I woke in the night and rose to meditate.  My life has been busier than I prefer and I could feel the weight in the bone dwelling over my eyes. I stayed with the weight, sensing and touching the seven bones that come together to surround and support the orbit of each eye.  

I knew there were seven but this morning I check their names.  What a list.

• Frontal bone.
• Zygomatic bone.
• Maxillary bone.
• Sphenoid bone.
• Ethmoid bone.
• Palatine bone.
• Lacrimal bone.

Knowing those bones come together to protect each eye, I sense all that goes on between my ears. I cleanse in the abundance I am, and offer intention for abundance to swell through the world like waves.

There’s more than enough for all.

Rain pounds down and enclosed, I repeat my journey through words that inspire me.

Birdwings

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror

up to where you are bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,

here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralysed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as birdwings.

– Rumi

Be still like a mountain, flow like a river”

~ Lao Tze

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.

– Annie Dillard

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

– John Updike

The rain has come again.  This is a moist year.

I read about Bernd Heinrich, a scientist and naturalist who lives in a cabin in Maine and observes those with whom he shares the land and gives them to us in his books.

I choose among his books and order Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death.

There can be a richness to the aging process, this continually grateful reception of breath, each inhalation a gift, each exhalation a letting go, and merging with the wider world of which we are part.  

Each day, my intention is to sink more clearly into living as a beginner, as babies do.  

Old and young meet in the center, centered in gratitude, gratitude for living that is always new, as both accept, receive, release, and continue to transform.  

May we all be well in this process of expanding our ability to give and receive.

I met with a friend yesterday and we discussed the aging process.  When I go in for my annual physical now, I have to draw a clock face, and then draw the hands to a time I am told.  It’s felt really silly to me until I read the poem below. I never recognized the complexity in “reading” a clock. I think I remember learning, and I remember teaching my sons.  I wonder what it is for children today that so much is digital. Maybe they can’t read a clock face. Maybe they “read” in other ways.  

I remember the first time I watched my young niece jump a unicorn in a computer game.  I could tell she understood the spatial aspects of the screen in a way I didn’t feel I ever could.

Yesterday my son, his wife, and I discussed screen time for babies and what it might do to do their brains.  It is suggested that a baby not view a screen for the first two years, and some philosophies say much later than that.  I enjoy Face Time with my grandson. Some say that isn’t screen time. Certainly there is a different response when he sees me in person.  All senses are involved, not just sight and sound. I’m round, dimensional, complex, complete.

Because I’m spending the night in Menlo Park, I participated in my grandchild’s bath time.  He kicked and splashed and the more we laughed and applauded, the more he laughed and splashed.  The feedback was clear. I am loved and I am love. In my immersion in air and water, playing with both, and these funny big people who think I’m the most marvelous being in the world which, and I take the narrative back, he is and we are.

Allow yourself to be as appreciated as raucously and vigorously as a baby in the bath.  Splash Joy!

The Clock by Victoria Chang The Clock—died on June 24, 2009 and it was untimely. How many times my father has failed the clock test. Once I heard a scientist with Alzheimer’s on the radio, trying to figure out why he could no longer draw a clock. It had to do with the superposition of three types. The hours represented by 1-12, the minutes where a 1 no longer represents 1 but 5, and a 2 now represents 10, then the second hand that measures 1 to 60. I sat at the stoplight and thought of the clock, its perfect circle and its superpositions, all the layers of complication on a plane of thought, yet the healthy read the clock in one single instant without a second thought. I think about my father and his lack of first thoughts, how every thought is a second or third or fourth thought, unable to locate the first most important thought. I wonder about the man on the radio and how far his brain has degenerated since. Marvel at how far our brains allow language to wander without looking back but knowing where the pier is. If you unfold an origami swan, and flatten the paper, is the paper sad because it has seen the shape of the swan or does it aspire towards flatness, a life without creases? My father is the paper. He remembers the swan but can’t name it. He no longer knows the paper swan represents an animal swan. His brain is the water the animal swan once swam in, holds everything, but when thawed, all the fish disappear. Most of the words we say have something to do with fish. And when they’re gone, they’re gone.“ The Clock” by Victoria Chang, from the forthcoming OBIT by Victoria Chang, copyright © 2020 Copper Canyon Press.

