, and protest killing in every form. Especially now. Now in this country, in the powerful United States, now because it looks as if there may be an opening. A possibility for change, for a different way. A way of renouncing killing and committing to peace, to compassion, to negotiating, to generosity. We must speak at our dinner tables. It is our responsibility as humans. We all have the credentials to speak. And we must listen to each other. We can take compassionate action. Yes, we can, and we must.

The Rain Comes Down and We Consider Revolution

January 18, 2010 Martin Luther King Day

The rain comes down in great loud sheets this morning as I stretch on my living room floor. Lady Sparkles watches me from her chosen place near the front door as Martin Luther King’s voice magically flows from the radio and fills the room and my mind. It is his anti-Vietnam War speech.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.”

King quotes John F. Kennedy’s 1962 prediction. It has become our reality. We exist in the present as our past’s future. Our governments make violent revolution. They pull the triggers and drop the bombs everyday.

Do we not have the strength, the courage, the creativity, the compassion to make choices for peaceful revolution? What does it take? Why is the U.S. Government engaged in murdering people all over the world? The journalist Allan Nairn says that the Obama military machine that spans the world is set on “kill.” Obama is not changing the setting. Why? Why is our vision so obscured? Can we be this stupid?

Now the wind whips huge wet drops in a maelstrom against the houses, roses, cars, earth, everything that exists and the kumquat tree waves its arms crazily scraping against the window as if to crack it open and come inside where it’s safe.

I cannot imagine what it’s like to be an unsafe citizen of Haiti now after the huge quake in the earth and the continuous political aftershocks that are Haiti’s history since 1804 when they were the first black republic to declare their independence. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be a citizen of Afghanistan seeing the U.S. military murdering people. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be a citizen of Iraq and watch the destruction of civilization, familiy and friends. I cannot imagine what it's like to be a citizen anywhere in the world where a foreign country is occupying my land.

I am a citizen of the world and my U.S. government is occupying Iraq, Afghanistan, and indirectly Gaza.

I cannot imagine what it will take for my congress people to say no to killing. I cannot imagine what it will take for all of us, citizens of the U.S., to say no to killing.

Is the first step to acknowledge that corporations control our government? Or, is the first step to acknowledge that all individuals have a voice, that we must use it, and we must say no to killing?

I look out at the storm and consider that perhaps it doesn't matter what's first. Just that we take a determined step toward peaceful revolution. And keep stepping.

What if?

What if Mr. Obama had gone to Copenhagen as a representative of the people of the U.S.?

What if he understood that all the people in the world are part of the same family?

What if we understood that we are all in the present together and that we need to make decisions about the planet that will benefit all living things?

What if we were all committed to thriving and sustaining life?

What if politicians made a living wage and didn’t receive money from anyone else?

Tipping Over the Edge

Sometimes it's the seemingly smallest detail that nudges one over. In this case it was President Obama's use of one word that tipped me over the edge of silence into the realm of expressing frustration and anger.

This month, December 2009, Obama gave a speech in which he said we need to be "nimble and precise in our use of military hardware." Nimble?

Quick, light, agile and deft. Quick, clever and acute in understanding.

It's not only the meaning, it's the sound of the word "nimble," the feeling, which is benign and almost fairy-like.

What does it mean to couple this word "nimble" with "military hardware?" Is it a linguistic balancing act to make us feel that everything is okay?

Are we supposed to be lured into the belief that killing people and destroying their environment is a quick light and deft action? That it takes a light maneuver to accomplish destruction? Or, is it using this benign and light word to lead us away from the brutal reality that our military is killing people who live thousands of miles away from us in order to "protect us?"

Ask yourself, when was the last time you even heard the word used? Using the word "nimble" was a conscious choice. I was shocked and angered to hear it used in this way.

I am angry that politicians use words to manipulate our feelings and beliefs. To lead us away from inconvenient truths.

Engaging in wars is not in any way a light experience, nor should it be described as such or insinuated that it is. It would be more useful to see the body bags of the dead returning and see the numbers civilians, everyday of people, we kill in Iraq and Afghanistan and to listen to what the families of the slain are saying. This is horrific to contemplate because it is horrific. Seeing the consequences of our actions we might be more inclined to speculate and talk about why our government is in other countries waging wars and why so many people around the globe dislike and fear us. Maybe we could move toward truth. Perhaps toward compassion. Perhaps we can take more compassionate actions to foster peace and to terminate our determination to build empire.

