The scent of jasmine floats on the air carried on a gentle breeze. In this place, full ease as though I’m a bee gathering pollen for the hive I share.
Summer Light
Vulnerability – The Perennial Philosophy
I’m in a small group where we’re exploring vulnerability. Despite admiring Brene Brown’s work with vulnerability as open-heartedness, I still struggle with the word. At times it suggests weakness to me, rather than softening the tissues into love, reception, trust, and connection.
In thinking about it, I remembered Michael Lerner’s spring letter from Commonweal. You can read it all here but I want to give a taste of what has softened my heart into the deepest pitter-pat feeling of love, trust, reception, and connection.
http://angleofvision.org/2019/05/30/ml-spring-letter/#more-568
Michael Lerner:
Yesterday I visited the house where Maimonides lived. It is a simple house. The ground floor is now a Chinese restaurant. At first this seemed a sacrilege to me. But I wanted to sit in his house. I entered and ordered rice and tofu. My tremor has increased. Sometimes it is difficult to feed myself. This was one of those days. A young waitress saw my plight. She walked over to my table. She smiled kindly. She placed a napkin on my lap and tucked another into my shirt. She took the spoon and began to feed me, spoonful by spoonful. As you might feed a baby. It was the first time I have ever been fed by a stranger in public.
Does the spirit of Maimonides inhabit this house? Is this Chinese restaurant a kind of hidden shrine to his memory? This kind young woman evoked his spirit for me. After a time, I could feed myself. When I finished, I tried to offer her an expression of my gratitude. She shook her head. She would not allow money to soil what had passed between us.
This young woman in the home of Maimonides was a living expression of what I have learned in my 75 years on this earth.
Love heals.
Love is the most powerful force in the world.
True service requires love, wisdom, and will.
A life of service is the path to inner peace.
She, in her late twenties, was in that moment the teacher of an old man in his mid-seventies. I will never forget her. She nourished my soul.
Before he shares the above, he writes this:
I am here in homage to two of my greatest inspirations—Ibn Arabi and Maimonides. I wrote an essay in 2010 about them after a visit to Cordoba, Spain. I called the essay Out of Cordoba. This was my introductory note.
This essay began after a visit to Cordoba, Spain, in May 2010. It is an inquiry into three great spiritual and philosophical visionaries of 12th century Andalusian Spain. Ibn Arabi was the greatest Sufi mystic of all time. Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher of all time. Averroes’ translations reintroduced Aristotle to both Islam and the West.
Ibn Arabi deeply influenced three leading thinkers of the contemporary Traditionalist School—the gnostic tradition of Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Like Ibn Arabi, they embrace the Perennial Philosophy which they affirmed was at the heart of all great spiritual traditions. Leibnitz coined the term Perennial Philosophy, and Aldous Huxley wrote an eponymous book with that title in 1945. The Traditionalists reject the Renaissance, humanism, and the whole turn away from the Perennial Philosophy in the West as a tragic error for humanity.
Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King sourced their non-violent visions of justice and renewal in the Perennial Philosophy. So have countless others. But Michel de Montaigne’s skepticism and doubt—on which so much of Western culture and achievement rests—critiqued the Perennial Philosophy. He drew on the Greek pragmatic philosophies—Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism. I ask whether the Perennial Philosophy might support the collective wisdom we need for the Great Work of healing ourselves and the earth.
Cherries
Last night I bit into a bright red cherry. The flesh was so full and sweet, it took my tongue ages to find the pit. Life is like that sometimes, and yet, the cherry grows around a pit, like a pearl grows around a foreign intrusion in an oyster shell.
I feel a bit discombobulated this morning as though so many riches have come my way I need to just sit and absorb. Am I the pit or the fruit growing around the pit? Of course I am both, and knowing that, I attach wings to my day and fly, nest, rest.
The Labyrinth
The fog blows in and birds squawk. Evening comes. It’s been quite a day. I went to Rodeo Beach this morning and was surprised by the number of surfers as the surf seemed small to me, but there was talk of swells, and then, they came.
Elaine and I walked up the hill in search for the labyrinth, which we found and walked. When one is up on the ridge with fog and mist, enchantment insists that oneness exists. As we trust in the flow between us, we encompass what we are, bees to flowers, and waves to shore.
Embraced
I rise and look out the window. A hummingbird flutters there. Yesterday as Marlene and I sat on a high bluff overlooking Abbott’s Lagoon, a huge hawk flew by looking us right in the eyes. What a wingspan and thrill and full heart response! I’m sitting with close encounters with large and small these days. Now a plump little bird sits on the slender branch that swings and he or she sentries all around.
Yesterday was one of those exquisite days as they all are of course. I left at 7:00 in my convertible, top down, so enjoyed a range of smells and temperatures as I drove over Mt. Tam to Stinson Beach for breakfast and a walk.
Rare for me, I forgot a book to take in to breakfast so thoroughly enjoyed my food, the people, and the view through the gap to the beach and waves.
It was low tide and the waves were gentle and slow. Ocean and I synced in mood.
I offer pictures to share the day.
Radiance
An owl hoots its last homage to the dark as light comes to reveal the sky is clear and now bound rays of sun turn the trees on the ridge crimson in welcome and delight. A new day!
I’m with this well-known quote by Pierre Teilhard De Chardin: Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. Then, for the second time in history, man will have discovered fire.
