USE THE OPPORTUNITIES OF SOCIAL DISTANCING TO "GO DEEP" INTO YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE

I have been a solitary for nearly two decades, but for many of you, Covid-induced social isolation and spending great amounts of time alone are an entirely new thing. I am reading that some people are experiencing great stress. Others are besieged by boredom and do not know what to do with all the time that is on their hands.

For these people, I suggest that you go deep into your spiritual life. Surrender yourself to the Lord during your waking hours. Like Brother Lawrence, who practiced the presence of God throughout each day, you can offer up your actions at home, such as the menial tasks of cooking and cleaning and other self-care duties - and you can also retreat to a comfortable chair in which to send up your prayers, confront your fears, and meditate upon the Good God.

Now is your chance. If the idea of going on retreat has ever intrigued you, now is the perfect time to create your own!

There are many books about meditation in Christian, Buddhist and Hindu traditions.

If your mind goes to a philosophical bent, and you are really a deep thinker, I recommend the writings of Father Bede Griffiths, keeping in mind that his writings demonstrate a progression of ideas as a result of personal spiritual experience.

The Practice of the Presence of God, a book that simply outlines the Catholic philosophy of practice of the monk known as Brother Lawrence, is also a splendid place to start.

Anyone in need of more book recommendations please feel free to comment, and I will reply.

In the meantime, God bless us and keep us all.

Silver Rose
Sannyasini Kaliprana

COVID CHAOS A few days ago, I drove to CLARK'S PET EMPORIUM to get much needed food supplies for my dog. As an essential business, they are allo

A few days ago, I drove to CLARK'S PET EMPORIUM to get much needed food supplies for my dog. As an essential business, they are allowed to be open, but I was horrified when two employees came out at different intervals to stand right next to my car and speak down on me, less than a foot away, and neither one of them were wearing masks.

Afraid to extend the conversation with them by remarking on the masks, and also afraid that one of them might be angered by being questioned about it and then even MORE droplets would be coming my way because of a more intense conversation, I decided to get out of there as quickly as possible and then call the owners later.

I looked up the telephone number of the owners on their website. (505-292-6288) It was a phony number that dumped me into their store telephone system. So I asked to speak to one of the owners (Michael or Thomas Steeples) or the store managers.

The young guy that came to the phone sounded very young and not terribly decisive. He said to me, "Yeah, we're not really wearing masks in the store. None of us are wearing masks." He also said that he understood it was serious, but his tone of voice did not convey that he actually comprehended that this issue IS serious.

He said he would "notify them." I quizzed him as to who "them" is - the owners? No. He said he was going to notify the store manager, which is the person to whom I was purportedly speaking. When I questioned him about this he said that the store manager was out to lunch and that he is the guy that answers the phone when the manager is gone! He tried to get me off the phone.

"Don't you want my phone number?" I asked him. He didn't sound like he was thrilled to be taking a message but he dutifully went to get a piece of paper and a pencil. He took my name and number, but I was not left with the impression that I should expect to get a return phone call. It isn't like he was rude. That's not it. He was disinterested and obviously disempowered.

woman wearing home-made cloth mask

I decided to call 311, which is the city general information number. I have, in the past, had great success with the 311 operators. They don't make you wait three years before they'll pick up the phone, and that number has never dumped me into a voice mail hell. They often have answers to questions like this.

The gal that picked up the phone WAS very accommodating. She referred to the information that she had at her disposal, but unfortunately could not tell me whether or not businesses that are staying open are required to wear masks or not. If they ARE required to wear a mask, I wanted to do what I could to nudge them into compliance. and if they are NOT required to wear a mask, I intended to find a different business that was doing this voluntarily.

The 311 operator gave me the number for the New Mexico Covid-19 non-emergency information line, which turned out to be the 9th level of computer hell that is much more concerned about the information they are NOT prepared to give you than any beneficial information. (1-833-551-0518)

If you are calling about platypus eggs, press 1.

If you are calling about the price of tea in China, press 2.

If you would like to know what temperature to bake bread, press 3.

If you want to learn how to swim, press 4

If you are calling about the circumference of a typical cowboy's hat, press 5.

A few of the "go away, don't bother me" phone numbers I found online

OK. I'm kidding about the topics - but they were no more helpful than the few examples, above. There WERE 9 levels of hell, plus several website addresses that the voice rattled off WAY too fast. NONE of it addressed this really simple request for information and no human being picked up the phone.

