I woke this morning thinking of Richard Bach’s book Illusions and then drove to McGinnis to look for birds. It was early and muddy and beautiful.
Nature
The Light
I‘m entranced with the light this time of year, candle, fire, sky. I taste Delight!
Enlightenment is not a fixed end; it is a timeless movement in love.
– Krishnamurti
Soft Light
Rain continues so each night I make a fire and light candles everywhere. I love the soft, flickering light.
I also see that for some the sun shines even in the rain.
Tis the Season
We’re getting our tree today. The weather is crisp and clear.
Holiday joy abounds as we expand in gratitude and connecting circles of grace.
Celebrating the Journey
In December, my book group meets for an overnight in the city but, of course, with Covid changes, we didn’t meet last year, and now, today we are journeying to San Francisco for lunch. We’ll take the ferry. I search for my Clipper cards and find four. Then, I dress up, well I dress up for me, and put on clothes I haven’t worn in all this time. Very exciting.
We never took our gatherings for granted, and yet, these days, there is an even more intense awareness of gratitude for ability, connection, togetherness, and health.
Emily Dickinson: Beauty is not caused. It is.
Perception
This morning I’m with the beauty and wisdom in this Carol video, O Holy Darkness.
I remember taking a course in Child Psychology at UCLA when I was 18. In 1968, we were propagandized that the “Communists” were programming their children. We had to fight back against that threat. Of course, our own propaganda was that we were the good guys and our children were allowed and given complete freedom and possibility in this “land of the free”.
Angela Davis, an avowed Communist, came to teach and there was turmoil and concern. In order to work as a tour guide on campus, I had to sign that I was not a Communist. I doubt I knew what that meant at the time. I knew my father believed in the Domino Theory and not wanting another World War II, he thought we were right to be in Vietnam. He didn’t live long enough to learn the truth of that.
Now, we are trying to teach our children a more whole history. Watch this beautiful movement into the embrace, the holy embrace, of wholeness.
Listening
It’s the time of year where we turn more deeply into ourselves even as we gather and celebrate the precious carving of dark and light.
I notice how softly I can move the air through which I pass through. I blow kisses like the wind, center the chimes of enchantment within.
I’ve changed the colors in my home from autumn gold and orange to red and green. Inside reflects outside as the branches on the trees are bare but berries shine red and share space with pine cones on green wreaths.
Circling.
Helen Keller wrote: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.
Feeling with the heart, celebrating hearts gathered everywhere.
Living – Relationship
Yesterday when I came to my Sensory Awareness Zoom class, I thought I felt fine, but as we worked with feeling the support of the floor, standing was too much. I needed to get down on the floor to fully receive and feel the support. We were working with boundaries, and I felt how my cells had been invaded by something foreign, and potentially dangerous, though the purpose was to potentially save my life.
I felt nauseous and tired as I processed the effects of the Covid booster shot the day before.
Then we went to the wall, and placed our hands there. At first, my feet were so sensitive from noticing, my hands needed time to meet, to truly meet and receive the wall, but then the support came through. I rested my forehead and hands on the wall and received and filled with reception, woke. I was no longer tired. I was awake, soothingly, comfortably, easily awake. In relationship, when we notice what is always here, there is the possibility of renewal, connection with the core, the inner-outer cord of support.
Martin Buber wrote: All real living is about relationship.
And Marion Milner discovered through her own explorations in her wonderful book A Life of One’s Own that:
But now concentration, instead of being a matter of time tables and rules, was a magician’s wand. By a simple self-chosen act of keeping my thoughts on one thing at a time instead of dozens, I had found a new window opening out across a new country of wide-open horizons and unexplored delights.
We’re not alone. We’re living Relationship.
Elaine Chan-Scherer took photos of the sunset at Ocean Beach last night. We’re in the time of December King Tides, though Queen works, too, and the tides are extraordinarily high balanced with a shore-revealing low.
Enjoy the December light and receive the gift of her perception capturing these moments blending water, fire, earth, and air.
Gratitude
I love this time of year, and today I’m gifted to receive my booster shot. I’m told hydrating helps with the side effects, so I’m guzzling water with glee.
I’m reading Robert Bly in the mornings. The poem “Surprised by Evening” ends with these words.
The day shall never end, we think:
We have hair that seems born for the daylight;
But, at last the quiet waters of the night will rise,
And our skin shall see far off, as it does under water.
And our skin shall see far off, as it does under water.
A friend’s mind is deteriorating with Alzheimer’s. She is afraid of chairs with wheels, and doesn’t remember any of us. What does this mean?
I re-read Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Memory, and in this moment, all gathers in me, a blossom held, a flower, releasing to more deeply reveal the core. ‘
Reception
It’s the second day of December. At 5:00 in the morning, it’s still dark and I’m out with the stars. I reflect on the number of people I know who’ve passed away this year and looking up at the stars lighting the sky, I feel peace. It’s a month where people move even more deeply within as we light candles and come together to celebrate another year, a year of transformation, a celebration and honoring of the cycles of birth, growth, learning, and death.
As Annie Dillard writes:
Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall.
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