Is Seeing Believing?

Sometimes you want to be seen and sometimes you don't.

Take the Leap: Grace Speaks

Greetings, my dears. The New Year’s here. I’m snuffling your ear.

Do you like my poem? Woof.

I’m sorry my New Year’s message is late but my two-legged’s been having trouble translating what I’m telling her. The human brain doesn’t easily catch the drift.

This is my New Year’s tip. You realize you’re listening to a dead dog. Ha ha ha. I’m only dead in the way that I dropped my body. I changed. But I am here in full fine form finally. Bigger than life. What does that mean anyway? I know, but it’s a koan for you. Woof!

Love. That’s the deal, seal. Nada mas.

You got to love. A person. An animal. A being.

All different kinds of love. I’m talking about them all in the largest, most expansive, the deepest sense. In the smallest daily way.

Every day my person put her palm on my flat head, “Good morning, Gracie.” She said. She’d gently rub the points of my ears with her fingertips. “You’ve got the softest little ears, and look at those cheeks.” She’d stroke my cheek spots and squeeze me.

My younger person curled up with me on the floor every evening. “Goozie, I love you.” Then she’d tell me all about what happened at school, especially things that made her feel badly. She played soccer with me in the back yard, giggling, running, and kicking the ball. “I got you. I made a goal. Woa, great dribbling, Goozie. Give that back.”

Loving another being connects us-- to them and to ourself. A oneness. I’m not a guru, but it’s true. We feel at one with ourself and the universe, if only for a second. That’s all we need to begin, a second. It’s worth going for. After all, if we have a choice, why not choose love? Make the leap. Abandon your self.

Plus, our love moves us to work for the loved one. I loved taking care of my people. Working for them. That’s the deal. We’re here to work for each other. It feels good.

I worked for my family, my two sweet ones. Keeping them safe, loved, cared for, having fun, reminding them of the present. I felt joy whenever I saw them. I gave them joy and giggles and someone to care for in return. Wag wag wagging.

They worked for me. They gave me shelter, food, water, joy, kept me safe, and loved. They cared for me deeply. We were connected. Although we each had different relationships, love unified us. Even though I dropped my wonderful body, we’re still deeply connected, as you see. I trot after them everywhere they go. Woof.

Love connects us. Love is a joy. Connection can lead to compassion, which is part of why we’re here, I think. Part of our work. Being at one with someone can take us to instant exhilaration, to joy, as well as instant compassion for their suffering, which we are moved to relieve.

Picture our world in which all humans acted from love and compassion. Woof!

My companion, Soft Tone, used to throw balls for me really far in the distance and I ran so fast and leapt up in the air and caught them. What a feeling! I flew through the air and snagged the ball right out of space. I held it with my teeth and felt it on my flat tongue. Sometimes I’d squoosh it between my teeth. It tasted like Soft Tone’s scent and the wind.

I’d gallop back and drop it in front of her. If she didn’t pick it up, I’d bark or grab it back. I didn’t think about it; I was just one with myself, my person, the ball, the space, the earth, my muscles, the flying, my intent to catch, the universe around me. When we’re one with ourself, we don’t think about it. We just are.

And when love comes, when compassion happens, it shoots through us like leaping for a ball, a wag of the tail. It’s automatic and it’s deep. It happens. In that moment we are One. With the air, the earth, the ball, the universe, all living things--One Heart.

When Soft Tone saw me leap and fly for the ball I could tell by the way she stood still watching and by the smile that emanated from within that she felt it too. That moment.

“Wow! Gracie you are so beautiful. You just do it and then you have such a huge smile and you want to go again.”
She loved me. A miracle.

This is not an intellectual exercise I’m describing. I’m a dog. Woof. I’m giving you instructions on leaping. For love.
It’s not just words.

Connect with a person, a blade of grass, a flower, a cat, a bird, a rock, whatever it is, you’re on your way. Connecting opens the passage.

Connecting leads to Heart. We have a million opportunities each day. Leap!

Let me know how it goes. It's up to us.

I hope you like the photos.

