Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Life

I’m reading a friend’s book, Sara Bragin’s The Living in Her Dying.  It’s about the time she spent with her mother as her mother was transitioning. It shows how much we need an advocate at such a time, and the learning that occurs when we show up to be with the loss of the womb in which we came.

The end of life process is with me these days as I feel the approach of a change over which I may not have control.

Last night I had one of those experiences that takes one out of their body and into awareness of so much more.  My cat Tiger is getting older, and needing body warmth, comfort, and support sleeps snuggled in with us at night.  When I got into bed last night, he came over with a look that lit the room, that was more than his huge eyes.  I felt the gift of this livingness, this gift of being in a body for a time.

I was reminded of Thomas Merton’s words about being on a street corner, and …

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . . 

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”

He uses the word God.  I might use the word Spirit or Light or Grace but the feeling and knowing, believing and honoring – that is the gift.

What’s happening in Ukraine is with us all.  We are united in this.  We feel the attacks; we share the fear and yet Tiger gave me such an invitation with his eyes, and way of being.  I wake as light, flowing light, light that is both particle and wave as am I.  

Tiger
A Portion of Our Yard
Serenity
And the wind chimes

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Mourning

Lou Andreas-Salome was Rilke’s teacher, muse, lover and friend.  This is from her book, You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke.  The memoir was written in 1927, a year after he died.

Mourning is not as singular a state of emotional preoccupation as is commonly thought: it is, more precisely, an incessant discourse with the departed one, in order to draw him nearer. For death entails not merely a disappearance but rather a transformation into a new realm of visibility. Something is not just taken away but is gained, in a way never before experienced. In the moments when the flowing lines of a figure’s constant change and effect become paralyzed for us, we are imbued for the first time with its essence: something which is never captured or fully realized in the normal course of lived existence.  

There’s a little bird singing in the trees today. I try to get a picture but one moment the song comes from one tree, and then another. I’m circled – notes calling leaves to come forth from trees.

New Leaves in Spring

The Redwood grounds growth

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Bearing Witness

Is it enough that we see what’s happening in Ukraine, watch pain, bear witness?

I’m with choice these days and how much we step in with change.  In our small personal world, my husband and I are looking at change.  I could say we have complete openness in this choice but age, health, and being near our children are factors.

The book City, written in 1952, is by Clifford Simak. I re-read it periodically as I’m intrigued with how he foresaw that our houses might become complete enough that we wouldn’t want or need to leave them, and then, we couldn’t when something invited us outside.  Friendly robots would take care of logistics and the house would be a container for whatever screen contact we might need.  

We came to this house located on Coast Miwok land in 1978.  Jeff was just four,  and Chris turned one. The question becomes are the house and land holding onto us, or are we holding on to them.

I’m going through books, letters, and cards  beginning to clean out what is here.  What do I need now?  What container do I build for my nourishment and fulfillment, and perhaps it is seeing people in Ukraine that has me even more aware of fragility and the preciousness of contact in what I choose.  This moment, this moment, so “it”, so full of my life and the lives of others.  

Books I’ve collected are on solitude, nature, poetry and the importance and essential nature of silence.

What pulls me now, and what comes is William Carlos Williams, and a red wheelbarrow and cold plums.  

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Creativity

After sharing something about my past with a friend, she said, “You’re continuing to air out the fairy tale”.

That reminds me of words from Suzuki Roshi’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind:

“The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.”

Perhaps that’s why people are risking so much and fighting so hard for their freedom in Ukraine. We want and need the space to be mischievous. We want and need to experiment, discover, and find our own personal ways to fence and control.

We need the space to do so, the permission to decide what opens our own unique gates.

Playing with Space and Weight

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Come Together Now

It’s early morning and I read the news for the day, news I receive from Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Hubbell.  I pause to reflect on people dying for a cause, defending a cause.

Yesterday I watched a Red-Shouldered hawk sit on a post above our yard.  He flew overhead with a screech and then his mate came to the same post.  Steve says he’s hearing the higher-pitched screech of babies.

It’s Spring and I trust that change is coming as countries unite to fight a frightened bully and speak with the screech of the hawk, a bird of prey that is a gift to our yard and other yards.

