A friend is retiring from her career as a therapist. As she comes to final meetings with long-term clients, she asks how to receive their gratitude and accolades. I sit with that as I look out on a beautiful blue-sky day. All is receiving. Being is receiving, Radiating is receiving. We live in relationship.
The flower opens to receive the bee.
Today I was in the Sausalito book store Books by the Bay talking to a friend who works there and who was just at the Monet Exhibit at the De Young. She read a poem to me, one I love, and hearing it read aloud is different than reading it silently and alone.
The poem is: “Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52577/monet-refuses-the-operation-56d231289e6db
Yesterday I was in Sausalito. It’s even more welcoming with tables and chairs and a piano to play.
Walking around my neighborhood I crossed the bridge to Eastwood Park, and took a photo of the creek. When I looked at the photo, I saw a perfect reflection of the sky. I was brought to consider even more deeply my steps, and where I place my feet. The ground and I reflect.
Misty Hannah led us today in Sensory Awareness on Zoom. She began with how she was folding her laundry today, folding and unfolding, noticing weight and texture.
She invited us to feel our shape, and then slowly to fold down, and then unfold back up and bring our arms out. I became an egret, a heron, with wings broad and scooping the air. My arms were fluid, not fixed like an airplane wing.
Folded, I felt open in the back of the spine, breath pouring in, fluid. When I unfolded back up, my head kept moving on its wand of a neck making figure 8’s, a dance of infinity.
As I fold and unfold, and knots untie, I’m reminded of Rilke’s wonderful poem from the Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again ..
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Leaving early to walk Tennessee Valley to the beach, I saw a deer at the top of our driveway, and then, three more along the path to the beach. Quail were hidden but sounding: qua querko, and so many birds were singing, I felt I was in a jungle. What a gift of a morning!
I’ve written about Forest Bathing before, the benefits of receiving from our plant friends, but yesterday I walked to Tennessee Valley beach with a friend, and another friend spoke of Beach Bathing. What can we learn from the sea, rocks, and sand?
Today I did Hisorty, an app where you can play with and reconnect with the timeline of history. My son thinks it’s too easy, and it can be, but I like seeing how events align.
From Hisorty: Code of Ur-Nammu: In 2050 B.C. the Sumerian king of Ur issued the earliest surviving written law code, predating Hammurabi by three centuries and laying the foundation for legal systems in Mesopotamia.
And here we are now, being re-introduced to how essential it is to follow the laws of ethics and morality.
It’s the end of the school year for children and teachers. Photos this week are of our grandson receiving a Little League trophy, a self-portrait, a painting with the words Love Is Love, and a camping trip with friends from his pre-school. He couldn’t have a broader, more proud smile. I think of our worry for him a few weeks ago, and can’t stop smiling.
It’s been a major step on the journey. What have I learned? Something beautiful carries us through what is tough. I’m filled with memories of all the help I, and we, received. And, I needed to process it, to let the tension go. Animals know this. They run from danger, then, when safe, pause and rest.
This morning I meditated on sadness. At first, it was personal, and then, it expanded out into sadness for the world, and then, just sadness. The fog is in. The redwood tree waves its branches gently, fanning the air I breathe.
Gratitude is a wreath around me, and I’m the eye, an I that is not separate, is one with beauty, balance, and fear, all strengthened as one.
A friend likes my posts from the past. He brings me back to this one from December, 5th 2021. I re-visit these quotes.
Martin Buber: ALL REAL LIVING IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIP.
Marion Milner in her book A LIFE OF ONE’S OWN:
But now concentration, instead of being a matter of time tables and rules, was a magician’s wand. By a simple self-chosen act of keeping my thoughts on one thing at a time instead of dozens, I had found a new window opening out across a new country of wide-open horizons and unexplored delights.
When astronauts go into space, they see the earth as a whole. They see oneness, not division. Let’s focus on the oneness we share, this lifeboat, planet earth.
Today I hiked with a friend on Ring Mountain. When I was a nature guide there in the 1980s, I learned about the Tiburon Mariposa Lily that was discovered in 1971. From the photos, you can see its beauty and elusiveness. It grows on serpentine soil that is surrounded by sandstone, so it never spread, and is protected along with other rare plants that grow on Ring Mountain. It blooms late May and early June, and it’s a gift to see it. The land was previously owned by The Nature Conservancy and is now owned by the Marin County Open Space District.
The Coast Miwok lived and thrived here. When I led groups of children who were in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade, we went through a grocery list of how everything we need to survive is here; food from the bay, acorns from oaks, a buckeye tree, quail, soap root for washing, pennyroyal for tea, tule for boats, beauty, and clean air. The Miwok carved petroglyphs on the rocks facing west.
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