“Beloved, let us love one another.”

1 John 4:7

The first virtual Burning Man ended last night.  And when I think about this past week, I think to myself, “I was so made for Burning Man.  Or rather…Burning Man was made for me.”  I did not know that I was a true Burner at heart.  But now I do.  Let me share with you why this is.

I got on a zoom with a camp that is called Pink Heart.  There were about 40 people on the call.  Since the pandemic hit, this camp has been gathering every  day for the past 5 months, at 12pm and 6pm just to share gratitudes.  Here are the ground rules:  you can’t complain about the day, or what’s not working right, or how something is missing in your life.  You can share your gratitude for that moment and put that heart energy into your day.  It’s really a beautiful concept.  I had joined this zoom call last Thursday at noon and apparently if we had been on the playa (desert floor) this would have been the day that we all would have dressed up in pink and rode our bikes calling out to people, “I love you!”  So because we could not be together in the desert, we decided to do a virtual bike ride together.  

We all took 10 minutes to dress in pink, get on our actual physical bikes, and ride in our neighborhoods with our iphones still tuned into the zoom call and call out to people we saw and say, “I love you!”  I put on a simple pink t-shirt, but other people had gone all out with pink tutus and pink balloons and some had even dyed their hair pink.  It was hilarious!  I saw one pink parade of about 4 bikers on the zoom call who were in San Diego going right down town yelling “I love you!” and so many cars were honking their horns and people were yelling “I love you!” back.  It was hilarious to witness!  That scene was much different compared to my isolated experience on my Sacramento street where I could only ride up and down in front of my house because if I turned the corner I lost wifi and the zoom call.  So I contentedly rode back and forth just enjoying the communal experience with my iphone in my bike basket.  I had no one to yell “I love you” to except my new friends on the call with a big grin on my face.  And then I noticed my neighbor’s dog who I know is old, blind and deaf and very far from home.  He kept leaping away if I got near and he was content to just sniff around.  

I rode my bike to my friend’s house and told her that I saw her dog around the corner.  She was shocked.  She didn’t know he got of the house.  She grabbed the leash and met me where her dog was hovering around and she said, “Oh thank God you saw him!  If you hadn’t, there’s no way that we would have known where he had gone.  We had no idea he had got out!”  And I said, “Well, you can thank Burning Man for finding your dog because I’m out here riding my back telling people that I love them.” She said, “What?”  And I said, “Yeah, I’m on a zoom call with 40 people all around the world putting love into the world.”  I showed her the phone with all of the smiling faces and I said, “Hey guys! We just did an Amber Alert for a lost dog!  If I hadn’t been out here doing this bike ride in front of my house, my friend would have been so upset that she couldn’t find her dog.”  My friend looked at all of the smiling faces and she cried out to everyone, “Oh my goodness!  Thank you so much!  Thank you so much for being out here and for helping me find my dog!”  And everyone on the zoom call all decked out in pink cried out in joy that the Prodigal dog was found and then they all intermittently called out, “I love you!”  And she yelled back, “I love you, too!”

It was just a great moment of love, joy and gratitude being brought simultaneously into the world.  Even though we all couldn’t be on the playa at Burning Man, we brought the playa, literally, all around the world and to a quiet Sacramento street.  This showed me that Burning Man doesn’t have to be just once a year, for one week, isolated in the desert.  This experience showed me that Burning Man can happen every day, right where I live. So with that being said…I love you!