I open the pages of a brand new book, Be Water, My Friend by Shannon Lee about her father Bruce Lee.
I share his words for you to interpret however you need right now.
Empty your mind.
Be formless, shapeless, like water.
You put water into a cup; it becomes the cup.
You put water into a teapot; it becomes the teapot.
You put it into a bottle; it becomes the bottle.
Now water can flow, or it can crash!
Be water, my friend.
Perhaps we all feel like patients these days as we’re bombarded with lies from a man with power he doesn’t deserve and hasn’t earned. Therefore, I offer some quotes to guide and inspire the day, and encourage patience as we savor the beauty of these autumn days.
Charles Olson: Can you afford not to make the magical study which happiness is?
Confucius: With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.
Krista Tippett: What an incredible power we have, to walk through the world, making somebody’s day.
Remember: The space between the notes makes the music.
Here’s the trailer for a documentary that, in my opinion, is a must-watch:
October is the birth month of my son, grandson, and myself. I view it as a month of serenity, of the last month in the womb I’m currently in before the emergence of a new space in which to learn and grow.
I haven’t posted the last few days because I’m trying to balance on the lies that are spewed and reported, and the ethics and truth in which I was raised, and in which I believe.
I know truth can be complex. I don’t believe in black and white, but, in this case, obvious, hurtful, dangerous, painful lies, it’s hard to balance on the bedrock I build within.
I understand that he who will not be named was bullied as a child and that he was raised to cheat and thinks that those who don’t cheat are stupid or flawed, that they don’t know how to play the game, how to beat the system. I send kindness his way, understanding we were raised differently, and still there is pain.
The election comes, and it won’t solve all the problems that are being created by a man who deserves to be, and is struggling to stay out of jail but I find it hard to watch and see.
On the other hand, I rise in the dark, and walk outside and see stars. I lift there.
Children won’t be trick-or-treating this year, but in my sons’ neighborhoods, people are still decorating. My son says people are out and about more than ever walking around. Children can wear their costumes, and maybe it shouldn’t be about candy. Maybe it never was. When I grew up, it was trick for treat, and we would practice our poem, rhyme, or joke for days before we went out. It was an opportunity to perform, to give something back. This year, it will be about connection, about moving around the neighborhood seeing creativity displayed.
My one year old grandchild will go as a bear. His father has a shirt of the CA flag that’s missing the bear, so he will carry the Little Guy in its place.
Maybe that’s what’s needed this year, living examples of what’s been lost, and carried in and on our heart like the masks, in our care for others and ourselves, we wear. Let’s restore the innocence and love we’re created to share.
In Denmark, children are taught empathy in and out of school. May our new president be the example we want to see in the world, both small and large, and may we come together knowing we share a planet where each of us needs to feel safe and cared for as together we lift our eyes to other planets and galaxies of stars.
It’s been still here and warm. I hear the night creatures rumbling about but last night the wind blew in, and I felt as though I was on a ship, moving through and carried on the waves, as of course we always are, sailing on the winds of love, connection, beauty, trust, and grace.
Wearing a mask like fastening your seatbelt is pretty much a given where I live. In addition, because I can be cautious, I’m rarely out, but last Thursday I did meet my daughter-in-love at Filoli Gardens.
You need a reservation and there were very few people there but as we left, a mother with her two children passed us in the parking lot. The children were probably five and four, and the older one, a little girl wore a dinosaur mask and the little boy a rainbow.
I exclaimed, and they came closer and closer as we talked until their mother warned them to stop. They loved my glittery mask and though I saw it as an abstract design, they saw different things in it and excitedly and carefully pointed them out.
The children and their mother have stayed with me. It was a heart connection. Their mother says nobody talks to them, and I said, “And I don’t see children.” We all just stood there, attached with strings of love.
Tears come to my eyes even now as it meant so much to all of us. Of course, in normal times, it would have been more crowded, and we probably would have passed each other unnoticed, but there we were, as though we were the only people in the world, reaching out for communication and trusting that being so close, with our masks, was safe.
This morning I woke from a dream – again, two children, and we were talking, and the little girl kept getting closer and closer to me, until her mother said to me, “Don’t touch her.” Of course even in the old days, I wouldn’t have thought of touching a child I just met and didn’t really know but last week’s experience has stayed with me enough to haunt my dreams.
I love to sit by a playground and watch children. Last week, a playground opened near where my son lives, and he took my almost one year old grandchild. There are rules, masks, and only one child at a time on a play structure, but it was grandchild’s first time getting to climb and go through tunnels.
