Today lightning lit up our house, well, not a direct hit, but enough to knock out power to 2400 homes in our area, 8000 homes in the county.  I haven’t experienced a storm like this since my mother died in February, 2005.  That night was wild with lightning, thunder, and rain, but that was February, not August, which is usually dry.  I’m grateful for the rain and hope it puts out fires that started from lightning strikes.  

Each day brings something new, and once, again, it’s how we meet what comes.  

It’s been hot but in the night the wind blew through tossing open the gate.  Now there’s the rumble of thunder, the flash of lightning, and soft rain.  The “kitties” and I are enthralled.  

I’m with the power of dialogue, communication.  No two of us are alike.  We may totally agree on a range of issues and then there will be the slightest difference, as to too much chocolate in the brownies – oh, well, not that, but we can divide and dissect with the brilliance we are.

I read Heather Cox Richardson today and feel sad.  We need two parties, and the Republicans seem determined to destroy both.  I truly don’t understand it, but I’m grateful to stand outside and feel sweet drops of rain.  

You can read HCR here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

This morning when I rise, though the sun hasn’t yet risen above the hill to the east, I see it shining in.  I look around and see that the sun is reflecting off a window or mirror from across the valley and into a mirror in my house which is reflecting into the kitchen.

Reflection.

We never know how, when, or how far our light reaches and reflects.

That is my light for the day as I reflect on how we can’t seem to stop Trump.  This with dismantling and disabling the post office is unfathomable.  Voting machines that can be hacked are in key states.  I don’t know where to put it so I watch the day come to light and slow my pace to give spaciousness within.

I’m slowly and creatively moving through Christian McEwen’s book, World Enough & Time, On Creativity and Slowing Down.

Gary Snyder concludes his poem “For the Children” with these words.

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us,

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that, 

they say,

are valleys, pastures, 

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light.

I love where I live.  When I first saw this land, I knew it was for me.  The Coast Miwok lived here, and it swells with peace.

I rise at 4, touched by something reaching in.  Wake!

And now, I’m with branches of trees, and branches in the sky.  I settle where branches begin. 

Today I listen to day 18 of the 30-day Wake-Up Challenge with Adyashanti.

I receive that I do this because I care.  I feel that deeply, how we care, care about ourselves, family, friends, and the wider world we share.

We’re not alone; we’re interdependent.

In that, I feel the pain of others, pain I can’t diminish for another, so the illness and possible loss of a parent magnified by a time when they can’t be seen or touched.

I sit with that today, with tears of letting go, of liquid love as I remember the passing of my own parents, and a pain that will always be part of me as I carve deeper paths into the ground of Love we share.  

My dreams are rich these days, guideposts to slowing down and receiving.  

This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings.

So love, love, love.

― Hafiz

I’m mesmerized by this poem.

“Duplex: Black Mamas Praying” by Antoinette Brim-Bell. You can hear her read the poem, and her comment on it here:

https://dcs.megaphone.fm/POETS2328102497.mp3?key=c70bc102aac57751a2c57b3410465461

Enjoying this summer day as the fog moves in and out, I’m with these words of Henry David Thoreau.  

Simplicity

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as

two or three, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail …

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.

To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome

and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the

companion that was so companionable as solitude …

If one advances confidently in the direction of his

dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has

imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in

common hour …

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.

So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and

took advantage of every accident that befell us. Sometimes, in

a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my

sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the

pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and

stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through

the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the

noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was

reminded of the lapse of time.

“Simplicity” by Henry David Thoreau from Walden. 

One son and I are participating in an on-line workshop with Adyashanti.  This week is about the heart.  My son is struggling to understand what it means to embody the emotional heart in the spiritual.

In going back and forth in our discussion, I remember holding hands with another as we’d swing around, both pulling as we balanced the circle until we collapsed laughing and tired on the ground.

Maybe when we discuss with another, go back and forth with thoughts, ideas, and sharing, it’s like that. We balance centrifugal force until we collapse in knowing what matters is circling with held hands and heart.

With another friend right now, we’re looking at what it is to be the first child in a family of elders, and then, second, third, fourth.  I’m a first child with all that that entails. I was worshipped as the Holy Grail. That’s lovely and there’s a pressure, too, so perhaps I still resist outside influence as I hold room for inner space.

This morning I had the image of a round card table we stored downstairs when the children were young.  One day the children pulled it out, turned it upside down and used it as a merry-go-round, which, of course, ripped the plastic cover, and didn’t do much for the structure. From then on it was either a merry-go-round, or a rather dilapidated and unstable table covered with a tablecloth.

Did it matter that it was ripped and torn and shaky on its legs? Aren’t we all beautifully put together, then turned upside down, so that when we come back up we see and function in new, perhaps unpredictable, and necessarily more creative ways?

I’m finding the political situation challenging these days.  I love the USPS.  I love to mail letters, and cards. I still enjoy paying some bills with a check and putting on a beautiful stamp and sending it off in the mail.  I find it satisfying but I got my first late charge this month and realized the mail service has purposely been slowed, so where I pay bills twice a month, I either need to pay everything on-line, or mail it back the minute it comes which may not come soon enough since slowed mail isn’t arriving far before the due date.

I recognize that these days are offering wonderful opportunities to practice our skills of equanimity. I give thanks for this daily expanding gift to stretch and circle round with joy, touch, connection, mindfulness and presence.

With that, I return to Angeles Arrien and her words on the four-chambered heart.  The Four-Chambered Heart is full, open, clear and strong. 

It’s a time, even more than usual, to ask each day.

Where am I currently full-hearted in my life and work?

Where is my heart open to new ideas, people and experiences?

What am I clear about with respect to my vision, values and behavior?

What situations require courage and perseverance, the fruit of strong-heartedness?

And here we are, dear ones of shared tenderness and care, navigating this world with circling and connected intention for full, open, clear, and strong hearts.  

I’d love to understand what blows through, and how, and when, and maybe it’s simply to accept the changing tides even as I nudge on the serenity side.

My friend Elaine has a sidewalk chalk fairy friend.  Support connects.

This appeared in front of her home yesterday.

I’ve been working with dropping awareness often held in my mind into my heart. 

Yesterday I sat, paused, and felt my thoughts drop into my heart as though my heart was a washing machine and my thoughts were spinning slower and slower until they stopped, cleansed, and dissolved.

Perhaps this image came because my washing machine is broken and I’m washing clothes by hand which reminds me of washing clothes in a stream and rubbing them against rocks. I like the idea of communal washing in streams.

We’re living in challenging times.  So much that was hidden is now exposed.

Yesterday former first lady Michelle Obama said that racial inequality amid the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic has left her feeling that she has “some form of low-grade depression”.

She said that watching the hypocrisy of this administration is “dispiriting”. I find that helpful as I’ve been struggling to understand this weight I’ve been dragging around.

 I understand life comes to us as we perceive it, so perceiving from and with the heart is a way to cultivate new living in my being, trust.  I do that now, listen, receive.

What can I release? 

The wonderful poet William Stafford rose early each morning to write a poem.  He wrote a poem each day.  When asked how he could possibly write a poem each day, he said he lowered his standard.

Today I lower whatever standard I may have created, some false god or idol of some idea of “perfection”. I sense from and with the heart that surrounds.

I know I’m enough, just as I am, this moment, this day, this stepping in and out of time.

This is a beautiful immersion in the art of making a teapot, a focusing energy in form.