With COVID, our focus is directed inward. We can be with family, care for our home like never before; be very, very careful, practice a skill, explore the internet and read. Its as wide as your imagination.

I am continuously reading something. This year, during our family’s 43rd annual camping trip, I was reading, The Spell of the Sensuous, Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, by David Abram.

I understood, quite some time ago, how we are one with the world and the Universe.

This book describes how to be far more connected to Nature and every living thing in it. In his words, our eyes and the texture of our skin takes-in the nuances of the shifting wind and the nourishment of a rambling brook.

He goes on to suggest that we got the word, “rambling” from the nature of the brook itself. That we got the word, “wow” and “bang” from lightning and thunder. And that we operate at this sensitivity level.

Calling ourselves emotional has been a stifling label. We can set ourselves free from it. We are naturally sensitive, just as are the birds and the butterflies are sensitive. We get our sense of flying from all of nature traveling by flight.

David Abram, a summa cum laude graduate at Wesleyan University, he holds a doctorate in philosophy from State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Watson and Rockefeller Foundations and has a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

He has traded sensory information with indigenous people in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas. As an ecologist and a philosopher, his writing has influenced the environmental movement in North America and abroad.

This is his first book. Its lyrical, poetic, and intellectually embracing. It startles our senses out of habitual ways of seeing and hearing for a wider, fuller engagement with Nature.

He traces the steps of Rene Descartes, from the 17th Century; followed by Edmund Husserl in the early 20th Century, followed by Merleau-Ponty in more recent times. They all developed the idea that our earth is animated with life that flows to us and from us.

We are communicating with it and it is communicating with us. It’s a rich exchange.

Amazon has The Spell of the Sensuous. It is published through Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House, New York.

I know what I want. This doesn’t feel right. I want to be peaceful. I want to create the life my heart says is good, and pure and clear, and oh so right for me. Listen to your heart, listen to my heart.

I CAN SAY THIS! I will say it nicely . . . keep myself together. No one else lives in this body so I just need to be clear with myself and be kind.

Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be. He seemed to appreciate what I said. I did put it out there without blame, shame or forcing anything. What a surprise when he kissed me on the cheek. Guess he really appreciated what I said. Guess I’ll be seeing him again. Wow.

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We also feel our history, our personal history, often and in many ways.

Growing up had two chapters. The first chapter was abundant. Dad was a successful lawyer in his own practice. We had a five bedroom, three story brick house on two lots in Allen Park, MI. We had everything, very often new clothes, lots of food, dinners out, and many vacations. Year by year, time went on . . . then, life changed.

I was awake at night to hear Dad’s abuse of Mom. His deep booming voice minimizing her natural goddessness. And then a thump and a quiet sobbing. Shocked and deeply sad, I had a decision to make. As a 12yr old child, did I allow this intel to minimize me, after all, this was my mother and father!  Or did I wait, use time to see how it turned out, keeping my thoughts to myself.   I chose the latter, like most 12yr olds in the 1960s.

Mom and Dad were divorced in less than a year. We moved from that house, plenty big for eight, into a house too small for the six of us. Now we had one pair of sneakers, one pair of boots, minimally just what we needed. Consequently we had to keep our clothes clean and ready to wear again, day after day.

The most profound change was with dinner. Pre-divorce we were required to be on-time, face and hands washed and seated at 6pm. We heard a passage from the Bible and learned a new word weekly from the dictionary. Dad would quiz us through the week to correctly pronounce, spell and recite the weekly word. We had to share what happened to us and how we felt about it. And we had to be excused before we left the table.

Post-divorce dinners only happened when someone complained they were starting to get hungry. Hand washing was only when my sister and I thought our younger brothers’ hands were “too gross.” What was served was often over- cooked from a slow-cooker Mom started before she went to work. Or it was something I could devise from little bits of left-overs and flavors hidden deep in the fridge and cupboards. Again, I chose to experience this as early training for my future career as a fine dining chef or as “the gourmet chef” in our big Italian family. What happened that day and our feelings about it were now left unsaid at dinner, to built up stress. Instead, we would talked it out in private one-on-one. Sometimes the tension got very heated, depths-of-our-soul types of emotions.

Pre-divorce and post-divorce both had positive and negative aspects and life lessons. Far beyond simply being fed, communal dinners nourish in a total feeling way. It does this in many forms, often indescribable. As long as people have face-to-face contact, and especially if they’re tightly linked by an emotional bond.

It’s a tradition worthy of preserving, resurrecting, or creating new, now.

Start from where you are.

From my heart, let me express to you how much choice you have every way, everyday. As a kid, and still today, I use my imagination to keep growing, keep flowing along. Very little needs to be ingested, it’s up to you. 

Love is often unnoticed. Invisible, it has a bad reputation for being fickle. When people are not valued, when they lose at love, the real lovers among us often coach themselves to “take-it-in-stride.” They courageously struggle and strive to keep their hearts open believing love will find a way. It always finds a way.

When two people try to love one another, its marvelous as long as they can forget about who they are. Forget about taking a position, taking a stand in comparison to _____________(you fill-in the blank). People do throw up blocks to it. Love doesn’t need you to know who you are. It needs you to feel. It needs you to want to be loved.

It’s not a commodity. It cannot be measured, its priceless having a whole lot to do with your personal growth.  It tends not to be viewed as valuable when it comes in the form of a clean house, care for children, care for pets, clean clothes, a beautiful garden, a balanced home budget and a home-cooked meal. Why is this the case? And what about a fresh attitude for: 

“so glad you’re home . . .  with a hug and kiss.”

When a person takes on the lover/caretaker roll full-time or part-time, why are these tasks not considered a valuable part of life?

Around the world, caretakers often feel undervalued.  Not gender-specific they graciously carry gauntlets accepting the time and effort and considerable personal sacrifice it takes to create a loving home. They are intelligent caring people. They could be doing a lot of other things with their life. You know, time is a non-renewable resource. 

The lucky one’s are the recipients of the care given by their lover/caretakers. They’re lucky to  know they have gold waiting for them at home. They know their home is full of love and they treasure the source of that love. The source is that beautiful person who keeps it going on day after day. 

Now that’s putting value in the right place.

Whether you like it or not, you are responsible. Everything you think, . . . every thought goes out into infinite space with a vibrating tag leading right back to you. Every moment of every day you send messages, good, bad and in-between. That infinite space can’t discriminate between good, bad and in-between, so it is always saying yes to every thought you have.

The thing to do is to own it. Be responsible for every feeling you have. Do this by realizing what you already know. Be with yourself here and gently come to a place of knowing the goodness you have inside.

Now be gentle with yourself. I say this because responsibility is a benefit. Once you relax into living with this truth you realize your power over your life. And then you have a power no one can touch. It’s yours to keep. This is the clean definition of responsibility I spoke of earlier.

Remember, with responsibility you are in charge.

Change your thoughts and you change your reality. Not immediately, not overnight, but in due time the longer you visit your very fine thought(s). All negatives have an opposite positive, make that switch.

Native American culture believes that everything happens in just the right way at just the right time. That’s a lot like, “Be Here Now.” And there is real magic in the practice of being in the moment, with your focused thoughts and with a universe that is constantly saying Yes.

For more on this subject watch the 18+ minute Ted Talk by Lisa Feldman Barrett entitled, “You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions. Your brain creates them.”https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_feldman_barrett_you_aren_t_at_the_mercy_of_your_emotions_your_brain_creates_them