John McCain: Confinement

We seem to be just at the beginning of the shelter in place directives, and I have started to feel their weight. Senator McCain had something to say.

Ann: John, I hear you out there, can you help us with this?

John: Well, Annie, I can offer up my experience, you‘ll have to decide for yourself if it helps. But I do know a thing or two about confinement. And you, my friends, are looking at a spate of it which is foreign to the way of life that any of you have been used to.

Ann: Yeah, but it’s nothing to what you experienced.

John: Yes, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you. No, it’s not the same, your body is not being tortured, your legs and arms broken, and the rest of you brutalized in ways too gruesome to mention.

But that in no way minimizes the challenges of today’s changing landscape. You are facing separation from nearby and far-flung friends and family with no idea of when you can resume the rituals of family and societal life that mark the passing of days and seasonal celebrations. Your financial bedrock is no longer solid with its resurrection uncertain both in kind and in quantity. The loneliness you face in actuality or in prospect is extreme. This is nothing to discount, and I do not discount it for you.

Ann: You don’t see us as wimps after all that you went through?

John: Annie, what I learned in Nam after those years of hell is that everybody has their reasons for feeling the way they do, reacting the way they do. Respect is due each and every human soul, for no one of us truly know what the other has suffered, and all of us suffer. The odd thing about it is that in the depth of that suffering you come to see either the joy in the life that you have been given or you just let go into nothingness or, worse yet, bitterness and anger.

I am asking each of you to hold on, to reach out, to have faith that it will get better because it will. And nothing will be quite so desperate ever again.

You may have noticed that I managed to have a pretty good time doing whatever I was doin’, and I’m still doin’ that now. Ask Auntie, read what she said in that post below where she said don't discount the joy. Because each little piece of it means more to you that it ever did before you came face to face with your separation and loneliness. Nothing is taken for granted ever again, and laughing is the great equalizer more than any virus.

That little blue flower you saw on your walk becomes the most beautiful thing you ever saw, the ducks on the pond are a miracle all to themselves. And when you talk to your loved ones, their little irritabilities won’t loom so large and can make you smile instead of groan - well, most of the time....

Ann: So what advice to you have for us if this keeps on for a long time?

John: Keep connecting with one another. Sing out the window to a neighbor if you have one, start your chat lines and skype sessions. I bet some of you guys could get up a poker game online if you wanted to. That’s what I’d do. You can do it online, you know.

And don’t forget the Lord, the Buddha, the Great Spirit, the Great One through whom we all connect in Source. This is the power, the unifying force that will get us through these days of separation.

Whatever you can do to join with others to acknowledge your common lives in this Great Spirit, take the time to do so. You are not alone. My colleagues in arms, confined and abused as we were, found ways to connect and support one another through our faith. Each little connection was a lifeline.

My friends, you are connected to each other in ways you cannot imagine. These days of separation can allow you to connect on soul deep levels with each other. Patience and caring are the watch words as you reach out.

Annie, I am ever grateful for this channel because I can let you know that I am fine, and you are too, each one of you, living or dead, and you will find yourself in God and each other if you will let it happen.

March 31, 2020

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