Comfort You | The Direction of Intention

Put It Into Practice [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 16, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

If you follow the lyric of Van Morrison’s song, Comfort You, all the way through, it works a perfect circle: when the weight on your shoulders is too much, I’ll be there. When the weight on my shoulders is too much, you’ll be there.

When the power went out on Friday morning, with temperatures falling, a blizzard on the way, and the power company nowhere in sight, we did something that reminded me (again and again) how extraordinarily lucky we are. We texted friends to tell them that we were in a possible untenable situation. Their responses? Come stay with us. Do you need anything? What can we do? Questions of comfort and offers of support. Throughout the dark night and into the next day they regularly checked-in with us. We never felt alone or without a safety net.

It matters. When you’re sitting in the dark wearing layers of clothes beneath your coat, a single candle lighting the room, the circumstance is not dire when there are friends offering a warm bed or making sure you have what you need to get through the cold night.

It matters. When the power company arrived just before the storm, when they told us that they couldn’t reconnect our house because the downed tree that snapped the power pole that yanked the power-mast on our house, bending it beyond repair – and we had only a few minutes to find an electrician who would come-right-now on a late Saturday afternoon in the snow and replace a power-mast before the power company left…an urgent call to friends produced three possibilities. The new mast was installed not a moment too soon.

We are lucky. We have extraordinary neighbors. We have extraordinary friends. We share the weight.

And it left me wondering what is so hard to grok. A storm that takes out the power reduces all complexities into obvious simplicities. We all do better when we share the weight. We can get through any adversity when we show up for each other. We recently witnessed it on a grand scale in Minneapolis. A nation is no different than a neighborhood, when we share the weight, when we show up for each other – rather than exploit each other – there is no hardship that we cannot endure. In fact, we thrive in difficult circumstances when we have helping hands at the ready, when we know that we can count on each other to show up for each other.

The challenge facing our nation is not red or blue, it is a manufactured divide. It is the powerful elite, The Epstein Class, exploiting the people for personal gain. They get a massive tax break and we lose our rights and our social safety net. They need us to believe that we exploit each other, rather than support each other, so we do not see how they exploit us. The guys who showed up in the snow to set a new pole and bring power back to the neighborhood were not concerned about who we voted for or where we worship or the color of our skin; they were concerned about whether or not we would freeze through another night. They made sure that we were taken care of. With our neighbors, we stood on our porch and applauded them when the lights came back on.

My thought on healing this sadly distracted and falsely divided nation? Listen to Van Morrison’s song. And then put it into practice.

read Kerri’s blogpost about COMFORT