I can find advantages in all of this. Both of his parents work from home. He would never have had as much contact with them without this, and it’s a gift for them, too, and what does it all mean?
Perhaps it means we value each interaction even more than before. Nothing is taken for granted. One playground near me is now open, again with rules.
Each generation grows up differently. I pray this one is learning the value of connection, interaction, gratitude for the moment, and the value of touch and trust.
I’m struggling a bit with the news these days. Enough said.
I continue to work with my own expansiveness, my own stretch and reach, allowing my feet to reach into what’s beneath me, even as I rise, like a tree, well-rooted and branched.
Today I’m with the words of Thich Nhat Hanh:
Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water.
The day was to go one way, and then a change, so now another, an open space. I’m out early this morning, well not early if it were summer, but this time of year 6:00 is still dark. The crescent moon is a cradle and stars are shining, winging my brain.
I oil my circle
of archetypes, prayers, gears.
Wind chimes.
I find myself wanting to eat some acorn mush in celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day though I’ll probably pass. I live on Coast Miwok land, and I’m grateful for its sanctuary, its feeling of bounty and peace.
We’re now learning that humans may have arrived in North America at least 20,000 years ago, 5000 years earlier than previously believed. We’re also learning that they came by boat as well as foot, so they traveled down the “Kelp Highway” abundantly sustained by resources along the coast.
I’m visualizing their travels even as I celebrate that it’s also Thanksgiving Day in Canada. The earliest recorded Canadian Thanksgiving dates back to 1578, well before the Pilgrims and the Native Americans feasted at Plymouth in 1621.
Canada sits above us and leads the way.
Yesterday I read Jill Ker Conway’s book, The Road from Coorain. Born in 1934, she went from birth on her parents’ thirty thousand acre sheep station in the Australian outback to become the first woman president of Smith College in Massachusetts. She was seven before she saw her first girl child, and eight when she was herding sheep from horseback.
Influenced by the land on which she lived, she writes “It is hard to imagine a kookaburra feeding St. Jerome or accompanying St. Francis. They belong to a physical and spiritual landscape which is outside the imagination of the Christian West.”
She also delves into Britain’s rule of and influence on a country that was first inhabited by Aboriginal people between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago. On Wikipedia, I read that “their artistic, musical, and spiritual traditions are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history.”
It’s a day to celebrate the richness of the past, the diversity, and how we now open in abundance and generosity to bring forth and recognize the bud and bloom of all that is here, this moment so precious, this moment explored and shared.
The poet William Stafford, was a registered pacifist in the United States. From 1942 to 1946, during WWII, he worked in camps and projects for conscientious objectors. He was paid $2.50 per month for assigned duties such as fire fighting, soil conservation, and building and maintaining roads and trails. This poem speaks volumes to me.
Learning
A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.
~ William Stafford ~
(The Way It Is)
In 2005/2006, I went through treatment for breast cancer, or as Molly Ivins put it, I was poisoned, and burned. She added that she was mutilated, but I ‘just” had a lumpectomy so didn’t feel as violated as those who had more.
I finished treatment in June and went through horse therapy to “re-empower” me. I’m not sure I was re-empowered but I loved the horses, and the time with them, and learning how they responded to my energy. It was a lesson in how we respond to the energy of others, and our own, and how we interact.
That September, I was invited to participate in a fashion show, a gift to the oncologists and doctors who had contributed to the survival of a group of women, and one man. Yes, men can get breast cancer, and he was quite a dapper soul.
We each had three outfits to wear down the runway. I wore pink lingerie, brown sportswear, and a beautiful black outfit with the risk of very high heels. Everyone wore formal dress for the runway and grand finale.
It was a beautiful, fund-raising event. It comes to me now when I read that Desiree Anzalone, the great-granddaughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Sr., has died from breast cancer. She was just 31.
We are reading of her because she is famous, but my understanding is that all the young women in that show passed away rather quickly afterwards. I was the oldest in the show at 56. There was a woman in her 20’s and others in their 30’s and 40’s, and a few in their young 50’s.
Cells multiply more quickly in the young so when they get cancer, they are more at risk. My family is gathering today, socially distanced, of course, to celebrate my son’s birthday. I give thanks for all the scientists and doctors and dedicated people who mean I’m here. The young man who handed us a gown for radiation always made sure each gown was warm, and he said a prayer over each one. Tears come. We live in a world of care.
Yesterday I met my daughter-in-love at Filoli Gardens. Reservations are needed these days and it was completely uncrowded. Two fawns greeted me as I turned into the driveway. What a gift to be with a wonderful human being in a beautiful place. A temporary exhibit of flowing sculptures was scattered through the gardens.
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