Election Day 2010

Being Powerless November 2 2010



Election night.

I watch opponents sweep aside my hopes and dreams

For justice and our civil rights.

I didn’t cause it, can’t control it. I weep.



Tonight, driving home along a busy country road,

My car one in a line, following and followed,

In the headlights, I see writhing, on the center line--

With shiny fur, brown and black, a long plump tail--

A creature of the night, injured, pained, struggling for its life.

I feel the tears spring forth; I, too, writhe as I speed by.

I cry out “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

It’s nothing that I did; there’s nothing I can do.

I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t help.



Remembering, today, the plight I lived,

A helpless mother

Unable to prevent abuse and meanness –

I would have sacrificed my life to help my daughter –

If it had mattered – but it didn’t.

Tears fell then and trickle from my eyes today.

I couldn’t change things, then or now.



Two years ago, my beloved left this life,

Beside me in the bed, in mid-sentence –

A total shock.

There was nothing I could do, no way to bring her back.

I racked my brain – was it my fault? Had I missed something?

Could I have prevented it?

No. No way at all.



Somehow, though things happen that are sad and painful --

Things I can’t ward off --

Acceptance of what is leads me to peace

Beyond the seen and felt,

Deep in the knowing of another plane.



REFLECTION

The outcome of meditation is the opportunity to glimpse a reality that underlies the time and space of this physical life. Though the physical is so often jarring and deeply disturbing, the transcendent plane of spirit is filled with light, love, peace, and exaltation. The mystery is ineffable and blissful. In prayer, I express my desire to inhabit this other world, even as my feet and my senses move me through the passage of time and the dominion of space on planet earth. Are all these painful experiences real, or are they simply illusions of reality through which I pass as through a hologram – they seem solid, but are nothing more than total illusion.