A friend tells me that for her shelter-in-place is boring, routine.  I don’t feel that way but maybe that’s because as an introvert, I easily entertain.  I feel like every moment something is hopping up to draw my attention like squirrels and crows running through and bouncing on branches of trees. 

Yesterday I posted that I was signed up for a workshop with “homework”.  Each day I was to bring forth a place of grief and go more deeply into it.

A friend emailed me today congratulating me on the courage required to do that, and chagrined, I had to admit I’d forgotten the assignment.  

In my defense, the usual good student that I am, an exchange yesterday turned everything around.

By email I was moaning to a friend that I couldn’t touch my grandchild though I have seen him twice socially distanced, and daily we Facetime, but I wanted to touch him.

She pointed out that her grandchild was born with a rare disease, and though sometimes he could be touched often he was hooked up to tubes and monitoring devices.  The child was pure joy but only lived a few years.  

My heart fell into a crevice of grief for her and his parents, and all who loved him, and I thought to myself I have nothing to equal that.  I know it’s not about comparison, but it is about perspective.  

It’s not the same but I remember when I was going through chemo and radiation and I’d see people much worse off than I.  I’d always feel better realizing I didn’t have it so bad.

One man was brought in from nearby San Quentin prison in his orange jumpsuit. He was well-guarded and his hands and feet were chained.   My heart moistens even now with sorrow at seeing him taken out of the van and escorted into the building.

A few years ago my husband was hospitalized at Christmas.  Staff was minimal and they gave him the best room with a view.   Because it was at the end, across the hall was a man, a prisoner, from San Quentin.  He looked so pitiful and it was Christmas, and the guards were outside his door, so in and out I’d go sharing the Christmas exchange.  Everyone was so sweet, and those who were working volunteered for those days.  The nurse who cared for Steve said he didn’t have children at home, and so it gave him great pleasure to work at that time.

Finally there was a great discussion.  Since it was Christmas, could the man have a shower?  The bathroom was right there connected to his room, and so it was agreed that he could have a shower. I think of it now and tears come. We were all so happy that the chains were removed and this man got to shower by himself. What a gift for us all! Certainly a Christmas to remember.

I realize that yesterday after thinking of the loss of my friend’s grandchild, I dismissed that I had anything to grieve, and  yes, personally I’ve gone into the depths of grief for my father’s death in an accident etc. but maybe I’m meant to expand this out, to feel what it’s like for children who are starving in this country and around the world.  What is it like to leave one’s home and travel to perceived safety and security, and be separated from your children and see them and yourself locked up?

Can I enter that depth of grief?

I’d been so absorbed in my own personal “story” which is privileged and blessed that I missed the point of the “assignment”.  

It’s 10:00 in the morning.  It’s time for me to sink, and open to feel new ground, and a horizon that embraces a wider world than I usually allow myself to recognize.  

May I travel and open in Trust and Peace and return in Compassion and Joy.

Though I live near San Francisco, my area is called Little City Farms, and feels rural. I live on a non-county maintained road, which means we pave the part we use, and the rest is a continually devolving landscape, a receptor of water’s flow.

Saturday I walked around the “hood” participating in a patterned pause and movement of social distancing. 

Ahead of me was a family with two children on foot-driven scooters.  The parents and one child turned a corner, but the other, a little boy about three, dropped his scooter in the middle of the road, and ran to the far side of the road.  I stopped, keeping my distance, as did someone coming the other way.  He dropped his pants and unselfconsciously peed into the weeds by the side of the road.  Then, he pulled up his pants, picked up his scooter, and off he went.

It was a moment, sweet and shared with people lined up behind me, like planes on a runway, each with distance, but able to see.

Before sheltering-in-place, families around here were busy and well-scheduled.  Now I hear children playing in their yards, and I see and hear families walking and biking together.

Cars sit and batteries run down, and in this moment, I pulse softly with peace and calm, intimacy, .

On another note, this morning I read Ocean Vuong’s poem, “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”.

I’m struck by these lines.

Your dead friends passing

through you like wind

through a wind chime.

I receive, believe.

Today I watched David Whyte in his online offering Just Beyond Yourself: The Power of Robust Vulnerability.  The word vulnerability comes from the Latin “wound”.  

He began by reading the poem “Just Beyond Yourself”. It’s written for John O’Donohue and you can read it online.  

He then shared about how going to the Galapagos brought him to a place of innocence which then led to hubris.  He had to break apart.

I was most struck when he spoke of his time in the Himalayas when he came to a broken and precarious bridge.  He was afraid to cross and then a “lined” older woman came skipping along and said, “Namaste”, which translates to “I greet the God in you”. After watching her disappear across the bridge, he crossed too.

I had a similar experience when I was in the Everest region of Nepal.  I was standing hesitant to cross a rickety looking bridge when a tiny, sprightly elf of an elderly woman carrying a heavy pack on her back came skipping across and seeing me standing there, said “Namaste”. She then continued along as I watched her, inspired by her energy and light. I write about her in my book Airing Out the Fairy Tale. 

Whyte speaks of his mother’s death, and how there is the loss, yes, but also a recognition revealed in his poem “Farewell Letter”, also available online.

The workshop has a homework task. Each day this week we enter into silence and invite a time of heartbreak or grief.  Allowing ourselves to touch into the bottom ground of our grief, we perceive a new horizon. I’ve done this before, gone fully into a place of grief, and what I discovered was joy, laughter, and bliss, so though part of me is hesitant to begin the task, another part trusts the reward.

We are living through a challenging time.  Certainty, such as it was, has disappeared, so we’re given an opportunity to meet what’s coming new, and in that, open to our poetic center and honoring the seasons, bloom in our time.  

