`Aha Update #11.5: "Mask in place before helping others"

"There is no cure for this, there are things that will help. You'll have to avoid everything that makes you sick. It will change your life. This is called MCS Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, or Environmental Illness." - The medical diagnosis I was given ten years ago 

Pete and I both felt the 'course correction' as surely as an earthquake. The funny thing about course corrections is a step to one side or the other is a correction, as much as an about face. What is happening for me is living through the real-time experience of putting on my oxygen mask to keep on. Period.

Yesterday we tried to outrun the wild fire smoke by taking a drive in Scout, the Subaru. The A.C. helps filter the air, and I was also using oxygen. This tactic helped just enough for us to realize the further north we drove the thicker the smoke. (The forests of British Columbia are burning. The wind was blowing from the north.)

"There's no outrunning this one, honey." This was Pete talking. Roger that! We made a course correction and headed home. On the way home we drove along the water on the western side of Whidbey.

"Isn't that where our friend lives?" I'm never real sure where I am on the back roads.

"Yeh, just up the road."

"Can we stop there, I'd like to leave her a check for the cards I bought." Our friend is in the process of raising funds for her safe nest. She also lives with severe chemical sensitivities plus.

"Sure."

Pete found the house and pulled a U at the end of the road and parked. With my face mask on I walked across the street and up to the door, and knocked. Our friend's mom answered. I asked if this is where our friend lived.

"Yes, she is my daughter."

I explained that I had a check for cards I had bought.

"Oh, yes. Thank you." The woman pulled her glasses from her face and looked at my check. "Yvonne."

I answered with a smile under my mask, "She knows me as Mokihana."

"Oh," that seemed to ring a bell for her. "Mokihana and Pete. I know Pete. My daughter's got her mask on today, too."

I left without seeing our friend, and left knowing something. The 'diagnosis' I received 10 years ago did change my life in the countless minute and about face course corrections in a given day, let alone 365 days x 10. What happened yesterday when Pete and I realized we could not outrun this wild fire smoke? It shifted me into L. Low Gear. The slow down Gear.

The slow down and be grateful gear. We couldn't and didn't outrun the environment, and haven't outrun Environmental Illness in these 10 years. But. What we did yesterday was stop along the way to help, with my mask in place.

That's something.

We can slowly keep on that way. The destination is still not clear, course corrections abound, and our mileage varies as my favorite astrologer Satori loves to say.

It's far less lonely this way and THAT is what Pete and I are aiming for.

P.S.
xo J.
P.S.S.
xo Elaine, you are the wind beneath our wings, mahalo nui!

Hang in there with us.
Love,
Moki and Pete

`Aha Update #11 "Ke ala a ke Ku'uku'u" The way of the spider

This title and post was an article originally published on my old blog, Makua o'o, on September 24, 2012. That blog was my first, written to complement Vardo for Two (the original). Vardo for Two chronicled the building of the physical new definition of "a home"; writing Makua o'o reminded me that the spiritual journey as elder in training--for that is what makua o'o means in Hawaiian, is a constant practice. The practice is ongoing.

What prompted me to revisit Ke ala a ke Ku'uku'u? The events of the past few days, and in particular the experience of living with the effects of wild fire smoke sent me searching for kupuna wisdom, elder wisdom. In some traditions across the Earth, 70 is the age of elder infancy, you know some things but there is still much more to life yet to understand. I went searching for an elder further on the path for something good to chew on. I found The Path of the Spider, and Aunty Betty, the kumu and elder who first introduced me and mentored me.

At almost 70 I am barely an infant elder. I look to the source to find my balance as the sand shifts beneath our feet. We scramble to make adjustments, some illusions have been blown up with the Lunar Eclipse yesterday; no clear alternatives yet. " Illusions destroyed. We think we want something, but we’re totally missing out. Why? Because we have it defined all wrong. We’re shooting at the wrong target. In order to get what will truly satisfy, we’re going to have to blow shit up and go on faith." - Satori

Read the original article "Ke ala a ke Ku'uku'u", and learn a little about kumu and elder my teacher Aunty Betty Kawohiokalani Jenkins. Grandmother Spider is an ancient teacher, I look to her for some clues.

What was the Lunar Eclipse like for you?