And then this by Anthoine de Saint-Exupery comes my way. If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
It seems so simple. Longing for love, we build a ship harnessing the rays of love, binding them like the rays from the sun. We radiate ease.
I’m off to Inverness and Abbott’s Lagoon to be with a friend and look for otters, energetic generators of love in a magnificent place.
A Field of Love
Richard Rohr writes of a force field of love, what some might call God.
I watched the trailer with Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers in his neighborhood. I think Mr. Rogers was a force field of love.
Lately I’ve been feeling my heart expanding, reaching out through fingers, like E.T. curing hurts by bringing light from and through his heart. I look up the origin of “Home is where the heart is,” and there’s no clear answer so we each find out own.
For me, home is where my inner and outer landscape are one. There’s no conflict between in and out. There’s a place of peace where I sit in a kaleidoscope of change, honoring the circling trust.
I’m with these words of Emily Dickinson: We turn not older with years, but newer every day.
Research is showing that once we pass through the midlife crisis, we settle into more and more happiness, more and more presence. Thich Nhat Hanh says that: People say walking on water is a miracle but to me walking peacefully on earth is the real miracle.
May this day be one of walking ourselves home, walking peacefully on and with the earth, being and cultivating a force field of love, as we meet and meld hard and soft, circulate tissue and bone.
Connect
I’ve been intrigued by a branch that extends up and out from a tree in our yard. It’s flimsy and yet seems a sentry place and point of delight for a variety of birds, large and small, and for the squirrel who scampers out to the top and swings back and forth.
It allows me to consider what it is to stretch and play and even feel that the squirrel, and I, as I watch with my mirror neurons, have wings.
Today in my Sensory Awareness call, I became aware that in closing my eyes, the lid wasn’t quite meeting the ball of my eye. There was a holding back, a gap, a “mind the gap” awareness of an unconnected space.
Curious, I explored and realized in my intention to live in impermanence, I had forgotten, or denied a place for tears. I was trying to be brave, a noble pursuit, of course, but it is a pursuit, and not a momentary response.
I felt the tightness in my jaw, and in allowing that noticing, the hinge began to loosen and I felt the lower part of my jaw, the support for the front of my teeth, let go, like a hammock or net springing back and forth.
There was rest there, movement, and support, and that allowed moisture to come and fill the space of my eyes, and with that wetness, a fluid glue, lid and ball came together to rest in connection, to kiss.
The heart moistens when we feel love. So do the eyes. Moisten and connect in the joyful grace of swinging and living fluid and elastic. It is our birthright. It is our birth rite to use all of our being and trust the net.
Unfolding
I wake this summer Monday morning aware of unfolding. The fog is in and I see a tinge of pink. It will lift early today, dissipate, or perhaps it is that it unfolds as I intend to allow today.
I scan through this living that appears to be mine though it expands out to involve watering plants and petting, feeding, and kissing kitties and Steve. Words and purrs are shared. Coffee grown far away moves through me, an awakening lake. My small and intimate sensory awareness group meets this morning on Zoom and I look at notes from the past to prepare. I open doors. What is mine to share?
I come to words by Dawn Prince-Hughes, a woman with Aspergers. In her struggle to understand human communication, she began to sit outside the window of the enclosure for the silverback gorillas at the Seattle zoo. One day she arrived upset. Congo, a silverback male gorilla noticed and rushed to the window. He motioned her to put her head on his shoulder. They touched through the glass. They felt the glass as fluid.
She says:
I probably stayed with him like that, with my head on his shoulder, for 30 minutes or so. I think it was probably the first time I was genuinely comforted by another person. Congo really set the standard for what social interactions should be like between me and another living being. You just can’t worry about looking like a fool. You can’t worry about getting hurt. You can’t worry about whether you’re right or not. It just boils down to wanting to be connected at all costs, at all risks. I no longer wanted to allow the permeability of my spirit to seek smaller and smaller shelters. It requires a completely open heart. I felt like I found a way to go home through the glass. — Dawn Prince-Hughes
I sit with that this morning, feeling my heart open through all barriers, a flower in full bloom, nestled with other hearts, connected at the root.
Peace
Yesterday an artist friend invited me and others to her space in the ICB building in Sausalito to make a book. The historic Industrial Center Building is by the bay and driving there is a return to the past, to a place where ships were made during World War II. I made my way past an array of artist’s studios as I climbed the stairs to the third floor and her studio with a view.
The book I made is a sweet little thing in blues and greens, 2 inches by 3, with a shell glued like a golden light to the front. A young girl across from me made a book and filled hers with drawings. Mine is still blank, waiting, as perhaps I wait, for the next call.
I sit here now realizing that if everyone had access to paints and pens, paper and a floor made colorful with unintended drops in patterns, abstract with no need to clean up, we would all find our way to peace.
Walking with my book over to the bay, I passed fragrant and colorful roses, then sat with seals and cormorants. Even more refreshed and renewed, I walked over to Fish and bought fresh, sustainable halibut which Steve grilled after making a sauce of tomatoes, basil, and Parmesan cheese. With a salad and a bottle of Chardonnay, we shared a grateful feast, a once in a lifetime grateful feast. It will never be repeated, never again, not like that.
Life is changing for so many I know, death a metronome. Be here. Be here now. As Thich Nhat Hanh says: The path is peace. Be peace.
This Sunday morning I look out to a ridge cloaked in fog, beckoning resonance with ease.