Grace

The Unexpected-- Openings: Grace speaks

This is a photo my two-legged took of a burrowing owl. After my two-legged, Soft-Tone, found these owls at the Marina, she visited them every day until they left in late spring. This was after I had passed on. I tell you things about us which will help you to understand my story.

Three hundred sixty-five days of every year Soft-Tone and I walked, ran, and played ball. She took me every day. I was always the leader, I ran ahead.

Sweet-One, (My two-leggeds have many names.), said, “It’s ‘cause you’re an Aries, doggie, that’s why you always have to be in front, right?” She’d laugh and I’d smile and wag.

I liked leading. I go ahead to scout, to sniff things out, to decide if it’s okay to go forward, find the news from other dogs, find balls, and because I love running. I love being ahead and seeing everything that’s happening. That’s who I am.

Rain, sun, fog, wind, mud, freezing, scorching heat, whatever the conditions, we were out there. I remember only two times my whole life when the weather was beating us back that I thought I might want to get out of it.

One of those mornings we were out at Point Isabel, a park for dogs to run free, swim, get in competitions of tail angles, Alfa Competitions the two-leggeds call it. We were the only ones out there and that always made Soft-Tone laugh out loud. The wind and cold rain were slashing horizontally against us.

“Wow! It’s wild out here, Gracie. Soft-Tone said excitedly and laughed. “It’s wild!” And she threw her arms wide open to the wind and rain and let it beat her face and her chest. I was impressed.

After about fifteen minutes, she looked at me—my tail and my head—my whole body was down, sort of retracting. She said, “Gracie girl, you’re not having a good time. It must be extreme if you’re crouching like that. Let’s go, girl.”

We turned around and I perked up and pranced a little because I knew we were leaving the gale winds. I even plumed my tail. I smiled.

I loved when my Sweet-One took me with her places. Staying alone at home wasn’t for me. I hated it. I felt lonely. So when she opened the back of the station wagon one Saturday morning and my Number Two, her daughter, Gentle Hands, came too, I was thrilled. I never cared where we went, just that we were together. Every outing was an adventure. I leapt in.

We were driving to San Francisco. I was looking out at the water and feeling happy to be together with my pack. Suddenly I lost my balance and fell into the side of the car. I couldn’t stand up. I started to shake. I didn’t know what was happening. Every time I tried to stand I tipped over.

Soft-Tone heard the sound and looked in the rearview mirror. “Gracie, what’s wrong? Shit, I can’t stop.”

“Mom, what?” Gentle Hands said.

“Look back there and see if you can see what’s wrong with Grace. It looks like she can’t stand up.”

We were approaching the Bay Bridge and there was no pulling over or stopping. Soft-Tone kept talking. “It’s okay, sweetie. We’ll get over the bridge and we’ll see what’s going on. It’s okay sweetie.”

Gentle Hands was reaching through the barrier, petting me and encouraging me to stay lying down because even sitting I fell over.

When we got into San Francisco Soft-Tone parked, opened the back hatch and watched as I stood up and jumped out onto the pavement. I shook myself and was a little unsteady but not much. I felt better.

“Let’s see you walk, Gracie.” Soft-Tone watched me. I trotted around, sniffed, collected news. I felt fine. A little stiff.

She felt my body. Ran her hands down my spine, my head, legs, tail, chest. She squatted in front of me, looked in my eyes and kissed my nose. I loved that. I felt her worry and Number Two, my soccer partner, my charge to protect, I felt her worry the strongest. Gentle Hands. I also call her Sweet-Names because she called me many sweet names, love names.

“You seem fine, Gracie. But something happened. I’m going to ask the vet.”

I think I was about nine in two-legged years then. For the next four years, imperceptible at first to all of us, I began slowing.

Hey, I tell you I am a filled-with-energy, love to run and play being. I’m always ready to go. Every moment is exciting and unknown. I still feel that way. Slow, was not something I knew.

So, I didn’t know I was slowing. My black muzzle was showing a little grey, my brilliant tan points: my eyebrows, epaulets, my cockatiel cheeks as my Sweet-One called them, were fading. But no one noticed or said anything. I think sometimes when you love someone you don’t notice something that you don’t want to see. Because she loved ME.

When Soft-Tone explained the incident to John, my doctor, he said the incident was probably arthritis. I had been taking arthritis tablets for a couple of years. They were yummy and I think they helped. But Soft-Tone knew that the car incident wasn’t arthritis. She told John that but as he checked me he said there was nothing else.