I hung up and called back, this time deciding to just pick a number at random, since none of them pertained to what I needed. It dumped me into YET ANOTHER computer voice mail that asked me to leave a message.

So I did. I left them a spicy message telling them that their stupid phone number is a PRETENSE - pretending to "be there" for citizens with questions, but answering nothing.

I called the 311 city government number again, and yet another very nice human being gave me a different number, this time the local number for the New Mexico Department of Health. (505-827-2613.)

The math behind social distancing

ONCE AGAIN, no human would answer the phone. It was another voice mail request for me to leave my name and number.

More and more these days, people in business and government are expecting computers to actually do their work for them. It is pure laziness to do so because computers cannot duplicate a thinking, living, breathing human being. Mentally lazy I.T. people concoct these excruciatingly long voice mail messages that do not anticipate all the possible reasons that a person may be calling that telephone number and do not give you any option to speak to a human about those other topics that the I.T. people are incapable of imagining.

It is more than obvious that the whole intention behind these 10-minute voice mail announcements is to avoid communicating with me or you. It is clear that their entire rationale is to avoid contact with us.

The 311 operators are a marvelous exception to what has become, more and more, the rule in our society.

Please don't get me wrong. I spend almost all day long connected up to the internet and I really do not know what I would do without it. I LOVE the internet. It helps me research. It helps me write. I learn how to make crafts. I learn how to play musical instruments. Even my prayer life and spiritual reading and participation is greatly enhanced by the internet. It is a wonderful tool, in the right context...but our telephones should remain telephones. We should not be greeted with a 10-minute invitation to get lost every time we call a company or a government office.

Apparently, the only way to quash this modus operandi is to make this way of doing business much more inconvenient for THEM than it is for us. You decide how you might do that. I, for one, will be making a very polite pest of myself, since I am already being treated like one.

Meanwhile, neither the manager nor the owners of Clark's Pet Emporium have returned my call. I have called the governor's office to encourage her to make social distancing mandatory for businesses that have been deemed "essential," since some of them, like CLARK'S PET EMPORIUM are not even doing the minimum.

God save us all.

Silver Rose

GLASS IN MY FOOD - updated

In early March, a neighbor suggested that I call the Department of Senior Affairs for our city. They had been bringing food for her pantry and she had found it helpful. She gave me the phone number - [505-674-6400] and I did call them and left a message. 

A couple weeks later, a man returned my call, took all kinds of information from me, told me "someone" would call me back about the food, and then I waited. I never heard from anyone, so on April 3rd, I called them and again had to leave my telephone number. 

About a week later, a different man called me back this time and asked me what I wanted, as if he hadn't a clue, despite my having left a detailed message, so I told him. He had absolutely nothing to tell me but only said that "they" had not given him any information about my request, "they" being another department that was in charge of the food distribution. He was cold, distant, unfriendly.

Talking to him was like pulling teeth. No matter what question I asked him, he repeated the same answer - like a machine: "They haven't given us any information."

It was upsetting to be talked at, like a machine. I asked him if his department was in communication with THAT department and whether or not he could communicate a request to them, and he just repeated the same phrase. "They haven't given us any information."

I explained to HIM that I understood him the first few times he repeated that phrase, but that he was not answering any of the questions I had asked him. His response? Yep. He said, "They haven't given us any information."

It was infuriating to be talked at like this. It felt belittling, this condescending script with the oddly passive language that doesn't answer any question.

"Could you PLEASE speak to me like a human being and answer the question I am asking you?" I asked him. "If you don't know the answer, that's fine. You can tell me that you don't know - but please just stop saying that same weird sentence with the passive language. It isn't helpful."

His answer? "This is what they told us to say."

I never heard back from anyone after that conversation, so I called the Department of Senior Affairs again today.

First, they said they had no record of me, that they never spoke to me, that they do not distribute food, that there are no men in their office that would be returning phone calls and they hadn't a clue what I was talking about.

I told the woman that their number is in my cell phone record for each time I spoke with them. I was looking right at it on my Consumer Cellular telephone record on the computer.  She connected me to another woman who was supposedly in charge (but she isn't really. She is a middle management supercilious type, I later realized.)

So, the second woman claimed I had not talked to them but that I had talked to a different department. She read some notes back to me that confirmed what I had said all along. I had called them in early March, then again on April 3rd. Evidently, they're connected in some way. She made no effort to enlighten me. Then she said that they HAD been distributing food but that they had run out.

It was all very weird. First they don't know me and never heard of me, then they DID know me and had heard of me but word salad, word salad, word salad.

