Protection

March 24, 2020
Oakland, CA
Cool and cloudy

If you have been to China, you know that the streets are a mass of humanity, crushed shoulder to shoulder, so crowded one can hardly walk. To see the same streets totally empty seems surreal. Our own streets are starting to exhibit that same dreamlike quality.

Since I am almost 89, I am one of the “vulnerable” ones, but I don’t feel vulnerable. I feel protected. Why? I feel protected because so many times in my life I have experienced amazing protection.

When I was working as a social worker in Los Angeles during the riots and was assigned to the office in Watts, the epicenter of racial violence, I experienced so much kindness in the homes I visited. Once, when I was the last to leave the office and my car wouldn’t start, a wild-looking young man with dreadlocks started my car for me. It was then that I realized that looks are deceiving. You can’t judge a man by his dreadlocks.

In all of my years as a social worker, I never got sick, even though my fellow workers were falling ill all around me. In looking back, I have come to the conclusion that immunity is more than white blood cells and a strong body. I never had the strength or stamina of my fellow workers. No, it was Protection, an energy which surrounds us, whether we are aware of it or not, an Energy which is augmented by deep meditation and prayer. The energies, of love, compassion and service may be the best immune system we have.

In these times of existential peril, I suggest that my readers review the occasions in their lives when they have been saved from disaster, and allow love, trust and gratitude to flood their being. At home or out in the street, these are the bulwarks of our immunity.

To our health, safety, and immunity,

Your friend, Dorothy

Visit the Facebook page of my mentor, Rahul Starr Patel.
Recommended reading: Inner Work: Using Dreams and Creative Imagination for Personal Growth and Integration by Robert A. Johnson, Don Hagen, et al.

8 thoughts on “Protection”

  1. Patricia Micciche

    My dearest friend Dorothy, How much I needed to absorb your every written word in this latest post of yours on PROTECTION! Thankyou from my heart! Though I have looked to my inner self as believing and living with love and compassion daily, (that by consciously living by these attributes in our daily human encounters ) then HEALING and IMMUNITY is possible! But during this coronavirus pandemic , I find myself “falling apart” into anxiousness, fear, and a need to recoil , instead of reaching out to others with a trustworthiness , doing what must be done with the assurance of protectiveness and higher guidance.
    This message, Dorothy, honed from all your lived years of wisdom and experience, is guidance itself and helping others. I am totally humbled. Your indebted friend, Patricia

  2. Dorothy what a wonderful post. totally opened me to the many times protections have been guiding and operating during adventures. thanks for the reminder. love – Mae

  3. Thanks for your encouraging and inspiring words Dorothy. Many people are experiencing anxiety and fear during this unprecedented crisis and it really helps to hear words of hope from you. May you continue to be blessed. Lynette

  4. Very apropos. Thank you for this reminder! Iespecially liked the line, “You can’t judge a man by his dreadlocks”!

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