THROUGH SHADES OF GRAY TO LIGHT

We recently came back from three wonderful weeks in Arizona, including an intimate Thanksgiving with our friends.  It seemed that we had only been away a few days even though our last visit was in April. The summer that followed that visit was loaded with physical and emotional challenges. On the positive side, the film about Mable Dodge Lujan and PQ’s great grandfather Tony Lujan has been winning film festival awards across the country since its first public showing in Santa Fe, the exhibit at the Harwood Museum by the many artists brought to Taos by Mabel was also a great success. 

PQ’s health went down quickly after we returned in April, then we went to the National Jewish Hospital in Denver for many tests. This is perhaps the foremost lung institute in the country. The doctor there put PQ on Ofev, one of two major new drugs for pulmonary fibrosis. It isn’t a cure but slows down the advancement of the disease. The doctor’s intention was to give PQ enough time to get on a transplant list. However, the passage of time is speeding up. The earth seems to be turning faster, the older we become. It doesn’t seem right, just when we need more time. 

PQ’s dear friend Dr. Gary Arthur came to visit from Laguna Beach California after we came back from Denver. He was shocked at PQ’s declining condition and immediately put him on a number of supplements.  PQ lost 20 pounds and gained much vitality after the Ofev and supplements became part of his routine.  These were pluses.  On the minus side, one of PQ’s blood tests revealed a problem with his kidney function. After running some tests, his Dr. concluded that the kidney problem had been going on for some time, and may in fact have been a trigger for the pulmonary fibrosis.

The reentry to Taos seems to be harder each time we leave. This time we had an appointment at UNM Hospital in Albuquerque at 8 a.m. This is a challenge when you live 110 miles away, so friends Miles and Gail invited us to stay with them in Santa Fe and this cut an hour and a half off of the time. Nevertheless, it was a very cold morning and I had a cold coming on.  We were both also underdressed for the temperature plunge.  I got one of the worst colds I’ve had in many years and PQ came out with a nasty cough, exacerbated when he performed several songs at the Christmas gathering on Bent Street the next evening. We spent most of the day at the hospital and I had to keep running to the car four blocks away in the cold for new oxygen tanks. The rest of the week was a deep gray blur as I imagine life at the bottom of a lake would be.  Sights and sounds were dim muffled and a bit wavy. I’m just beginning to make my way to the surface again. 

 Right now PQ is working out designs for drums and jackets. He is especially inspired this winter and it has become a very important part of our income, even though art is unpredicatable.  Our limitations are especially annoying this winter. Coming back from Arizona was a drop into the dark cold reality of winter and responsibilities. All of our houses, the old pueblo house on the reservation and this in town house, need repairs and we have neither the money nor energy to fix them. PQ has been talking of selling the ancestral home on the Pueblo that Tony Lujan gave to his father as a wedding gift to avoid any further deterioration. This is sad but time and weather are taking their toll and it would be better if someone had it who could properly maintain it. 

I find myself experiencing such a flood of feelings that it is hard to function this past week. It’s as if the whole year is suddenly demanding my attention because I have lived it incompletely and it demands respect and closure. Denial, delay and escapism are not working and I feel that my skin is being pealed back to expose raw nerves. I’ve noticed that every time I make an advance in awareness and spiritual clarity, next will be a backlash of all the unfelt sadness, anger, fear and disappointments that have not been healed, or incompletely resolved. It is false to expect spiritual and emotional development to be easy and pain free. It is not an escape but a transformation and often dismantles us before reorganizing us. This winter I have experienced this sequence with especially powerful effects.

As I watch the violence of TV news and the darkness of the brutal sex, blood, explosion and destruction in popular media, it concerns me that viewers are becoming numb to all the subtle sensibilities that honor life and compassion. I remember that the Black Smoke Beings feed on raw negative sensations and create addicts of negativity to assure their source of energy. We have real enemies that wish to enslave us and keep us from evolving.  We are not natural enemies of each other. Those who manipulate us toward hatred, fear and vengeance are never allies, but manipulative predators feeding on us.

Christmas is about the victory of life and the defeat of death. This is true of both the pagan sources of the Yule and evergreen tree and story of a divine child who will grow to be an example of triumph over evil and death. Of course, the dark ones have distorted this message and attempted to abstract it into another deadly poison.  The longest night, the lowest light, the cold and wind are heaviest on the edge of l light.

It is important during extreme times to avoid focusing our energy fighting evil and destruction. Of course it is also important not to be a Pollyanna but to focus power on what is wrong gives energy and form to the issues that we wish to disolve. We manifest whatever we give the most attention to.