I seem wrapped in the colors of the flag of Ukraine, blue and yellow, blue for the sky and yellow for the sunflowers they grow under a blue sky that shines above the current gray.

A wide-eyed view
The moon yesterday morning
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Embrace

The tides move in and out, and today I wake balancing the flow of the personal, my daughter-in-law’s grief over the passing of her mother and her father’s current ill-health, and what is happening in Ukraine.

After 9-11, the world united, and then there was war.  Perhaps this time, the world uniting can lead to peace.  Meanwhile each of us can feel the fragility of this spinning orb we share.

We have differences of opinion, and different responses, and it’s also very clear we need to get along.  

I think of the marsh with all the different niches, so that each bird, each beak, feeds.

Sunrise!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Reflecting

I can’t stop thinking of the people of Ukraine.  I see photos of people fleeing with their pets. This invasion is not okay, and the response is showing what people want and need.

It seems resistance is working.  People in Russia are protesting this action, and Ukraine is defending themselves, and calling for help.  Perhaps, this time, humanity will prevail, and the wounds of this disputed region can heal.

I’m pleased with the Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Heather Cox Richardson has this to say about her:

Similarly, it seems to me a mistake to characterize Jackson as a part of a “radical progressive agenda” unless democracy itself has become such a thing. Jackson’s tightly reasoned briefs show a focus on democracy that is similar to that of her mentor, Breyer. She has become famous, for example, for a 2019 opinion rejecting the idea that a president’s advisors cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. “Presidents are not kings,” she wrote. “This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Like Breyer, as well, Jackson has a “reputation for pragmatism and consensus building,” according to former president Barack Obama, who nominated her as a district judge.

At today’s event, Jackson defined America as “the greatest beacon of hope and democracy the world has ever known.”C

Anticipating criticism suggesting that Jackson’s judicial experience has been brief, Vladeck also compiled a chart of the judicial experience of all Supreme Court justices since 1900. The information showed that Jackson’s 8.9 years of prior judicial experience is more than four of the justices currently on the court—Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett—had combined. It’s also more experience than 4 of the last 10 justices had at their confirmations, or 9 of the last 17, or 43 of the 58 appointed since 1900.

Circling breathes and breeds

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Absorption

My husband and I spent this week with our grandchild.  I avoided the news as much as possible as I stayed absorbed in the imaginary, and therefore real world of a two year old.  We looked out the window of their home and saw a jungle with lions, tigers, and bears.  We put a soft, child-size bowling pin on our nose and one on our head and were in a marching band playing trumpets and trombones.  Innocence, and then, there is the opposing force of war and I’m thrown into a tailspin of not understanding why and how we do this again and again.

When we returned home, the man who stays in our home when we’re gone was incredibly upset.  Though born in Moscow, he came to this country as a young man and became a citizen.  He was recently in Ukraine.  He has friends there.  He had been continuously on the phone hearing of bombs dropping and fear, fear, fear.  News of the war I’d been avoiding became personal.  I, too, wanted to hide in my house and protect myself and my children.

I think of Leo Tolstoy’s book War and Peace. What if everyone read it? Would we still destroy? Can we look more wholly and generously at this planet, not a very big one these days, we share?

We spent yesterday at the Hiller Aviation Museum with our grandchild.  As far as he knows, he flew a Blue Angels jet and a 747.  I think of words from the 60’s, “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came.”  What if no one on either side was willing to fight? I think of the Christmas Truce of 1914 when weapons on both sides were set down and people on both sides of the trench celebrated together. Can’t we do that now?

At the museum yesterday, Space Camp was happening. The children were in two teams, the red team and the blue team. Each team would launch a rocket-powered car. The children were not allowed to chant for their team. The idea was to learn about rockets and not to divide, cheer, and say one team was “better” than another. That works for me.

For Our Children

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Flow and Roll

Because I’m with death these days, this process I see as transformation, warp and weft, tangling and untangling, I feel the words of Carl Perkins roll through me.

If it weren’t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song.

With death, we become the stream, allowing others a more vibrant and fragrant place as they fill in where we were as we liquify and aerate, dissolve and reform.

When you love, you complete a circle. When you die, the circle remains.

John Squadra

The ridge this morning