Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Stretching

Yesterday, I appreciated the notification of a possible tsunami.  A helicopter flew and hovered overhead. This morning I find myself remembering different translations of the words of Masahide:

My house burned down

I now see

The rising moon.

or

Barn’s burnt down —

now

I can see the moon.

When I got the notice to move to higher ground, though my house is safe, I left because my medical appointment required dipping down to drive by the bay.  Though the notice was cancelled by the time I arrived, the office, which is by the bay, was still in a tizzy.  They had evacuated, but my ophthalmologist said at first she didn’t know where to go, and then she thought of what it would be to leave and learn everything was gone.  It was a time to reflect.  Yes, though everything had returned to normal, what might have happened.  Like that, change.

My meditation practice is about impermanence and interdependence.  I think the political news has us all awake recognizing impermanence and interdependence.

I come to the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.  

We’re being stretched. 

Maple leaves fall as bamboo which represents enlightenment stands and stays.
Abundance

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Falling Leaves

Today Robert Hubbell points out that the Democrats could have changed much of what’s happening by expanding the Supreme Court.  They controlled  the House, the Senate, and the Presidency from 2021 to 2023. Expanding the Court required only the passage of the bill by a majority vote in both chambers of Congress (and creating a carve-out in the filibuster, which requires only a majority vote).

They didn’t act and now we deal with these biased rulings. Hubbell gives a partial and devastating list.

Dobbs (overruling Roe v Wade), Trump v. US (fabricating presidential immunity out of whole cloth), Bruen (concealed carry of handguns in public is a universal right), Bremerton (okay for football coach to lead public school athletes in prayer at midfield after games), Cargill (a bump-stock rifle that can fire 13 rounds per second is not a “machine gun”), and Snyder (bribes given as “thank you gifts” are not illegal). 

These days I hear leaves falling.  They make a sound as they swish through the air and land.  We, too, sound and resound.

Fountain speaks with sound and fluidity of image and form
Gates open, close, and open!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Tis the Season

Today I was in the Sausalito bookstore, Books by the Bay.  This time of year, stores in Sausalito participate in a contest display of gingerbread houses. Perusing, I met a lovely woman visiting from India who had just come from Muir Woods.  We both agreed Muir Woods is a cathedral. She shared a photo with this sign.

In Muir Woods
Conversation Starters!

The Gingerbread House
Stuffed Friend! We noticed some candy had been nibbled from the house!
Stained glass window in the Gingerbread House!



Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Bluesky

I’ve never been on Twitter, now X, and haven’t been on Facebook for some time now but today I read about the coup stopped in South Korea, and accountability for Trump’s choices, and though the media in this country excuses Trump’s pardons and goes after Biden with one pardon for his son who was targeted as his son, it seems the people are awake and responding.

Bluesky is exploding as a social media alternative to X which is now compromised by Musk.

Bluesky focuses on users, not advertisers, and is not bought, utilized, and managed by the richest man in the world for one purpose, his own.

Reflect!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Winter Light

Yesterday, I walked to the beach at Tennessee Valley. The birds and flowers are resting. It’s a time to move inward and reflect on what nests within, what comes from release and connecting to birth.

I’m with these words of Annie Dillard:

We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water.

I slow to split the light of the present.

A little bird chirps the way
Grounded with rocks
The ocean streams dreams
Transition
Crossing the Stream

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Wonder

I know many of my friends, like me, are depressed with the political situation, and yet we just spent time with our five year old grandson, a time of wonder, beauty, exuberance, inspiration, innocence, and trust.  He believes in Santa, and I think of the story I love:”Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”.  We must focus on children, become like children and believe in generosity and sharing the abundance that is here knowing there’s more than enough when we each cultivate our own knowing and experience of enough.

Morning in Sausalito



Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Silence

Silence is essential.

We need silence, just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us.

– Thich Nhat Hanh

Intricacy in Space

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

We Are the World

When my son graduated fifth grade, the children stood in tiers and sang “We are the World”. The song came out in March that year, 1985, and most of us had never heard it. We adults watched and listened in tears.

I thought I could share the video here but if you go to Youtube you can find it and listen. I’m inspired and lifted each time I do. U.S.A. for Africa: We Are the World.

I’m also with the words of John O’Donohue from his poem “A New Beginning”.

You can find the whole poem online but it ends with these words which make me wonder if we’ve become complacent. Some of us have been accused of being “woke”, but maybe not woke enough.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; 

Soon you will home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

I just read the book Orbital by Samantha Harvey. It allows us to orbit the earth in the International Space Station and even more appreciate the preciousness of this earth we share.

Light!

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

– Mary Oliver

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Reception

Yesterday I read an essay by a father, Dave Kim, who was surprised how much his 8 year old son loved the book Heidi published in 1881 by Joanna Spyri.  He and his son went to the village where the book is set, Heidiland, and again, his son loved exploring and understanding whether it was a real little girl, or a composite who lived there.

His son was especially enchanted with these words which I remember reading as a child. It’s sunset and Heidi is with  her goatherd pal, Peter:

A golden light lay on the grass and flowers, and the rocks above were beginning to shine and glow. All at once she sprang to her feet, “Peter! Peter! Everything is on fire! All the rocks are burning, and the great snow mountain and the sky! … Look at the rocks! Look at the fir trees! Everything, everything is on fire!”

Dave Kim writes: This was one of his son’s favorite moments. “Do rocks actually glow in Switzerland?” his son asked him one morning.

I’m with that as I consider which books my now five year old grandson responds to.   One favorite is Ziji, The Puppy Who Learned to Meditate by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Torey Hayden.  When he spends the night, we read it before he goes to sleep.

Yesterday a friend was here and pulled a book off a shelf, The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris.  They made a “spell book” to conjure up lost words that were left out of the most recent edition of the Oxford-Junior Dictionary.  Words like acorn, bluebell, dandelion, heron, kingfisher, newt and otter were replaced with attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail.

The outdoor and natural were displaced by the indoor and virtual.  Most of us interact virtually each day, and this morning I read a poem on-line by Wendell Berry about watching one leaf fall, and I felt that leaf falling through me bringing peace, integrating all the ways we perceive.

One Leaf
Maple leaves ready to fall.