This morning at Stinson Beach.
Respite
Motion and Stillness
We didn’t have internet at our house for three days so I enjoyed going to our local libraries, and seeing how well-used they are. Community. I also had more time for meditation and reading. I see what a habit it is to come to the computer first-thing, and throughout the day, and feel the necessity to know the latest news. This morning as I read what the Trump administration continues to do, I feel like I’m going to vomit, so I’ll post this and return to reading a book I recommend: Can Poetry Save the Earth, A Field Guide to Nature Poems by John Felstiner.
What a contrast to the Trump administration dismantling environmental protections and reveling in the billion he got to do so.
From Felstiner’s book:
Motion and stillness, a changing constancy. “The early American painter Thomas Cole saw in waterfalls a “beautiful but apparently incongruous idea, of fixedness and motion – a single existence in which we perceive unceasing change and everlasting duration.” A poem, like a painting catches life for the ear or eye, stills what’s ongoing in human and nonhuman nature.
Richard Wilbur writes of windblown bedsheets on a clothesline, “moving / And staying like white water”.
Of course, for many, this may be an image from the past and so we unite in the stillness of memory as it waves in us like bedsheets on a line.
Love
I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, but this morning I watched the replay of the Half Time Show. Wow! So much was conveyed in the show: a wedding, love, the blackouts in Puerto Rico, giving his grammy to a five year old who represented and reminded us of the horror experienced by five year old Liam. Benito’s message is clear. The only thing more powerful than hate is love, and the majority of people are loving. We have a few who don’t understand the message, but most of us do.
Together, we are America. Together, we are one planet bound in love.
Black History Month
I was on a poetry/meditation call where a woman shared she envisioned this inner/outer world we share as a teabag immersed in a cup of water. She sees us immersed in an ocean of water and air flowing in and out.
The image is with me as I reflect back to 1976 when Republican President Gerald Ford officially recognized February 1 as the first day of Black History Month, a month to honor the accomplishments and contributions of Black people throughout our history.
Now, the Trump administration denies and stomps on that contribution. How does that affect us all, this denial of inner and outer flow? One can only feel compassion for a tragic group of people isolated and contracted in fear and hate. What a horrific way to live on a planet that teaches and shows us how to thrive in connection, generosity, reflection, and inner and outer flow.
Ataraxia
Though I don’t use Facebook these days, they send me memories which sometimes prompt me to look to see what I posted on this day in 2017, nine years ago.
I wrote: Last night the word of the day in my Toastmasters club was Ataraxia, which means “a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety”. Ataraxia is tranquility. On Wikipedia I learn that the word is a Greek term and was used to describe the ideal mental state for sending troops into battle. It seems the perfect word for these days.
Compassion and Respect
Children speak. From The New York Times today.
“You are scaring schools, people and the world,” one student at Valley View Elementary, just outside Minneapolis, wrote to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Exactly a year after President Trump’s second inauguration, ICE agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old prekindergartner at Valley View. In and around Minneapolis, a city under siege by federal immigration authorities, scores of students are staying home out of fear of being abducted or have had family members who have been taken. As supplies for families too scared to leave their homes line the hallways of the school, immigration patrols rove outside and Liam languishes in a detention camp more than a thousand miles away, students have written letters to ICE agents. For the video above, Times Opinion asked some of them if they were willing to share their writing. “I think you should make friends with the world. Love, a Valley View student,” one child concluded.
Childbirth
A friend’s daughter is in labor. A circle of family and friends are with the dilation as we wait and visualize 8 cm. I remember back to the birth of my sons, that transition period, and it can be painful, very painful, and then the reward, all pain forgotten, only the joy of a new being in the world, a deepening connection and reverence for continuing life.
Perhaps what’s happening in this country right now is childbirth. Painfully, we gather in community to renew and expand the vows on which this country was founded. We re-read the Constitution and Declaration of Independence over and over again, trying to teach it to those who are working to overthrow our government and create a dictatorship.
When those who object to the policies of this corrupt administration are labeled and murdered as domestic terrorists, we come together to act, and as in childbirth, we expand in connecting new cords when one is cut.
Peace
Yesterday I walked with a friend to the beach at Tennessee Valley. The beach was completely changed by the storms and high tides requiring a possibly wet crossing to and from the ocean. Enjoying lunch, we savored the company of a Great Blue Heron strolling and rollicking in a graceful journey to dine on lunch.
Ziplining
As we navigate these challenging times, we respond with ease as my son Jeff does while ziplining. We slip into our meditation posture and organize our communities. We unite.
Lydia Polgreen says let’s not label these people in Minneapolis protestors. Let’s call them what they are: community organizers. Her words:
But what I saw in Minneapolis is better described as organizing and concerted action. It is an important distinction because so much of what is happening is invisible — people engaging in a form of neighborhood watch, walking vulnerable kids to school to shield them from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Church groups organizing food parcels for families too afraid to leave home. Community groups using encrypted messaging to compile spreadsheets of suspected ICE vehicles and activity. Others are logging and archiving endless amounts of evidence of ICE atrocities. This is the product of deep community organizing, not merely spontaneous actions driven by immediate anger.
Circles of Light
Tonight I made a fire in the fireplace and lit two candles to reflect on and honor those who’ve tragically passed: Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
John Squadra wrote: When you love, you complete a circle. When you die, the circle remains.
These two people who loved and were loved, completed many circles that now expand and remain.
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