One wonders why on earth some people decide to go into one of the "helping professions", except perhaps to lord it over the less fortunate and thereby make themselves feel superior. I really don't know.

Completely depleted from the effort of dealing with these double-talking people, I decided to just give up and pray that the "stimulus" payment comes to me soon. The working people - those who aren't disabled, are not poor and are in much better condition than I am - these are the people who get the stimulus checks first. The poor get them during a later 'run.' Everything has been delayed a little bit because of Trump's sudden insistence that he wants his name on everything.

I hadn't eaten since breakfast, so I put together a meal of the last of my rice, stir fried beet greens from some beets I had cooked last week, and tofu with mango chutney on top. It took a long time to pull it all together, and I was exhausted and famished when it was finally ready at 10 pm. I sat down and tucked into it and immediately came up with a mouth full of pieces of ground glass. I had inadvertently swallowed some of it and spit out the rest.

I had no way of knowing which food item had been adulterated so I had to throw out my entire dinner, as well as a new bottle of mango chutney. I can only pray that the little bits of ground glass that I had originally interpreted as some grit from poor rinsing of the greens doesn't cut my insides.

Typically, I have some sort of positive message or teaching in my blog posts - at least I TRY to do that - but I have nothing to offer about this slice of life except that experiencing the way people treat the poor is a heck of a lot different than reading about it in a Dickens novel.

Of course, there is always the underlying reason for most of my blog posts, which is to present my experiences as an example of how vulnerable populations live in modern America, in an effort to help others feel compassion and empathy toward vulnerable populations as a whole.

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UPDATE:

Four days ago, after I posted this item, I received a telephone call from yet another person involved in getting food out to the seniors. I explained to her the mind-bending runaround I had gotten, which really surprises me because there is a neighbor on the property who has been getting little boxes of food from these people, and she behaved as if the process was really easy. She called once and asked for help, and they came right out.

Anyway, the lady said she would look into it and get back to me. She didn't.

But, this afternoon, a sweet girl named Valerie, from the Aging and Long Term Services Department, called me saying that someone had called them and given them my number, but she doesn't know who. She wanted to know what I want! Incredible. I told her my story and she looked me up in their records. She said that if a food box had been arranged for me, the notes would have said "action taken" but it remained blank. She was concerned, since I had been calling since early March...and she said she would notify her boss, whose name is "Joe." This is the same thing the gal told me last week.

Evidently, they have a lot of volunteers who have dropped out. She talked about "spread sheets" and distributing "spread sheets" to "the different locations." I was humorously snarky and said something to the effect that instead of distributing spread sheets, perhaps they should distribute food instead. It was a joke. I asked her if they were all trying to drive me crazy. That wasn't a joke.

After exerting so much effort and being treated, at times, like dirt, I am beginning to wonder whether or not other poor, disabled and isolated seniors have just given up.

The dog-and-pony show to which I have been subjected, complete with haughty middle-management bureaucrats talking down their nose to me, has made me feel that I need to be a lot hungrier before I ask any government agency for help again.

This whole thing has been a tremendous learning experience for me. I had no idea that poor people were treated like characters out of a nightmarish Victorian novel. The price one has to pay in humiliation is close to being too expensive.

I could stand to lose some more weight anyway.

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Second update:
April 23, 2020

I originally wrote this blog a week ago. It has been several days since the last person called me and I wrote the last update. No one has come from that department.

Fortunately, as is usually the case, I was rescued. A lovely friend, whose family I adopted some time ago, brought me some gorgeous fruit, a bag of really fresh potatoes (which is rare in the markets of New Mexico) and some dog food that my little Charlemagne needed. I feel terribly grateful.

My overriding concern is for other seniors who find themselves isolated and needing help but who do not have my luck. THIS is exactly why I write my personal experiences. With every little "slice of life" anecdote that I recount, I hope to fuel enthusiasm for reaching out and helping the millions of American seniors who are not getting many of their basic needs met. Seniors who have worked and supported themselves their whole lives typically receive, on average, $1,100 per month in social Security - but you have to make LESS than $1,000 a month to qualify for most of the helping programs. The programs, on the other hand, are minimal.

Consequently, there are millions of seniors, caught between a rock and a hard place, with income that is too low to attend to their basic needs but too high to qualify for help. Only the bottom third of poor people get assistance and the dog-and-pony show that the bureaucrats demand is exhausting. All the while, the "helpers" are looking down their noses at those that need help and muttering about means testing.

I am praying every day for all God's people, especially the poor that Jesus loved so much. Please join me.

