Wake Up Call #397: Come for the Practice, Stay for the Love

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call #397. Today I want to take a break from shame and dread, although I’ll come back to it. I’m just feeling like a little lovingkindness. So first, two stories, and then let’s do a metta practice together.

The stories are about Idaho. I’m up in Ketchum, Idaho to talk with the Idaho Women’s Bar Association tomorrow. We made a road trip out of it, driving up from Tahoe City. Everyone told us how conservative it is up here in Idaho. Being from Northern California, we’re pretty much surrounded by very progressive people, and I was really wondering, not so much how Ketchum would be since that’s Sun Valley and a lot of people fly out here to ski and for the outdoor activities in the summer from the coasts and more progressive places, but how it would be along the way. 

But it wasn’t like that. First stop, first story: the host at the Inn we stayed in in Twin Cities, Idaho. We rolled in late but at breakfast, she sat down with us since we were the only guests. And right away she asked what we were doing, and when I said we were heading up to Ketchum for me to give a mindfulness talk, we started talking politics and religion even though we all laughed about that we knew we weren’t supposed to talk politics or religion. Turns out she thinks differently than we do on a number of issues including her gun collection of 20 in the case plus the loaded pistol she keeps in her night table. But even where we diverged completely, she was kind and so were we. We enjoyed every minute of that breakfast with our new friend, and we left feeling a lot of love for this very independent, pioneer-style woman.

Then we went to the IB Perrine Bridge, the only bridge in the U.S. where BASE jumpers, which stands for Buildings, Antennae, Spans (bridges), and Earth (cliffs) can legally jump from a “span.” We watched three jumps. Terrifying! The folks standing next to us introduced themselves. Their accents sounded almost southern but they were our age and had lived all their lives in a small farming town about 60 miles east of Twin Falls. In fact they’d never been to Twin Falls! But here they were because HE had retired from the air force and taken up drone flying, since he no longer qualified to fly a plane. She didn’t talk about her occupation. Anyway, we definitely didn’t get into politics or religion with them but it was clear to each couple that we came from very different places. We did hear all about drone flying – to the point where Carl (my hubby) is interested. He even showed us some videos he’d made, including the one of his town, with the drone keeping the American flag centered in the frame while very patriotic country music blasted in the background. He even took Carl’s phone number so he could send him more videos and they could talk about drones. And then, last night, Carl got a text with a gorgeous, drone-made video with non-partisan music – and with Carl & me at the end, waving good-bye to our new friends. We left loving them, too, and felt their love coming right through the video: these folks whom we really couldn’t be too much more different from, and still live in the same country.

All of this just to say that today and tomorrow I’m going to meet a bunch of women lawyers here in Idaho and many of them will be very different from me – conservative, not meditators, maybe a little wary of mindfulness and lovingkindness and even compassion – but that’s what we’re going to talk about. And in today’s news, a three-judge panel in Texas was, let’s say, less than happy, about the U.S. government argument in favor of keeping open access to the FDA approved abortion pill, and the South Carolina legislature agreed on a total abortion ban after six weeks of pregnancy, which bring the number of states who now ban abortion post-Dodd to 13 the number of states with total bans and 44 the number of states that have some kind of ban. So this morning let’s do some metta together, and really consider putting our heart into people who are different from us, whom maybe we consider difficult, and see how that can go, see what breakthroughs we can have.

Warm the heart

Self

Beloved

Acquaintances & Colleagues

Difficult People

All Beings

Earth!

Thank you for your kind attention. Love you all.