Episode 301 - Emotional Rescue

About this Episode

Feelings cover both the personal and the general. They cover both the individual and the collective. So you feel deeply when you are loved and loved back, and you feel deeply when a cause -- political, social, or cultural -- captures your heart's allegiance. We are seeing this dramatically within the current mood and its fiery passions.

But wait: I was here before!

I was "here", in the Spring of 1968 when the match was lit by the assassination of Dr. King. I saw personally the inferno that became Northeast Washington (D.C.), and was even stopped and threatened because I broke the curfew. Everything "normal" came to a halt.

Then again, in the Spring of 1970, in the aftermath of Kent State, everything seemed to stop. Classes cancelled, round-the-clock demonstrations; and again I got stopped one night for breaking the curfew. That was twice in two years.

Yet oddly, it is not those famous events, Dr. King's assassination and Kent State, that I remember the most. What I really, indelibly, remember from that time is relationships at risk, reconciliations gone wrong, and driving in the rain listening to "No Time" by The Guess Who.

Your life is like a Doppler map on your weather app. The Doppler shows where the storm and the front is at its most severe. You are able to see the "cells" of intense weather, and where the wind and rain are at their worst.

Consider your life, from the day you were born right through to today, as a Doppler map. The times of greatest stress, looking back, show "sun spots" of intense activity -- good and bad. And while they may not have been the actual crises of political warfare and lockdowns that you weathered, those crises "brought up", from deep inside you, electric storms of anger, unfairness and rejection -- not to mention horizons of calm, justice, and connection.

In assessing where you are right now, weigh the Big Issues of the current scene. They are Big. Bigger still, though, are the inward storms, both for shattering and for fulfilling. Listen to "Question" by The Moody Blues.