Heading into the full moon in Libra one year later now. The human world strangely paused–not our minds and spirits, but our outward activities severely circumscribed. Pandemic.

I knew something was coming. Knew it back in 2002, after having a breakthrough experience. I felt something big was coming that would change everything, possibly even wipe out human life as we know it, but it mostly felt hopeful. Back then it felt joyous, like humans were on the brink of a revolution in consciousness. The times were dangerous for sure, but we would wake up. We would turn on a dime.

In early April 2016 I sat on my side stoop in Glens Falls, NY, and had another kind of experience. It was the cooling evening of a kissing-warm day. The trees were budding and the birds were singing, and the sun was setting in glorious yellow-orange and blue. Sitting there on those steps, witnessing all that glory, I suddenly felt I was one of the last humans to behold spring unfolding. It wasn’t a thought, it wasn’t an abstract musing. It was real, and terrifying, and humbling, and sad.

That was a bad year. We lost a lot of our culture keepers that year. Prince and Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Harper Lee, Alan Rickman, Elie Wiesel, Gene Wilder, Carrie Fisher. The list goes on. The Western world lost a lot of culture keepers, and the United States publicly lost its moral compass. Despite his drawing huge crowds and running a strong campaign funded by The People of the United States–through multitudinous small donations–the media ignored Bernie Sanders and focused on DJTrump. And despite the overwhelming public support for Bernie Sanders, the DNC gave us Hilary Clinton. And despite his delusionary campaign promises and openly demeaning, even disgusting, behavior toward disabled people, women, and give him time anyone you could possibly put in front of him, Donald (he tells it like it is) Trump became the 45th president of the United States.

It was a surreal year, 2016, and all that summer I couldn’t shake the sense of being on the Titanic when all the rich people were still asking for hot toddys and complaining about putting on life jackets. Except it wasn’t only rich people, it was most people.

Since then the feeling of something impending has grown stronger and stronger. I don’t fly as a rule–the last time I’d been on a flight was 2011 for my brother-in-law’s wedding, and before that 2001 for my grandmother’s funeral. It never made a lot of sense to me for people to fly all the time, for a whim, but as the years went by it got so that any venture that put me more than an easy drive from my family felt like I was taking a chance late in a game of musical chairs. When the music stopped, I wanted to be home.

However, last winter found me by chance with a bunch of Delta miles I had not purchased but were redeemable only by me, and my mother kept telling me her house in Arizona was open as home base. I planned a solo trip for April, during the full moon, and booked Air BnB for some camping equipment and an inside scoop on where to primitive camp in Sedona, where I was led on that lovely, healing morning ramble.

The point of all this is to say that I’m a sensitive. There are subtle subtexts that play along with the more apparent energies of this world, and people do not usually speak about them. It drives me crazy sometimes, because I know I’m not the only one who sees or feels these subtexts, but the dominant mode is to ignore them. Out of politeness or a sense of how inconvenient and inefficient it would be to address their existence. But now that the game of musical chairs has stopped I’ve been feeling a lot of fear and intensity, and I know it’s not all my own. The past few years have been incredibly wild, pushing the envelope of our ability to swallow one more inconceivable thing over and over again–but people have always had their busyness, their distractions, their vacations to keep reality at bay, and now we have been grounded with ourselves and the crazy news.

So I’m feeling all this intensely and my mother, who is a lifelong Republican, emailed me to inquire about my health. I responded:

…the whole thing is very heavy and it wears on me. I think it’s the not knowing what is going to happen, and seeing every person in my life as possibly gone all of a sudden. Seeing everything really, as possibly gone. It isn’t just the virus, it’s the whole world and the changing weather, the earthquakes and fires and floods. Humanity has tipped things too far, and nature needs to find balance again.

When you asked me to go to London with you, even if I did have a passport I didn’t want to go because I’ve been feeling this coming for a long time. I didn’t know what or when, but I knew something was coming that would likely shut down the world–and any chance of return.

And she wrote back:

You have such an innate sense of oneness with this world and such a sense of responsibility that I am not surprised you had strong feelings about what was to come. I am not a biblical scholar by any means but there is the prediction of a catastrophic end to the world as we know it. I choose to believe it is a major event that will bring us all to a place of true beginning – a reset button – if you will – that allows us all to make the changes we need to in order to move forward in a different and more positive direction.

I hear sadness and some fear in your words and I guess I have a more positive take on this – as horrible as it is. I think of this as it is – it is an opportunity to come together and restructure our lives and the world we live in. At 78 years young I am not afraid of dying, just very sad at what I will miss in my loved ones’ lives. My world (life) will definitely end but you have so many years ahead to work toward the changes that need to happen for us to continue to live in this world.

You and I are at opposite sides of the political spectrum but share common core values – but we can all come together through this. This isn’t political – this is changing the world.

When I read my mother’s words, I thought of my experience in the desert, under the April full moon, and knew it was for sharing, not for keeping. These experiences of the subtleties of life, the subtexts, the undercurrents, have been scoffed at by the mainstream and kept hidden too long. If even one person reads my account and understands they are not alone, are never alone in this beautiful, magical world, then my purpose has been served. But make no mistake–my love for people has its roots in loving this Earth. I write to express my re-learning how to live in harmony with all of life. As part of remembering who we are.

It’s come to the time when we see what is essential–we recognize what is essential. We may have varying needs based on personal proclivities (to be honest, I’d been hoarding notebooks and shampoo for months before this happened), but certain things I think we can agree that everyone needs. Clean water and clean (not poisoned) food. A safe place to live and develop meaningful relationships. We also need natural, unspoiled places, because the balance of life depends on these. Trees, animals, water, the insects, the fungi. The hard truth is, humans could become extinct just as easily as humans have wiped out many brothers and sisters with our uncontrolled “I, me, mine” and “I want.”

We have spent too long chained to an agenda that does not serve the Earth and its future generations. We may disagree on many things, but the essential truth is before us.

It is time to fight for this Earth.