I’m with gratitude this morning, enjoying sitting and watching the day come to light.

Yesterday, I watched Elizabeth Strout talk about her writing, specifically her two books on Olive Kitteridge.  Book Passage brings authors right into our home.  

Strout said she’s always been interested in other people, in how they see the world.  What does it feel like to be another person?  She said novels help us with this.  We enter the life of another.  She said, “Wherever there’s a person, there’s s story.”

Her earliest friend was the physical world.  There were no  kids around where and when she grew up in Maine.  She went to NY, a place she loves, but then left to return to the light of Maine.  

I’m with the light here, especially this time of year.  I revel in it.  We are light after all.

Strout spoke of point of view and how with Olive, she gives us how different people perceive Olive with all her imperfections.  In her writing, she just records life with its imperfections.  She wrote the second book on Olive after seeing a woman in Oslo who reminded her of an older Olive.  She knew Olive was back.

I was also introduced to Dorothy Hunt yesterday.  This brings me peace. 

When I see it’s November 20, I feel the holidays begin, that slide into celebration which will be more quiet this year.  I’ve never been the raucous sort, but Thanksgiving day will be Steve and me cooking our favorite turkey delights. We’ll see other gatherings on computers and other devices.

I’m not quite sure why this day, November 20, strokes and strikes me so, but it does.  The light is soft, and trees are radiant with red and gold.  Leaves fall like snowflakes and birds twitter with joy.

Trump is holding on, and he will go.   He and his daughter will be indicted for state crimes.  He has to face reality or destroy a nation that affects the world.  I saw a Star Trek episode where a petulant alien with the emotional capacity of an un-nurtured child was threatening to destroy the world, and we see that now.  For many of us, Trump’s behavior is alien to how we were raised.

I trust we will survive this, as we become even more aware of the preciousness of shared breath.

A neighbor of my grandson re-arranges hundreds of rubber duckies each day to deliver a message. Wednesday was “Believe”. This is only a portion of the display.

Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen – that stillness becomes a radiance.

— Morgan Freeman

This morning I was tucked cozily in bed, one cat at my feet.  It was silent and then the wind blew in bringing the rain we welcome and need.

I contemplated why I was so content just lying there. Wasn’t it enough?  What would motivate me to rise from bed while it was still dark?

What is it with this list of “shoulds” most of us carry, especially now, in this world of complexity and need for change.

I remembered back to my Rosen training.  In one class with Marion Rosen, Hans Axelson, founder of Axelson Institute in Sweden, and Frank Ottiwell from Alexander Technique, each of us walked individually across the floor between two groups of people who analyzed our walk.   What did it say about how we meet, greet, and move through the world?

I was self-conscious at first, and walking very carefully and studiously, and then, Marion said, “Walk as though you’re meeting your lover”, and everything changed.  I lifted and floated easily and quickly across the floor.

We also worked with activating and using our “Marilyn Monroe” muscles, muscles located in the back close to the sacrum.  Again, I was self-conscious to swing so loosely but I played with dancing with my shadow and it was fun.

I rose with all of this in mind, seemingly floating out of bed when the words of Charlotte Selver came to me.  “Does it interest you?”

I realize that’s how we navigate our list of shoulds.  Life is short and precious.  With interest as guidance, we know our path.

Mark Twain said it well: “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

It’s true of all we do.  It’s how to meet the world, with soft, open chest and face and back of neck and back of knees.  So light life can be.  

I’m floating now secure in knowing I’m pulled forth with ease by what interests me, and I offer this to you.  Meet the world as though you’re meeting your lover because you are.

In the Sensory Awareness retreat this weekend, one workshop was titled “Beyond Boundaries and Borders, Inside and Out”.

The word “limit” was used a few times in the leading, or maybe more.  I didn’t notice but one man did, a Black man who is a leader in the work.  Like me, he has been studying and practicing sensory awareness for many years.  He was triggered by the word, “limit” which for him, brought up White Supremacy.

I’m glad he said it.   We discussed language, and how we use it, and what may come up for each of us in our individual experience.  

Later in the day I was asked how the workshop was, and I responded “Perfect!” which, for me it was, whatever that means to me, since I also know perfection is static.  I know there is no “perfection”, that we’re always moving etc. but for me it was the lovingly offered and careful balance of what I needed, and in that moment, the word seemed to fit.

My friend gently reminded me that for her the word “perfect” is a trigger.  

In the Rosen work I do, language is called the “third hand”.  It’s also important in Sensory Awareness to try to put into words our sensations and share them since each of us has a different experience.  We learn from each other.

Today I’m with the power of sharing and connection, of being seen and feeling heard.  As we move toward a holiday of tradition, and try to work out how to meet, or not, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, a complex holiday as to origin, it’s increasingly important to understand and receive the impact of our words. It’s important to trust that when we share when we’re triggered, we know the response will be one of intention to understand with love and care. In each exchange, we’re touched and changed.

Yesterday someone spoke of chipmunk mind rather than monkey mind and I could relate to that.  Muir Woods has many chipmunks, and I love to watch them scurry around and chip, chip, chip at food like busy little monks.

Reading Harold Gatty’s Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass, I  learn that people are asymmetrical.  98% of people are born right-handed and their right arm usually becomes longer than their left and their right shoulder becomes lower than their left.  The left brain directs the right hand so is larger in right-handed people than the left.  

Right-handed swimmers veer to the left without visual aids to guide them, and when they row, they veer to the right.

Also, one leg is usually shorter than the other which is why when we’re lost we tend to walk in circles.

Also, with a choice of two directions, we tend to turn right. Thinking about it, I realize when I enter an art gallery, museum, or grocery store, I do tend to turn right.  Notice; it’s fun.

