Dayenu: It would have been enough

Calling to the energy of the universe and living with intention. This is my evening practice of Qigong. Eighteen movements to feel the waves and move with aspiration in this moment. To enter a sparkling space of community and vitality, to know belonging. To clear my mind and heart for 22 minutes, so I can take a deep breath and face the wind storm of America.

The Jews have a saying: Dayenu: It would have been enough. James Michener wrote about it in The Source (c1965). About doing our best, facing the challenge, understanding the disappointments, and convincing ourselves there is a purpose, a goal, a meaning to the way it happened. Accepting the joys and the crushing losses. Making sense of it by building character, experience, perspective and wisdom to carry on.

For years, four years, we have lived under the pall of a power hungry government and leaders wearing blinders. We live with cruel, ruthless insensibility. We face psychic bombardment of stress and loss from disease and disability. And Covid-19, a worldwide pandemic is drowning us.

Dayenu: It would have been enough.

But now insurrection. Now, a small faction of people who feed on conflict and looked for a place to spew their anger. They found it in the microaggressions and stings of a narcissist interested only in his own reflection. Like the fly on the head of a white-haired man that screamed for attention and made it so we couldn’t look away. A fly. A narcissist.

So each evening, I breathe deeply into an energy of quiet reason. I close my eyes and release the strands of negative and call for health and humanity to flow through me. Breathe deeply America. Live in an energy of compassion and cling to the strength of our uniqueness and equality.