Today I’m with the photo of a four-year girl released by Hamas. I think of my four-year old grandson, of all the children on the planet. This cannot continue. It must stop. I don’t know the solution to something so complex, but I feel we must hold the images of children in our hearts and minds and come to a peace that benefits us all.
This piece from four years ago by Robert Reich is a good start:
We say it’s a day when really it’s a week, a month, a year, all gathered in a cornucopia of gratitude. I find myself with memories this week, past gatherings, and celebrations of the fall of leaves. I miss my parents as this day approaches. I miss all those who’ve passed and aren’t here at a table we share, and yet I feel the expansive clasp. The table is vast.
I continue to read about these two amazing people, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, who lived in Plains, Georgia and carried peace, human rights, and care-giving throughout the world and within their souls. Imagine if Jimmy had won a second term, a man who wore a sweater rather than turning up the heat and put solar panels on the White House which were then removed by the next administration. These two people were hard-working visionaries, and so we mourn her passing which will probably be soon followed by his.
I woke from a dream this morning where I was in a small boat enjoying waves on either side of me, and then, everyone was in boats, too, enjoying the rise and fall of waves. There is so much discord right now and yet with the cultivation of perception we can find and create a boat that fits the current waves of up and down.
This week is one of Thanksgiving and celebration where I live. We each choose what that means to us as we gather together or choose solitude. May we remember we share a planet, a sacred earth, where people like the Carters show us the way.
I made a fire in the fireplace last night as I listened to the welcome sound of rain. I lit candles to savor the quivering light in the dark.
My neighbor gave me a fairy door to go with my other fairy door. A local man makes each one individually and gives them away.
Yesterday my neighbor and I took a walk on the Oakwood Valley Trail to immerse in the fairy landscape there. Water was still dripping from the morning rain, and it was a land of enchantment.
Clearly there are all sizes and types of fairies. I was reminded of Cathedral Woods on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine. We beckon our landscapes to open, to nourish what flourishes within and in the soil beneath our feet and the trees that rise from roots twined to feed.
I also nourish on words as lanterns, as stars and fairy lights.
So many I know are facing personal challenges right now, and the world is on edge and off balance, so I come to poetry and these words of Mahmoud Darwish:
‘A poem in a difficult time / is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.’”
My grandson goes to a wonderful preschool. I just watched a video made by one of the classes. It’s called the Wind Chime Restoration Project.
At the entry to the school was a windchime that the parents and children loved ringing when they came to school and left. One day it broke.
One class, the Opals, decided to fix it. The children drilled, painted, and threaded. As one child put it, it took a long, long time.
The video contains each child’s words. Words that repeated were, “I love you Wind!”
The wind chime became the voice of the wind for the children as they saw themselves as protectors of the wind and the chimes.
Each child speaks of being very gentle with the chimes, and shows how to be very careful when touching them. The chimes are painted in different colors with messages from the children fluttering above them.
The video ends with the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass.
We need acts of restoration not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.
The news these days is challenging. I offer pictures of Old Mill Park as a pause to balance and support.
We’re home from Half Moon Bay and it’s raining. Pure delight.
Frederick Franck:
When a monk complained about the world’s evil, the Buddha stretched his hand toward the Earth: “on this Earth I attained Liberation.”
I’m in Half Moon Bay nourishing on changes in tides and light.
Although the moon is a vast and great light, it is reflected in a drop of water. The whole moon and even the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew on a blade of grass.
– Dogen
We are all affected by what is happening in the world. In feeling that connection, I’ve upped my meditation time. I honor a need to go within and renew in compassion, and in that, I feel a deeper connection with those I meet. We all share in this world we create.
Yesterday, at my ophthalmologist appointment, I learned my eyes are doing great. If you’ve ever had the test for your peripheral vision, where you click when you see a flashing light, you’ll know how delighted I was to hear that I caught them all. I’m seeing more than straight ahead. I round to curve and spiral what surrounds.
I sync to these words of Alan Watts
“The sensitive nervous system is part of the external world. And the external world is an event in the nervous system. The inside of the box is outside the box, and the outside is inside. I mean, you know, it seems to flip flop perpetually.”
It’s a time to honor darkness as it comes, harvest. The veil between the living and the dead is thin. The ancestors come through and with a pause of reflection, we feel the ancestry we all share. Today, tonight, and tomorrow, is a time to expand out into viewing our planet and the world of varying roles from a wider space.
