I started to say the sun is shining and then I realized that, of course, it’s shining; it’s always shining and then there’s what’s happening to us as the weather changes: fog, clouds, rain, snow, sleet.
This morning I’m at peace. I’m thrilled with the Supreme Court decision on LGBTQ rights. I swirl within, a pelvic cauldron that swells up into heart and throat with gratitude.
There’s so much to do on the planet, and honoring each of us is where we start.
Ah, the sun just struck a branch of the tree, and that touch reverberates in me.
Sun spreads its beams through each of us us like honey and jamand I stay sheltered-in-place.
Where I live, I can stand on a bridge or sit by the shore, and watch the changes as the tide turns in Richardson Bay. It’s not a simple, polite exchange. Oh, yes, now let’s go this way and not that. You go first. I’ll wait.
Instead, there’s a swirl and circling I might view as confusion and uncertainty. What, oh, the moon is pulling us this way and not that. Okay, don’t shove; let’s turn, but not rigidly, not marching left, right; let’s pause, then, circle a bit to navigate the change.
I sit here this morning trying to expand around all that’s going on.I’m circling, trying to navigate changeand grief, anger, sorrow, fear, knowing that ultimately all is love.
Where I live there are two ways to drive to the ocean. One is a series of curves that makes some people sick, and the other is a rather straight route through a variety of towns that become smaller and smaller as the road heads west.
That road, a major east-west connector in the county, is called Sir Francis Drake.
There’s now an outcry to change the name of the street. Until recently, I didn’t know that Sir Francis Drake began his career as a slave trader. I knew he was a pirate but hadn’t considered that he traded in human lives.
In addition to the name of the road, in 1990, a huge 30-foot tall, steel sculpture of Sir Francis Drake was placed next to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal.Now, people want it gone.
At first in the overwhelm I often feel these days, I thought it was hardly the biggest issue of the time but now I see that yes, we must do everything we can to show we’re paying attention to the changes that show that Black Lives Matter.
I just finished reading the book Troop 6000 by Nikita Stewart. It, too, is an eye opener as it deals with the problem of homelessness in NYC.
Reading this book, I have great respect for Mayor de Blasio and what he is doing to deal with what seems like an insurmountable problem.
I’m also in awe of the woman who with courage, determination, and the help and support of others set up Girl Scout troops in shelters in NYC. Her work changes lives.
One person can make a difference. We know that but this book is an honest accounting of the work in change.
And now for me, there is the more immediate question of social distancing. My family and close friends are still choosing to honor it, so I wait to hug my children and grandchild.
I’ve been through physical pain, and I want to wait a little longer before I expose myself, or those I love, or those I come in contact with, with something that still seems scientifically illusive.I also understand this is a mental health issue. When does the economy, social interaction and touch become more important than anything else?
For now, my family is in agreement, and perhaps my wider family too as my little bird friend still sits on her nest. She brings me trust and peace.
Yesterday a friend shared with me three questions Norman Fischer asked her Sangha to discuss in small groups on Zoom.
What is the difference between inner and outer life?
If there is a difference for you, what does the difference feel like?
Again, if so, what would it be like to bring the two together?
I’m with these questions. Considering them, I become porous, and there is no difference between in and out. I think of the Pixar movie Inside Out. How much of what we see and interpret comes from inside, not out?
This morning lying in bed I listened to birds as they chirped the morning to light. I felt my skin touching in and reaching out, receiving and negotiating like an airport controller leading planes to land and take off.
I visualized myself as an airport, wondering if planes have attachment to their hub, if they prefer gathering with other planes painted like them, or enjoy the diversity of different colors and patterns on planes. Of course, planes aren’t “human”, and yet, what is this world in which we immerse? What is our response to different colors and shapes?
Today I learn that on the International Space Station, experiments are being conducted with a fifth state of matter. We know about gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas, but in a lab, 25 years ago, scientists created a fifth state of matter, Bose-Einstein Condensates.
According to LiveScience, “when a group of atoms is cooled to near absolute zero, the atoms begin to clump together, behaving as if they were one big “super-atom.”” This way to explore the quantum world is more easily explored in the microgravity environment aboard the ISS.
What an exciting addition to all that’s happening here on earth.
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky said that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Clearly, we in the U.S. have a long way to go, and yet, I’m inspired by Wendell Berry.
The Real Work
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
– Wendell Berry
We’re in this together my friends as we welcome new ways of understanding and coming together as this fifth state of matter is explored.
Morning Sky – the moon is there too – On the ridge
Windows are open and I wake to a symphony of singing birds. The moon is a light in the softness of the morning blue sky, a beacon demonstrating change.
I’m with the sharing of a friend who went to a rally in Amherst, Massachusetts. He writes:
Towards the end, we were asked to take a knee and stay in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in memory of George Floyd. This is how long the policeman pressed his knee onto his neck until George died. About 1,500 people or so were completely silent for that time. Ann and I have been sitting for 8 minutes and 46 seconds twice daily since and we plan to do so in the coming days and weeks.
I can’t stop thinking about those 8 minutes and 46 seconds. That’s a long time.
