“People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections.” ~ Khaled Hosseini.

I have always believed in the mind-body connection, understanding that the whole body is connected, in ways we can only begin to imagine.  I often recommend practices that help to still the ‘monkey mind’, one that jumps from thought to thought, chasing down all of the possible ‘what ifs’ instead of saving energy for the when things actually happen.  I believe in the power of meditation and the effectiveness of mindfulness.  However I am also a very impatient person, finding it difficult to sit still and just be.  It is much easier to get up and do.

When I found a small book on sale at Barnes and Noble some years ago (after Borders closed down – my favorite place to get lost) I bought it.  It was entitled ‘ten-minute meditation’ and I immediately knew it was something I could handle.  I think I gave the book away, but it was memorable, because it associated thoughts with each number one to ten.  I haven’t practiced it with any regularity, and I may have made up my own meditative rhymes to go with the numbers, but one of the thoughts that stayed with me was the rhyme that went with seven.  The author suggested that as you sat straight-backed, with feet firmly on the floor (rhymes with four) you imagined a golden thread that pulled your spine straight and connected you to heaven, and thus to all of the ancestors that went ahead of you.

I have never bought into the concept of heaven that many describe, however I do believe that matter, being neither created nor destroyed, does pass on into some other ‘thing’, in some other dimension.  That energy merely changes form, switching over into some more ethereal, perhaps more enlightened being.

I love these thoughts of being connected.  When you think about the human race and how it is procreated, we can track backwards in our imagination through our umbilical cords, back to the first mother.  And our DNA has been passed down, entangled with, transformed and comingled with DNA from all of the corners of the earth.  Therefore every one is my cousin!  I don’t know if you have noticed this, but in the Caribbean, people claim each other as cousins even if the common relative was eight generations ago! They know something that the rest of the world may have forgotten, our common roots. My niece, growing up in England, was a member of a ‘pan band’, learning to play the steel pan, most famously developed in Trinidad.  Other band members, though British born, came from several of the small islands of the West Indies, yet always introduced each other as ‘my cousin’.  How so?

This thought of our umbilical cords connecting and attaching us back through history is one that is revered in many cultures.  Which reminds me, I knew as a child that although I wanted to be a nurse, I could not be a midwife.  For I thought the midwife, after severing the umbilical cord, tied the end in a knot.  And since I could not tie a knot neatly (it took me years to learn to tie the end of a thread with one finger and some saliva) I thought I would be responsible for babies ending up with an unsightly belly button!

In Jamaica (and so Google tells me, Mexico) there is a tradition of burying the ‘navel string’ (umbilical cord) at the root of a tree.  This gave the newborn a connection to the earth and the tree.  In recent years there have been initiatives in Jamaica to bring back the tradition, and tie it to the practice of planting a young tree, to both reconnect Jamaicans to their traditions and roots, but also contribute to conservation efforts to fight global warming.  One plan had been to invite those many Jamaicans in the diaspora to come home to participate, but then along came 2020, and so many good plans had to be put on hold. 

They say that the tensile strength (the amount of stress a material can withstand without breaking) of the silk that makes a spider’s web compares to the mid-range strength of steel, and yet it is gossamer fine.  It doesn’t take a lot to make connections, but these connections can withstand so much, if we nurture them and value them.  But it seems we need reminders that we are connected, both to each other, and to the planet on which we live.

It should not take a blow to the head to make us wake up and smell the climate change.  We are hearing on the news that this week has been the hottest week in the world, EVER!  Hundred-year floods are happening every few years.  The climate crisis is not a distant threat, it is upon us now, and it seems we are waiting for some miracle to turn back the tides.

We all have to be involved, not only in doing our own part to reuse, recycle and repurpose and to be more mindful of our carbon footprint, but in agitating our politicians to do something.  Yesterday we ventured out to a local ‘food-truck frenzy’ in a nearby park (should have been more food-trucks if the frenzy were to be believable).  As we gazed at menus and felt a slight breeze in the humid evening, a lady approached us to fill out forms in support of women’s reproductive rights.  She was just an average person, coming out on a muggy South Florida evening and approaching strangers to try to make a difference.  It may not be much, but we never know when our little effort is the last drop of water that makes the bucket overflow.  So please, fill out those online petitions, and support those grass-roots organizations that are fighting for significant action to be taken on any of the important existential issues of today.  We have to fight for our grandchildren and their grandchildren, and all of those to whom we are connected through our umbilical cords.

I wish I had a tree to go to, under which was planted my ‘navel string’.  I am sorry now that I didn’t do it for each of my four children.  But we can still plant trees, even if we do not live long enough to sit under the shade.  And we can nurture our connections to each other.  For we are all one human family.  We are all cousins.

Have a wonderful weekend, Family!

One Love!

Namaste.