May God bless you all.

Silver Rose

Sannyasini Kaliprana

ABANDON THE HANDSHAKE FOREVER

When I was moving among the Hindus, the common symbol of greeting and leavetaking was the anjali mudra, performed in the standing pranamasana position. Sometimes, the word "namaste" or "namaskar" is said at the same time as this palm-to-palm gesture is made.

When greeting a person more senior than oneself, it would be common for the junior person making this sign to incline their head in a very slight bow, which generally communicates humility in the presence of one's elders and/or betters.

This prayerful position is extremely respectful and points to the spiritual life of each person - the one giving the salute, and the one being saluted. I have always found it meaningful, charming and graceful.

The word "namaste" - loosely translated - means, "the spirit within me salutes the spirit within you." One could hardly go wrong with that!

Considering what we are going through at the moment, I would certainly recommend trading our typical handshake with this gracious gesture instead. There is nothing like a pandemic to make one more aware of the constant presence of germs, viruses and other forms of natural biological warfare that nature inflicts upon us.

In addition to consciousness of viruses, there are many people who are not comfortable having someone's hands on them, whether with a handshake or a hug. I could write a much longer blog about the many reasons why this is true for some individuals. I would just suggest that, if you DO intend to resume the handshake or the hug, that you ask permission before assuming, one way or the other.

I will be reverting, from now on, to the namaskar and the anjali mudra of respect and graceful deference, and I recommend it to you, if you have been considering the possibility of giving up the handshake.

God bless us all

and may we all be well

Silver Rose

"Sannyasini Kaliprana"

HOLY WEEK IN THE YEAR OF THE CORONA VIRUS

All of human civilization is sitting on the edge of its seat, as it were, holding its breath for a moment, waiting for the plague to pass us by, knowing that many will be left dead in its wake and wondering which of us will be taken.

In America, we are told that many of the Corona virus patients are dying "alone," which is just a type of shorthand for a complex situation. They're not really alone. Hospitals are packed with people: doctors and nurses are milling around, intently seeing to the medical needs of too many patients, and so, a lot of people are there, but we can't risk allowing contact between patients and their loved ones, because of the wildly contagious nature of this grim virus.

The labored transition between this world and the next is traversed solo, in a sorry little boat of failing flesh.

During his final week on earth Jesus first endured humiliating lies and taunts,  physical torments and the betrayals of those who supposedly loved him. Enveloped by a keening crowd that howled for his undeserved torture and death, He too was not permitted the comforting presence of loved ones focused on easing his pains. They were made to watch from a distance, as our relatives and friends are made to do.

A hospital is understandably chaotic during a pandemic, but the pandemonium of the events we remember as "holy week" were more terrible - more ghastly - because all of the activity around Jesus was geared toward accomplishing his death, not trying to save it - and the crowd in which he was enveloped were mostly jeering at Him.

Still, we can use the frightening specter of the possibility of our own impending demise to gain greater understanding of what Jesus endured than we might have otherwise had, if this year was not the year of the corona virus under the reign of a modern despot who cares more about his popularity among his minions than in doing what is right for mankind.

The Angel of Death

by

Evelyn de Morgan

Like the ruler who freed the criminal Barrabas, rather than the God man Jesus, Trump entertained and advertised false conspiracy theories about the virus, and hid January's internal reports that Covid-19 could be devastating to the people of our country. Instead, he alleged that the deadly nature of the virus was inflated by the Democrats to make him look bad. Then he claimed to have it entirely under his control. He lied about the number of cases in our country, the availability of testing, the expected duration, and every other fact that would contribute to our understanding of what we were facing and how to avoid being one of the casualties. Anyone who questions his "inconsistencies" is publicly excoriated and slandered to within an inch of their lives, in language that comes from the playgrounds of our youth. We all recognize it as the rhetoric of the schoolyard bully.

Now we find ourselves in this situation where we are finally up to speed on crucial information about the deadly reality of our situation, but way behind the curve when it comes to actions necessary to put the brakes on it. It has dawned slowly on our collective consciousness exactly what we are facing here.

There are still some Americans who believe that it is all a "Democrat hoax" and that it is "just like the flu," as the president has previously claimed. They're refusing to comply with social distancing recommendations and are currently making a big fuss about the churches cancelling Holy Week gatherings. Some of the same people keep telling us senior citizens that we should be willing to die so that the economy can thrive. The mere fact of being an older American means, to them, that we are worthless because most of us are not producing income, so we might as well die. Like their orange god, money is the most important thing to these folks, even though most of them claim to be Christian. But try to ignore them. The Lord will deal with them, in His own time.