“She has a slight heart murmur,” he said, “but that wouldn’t cause this. I think it’s the arthritis.”

Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you every creak and crunch I acquired during those four years, but it became harder to jump into the back of our station wagon. I weighed fifty pounds. Soft-Tone began researching ramps; phone calls, store visits, Internet, tried this and that.

One morning I was standing waiting as she opened the back hatch and she said, “Okay, Grace, I’ve got a new idea. Come back here.” We walked ten feet away from the open hatch. “Okay, we’re going to run to it, you’re going to jump and I’m going to help you leap.”

That sounded fun. I took off, I launched and in mid air I felt her sweet arms and hands encircle my middle and continue to support me and encourage me forward in my trajectory. That was our new strategy. I loved it. The feeling of jumping. With her help I could still do it. We did it every day.

At the Marina there are beautiful narrow dirt trotting paths that go up hills so at the top you can see all around the Bay, almost three-hundred sixty degrees. There are beautiful dirt trotting paths that lead down to the water. We loved going up and down these every morning. Of course I ran ahead down them and took detours hoping to sniff a rabbit or hear the squeak of a ground squirrel and tear after it. Yummy.

But somewhere in those four years after the car incident, Sweet-One and I changed places. One day we were walking down one of our favorite paths and I stopped and sat by a big outcropping of pampas grass while she continued down to the water. She thought I was detouring for a squirrel.

As I sat, the beautiful silvery tan plumes blew in the wind above my head. I tipped my nose up sniffing and thinking; my tail is majestic like these pampas plumes.

I had stopped about two thirds of the way down the hill. I waited. At the bottom Sweet-One turned around as usual to come back up but unexpectedly I was not leaping after a rabbit or running close to catch up after a side exploit. She saw me sitting.

“Gracie! Oh my gosh. I’ve never seen you stop or sit. You’re waiting for me aren’t you?” She walked up to me. “It’s too hard on your haunches to come all the way down this hill and go back up? I’m so sorry. What a fabulously clever girl you are to wait here.” And she hugged me. But I felt her sadness.

Sweet-One observed me from then on in a way she hadn’t before except to sing my beauty. She talked to me about what she saw. “Gracie, I think you’re not hearing the way you used to. Now I see you hear a normal sound but your ears perk up and you sometimes put your tail between your legs as if you’re hearing something scary. You come and put your nose on me or lean into my legs for protection. Something you’ve never done before except when you hear the street sweeper. Sometimes you don’t seem to hear someone coming up the steps, or at the door. I love you.” She hugged me.

I am a great lover of balls. When Gentle Hands was two and a half she learned from her mom how to throw a tennis ball for me, how to tell me to drop it, and how and when it was safe to pick it up again.

Often I grabbed the ball back after I’d put it down. I’d put it down in front of the two-legged’s feet, but I’d keep my muzzle down two inches at most away from the ball. I didn’t move a muscle. Only my eyes moved, watching the hand. I’d wait until the hand got almost to it and then I’d snatch it. Sometimes I got the hand too. I was quick and it was fun. But the two-leggeds didn’t like it much. Gentle Hands’ mom taught her how to get me to move farther away from the ball, how to be Number Two Alfa. It took a while. It was fun.

I loved soaring through the air to catch a fly ball, catch a line drive, a ball on the bounce, it didn’t matter. I never missed. People at Point Isabel joked about how the Oakland A’s could use me on their team.

I began missing the ball. Sometimes it bounced off my teeth. I didn’t know why. It was very frustrating and unsatisfying. It didn’t feel good. “My sweet Gracie. I think you’re not seeing the way you used to.” She’d hug me and pet me and toss me another ball, close up. Sometimes I still missed it.

One day she said, “Grace, maybe I can get some help for you so you don’t have to suffer. I’m going to journey.”

I had lain on the rug many times when she lay down and journeyed to the spirit world and when she danced and sang. Now, she journeyed to my spirit to ask permission to do healing work for me. The spirits can offer information and help but the journeyer must get a person’s permission to work for them.

The information received is sacred so one must think about whether or not to share this information and if so, why and what part of the information may be shared. Is there a purpose for sharing?

