Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Reflecting

Today I listen to Alicia King sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, the Black national anthem.  I find it unfathomable what we’re seeing and what’s been happening to people in this country who are Black.

I’m wondering why police are carrying guns rather than using Tasers.  Isn’t a Taser enough defense for police monitoring driving and similar conditions?  Why is a gun right there at hand?  I read that the two are meant to be on opposite sides of the police person and that they are different in feel and even color.  

It seems an inexcusable mistake, and yet it’s been excused in the past. 

My younger brother, my only sibling,  passed away two years ago in April and I find myself thinking about death.  

I find comfort in these words of Rabindranath Tagore:

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 1 Comment

Being

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

This weekend in a Sensory Awareness workshop with Miren Salmeron I felt the flow and connection of blood, organs, and bones, as though I was a tide pool, and all this movement and changing, flowing densities was happening within me. There was nothing for me to do, no need to orchestrate. What a relief!

It was ease, compassion, kindness, reception, Love. I am an aquarium, though as a living organism, permeable, not glass.

The experience felt like pregnancy where we allow expansion and birth.

Thich Nhat Hanh in Walk Like a Buddha wrote:  

When the Buddha walked, he walked without effort. He just enjoyed walking. He didn’t have to strain, because when you walk in mindfulness, you are in touch with all the wonders of life within you and around you.

Thich Nhat Hanh gave us this poem.

Breathing in,

I calm my body.

Breathing out,

I smile.

Dwelling in the present moment

I know this is a wonderful moment.

When we pause and spread our arms like wings on a bird, or branches of a tree, we embrace and feel embraced. We’re pumped with air, given space, and when we smile, the muscles of the face, connected to the seventh cranial nerve, change the nervous system and our relationship with air, our vital nourishment and need.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Gratitude

Tara Brach: 

Gratitude arises when we bring an open and full presence to our life, and its sweetness is a feeling of homecoming.

I read Heather Cox Richardson this morning and I’m grateful for her columns and for our President Joe Biden.  Today she looks at what Trump allowed and encouraged, and how Biden stepped in to save lives. I’m grateful for many things but this morning and last night birds are chirping away.  What a wonderful greeting of Spring.  

The leaves of the Maple tree return

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Creativity

I’ve been inspired by the creative responses to the pandemic. When I got my two shots of the vaccine at the Civic Center, I was reminded of the years of county fairs I attended there. When my sons were young, their various exhibits entered by the schools won prizes and ribbons. In their categories, every child won something.

Now, I read that live drive-in opera is coming to the Civic Center. The fair this year, like last year, is cancelled, but we have drive-in opera instead. My heart lifts in the notes, high and low, that carry us along.

https://www.marinij.com/2021/04/08/marin-staffers-prepare-site-for-san-francisco-opera-drive-in-performances/?utm_email=4493F4C145D494C88569246562&g2i_eui=bjUhdJDTrH6oPWZmyd8JFfpTUNMQTeJk&g2i_source=newsletter&utm_source=listrak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fwww.marinij.com%2f2021%2f04%2f08%2fmarin-staffers-prepare-site-for-san-francisco-opera-drive-in-performances%2f&utm_campaign=bang-marin-nl-breaking-news-nl&utm_content=alert
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

The State of Balance and Calm

Today I read about Superconductivity.  

“Below a certain “critical” temperature, materials undergo transition into the superconducting state, characterized by two basic properties: firstly, they offer no resistance to the passage of electrical current. When resistance falls to zero, a current can circulate inside the material without any dissipation of energy. Secondly, provided they are sufficiently weak, external magnetic fields will not penetrate the superconductor, but remain at its surface”.

Reading that, I feel a resonance and understanding of the following words of Thomas Merton.

I feel how when the heat of motion, reactivity, and vibration calm, we come to “the peace of inner clarity and love”.


Thomas Merton: In a world of noise, confusion and conflict, it is necessary that there is a place of inner silence and peace, not the peace of mere relaxation but the peace of inner clarity and love.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Language

I’ve always felt the old adage that “sticks and stones may hurt my bones but words can never hurt me” was wrong, sadly and tragically wrong and untrue.

Words can hurt, and we’ve probably all flung them one way or another, at ourselves, or at others, especially those we love.

This morning I read Sharon Olds poem, “Looking South at Lower Manhattan Where the Towers Had Been”.  It took me where I didn’t expect, and when I clicked to hear her read it, I also came across her poem “Pine Tree Ode”.  I suggest you read and listen to both as a way to sink and rise even more deeply and fully into this world we share.  

https://aaknopf.tumblr.com/tagged/OldsAudio?ref=PRH872FE1B798BB&linkid=PRH872FE1B798BB&cdi=2E066F106EDD2B38E0534FD66B0AFA34&template_id=20555&aid=randohouseinc35790-20

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Reflecting

This morning I lay in bed and felt the sinking, the need to rearrange to meet this new day – 

The words of Baal Shem Tov came:

Let me fall if I must. The one I will become will catch me.

I read Alan Watts and think of how we practice the following when we play tennis or ski or mindfully live the moments of the day.

If you expect something to come in a certain way, you position yourself to get ready for it.  If it comes in another way, by the time you reposition your energy, it is too late. So stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction. 

By the marsh
Looking up

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Easter Weekend

Seventeen month old grandson is coming for the weekend with his parental units so the Bunny is hopping around here this morning.  I see colorful eggs everywhere, and a stuffed bunny and bunny ears for Keo.

He loves basketball so the Bunny left a basketball hoop here last night with three orange balls. 

It’s Keo-Time!

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. 

– Henry David Thoreau

Wind Chimes

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Poetry Month

I’m home again and as I consider what poem beckons me today, it’s the sound of hot water dripping through coffee grounds.  That sound passes into taste.

Yesterday morning I had breakfast at the Residence Inn in Menlo Park.  For some strange and unknown reason a TV was on in the breakfast room blaring out the morning news.  Two little boys, around eight years old, stood there aghast as they watched a video showing two young children being dropped over a border wall in New Mexico.  Then the trial of the murderer of George Floyd came on.

I hate to be an “in my day” sort of person but my parents read the newspaper and probably watched the 6:00 news.  We read the newspaper when our children were young.  Now, of course, we read the news from a variety of sources on-line. I’m sure there was awareness, as there should be, in both generations of the horrors that occurred, but certainly not an onslaught as the first meal of the day is consumed. 

We’ve had a heat wave which today draws the fog onto the ridge.  It’s a new day and I’m grateful for my home and a month that celebrates poetry in a myriad of ways.  

Morning with the moon a gift in the sky

The fog blows in and then softens out