Guest Post by Jim Jackson
In reviewing my personal journal of 2020, I found the following enlightening entry of April 16th, written during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It has now become a great dislike to go to the grocery store, although I’m so grateful to have that opportunity: thankful for the food being there and being able to afford purchasing it. I’m also thankful for the producers, the factory workers, the field workers, the shippers, and the store workers for risking their health during their hard work so that we, the fortunate ones, might eat comfortably.
I believe their kindness and hard work- service for us has not been lost in the eyes of Spirit – or God, if you wish to say it that way. I believe that inwardly, and for now unseen, their consciousness is being lifted. More Souls are stepping up.
At Trader Joe’s the wait in line to get in the store has been 20 to 30 minutes and 10 more waiting to get to the checkout counter, so with travel and shopping time, about 1 1/2 hours.
Yesterday I went to Safeway. There was no wait to get in, but a good, 20 minutes wait at the counter. Three counters were not open. It made me wonder if there was a shortage of workers. I had seen the sign outside “now hiring”. If getting customers in and out efficiently and quickly was a goal, this was not the way.
These times are just inconveniences, though, not something that should ruin someone’s day. It can be a positive time of observation, or as we used to call it, “People watching”.
As I waited in the checkout line, about 10 feet in front of me was an attractive young woman with her one-year-old son attempting to climb out of the cart and her three-year-old son jumping and swinging all over everything in reach, and it appeared, she might again be pregnant. The boys were just being young boys, before any kind of reasoning would work. Other than contaminated hands, they were not in harms way.
I truly admired how patient, caring, and loving she was handling the entire had-to-be stressful 20 minute situation. There was never a sharp word. No threats. No slaps. She just calmly went about doing her five or six, all at once jobs, with kind and soft words and actions, while also unloading her large cart load of groceries Over $150 worth.
As my turn arrived, and I plopped my pork chops and chicken on the counter, I casually said to the clerk, ‘That young mother really has her hands full.”
The clerk, a middle aged woman, replied, “And she certainly is a sweetie.” She had then just added an “exclamation point” to my own feelings!
This 20 minute experience, another waking dream, was immediately appreciated by me. It was only a splinter of a glimpse into that woman’s lifetime, but to me, her actions, in a time of surely stress and anxiety, gave me the strong impression she was someone further up the spiritual ladder; an individual Soul already at a higher level of consciousness. Although she did not speak any high spiritual proclamations, which would mean nothing anyway, it is her actions which count and their intentions and expectations.
That was a very fitting climax to my visit to the grocery store. At the meat counter, the deli chicken department, in the isles being restocked, and those gathering carts outside—all those employees, I told face-to-face, but at least 6 feet away, of my thanks and appreciation for their working, for being on the front line and risking their health. Each one thanked me back for saying that and meaning it.
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“Spiritual unfoldment can be found in the little things of life. It is in the small events, such as goodness in the daily things of life, being kind to a child, speaking softly to those who can be hurt easily, non-injury to a fellow creature, and the giving of one’s self to others who are without the essentials of life, that spiritual unfoldment can be found.”
—The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, Book Two, Page 201
“Life is sometimes like a grade B movie. You wouldn’t want to walk out in the middle of it, but you wouldn’t want to sit through it again.
—Ted Turner
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Jim Jackson enjoys reading, writing, and sharing his experiences with those in his community and friends. He still has an interest in tennis, he says.
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