In a sensory awareness workshop yesterday, I noticed how constricted I was, how held, and how I was allowing breath to have little effect.  I moved myself about to open up, but then when I simply stood and opened my arms out, I felt a shift.  Breath entered in.  I lifted my arms above my head, and power, joy, and breath joined in.  

Traffic yesterday was horrendous as though people are aware a new shut-down is on the way. The virus is spreading, and like this deposed president, won’t go away, and so raise your arms, and make faces, and sing and dance and hum.  We’re playgrounds; let’s play, as we stretch, sing, and dance to fully inhabit our space and enhance our day. 

The Dalai Lama says: Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

It’s been eight months since our lives so dramatically changed.  For many of us, the place we’re exploring that we’ve never been before is to travel further within and see the stars sparkling there as we form constellations of our own making.

Our family is discussing the celebration of Thanksgiving.  Gathering requires the cooperation of the weather as we need to be outside.  I look at tents.  Maybe we could each be in our own tent, but then, there is the question of bathrooms and so I look at portable toilets, and then, I pause and look at the ripening sky.

I was thrilled to be soaked in rain yesterday. The wind blew and leaves flew. All cleansed.

My local grocery store has extended hours before Thanksgiving and on the day because so many people will be cooking. There’s something cozy in that, and yet, my son is clear.  Family gets together on Thanksgiving, and as my husband and I become more cautious with this, we say, “Yes, if we can be outside”, and now I scroll through tents and portable toilets grateful to be alive.

I’m reading Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes.

I was proud when my brother shared that our genetic history showed 3% Neanderthal, but then, I learned that’s fairly common for those with my ancestry: German, Norwegian, English, Scottish.  

I hadn’t realized how adaptive the Neanderthal were, and how they survived in various landscapes and climates.  

What the book is giving me is even more appreciation for the use of my hands and the ability to form tools from the landscape I inhabit.  I find myself weighing my spoon this morning, noting the texture of oatmeal and fruit, wondering how I might have been led to form the shape of a spoon to hold in my hand.   

I love rocks and will look at them differently.  Could I make a knife that would lead to, and enhance, my survival?

How might I use my environment more creatively and wisely?

When I was a nature guide on Ring Mountain, we made a grocery list as we wound our way through the landscape where the Coast Miwok lived: acorns, quail, soap root, fish and clams from the bay. The Miwok made boats from tule reeds and paddled from Marin to San Francisco.  

We are creative beings, and now we come together to utilize the skills of each of us as we heal division, and embrace in a warmth that creates thermals on which to soar.   

The day comes to light, tender, soft.

I pause to feel the light within.  How am I touching the light, receiving what births from Source?

I plan a quiet day to renew and connect.

I’m guided by Rumi:

Every atom babbles the mystery —

Listen yourself, for I’m no tattletale!

It’s Veteran’s Day, formerly known as Armistice Day honoring the end of World War 1.

And now here we are with a man still in charge who is trying to destroy the integrity and security of our country.  He is not allowing Biden the access he deserves and has won.  There is no election fraud.  Trump has no allegiance to anyone but himself.  He fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper.  He continues to stack the deck with those loyal to him.

Heather Cox Richardson wrote this yesterday:

Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Biden’s win means that the current administration is denying him the right to see the President’s Daily Briefing (the PDB) which explains the biggest security threats facing the country and the latest intelligence information. Trump can keep Biden from seeing other classified information, too. 

Today, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper (by announcing the firing on Twitter), and replaced him with a loyalist, Christopher C. Miller, who will be “acting” only. Trump also selected a loyalist and Republican political operative, Michael Ellis, to become the general counsel at the National Security Agency, our top spy agency, over the wishes of intelligence officials. Ellis was the chief counsel to Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), a staunch Trump loyalist. Trump is also reportedly considering firing FBI director Christopher Wray and CIA director Gina Haspel. Last week, he quietly fired the leaders of the agencies that oversee our nuclear weapons, international aid, and electricity and natural gas regulation, although the last of those officials was moved to a different spot in the administration. 

In other words, Trump is cleaning out the few national security leaders who were not complete lackeys and replacing them with people who are. It’s funny timing for such a shake-up, especially one that will destabilize the country, making us more vulnerable.

Today Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson noted that a source told him that the “Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more….” This deal comes two months after the administration’s Abraham Accord normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE opened the way for arms sales. 

The UAE has wanted the F-35 for years; it is the world’s most advanced fighter jet. They cost about $100 million apiece. The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has secretly been pushing for the sale of the arms to the UAE in the face of fierce opposition by government agencies and lawmakers.

The administration had announced a much smaller version of this deal at the end of October, in a sale that would amount to about $10 billion, but Congress worried about the weaponry falling into the hands of China or Russia and seemed unlikely to let the sale happen. In 2019, it stopped such a deal. Trump declared a national emergency in order to go around Congress and sell more than $8 billion of weapons to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He later fired Steven Linick, the State Department’s inspector general looking into those sales, but when the IG’s report came out nonetheless, it was scathing, suggesting that they put the U.S. at risk of being prosecuted for war crimes.

When you remember that Trump’s strong suit has always been distraction, and that he has always used the presidency as a money-making venture, I wonder if we need to factor those characteristics in when we think about his unprecedented and dangerous refusal to admit he has lost this election.

I read her words and look around for support.

Henry Miller:

“One’s destination is never a place but a new way of looking at things.”

Terry Tempest Williams:

“To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.“

Yesterday I went to Dunphy Park in Sausalito and sat by the bay and watched the tide come in. Grebes, egrets, cormorants, and gulls entertained as their eating niches slowly filled. The tide is coming in, and with that comes trust that the damage that one man can do will soon be undone, and we’ll connect in care for All!