This morning I rose early to clean my home.  It was a way to deal with the trauma in the world, all that’s being exposed, even as people are coming together in beautiful ways to support each other.  

What is my part?

My son introduced me to a wonderful book, “the first free women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns”.  The poems, written at the time of the Buddha and handed down orally until they were written down, are in this book translated by Matty Weingast with a Foreword by Bhikkhuni Anandabodhi.

There are several translations of the Therigatha (Verses of the Elder Nuns”,  73 poems written by enlightened women of all ages and backgrounds.  Matty wanted to be less literally accurate while bringing forth the essence of what was said.  I love the book, each poem a jewel.  

Last night my son and I, each sheltered in our separate homes, watched as Matty and Bhikkhuni talked about the book on Zoom.  She read some of the poems, and people asked questions.  

Naturally what’s happening in the world came up.  How do we respond?

She felt White people should join a group to work on our understanding of racism.  The way to delve into what we don’t even know and understand is with a facilitated group.

He felt we can learn through literature, and suggested reading Frederick Douglas, Audre Lorde, and Lucille Clifton.  I thought of James Baldwin as another source.

They both agreed that the poems show the many different paths to Enlightenment.  We are not the same, nor should we want to be.  We each choose our way to support the changes that are occurring in ourselves and in the world as we travel on a journey to peace.

I don’t have words right now for all that’s going on, so I offer this poem by Mary Oliver for comfort, guidance, and support.

Lead 

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

 ~ Mary Oliver ~  (New and Slected Poems Volume Two)  

Sometimes I’m amazed at what I don’t know.  I try not to judge that since the place of unknowing can be an opening.

Today I read and listen to this poem by Parnesia Jones. I suggest you do too, then pause and hold on to what we know is true. “Karma is keeping watch.”

https://poets.org/poem/what-would-gwendolyn-brooks-do

Awareness of the five astronauts in the International Space Station circling above us has me aware of gravity and what it would be like to float without it.  I know that our bones need the pull of gravity to replenish and furnish our support, and yet, for just a moment I’d love to feel and play in the float.  Maybe a few moments.

A bird’s bones are hollow with no marrow.  I like the sponginess of my marrow, the pink liveliness where stem cells are manufactured and blood cells are produced.  I’m grateful for the dance and exchange within, and of course, we dance and exchange with our environment that surrounds.

This morning I stayed in bed, reflecting.  Cherries are ripe and abundant this year so I was thinking how my life is a bowl of cherries, a pie crust filled with cherries, and then, as guided by David Whyte yesterday on a Zoom call I ventured within wanting to delve into what David Whyte writes in his poem “The Seven Streams. He says:

Be a provenance 

of something gathered, a summation of 

previous intuitions, let your vulnerabilities 

walking on the cracked, sliding limestone, 

be this time, not a weakness, but a faculty 

for understanding what’s about to happen. 

A provenance is source, and I feel myself going deeply within to Source, thinking of science fiction movies where they demonstrate movement at warp speed as streaks of light until, and here I am now, centered in source, which is calm, the eye of the storm.  I’m processing all the changes occurring each day, the rapid changes, and I’m returned to the 60’s and all the unrest.  Memories surface – riots, protests, assassinations, and death – war and change, and then, well, I had children, and those beings light the way, and here we are on a new day, and still I’m with what it is to nest, a nest carefully built where eggs hatch and birds fly away.

I sit here now. My feet receive the ground as the ground receives me and my heart waves a flag of grace.  On January 1st, 2020, I set my intention for this year to be kindness, to be kind to myself and others, to honor compassion, each moment, each day, as much as I generously could.  I read that Trump hid in the White House yesterday afraid for the venom he’s stirred and yet he continues to stir.

Yesterday, on the David Whyte call he said that “Trump isn’t large enough to hold both sides of the container. He represents the Dark Masculine.”  The virus is allowing us to open to a planetary conversation that can help balance the representation that is Trump.  We’re coming alive to structures that have been holding us down and in place.

