We've been doing this podcast for six years, and meeting up weekly for 12. When Maverick, John McCain left the stage, he showed up a number of times. He asked us to send a private message to his daughter, which I protested I had no way of doing that, and he said "You'll figure it out." I did - but have no way of knowing the reaction. When I was writing my first feature "Three For the Road" I met with John's chief of staff, so I did have some background information about him most don't know. But in terms of his showing up on our podcast, each time he shows up to talk about politics, often bringing former Presidents along with him. As Jennifer notes in the show, when he showed up to speak, she was reluctant to go down that path, since we rarely let politics enter the frame. (Why? Well, it shuts down a person's ability to hear messages of love from the flipside when they're stressing over events of the day.) For fans of the podcast, they know what we interviewed the current President's father and brother on the podcast, as well as the son of the previous President - Jennifer was only answering questions I was giving to "first names only" - and didn't know who "Fred" "Beau" referred to. What we heard from the family members of those politicians was the same - onstage we struggle to understand why things happen, but offstage we can see the wheelworks, understand what role a person plays onstage, and how that affects others. That being said, John in this podcast said he didn't want to give air time to the person she was fearing we'd speak of - but wanted to talk about how change affects the planet, affects the individual. That we're going through a period of change, and that's okay, that's a good thing. It's what we do while we're onstage. We learn and move forward. But it's also a conversation about not attaching emotions or fear to change - it's the most constant part of existence. And we also spoke to a friend of mine's dog who passed recently. It was my old boss Robert Towne's dog Hira who introduced us to the idea we could communicate with animals offstage - he's featured in BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE FLIPSIDE and has shown up in many sessions to talk about how "animals understand incarnation but humans do not." In this instance, Lulu said she'd "been with her owner in a previous life" and that "there is room for another dog in her owner's life - and that she would be instrumental in finding that dog (as well as share some of the frequency of that dog.) Easily the most profound part of this discussion today - because learning that not only are our pets aware of us, they report finding us, they report coming back to be with us, standing by us, being connected to us - and that we can communicate with them. So while one is going through the process of voting this week, remember that our teachers, guides, loved ones, classmates, council members and animals... are all rooting for us. Worth contemplating.