What I’ll tell you now is a compilation of several journeys Sweet-One took to talk with my spirit about healing me. Many aspects are not appropriate for me to discuss so I omit them.

She journeyed and found my spirit who looked different than I do. After a greeting Sweet-One said, “I really want to relieve Grace’s suffering.”

“She’s not suffering.” My spirit said.

“But she doesn’t hear accurately, and she gets scared. She has a heart murmur, the vet says.”

“It’s all stuff-stuff of getting old.” My spirit said.

“I feel like I’m falling asleep.” Sweet-One said.

“Maybe you need to take little naps like we do.” Spirit said.

I rolled over laughing and whapping my tail on the floor. I find the spirits very funny.

“Do you want me to work on you to cure your hearing?” Sweet-One asked.

“No.”

My Sweet-One could not believe her ears. She was shocked. A lengthy discussion followed about why not.

“It seems like you’re suffering because in not hearing accurately you’re fearful.”

“Yes, but this is the way we go. Things deteriorate on the way to death. It’s a natural process.”

“But it’s my job to alleviate suffering.”

“I can see you have a lot of compassion for Grace. You can do the work if you want to.” My spirit said.

“But I want to do what you want.” Sweet-One said.

“You may be doing it for yourself,” she said. “I’m ambivalent. And just so you know, I’m fine.”

“But you seem to be coming to me a lot and asking for reassurance because you’re scared.”

“That’s true,” spirit said. “You can do anything that is loving. I believe this is a loving gesture you’re making. But it’s good to think about this.”

So Sweet-One thought about what my soul told her. She was still shocked that my soul told her, “No.” She had just assumed it would say, “Yes.”

In thinking about it she realized that she was suffering seeing me suffer. She wanted to stop her suffering and mine. It dawned on her that she needed to separate her will from the situation.

She journeyed after that to learn how her will might get in the way of her healing work. She kept thinking about it. One and a half months later she journeyed to my soul again for a teaching on her will and was instructed.


“You can watch me.” My soul said. “I love you.” They floated down a stream together in a canoe watching life happen. “If you watch, you won’t use your will so much. It will just flow.”

A few weeks later she journeyed again. She told my spirit that she realized something. “I know I don’t want Grace to die. I will be so freaked out. I’m frustrated that I can’t understand what’s going on with her. I realize I’m very frustrated and scared.”

“She’s with you all the way. You can just be with her. She loves you and is tuned in to you.” My spirit said.

“But I don’t understand what’s going on with her.” Sweet-One said.

Sometimes two-leggeds are dense. It’s curious. I think they’re not properly equipped to embrace life. But my Number Two, Gentle Hands, understood, maybe because she was young. By the time she was three years old and I was a teenager we knew each other pretty well. She sat and talked with me my whole life. She told me everything.

“Just sit with Grace. Be with her. She just wants to be with you.” My soul said. “She’s talking to you all the time.”

Sweet-One realized she felt helpless. Helpless to relieve my suffering. In the face of that and not understanding, her impetus was strong to do something. Finally, she understood.

From that moment on Sweet-One changed. It would be eight months before I passed. She slowed her walking so that she walked with me, not ahead. She talked with me all the time we walked. She sat with me often and talked with me. She listened to me. She looked into my eyes. And she stroked, petted me and sang my praises. I was in heaven.

She came into rooms I was in, sat on the floor by me and talked with me. These times with my Sweet-One were as joyous as when I was swimming out for a ball she threw into the Bay when I was younger. And these times were different. She really placed her being with mine. It was beautiful. Unexpected. Our relationship, our bond deepened. She was totally with me. The communication was visceral. An unexpected gift of love and pleasure.

When I think about it, my finding her when I was lost on the street was unexpected. I didn’t expect her to say, yes, to keep me. For her, too, I was unexpected, as was her acceptance of me. That my soul said, no, to her request to heal me was unexpected and shocking for her. The stroke I had in the car was unexpected. The unexpected offered so many openings. Look where it took us. To joy. To a teaching about will and healing. To deep pleasure between us. To unfathomed love. All unexpected.

I tell this story to encourage opening to the unexpected. What may seem at first adverse, may, if you open to it, bring unexpected gifts. To joy in each moment. To deep pleasure. To unfathomed love.

I thank you Sweet-One, for making it possible for me to write this.

Grace