I see how important it is for each of us to honor that amount of time each day, as we imagine what it was for George Floyd and as we give thanks for this flow of breath in and out, this beautiful exchange.
Here’s a beautiful essay to answer the question What Is Love?
I love how the moon is shining in the sky when I rise these days. She is such a peaceful presence drawing my eyes up and outward.
I just finished reading James Nestor’s book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. I recommend it. He shows how essential it is to breathe through our nose, not our mouth, to fully exhale, and to chew. How we breathe matters.
This is excellent, and I recommend it as a way to immerse in, and understand what is going on.
Two weeks ago, Monday, May 25th, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. Two others restrained him, and a fourth kept help away.
This incident, unlike so many, has ignited protests and forced those of us who are White to look at our privilege.
Here in the U.S. I may have taken my privilege for granted but when I was in Nepal in 1993, it was moment by moment clear. The color of my skin set me apart, elevated me, protected me. When I was in the mountains in the Everest region, I was allowed into places the local Native people were not. I was “special”. I hope that’s changed.
When my children were young, I was a Terwilliger Nature Guide, trained to spot snakes and plants, and shout out just like her, “Something Special”, and yet, of course, everything is special. A weed is a plant growing where someone chooses not to want it. We now know the nutritional value of dandelions. Many always did.
Yesterday I was guided into my body to feel what’s going on for me. At first, I felt my jaw drop down into a pouch like a pelican pouch. Putting my thoughts there, monkey mind, I could feel the draining out of excess like water, but also how thoughts could be digested, used as needed, and eliminated as purely waste which most are.
Now, the murder of a man on the street is asking us, requiring us, to pay attention. We’re noticing our responses, habits, thoughts. Difficult as this time has been, I am awake. I wake in the morning, alert, feeling myself 360 degrees around like a tree. There is no front and back, no separation. I’m immersed in a world that asks me to be awake to it, to shine a light on my shadow and examine how I am in this world, my relationship to where I liveand how I connect, listen, and receive, so I can be clear in how I give.
What I felt yesterday when I paused to feel is that I’m bruised inside. This is trauma for all of us as we come together to heal wounds visible and invisible. This is no attempt to compare wounds, or how each of us bleeds, but simply to say my current mantra is Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, “Please Call Me by My True Names”. It carries the compassion needed to heal our times.
The world is rocking as people reach within to balance what’s been wrong.
Black Lives Matter rings through the air and the ground under our feet.
I sit amidst it all, feeling like a bell continually being rung.
This morning the image comes of one of those sliding tile puzzles. There are 16 squares with 15 tiles and you move them to align numbers or letters or form a picture.
I find myself as the space, the open place where movement is allowed.
I don’t know what this day brings and I open my wings to spring. Mama Bird is sitting on her nest and seems comfortable with my checking in on her, not too close and not too far. I say, “I love you,” and she responds, “Tweet!”
My days are filled with butterflies, and not the stomach kind. Yesterday one flitted by the window and at first my eyes took it in as a bright yellow bird.
On December 25, 1968, these words of Archibald MacLeish were published in the New York Times.
The medieval notion of the earth put man at the center of everything. The nuclear notion of the earth put him nowhere – beyond the range of reason even – lost in absurdity and war. This latest notion may have other consequences …. To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold – brothers who know now they are truly brothers.
Yesterday I noticed there appeared to be an extension on the nest I posted a picture of a few days ago. Today I look and there’s a beak sticking up from the nest. I believe mother is resting on her eggs.
I’ve moved the table and chairs away from the area so all can be peaceful for my little friend.
Today I think of how all children are our children.
In my neighborhood Next Door there was a report that an older White woman was tearing down signs that say “Black Lives Matter”. When confronted, she said she didn’t want her grandchildren to see them.
I feel sad that there would be a differentiation between her grandchildren and all grandchildren, sad for her and her children and her grandchildren.
I wonder if this will be the final breakthrough. So many times, we’ve thought we were there. Certainly with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, I thought we were making a statement to the world, and now ….
And people are speaking up. I read that an elderly White woman was escorted out of our local Whole Foods for making racist comments to a Hispanic woman. She was told we don’t tolerate racism here.
I should feel happy about the positives in this and yet there’s something about those who still don’t see that makes me sad, and obviously there is more that I could see, and yet, I’m working to open my eyes and perception, to widen and broaden my reception.
David Abram says that where we might have thought our senses were antennae bringing the world to us, actually the senses are “gregarious”. We live in an interactive world. Our world is one of being in relationship, within ourselves and with this world we share.
Sitting with that, I give space to my sadness, give space to all that’s happening, the pandemic, unemployment, confinement, and now a clear exposure of the injustices of racism. Perhaps each of us opens to what it is to be Black in the United States with dismay and sorrow that we’ve allowed it to go on so long.
Yesterday a ladybug, a symbol of good luck was at my front door. I sat with her and rejoiced with the omen. She didn’t fly away.
Today I open The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. I read some of the poems and won’t put them here. I need to stitch my heart back together as the seams are broken open and I want to repair.
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