There are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  The last few days I’ve been in a bit of depression so today I move my energy into acceptance.  How do we make the best of a huge change in all of our lives as this pandemic and evolving recession affects us all?

Former President Barack Obama led the way yesterday with his commencement speeches.  He continues to build and connect us in hope and the work involved in shaping our world in a way that connects and includes us all.  

Here’s laughter for the day.  Andrew Cotter, a sports commentator, uses his skills with two dogs, Mabel and Olive.  Continue along after their Zoom call. 

As for a way through, I realize I get depressed when I don’t write. I’m following the advice of Natalie Goldberg today.

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.” 

And see what comes.

My friend Jane has been studying restorative yoga and Reiki with this woman Valerie Jew.  I suggest you give yourself the gift of an hour and 9 minutes to rest, renew, and restore.  In my opinion, it’s an essential way to deal with these challenging times.

The day is gray and wet.  Three quotes guide my heart haven as I enter a new day.  

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

– Oscar Wilde

Happiness is a habit, not an emotion.

– Thich Nhat Hanh

And there’s this to puzzle over and untangle, though maybe it enters whole and clear. 

Dogen Zenji, a Japanese Zen master from the thirteenth century:

Mountains do not lack the qualities of mountains.  Therefore they always abide in ease and always walk. You should examine in detail this quality of the mountains walking. Mountains’ walking is just like human walking. Accordingly, do not doubt mountains’ walking even though it does not look the same as human walking.  

It’s May, the lusty month of May as sung in Camelot, and yet, this morning all is quiet and still.  It’s light and still early so I stay in bed luxuriating in the rising of a day that feels calm to me, open, unknown, as again I stir the inner wrappings of sheltering-in-place.  

I feel expansive as though I can fully claim this space and the movement of breath, of air, as it moves in and out, but it’s not claiming as much as noticing. What is this movement of breath in and out?  I extend, and I’m three dimensional- four – more.

As I’m with breath, simply breath, my diaphragm releases, and I revel in the gurgling that flows like a river, a symphony of my own.  

The diaphragm is the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious.  We might think we have a tight hold on what we know but when we release into the unconscious, there is so much more.  Today I feel into the formation of what guides us, this immersion in water, ground to clouds, this change of form.

A few years ago, a friend and her husband decided to memorize a poem a day.  They began with “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear.  Then yesterday a friend said she is memorizing a poem each day on her hike.  She, too, started with “The Owl and the Pussycat”.  She emailed me:

“My favorite line to say is Dear Pig are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring said the piggy I will……say it, Cathy, it just makes you feel so monumentally silly and happy.”

Say it.  It does, but it has me wondering what it is about this poem that is considered to be nonsensical.  Why an owl and a pussycat?  What’s the symbolism, and is there symbolism, or is it just a way to jiggle the mouth and body/mind all around?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43188/the-owl-and-the-pussy-cat

Today I began reading Rescuing Ladybugs: Inspirational Encounters with Animals That Changed the World by Jennifer Skiff.

I was feeling a little glum when I began.  I’d been to my local grocery store at 7:oo for Senior Hour and there were only a few customers in the store, all wearing masks, and carefully, mindfully, and somewhat furtively scurrying around.  There’s still no flour and very little pasta but certainly there’s plenty of food, more than one might imagine when one stops to think about any reality other than the one we were living in. 

Because I’m so rarely out though, it’s an adjustment to see so few cars out on the road. It’s a shock.

I read that social isolation will continue where I live, and I agree with that even though it’s hard not to see my grandchild and hug and kiss him.  I appreciate Facetime but it’s not quite the same, and yet I’m grateful that I can easily shelter-in-place as can my family and friends.

I honor the adjustment required when something this huge and still not understood has been unleashed.

This book gives concrete examples of how rescue and change are possible.  Empathy, memory, compassion, and possibly telepathy are shared among all creatures.  We can save ourselves, and the world, and together we will and are. I trust this to be so.

This morning I enjoy a back and forth exchange with an old friend on being aware of “counting down”.  We are of an age and there is a desire to convey some wisdom from our age, and in that, there is trust in how we imprint on the wind.  There’s nothing for me to do.  I’ve lived a good life and I trust that, and now there is a need or desire to release and be.  

Moles and gophers are busy in one section of my yard these days.  It’s unused, left natural for the critters who live in the area, but a neighbor’s cat loves sitting next to opportunity ready to pounce when a bright-eyed creature pops out of a hole.

My cats have never been hunters.  One even came to me when a bird flew wounded into the house and was lying winded on the floor.  We watched together until he or she was able to mobilize and fly back out.  

I feel such peace today and perhaps it’s because of the beauty of Mother’s Day and all the love that came my way, and the way of others I know and cherish, and all of us are mothers, mothers to ourselves, and this world we share.

I see this pause to shelter-in-place as an opportunity to go within, and slip underground like the moles, gophers, worms, and voles, and consider how we aerate the earth with our ability to ingest, chew, digest, and pour out our own intestinal touch.  Like the starfish, the sea star, we can expel our stomachs to feast, take in and release, over and over again.

Be Peace!

I read the following right before bed last night and my dreams were invitingly expansive and intense. 

Robert Bly in “Letter to James Wright” – 

Do you remember that cliff

We once imagined – hundreds of swallow holes,

   And an old Chinese poem rolled up inside

Each hole!  We can’t unroll them here.  We have

To climb inside.

This morning I’m with words of  Herman Hesse: 

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

I’m happily home unrolling scrolls inside.