Meanwhile, in addition to exercising caution with regard to our physical well being, we need to get our mental, emotional, and spiritual lives in order. For those who are not accustomed to living like hermits, this has hit them hard, but with typical human ingenuity, we have found many ways to come together on the internet and elsewhere, so that we are made to feel that we are not alone in this.

Skyping and Zooming and Facebook watch parties are springing up like electronic flowers on the interwebz landscape. Newscasters and late night news hosts are broadcasting from their attics and home offices. Neighbors are serenading us from their balconies. We are not going to take this lying down, so to speak, and it makes me smile just thinking about how really spunky we are. As someone who has become somewhat of an expert of making lemonade from lemons, I just love this trait of ours.


Even though we are not able to attend religious functions during the holiest month of the year (for several religious traditions), we can still apply this ingenuity to the spiritual realm. After all, it really IS an inside job, no matter what time of year it is or whether or not there is a plague stalking the land, ready to consume us all.

Granted, our current life situation is a lot more captivating than the normal mental noise we have to deal with, but I keep reminding myself (and I recommend this to you) that it is always the case that death surely awaits us in each of our futures. We do not know when it is our appointed time, and we are not often reminded so poignantly of that fact - but it IS a fact. Death awaits us all the time - not just in the time of a pandemic. This is why some Buddhist traditions recommend meditating upon death. It seems macabre to the uninitiated, but the Buddhists do have a point.

Last week, another neighbor of mine died. Mike, a strapping, tall, healthy looking man of about my age - mid-sixties to early seventies, was helping another neighbor get to the hospital the last time I saw him. The next thing I knew, someone was telling me that he has just died. One of his friends couldn't rouse him on the telephone. Another knocked at his door and there was no answer. His adult child tried to reach him, and left messages, with no response. In the middle of the night, he had died, alone in his apartment - not from the Covid-19 virus, but some disease he already had.

Whether we die in isolation in the hospital, or in our apartment in our sleep in the middle of the night, The Lord is the only one who can really accompany us on our final journey. It's a good idea to get to know him beforehand, otherwise it could be an uncomfortable ride, in the end.

Personally, I cannot claim to be ready to die. I am not sanguine about the prospect. Not at all. I am really enjoying life and, if I had my way, I would live ANOTHER 60 years, if I could. Life is really a wonderful gift, even if full of trauma and drama - even if it gives you PTSD and nightmares and poverty. The spark of life is such a gift. Consciousness itself is the gift.

Having lived as a hermit for the last 18 years or so, I am not at all disturbed by the social isolation with which most people have been saddled because of this virus. Consequently, I feel I have something to offer in this regard, and if any of my readers are having a hard time coping with the isolation, or this situation in general I extend to you the invitation to contact me and I may be able to help encourage you through it. I have a Facebook page that is easy to find, and you can always leave a comment on this blog.

If you are having a hard time coping with the pandemic news, the first thing I would tell you is to curate your news consumption very carefully. Decide the maximum amount of time you can watch or read it before you get anxious, then make sure that you limit yourself to HALF of that amount of time or pages.

The next thing I would recommend is to avoid watching Donald Trump's so-called "press conferences." He routinely pushes advice contrary to what the medical professionals are recommending, so nothing good can come of watching him. And who needs to listen to his inappropriate and constant name-calling of the journalists who are asking him legitimate questions on your behalf? It will just upset you and confuse the issues.

Listen to the medical professionals like Dr. Anthony Fauci and other doctors with experience in epidemics and pandemics, stay socially isolated, wash your hands frequently and efficiently, and do whatever else the experts say to do. Don't listen to ancillary non-experts who are just trying to get time on camera, and don't get distracted by Trump's smoke and mirrors. He could have done something to ameliorate this pandemic early on, but he chose to hide crucial information and then lied about it later. So just ignore him. He will get his comeuppance later. [UPDATE, OCTOBER 5, 2020: A few days ago, he and Melania tested positive for Covid. Many of his close staffers ALSO have it. More are expected to come down with it because none of them have been following the guidelines.]

In the meantime, I am praying for all of you, in general, and for specific people who have asked me to include their name in my prayers. To the extent I am able to include you in my meditative journey, I do that, as well.

May God bless you all and keep you safe, and I hope to continue to "see" all of you through this emergency.

Yours in the Lord,

Silver Rose
"Kaliprana"