Cruelty
I’m working to keep this blog positive for myself and you. I know we’re all aware of the coup, and the lies in the speech last night but today when I read that the Trump administration imposed a $1.00 credit limit on park employees, I felt my blood pressure rise.
Yesterday I was at the Muir Beach overlook. I used the bathroom. I used toilet paper. How are the employees supposed to buy toilet paper and resupply the bathrooms with no money? How are they supposed to turn on the lights in the offices where they work? How do they buy gas for the vehicles they drive to move from place to place?
What is the purpose? It’s cruel.
I think of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem, How Do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
For this administration their rule is: How do I hate and destroy this country? Let me count the ways.
Interdependence
The world seems turned upside down with the Trump/Musk/Putin trio, now acting as one. I read The Cult of Trump, and saw how Trump was raised without love to hate and dominate, and yet, destroying the world seems a bit harsh in response.
I know he hates CA but threatening our water supply, again I ask, why?
With that, I was at the marsh yesterday and I offer photos of harmony and connection.
Faith
I offer a poem by James Baldwin:
For Nothing is Fixed.
For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
“Stronger than that”
Rising United
We need our independent bookstores. This Pablo Neruda quote used to hang outside City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.
Tyranny cuts off the singer’s head
But the voice from the bottom of the well
Returns to the secret springs of the earth
And rises out of nowhere through the mouths of the people.
Balance
Rumi:
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”
Photos from where I live.
Land
More and more I learn about the importance of the land where we live. We moved a great deal when I was growing up, as did my husband’s family, and yet, when the two of us came to Marin, we knew this was “it”. I looked out on the ridge and knew I was home.
The Coast Miwok lived here, peacefully. It’s a peaceful, nourishing, nurturing place.
In my meditation today, what came up was Mr. Wheelwright who donated the land where Green Gulch Farm Zen Center now beckons and thrives. He and his wife had lived happily there, and he wanted the land to continue to be loved and cared for. It’s on the other side of the ridge from where I live, flowing down to the Pacific.
I think of what brings happiness. When I was in Nepal, I read Dominique LaPierre’s book The City of Joy, about life in a slum in Calcutta and the joy he found there.
Musk wants to go to Mars. I wonder if Mars wants him. Perhaps we need the devastation he’s creating to bring us together and remind us what matters. It’s one planet, bound together economically, and morally, and not by the egos of a few.
“Be a Good Ancestor”
I just watched Roman Krznaric’s Ted Talk on looking at history to create our tomorrow. He offers the Maori proverb: I walk backward into the future with my eyes fixed on the past.
Lichen
There’s a saying that Annie Algae and Freddie Fungus took a “lichen” to each other, and so we have a symbiotic organism where algae provides food through photosynthesis and fungi provides structure, moisture, and nutrients. It’s not classified as a plant or animal. It thrives in unpolluted areas and can slowly, slowly, break down rocks.
I’m reminded of it when I read Heather Cox Richardson today – symbiosis and cooperation between differences, living and growing in harmony for the benefit of both.
Trump revels in telling lies. Most of us were raised to not tell lies but for him it is a game, a game he has won all these years.
We all know Russia invaded Ukraine. Putin thought he could walk in and own it in a few days but Ukraine has responded by uniting. What I didn’t know was this:
Trump lied that the U.S. has provided $350 billion to Ukraine and that half the money is “missing.” In fact, the U.S. has provided about $100 billion, which is less than Europe has contributed, and the U.S. contributions have been mostly in the form of weapons from U.S. stockpiles that defense industries then replaced at home. None of that support is “missing.”
From Heather: On Google Maps, users changed the name of Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago to “Kremlin Headquarters.”
When will the Republican party wake up and stop the madness?
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