Cathy's Blog!

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Wisdom

Velcro was patented in 1958. I discovered it in the 70’s as a wonder for children’s shoes. Spiderman and Superman shoes were easily entered and clasped.

Dave Barry said, “Your modern teenager is not about to listen to advice from an old person, defined as a person who remembers when there was no Velcro.”

Certainly now there’s a different parameter for listening to those who lived before computers, the internet, or smartphones. How is knowledge categorized? Where is wisdom found?

I resonate to Rumi:

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

And Brother David Steindl-Rast:

It’s not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.

And these two dogs, rescue greyhounds, who earned a living and now savor retirement with ecstatic motion and gratitude, though in this moment they capture the ease and joy of repose.

Posted on May 12, 2024May 12, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Mother’s Day

The Northern Lights, Auroras, were seen even in San Francisco last night. It seams a sign of the oneness we share as caressed with light, we mother ourselves, each other, and the planet we share.

Posted on May 11, 2024May 11, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

The fog is a soft presence this morning as I view photos of the Northern Lights which though near, I didn’t see them right here. Instead, I watched an interview of Jane Hirshfield with Michael Lerner at Commonweal and was deeply touched with inner light.

The interview concludes with her reading Little Soul poems, written to her first love as she accompanied him as he was dying.

Her wonderful poems are in her latest book The Asking.

Harness

Little soul,

you and I will become

the memory

of a memory of a memory.

A horse

released of the traces

forgets the weight of the wagon.

Posted on May 10, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Spring

I was at the Farmer’s Market yesterday so we’re feasting on abundance: asparagus, strawberries, peaches, and blueberries. The visit reminds me of the work of producing, planting, harvesting, and bringing nourishment closer to me. I’m fed by a hard-working and intricate web of connection.

Wednesday morning I was at the Bayside Cafe for breakfast. A little boy about three or four emerged from the bathroom with his father, and the child was saying “Happiness”. He then walked through the restaurant and out the door repeating “happiness, happiness, happiness” with a slight pause between each word. I’m carrying that with me, such an ease-filled way to be and ripple in the world.

As Cheri Huber shares:

When you think you’re the center of the universe, you’re a misery. When you realize you’re the center of the universe, you’re a blessing.

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Embraced

I read these words of Richard Rohr and feel the long neck of immersion and experience, the fluidity, strength, and agility of birds on land and in flight. His words are ballast, support, inspiration, and guide.

Going to the deepest level of communication, 

Where back and forth has never stopped.   

Where I am not the initiator but the transmission wire itself.

— Richard Rohr 

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

May Day

My son and his wife are in Paris celebrating her 50th birthday. Today they were in Giverny strolling through Claude Monet’s home, and water and flower gardens.

I was in San Rafael by the wildlife ponds.

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Living Wholeness

I’m struck by this quote and invite my voice to reveal my immersion in and reception of the breath.

From Philip Shepherd’s book Radical Wholeness.

A person’s voice is like an MRI that reveals immediately how much of her body is available to the breath—and so, too, how much of her being is available to the Present. When the body is liberated from its divisions, it becomes a fluid medium through the entirety of which the breath travels like a wave. Like a living graph, the voice reveals the progress of the breath through the body—and the ways in which the body blocks that progress—to everyone within earshot… If you crave sensation and awareness, you don’t need a magnet in your finger to provide it. The whole of the world lives through you, expressing itself in an avalanche of sensations within. If you could find your way back home to the body, to the breath, to yourself, you would liberate your awareness into the realm of a felt mystery from which you can learn in ways limited only by your willingness to attend to it.

Grandchild finds a Roly-poly or a Roly-poly finds him.

Posted on April 30, 2024April 30, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Unfolding Spring

This morning we were awakened by a little bird singing into the camera placed outside. At the Chandler Nature Center, a part of Phoenix, we saw white ducks, a coot, and a Great Blue Heron. It’s a time of unfolding, a living birth.

A Surprise: A Great Blue Heron in Chandler, AZ

Home to Grandchild, hidden and wrapped in a young redwood tree

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Morality

I’m in Phoenix visiting family which is a delight. I’m minimally involved with the news but seeing our democracy in danger of destruction, has me aware. I read this from Heather Cox Richardson today:

“I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S. Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act,’” lawyer Marc Elias, whose firm defends democratic election laws, wrote today on social media. He added: “I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”

In contrast, we sit outside watching a saguaro cactus in which a woodpecker meticulously maintains a home for her babies. The babies pop their heads out of one hole for feeding , which she alternates with opening another hole on the other side.

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Perception

Last week I took my usual plethora of photos at Stinson Beach but one stayed with me. This morning, I shared the photo with my son and he pointed out that what I had interpreted as an unusual wave was a shark. He then sent me a diagram showing that, like an iceberg, 90% of the shark can be underwater and we may see only the fin.

Now I see it clearly as a shark, grateful I didn’t pop in for a swim.