Is everything actually toxic? If not COVID, then the spread of despair that stems from being, listening, reading, and contemplating the state of our country. After the candidates' debate one commentator called the presidential performance, “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck,” and that was before the revelation that the President, First Lady, members of their inner-circle, and the Senate had the virus. Meanwhile, California continues to burn, schools are disrupted, colleges are wounded—some on life support—and the windows on Main Street are shuttered.
We are well beyond the point that anything that is disclosed will shock us. In normal times, any one of the revelations from the past week alone would have engulfed the nation in scandal for months. At the writer Tana French said this week, our subconscious has become “a smoking crater right now.”
I agree. For someone who came of age as a journalism junkie, I find that it’s too much and I need to look away.
The question is where.
The idea of giving your anguish to God, releasing yourself from it, seems facile. Finding equanimity in meditation seems a promise unkept.
But remember, I am new to this, a novice, and I am convinced that meditation rewards practice more than it demands prior belief.
So, I do what I know how to. I meditate while I walk. Almost every day, early in the morning, I head out of our community up Northwestern Avenue, sometimes with my shirt from the university of the same name.
Author starting walk up Northwestern Avenue
Most people like walking in the woods or countryside. I’m more of an urban walker absorbing the human traces on the land.
Up Northwestern Avenue, homeowners pushed out the shells of 1960s subdivision houses in caring ways: a wall there, a window here, a second story, actually lots of second stories. Driveways bulge with vehicles, suggesting that the original garage has been repurposed.
And trees: an olive that’s been sculpted into a dome taking on a Dr. Seuss look, a mature Hollywood Twisted Juniper whose trunk is wrapped in self love, a veteran Live Oak that shades an entire midcentury cottage.
Signs. It’s election season, and there are signs in interesting aggregations. One pro-Biden sign is from 2012. A Trump sign is shyly displayed inside a window rather than in the front yard. Protective custody, I think. Black Lives Signs abound, many of them homemade by kids, from the look of them. Lots of chalked images on the sidewalk. My favorite: an admonition not to make noise because grandma is sleeping.
The walk connects me with people on this street I have never met, and by the time I reach the church my body is oxygenated, and my psyche has started to clear.
I am prepared to walk the labyrinth, a compacted earth pathway lined with the rocks from the alluvial fan that underlies Claremont. It’s a new part of the contemplative ministries at Claremont Pres. made possible by a bequest from the Arce family and the hard work of volunteers, including my meditation partner Sam Atwood.
I’ve probably walked the labyrinth 100 times now. The marks left by my shoes yesterday greet me as I start to recite the Francis Prayer—“Lord make me an instrument of your peace….”
I exit better able to face the day. It doesn’t stop the chaos, which as popular commentator Heather Cox Richardson, writes, "is designed to make you hopeless about creating change so that you give up.” The walk allows me to follow her advice, “to combat that, look away and recharge your batteries. Focus on the things that ground you: family, friends, pets, gardening, movies, books, biking, church… whatever works. Just come back when you can… and remember to vote."
Photos: CTK