We reach within, and touching grief, may feel something being born.

As David Whyte said yesterday and I’m paraphrasing him in this post as this comes from memory and is my interpretation of what I heard.

“We’re seeing a manifestation of people coming alive to the structures that have been holding us down and in place – a good manifestation in a bad form.”  

I’m watching Dragon’s approach to the Space Station.  Wow!  

Now docking at 7:16 my time.  I feel the touch of the capture, first soft, now hard.

Yesterday I watched SpaceX launch NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley into space to fly for 19 hours to the Space Station where they will stay.

I remember back to when I lived in Florida, and we students were gathered into the school gym to watch on a small television as a rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral.  In 1961 Alan Shephard became the first American in space.  In 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step on the moon.  By that time I lived in CA and watched on television here.

Now I can watch on a phone I hold in my hand, or on a laptop or desktop computer, or or TV. 

I rise above the complex and disturbing news on earth and rest in this achievement, an achievement  that requires vision, intensity, communication, and integrity. 

I read a book by Ursula le Guin where the question asked was if one lived on a planet where nothing flew, no birds, bats, or insects, would humankind think to fly.  We live on a planet where we see and are inspired by flight.  We’re meant to expand, to stretch the space within ourselves, to spring life into our joints, and exult in our ability to jump, skip, walk, and with a leap of technological connectivity, fly.  

This morning my husband and I were sitting outside as the day came to light, and we spied a little nest constructed on top of our power meter.  I stood up on a bench to take pictures.  The nest is empty now but clearly for the makers it was an amazing achievement, and a brilliant choice of location as it’s high up and next to a motion detector light.

I nest in the joy of living on a planet so beautiful, knowing that if we can reach the moon, we can figure out how to bring equality, nourishment, support, and shelter to all beings and life on earth.  

May this year be the last gasp of discord as we step into a new understanding of how fragile we are, and how strong, as we feel and absorb the ground beneath our feet and look up to the stars.

My friend Patty works at Commonweal. She sends me this today. This man, Marvin Mutch, is involved in Commonweal’s newest program.

People like this, programs like this, melt the heart, and this morning I feel my heart like a watering can with compassion pouring through all the little holes to soothe and bloom this earth we share, flowers and people, past and present, All.

Click on Ill-Served, and if you want more information, go to endwellproject.org. This particular offering and others are there. In watching and listening to Marvin Mutch, you will be rewarded with healing, beauty, and compassion that will help with the news of these days.

I open the new National Geographic on “The Last Voices of World War II” to a page where one survivor shares his story.

Nobuo Nishizaki, a Japanese veteran says, “We were sent to DIE FOR THE EMPEROR AND IMPERIAL NATION, and everyone acted like we believed in it. But when the soldiers were dying, the young ones CALLED OUT TO THEIR MOTHERS and older ones called out their CHILDREN’S NAMES. I never heard anyone calling the emperor and nation.”

When he left home for the navy in 1942, he was 15.  His mother ordered him, “You must survive and come back.”  Her words carried him through many battles and a suicide mission at Okinawa. He did return to her.

Perhaps now as we see a virus run through us all, we can release nationalism and come to peace.

The fog came in during the night.  I go outside and water, commune with plants and trees.  Cicero wrote that “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”  

I have both and yet I read the news and weep.

I had a medical appointment yesterday and was by the bay at low tide.  I thought that’s where we are right now, low tide.  Normally the area is bustling with people and there’s no place to park.  Yesterday was eerily empty.  I wore my mask, sanitized my hands, and my temperature was taken: normal.

That’s good and yet nothing feels normal these days.  

We’re having a heat wave and summer clothes spring forth.  We’re fragile where I live so a temperature of 84 anchors a little stress.  65 works for us up to 70 or 72.

The news these days is challenging and yet there are steps.  Twitter is offering fact-checks to two of the most blatant Trump tweet lies.

I listened to David Whyte yesterday as he spoke of John Keats and this quote:

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.

That plus Emily Dickinson and her words on hope guide my day.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—