We have a new pot to heat water for our morning coffee. We like to watch water drip through a cone so we each make our own cup.

We were sad as we watched the old pot lose memory and consistency but after another pour of luke-warm water while knowing the pot was doing its best we now have a sleek new model.

This one keeps a digital accounting as the water rises in heat, so one can  begin the day mesmerized by the rising numbers until at 200 degrees, a beep, beep, beep.  It’s true that one becomes more easily entertained with age. It’s a return to childhood, a return to meeting the excitement of change, a world that is always, every moment, vibrating and new.  

Steve and I took Uber or Lyft in and out of the city yesterday to meet one son and his wife.  Our returning driver lives on a houseboat in Sausalito and transports boats back and forth, so recently brought a boat from Tahiti to Hawaii to here.  He described many an adventure, but then, each moment is that. He sails the seas, and I watch water heat.  

I’m traveling a wee bit south today and spending the night down there, so I’ll see how computer connects in a new place.  My computer tends to resist change, and I respect that, so I’m open to what computer needs. We never know and perhaps vibrational inconsistency is what moves our heart back and forth in a dance delighting in, and stimulated by how and what we meet. Enjoy your Monday, the start of a new week.

   

Feng Shui translates to “wind-water” in English and is about energy circulation and flow.  We harmonize with our environment, feel where energy is stuck. Last night I couldn’t sleep so rose and meditated in a newly cleansed room.  I could feel the energetic shift in the room, the opening, welcoming shift in me.

I’ve removed two standing bookcases as well as two shelves that were attached to the wall.  Artwork is down and only a few items returned, so the room echoes, and in that echoing, I wonder what comes to me now.

The full moon may also have affected my ability to sleep.  I sat in the dark, meditated, and sensed. Then the rain came.  I felt a need to be awake to witness the weather, earth, and moon in their shifts, echoed in me.  

I thought it was the Hunter’s full moon so meditated on predator and prey and Thich Nhat Hanh’s wonderful poem, “Please Call Me by My True Names”, where he explores and explains how we are everyone and everything, both predator and prey.

This morning I learn the January full moon is Wolf moon.  The wolves may have been howling, but I didn’t hear them last night.  Though I couldn’t see the moon I felt it’s light.

We’ve occupied this abode for over 42 years.  Going through what’s here is like going through an archaeological dig.  How do I meet what I’ve gathered over the years with full perception and new and grateful heart?  

I  come to what I consider my most private room.  The white Bible with my maiden name engraved in gold is here.  It’s a gift from one grandmother. The Christian Science books from my other grandmother nestle close.  Both women were amazing and I bow to the wisdom and grace in my ancestry.  

In this room, I have an array of baskets that cluster a variety of things and today I delve into one to find a miniature herb garden kit my mother gave me right before she died.  I find a tiny spade, and four tiny two-inch pots with metal labels for Basil, Coriander, Parsley and Thyme. There’s a little book on herb gardening. In addition, there’s a set of cards, Creating Sacred Gardens Knowledge cards by Elizabeth Murray.  I pull out a card. It’s the Arch. 

 “The arch, one of the most sacred symbols of the ancient world, signifies openings and exits and the cycles of life-death-life and creation – destruction – re-creation.  It is also the symbol of the Earth Mother. Arches are prevalent in Druidic, Hindu, Arabic, and Greek temples, as well as in Christian churches.”

“Positioned over garden entrances, arches welcome us and offer a sense of grace and fluidity. They suggest a rainbow reaching from earth to heaven, bringing good luck and blessings.  Arches also make a particularly appropriate setting for marking rites of passage.”

The arch represents the soul’s longing for grounded and spiritual connection.  I sit with that now. Yes, that is my desire – grounded and spiritual connection, and so I envision an arch over my head, a rainbow dropping light like dew, transcendent awareness of gifts gathered here and everywhere.  

Peace!