Last week something caught my eye and my heart as well. It was Krishnamurti in the Ojai magazine, a brief review of his life and teachings, all summed up in a single phrase –

“We have to (or was it you need to) live differently.”

 A wise woman this week asked me the meaning of change. She wanted to know what came up for me when I saw, heard or read that word. I said very simply in response, “life”. The willingness to change, to be with change, to inspire change as well as to ask for, invite, even demand change, is a full-time life… to surrender to what comes, to prepare as best we can and be an ever-adapting species.

This year in many places of California, yet again, we went from drought to intense rains. I currently live in a room, a room of beauty, surrounded by a few precious pictures, paintings by loved ones, gifts from community, sacred objects all to me. Just outside is a small, tiled deck serving as a roof above the patio below. When the big rains came, so did the leakage – the runoff – and not unlike the streets in Los Angeles, the water ran off and into places it was not “meant to go” …places not so beneficial to the living habitat. The damage to our walls of so-called protection and beauty will now need big repair, costing thousands. A roofer finally came to take a look and created a different run off.  Sadly, it didn’t help, and more quite different kinds of work will be needed.

 I sit with this little life reality here …. It seems a mirror of a much bigger water story going on today.

Not all so many days later, we walked into our kitchen, where of course, many meals are prepared…our hearth. Just around sunset at the end of a long day, we came home to find water all over the floor. The refrigerator had died, a model we had “inherited” when we moved in, one that looked shiny, new, larger than any I had ever used or had before. Quite luxurious, I would say. After working quickly to save all of our precious goodies inside, we made something to eat, so grateful that we had coolers. We knew how to camp out of our garage. We even had 4 blocks of ice already to put in. Prepared for sure on some levels yet not prepared to hear the cost of repairing or rebuilding such. The verdict is still out but we are talking of 15k to 20 for a new one, if you can even find one. The recent tariffs have changed both cost and availability. Impacts come in local and global ways. For sure, we would choose repair and today we find out if that is even possible. According to our neighbor who had a similar one – it took many days to do just that, as well as many thousands of dollars. That for sure, is not in our trim monthly budget nor in our time estimate for departing soon to work in Europe.

Change comes when it comes. We can still find and buy ice a few blocks away. Several blocks will keep us well fed for the next week. I cannot help but feel into the bigger story i.e. we can’t buy ice up in the Arctic. As we titled our Walking Water storybook some years ago, The Waters are Rising.

All of this happened on what’s called Good Friday, the day Jesus sacrificed his life for us, as the story goes.  So, what is being sacrificed today? To wake us up? To wake humanity up? What do I, do we need to sacrifice? How do we need to live differently in the change? This little local event is leading me to assess what it is I truly nee, what I am willing or ready to live without – much of what the modern world convinces us to live with. It is yet again a reminder, a stark reminder of our planetary story.

This needed attention to water, this needed repair or redirection of our systems, for water to not be wasted, or cause unanticipated and unnecessary damage; our fridge’s and our planets temperature control panel needing to be changed for our food to not be destroyed; this reframing now essential, of our hearth, our place to eat and be nourished.….

This very same week we have been asking for help, which has come at last, to fix the beautiful water fountain outside on our small patio. It too, stopped working. The birds love it as do we. There, no water is easily flowing through, while a few feet away there are puddles forming. The plants! They either have either too much or too little water; again, a reminder of what is the case for many places, peoples and animals. We knew and now have had confirmed that the whole irrigation system needs repair. Another system, another human made system, interacting with other living beings here needs attention.

The water story is everywhere even where the danger of fire seems to be the real big story in everyone’s hearts and minds. Only 60 miles away, the water flow and hydrant system is still being blamed for the inability to respond rapidly to the devastating fires in LA. Trump says even more water needs to flow from other places into LA…. as we, Walking Water continue to walk and pray, that the pumping of such out of Payahuunadu, ends. We stand with the Indigenous leaders.

LA like many other peoples and places, could live differently, could work with the water that comes and redirect it, could become far more sustainable than it is today. And many individuals and organizations are now coming together and focused to make this happen, while others understandably are seeking shelter after losing their homes to fire. The story, as it has been, has been interrupted for sure and now…again we, I do say we, are in the change.

The Pacific Palisades fire coastline is about 10 miles long from Venice to Malibu, now much of it flattened to ashes and rubble. As I see that and feel that I can’t help but also bring to mind, the coast of Gaza. It is about the same mileage, now flattened to rubble as well not by fire of the kind in LA but by our weapons, and I do say our weapons. The stark similarities along with the  huge political, social, racial and economic differences within what has happened there and continues to happen are enormous. I need not continue with the analogy, only to write that these images and nightmares are with me.

 

I met with a community of people this week up here on the 40-acre ridge that was first put aside as a place for Krishnamurti to live and teach. I asked them, what would they put in the center of their attention in this new chapter of stewardship. Some said love of life, others said the land, others the children. All seemed good answers and indicative of their care. I responded yes to all …as long as water was available, as long as fire was sacred, as long as air was here to breathe, as long as this earth was here to hold, heal and nourish us.

The day after this meeting was Earth Day. I woke from a dream just before the light came. I was in a huge earthquake with skyscrapers all around me – tumbling, collapsing. I kept moving, moving with my body close to the earth, somehow miraculously unharmed. And yet there were now huge chasms and canyons I saw forming between myself and my loved ones. There was a terrifying loneliness in the vastness of the devastation, I witnessed. It shook me awake.

And so, I write this morning before the sun rises when birds calling is the waking sound, before the cars begin coming. I am grateful to hear that so clearly in this town, in this two-bedroom condo, only one block off the Main Street. Though those sounds maybe are not the wild backyard nature I know in the Eastern Sierra…even here I am “waking up” with the earth, water, fire and air so strongly in my sleeping dreams, so strongly in my everyday reality.

Preparing as best I can inside and out for the change, the systems break down whether it be electrics or irrigation… Water capture, water drainage – words don’t quite express the change needed – the call to live differently. Today, we go to another town and hospital nearby to have another system checked – my husband’s pacemaker. The doctors say that there is some “anomaly” that showed up in March and that they best try to find out why. Yet another essential system supporting life for him to live longer – may be not functioning. I can’t help but feel given all unfolding within both the bigger and our little story, how could there not be a skip of the heartbeat, a faster beating heart, a change in blood pressure?

I pray for him, for my heart as well, that all will be well. But even more that we will have the grace, the courage, the love and care for each other and all around to be with whatever the news is, the change, the life as it comes…. to be with the systems breaking, the repairs needed, to find and create the fortitude and means that are possible… the willingness to live differently as Krishnamurti so wisely guided us to do, both inside our minds and as well I sense, on this planet earth. I pray I may have the heart to keep changing as long as I am here. To not only be with the change but as well to take action, to bring the changes that are needed. And then there is that old saying attributed to Ghandi “to be the change we want to see”.