Points

  At one point in my travels I got exhausted (2007).  And, I got to go stay with my parents (this was before my Mom passed away of ALS).  I was physically zonked and also mentally wiped out.  The bigness of the world had me the tiny person.  Although I'd stayed faithful to God, I'd also gotten out of touch with the...not perfection, but, the true reaching and receiving of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, all God's Saints and Holy Angels through the Sacraments and Mass.  

  So I started doing Church again.  But then I began having gripping nightmares of evil coming for me.  I told my mama.  And she explained her artistic vision of staying in our Jesus Bubbles.  As a painter and sculptor of sea and mermaids and able to put ephemera in an artistic style with a "touch" her suggestions always had the magic of imagine that.  I could.  I could conceptualize all Christians in their Jesus Bubbles bubbling around in a world of entropy, chaos, and destruction.  But the nightmares didn't stop right away.

  Mom kind of sighed, looked at me, and said, "I bubble you." She knew I just didn't have any more strength at that time, and my confidence in myself was low, so this was not having as much faith in Jesus as is possible.  "You do????" I asked like the recipient of a grand prize or a vote or being knighted.  "Yes I do." I'm still not sure if she shared her Jesus Bubble or restored mine with a mother's love but between my bubble and yelling/directing Jesus to the troubles in the dreams, the nightmares stopped.

  Recently, when my truck broke down I was immediately flummuxed.  A person pulled the bubble trick on me through an act of kindness.  Had an extra blanket and the reassurance that God's got us!  Here in WNC, post election, there is admission of I'm tired.  And we all have times like that.  It's not "giving up" to admit it and to take care.  God knows, it has been hurdle after hurdle after hurdle.  All the while life keeps happening...birth and death, routine and surprise, tending and destruction...the off-button is only so much in our control.

  We are strong and resilient, but we are also always needing to care and be part of caring too.

  Also, around that time it became essential for people to step up full force with economic prowess.  Mom and I had a moment.  We were vacuuming the basement where she and a brother were having a workshop and doing Ebay work.  I was in slow gear and Mom realized, I've got to make dinner!  I grabbed the base of the vacuum and started up the stairs, but was so tired I started tipping backwards.  She propped me up with the hose and arm and pushed me up the rest of the way.  It was just a moment, but it was so representative of my mother's Republican spirit.

  We are tired but we've no good choice about facing the future.  We are also in that rather awkward space between helping one another and propping and pushing for people to become again untethered to crisis.  Here is where nobody likes an authoritarian boss, but we do have to doubledown on managing.  It triggers emotions for people.  So, I think, the more we can understand ourselves as authoring these next chapters together as individuals we'll be able to get America up out of the basement and into....Spring is six weeks ahead, as someone put it the other day.