THE SPACE…BETWEEN

My favorite contemporary “spiritual philosopher”, Charles Eisenstein, says that we are in “the space between stories”.  We have left behind the world as we knew it, the one we thought would last forever, and we are so steeped in upheaval and change, that we do not yet know the world of our future.  We are in between.

We have a chance now, a huge opportunity, to create a different world, a more beautiful world, one we have perhaps only (or never) imagined.  We have a chance now to come together, to care for each other and Mother Earth.

Here is the Earth I love.

And here are two stories from my own “space between”:

A few weeks ago we discovered two dogs leashed to a line tied between two trees.  They were on the edge of the field on the other side of the wall behind our house.  We could see them when we walked up to our roof (mirador) and we could hear one of them barking a high-pitched yip – relentlessly.  For 20 hours straight.  Something wasn’t right.  It’s rainy season for us and the dogs had no shelter, no food or water.

I contacted a nearby Mexican neighbor who lives next to the field and asked if he knew what we might do.  Then I saw other neighbors who were quite concerned.  None of us liked the noise but mostly we were worried about the dogs.  One neighbor contacted a dog rescue representative who started working on it right away.

It turned out that the field is rented by an elderly farmer who counts on his corn crop for his own survival.  He’d tied the dogs out to scare away the squirrels that would want to eat his corn seed.  A mystery to us as we could see squirrels scampering through the field, out of reach of the dogs, enjoying themselves thoroughly.  (Everyone has a story.)

The result was that two neighbors bought houses for the dogs then several of us chipped in to buy a month’s worth of food for them.  Around here stray, hungry dogs are such a problem that pet stores will divide up large bags of food and give a special price to the rescue people.  The farmer wasn’t happy about someone (even another Mexican) complaining to him, of course, but within a few days he released the dogs.  The noise and the abuse stopped.  The corn crop is growing.  The dogs have food and shelter.

Like so many other places right now, school is happening on television and online.  There are many children here who can’t afford internet or a device to use for their lessons.  It turned out that our gardener’s children had access to wifi (in a home of 20 people with 8 men working, chipping in to pay for internet service) but no device other than an old cellphone.

I put out a plea on our local Facebook page asking if anyone had a tablet or computer to sell for a reasonable price.  The responses that came in were either complicated laptops or high prices.  Then out of the blue a good friend, who’d just upgraded, cleaned up and donated their “old” laptop to us.  Ben threw in his extra printer and some ink.  César and Noemi’s three children are now able to “attend” school.

After this happened I decided to ask my housekeeper (who speaks no English) if she had what she needed for her three children for school.  Shyly she answered No.  Again I put out a plea for low priced or donated devices.  This time nothing.  So I sent out an email to friends here.  Within days I had enough to buy a simple, new computer at Costco.

I was so excited about giving Alba the computer, including a note listing the names of all who had contributed, that she and I were both almost in tears as I handed it over.  Through Google Translate I was able to ascertain that she does have wifi and knew someone who could help her set it (the computer) up.  Two days later I received WhatsApp messages from each of her three children – en español – thanking us all for the computer.  Tears of joy filled my eyes.  It felt so good to be able to help.

So these are the stories that make up my “space between”, the stories that remind you that we are all in this together, all here to help each other in whatever way we can.  I’m sure you have your own stories.  This could be our new, more beautiful world, where all are equal, where those who have more give more, where we laugh and cry together, smile at each other, and understand that love, respect, understanding, consideration, and compassion are the stories of the  world we have only imagined.  That’s the new world I want to see.