I’ve been outside enjoying spring’s arrival when I come inside to read an article on therapy dogs and a pig at SFO. They wear harnesses that say “pet me” and are there to comfort and entertain. We live in a world of so much beauty. Touch. Receive.
Immerse.
Read about the Wag Brigade:
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SFO-therapy-dogs-animals-pig-airport-wag-brigade-14121957.php
It’s Valentine’s Day, a day to celebrate red and pink, the red in our blood, and the pink in the marrow of our bones.
There is a South American Indigenous saying: “To become human, one must make room in oneself for the wonders of the universe.”
Yes! This is the day for that.
The wonderful mystic and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.
According to an article in the New Yorker by Ian Parker, in the book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari suggests that The Cognitive Revolution began about 70,000 years ago when Homo sapiens began to develop “nuanced language”. They were able to “communicate untruths”.
“As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled,” he writes, referring to myths and gods. “Many animals and human species could previously say ‘Careful! A lion!’ Thanks to the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens acquired the ability to say, ‘The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.’ ”
They could unite with a shared philosophy, culture, and belief system.
As we know, we can unite through words, language, and beliefs, but also divide.
Today is a day to celebrate and feel the spirit of connection that flows through us all.
At heart, we are one.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
My husband is setting the alarm for 4:30 and rising enthused about work.
I rise a little later giving myself permission to lie in bed and mentally roam. Lately, I’m obsessed with babies and my three month and counting grandson.
I’m aware of roundness and reach, and focus near and far. I push him on the swing; he comes forward and flows back. Over and over we play with this shift in distance and space, until I feel the call to lift him out for a kiss and a hug.
I touch his nose with my nose and pull back – near and far, one of our favorite games so far. He laughs and I laugh. We mirror joy, relate as one and two and more as there is sky above us and grass beneath, or carpet at times, or wood. We notice texture, skin, clothes, touch, smell. He always smells baby-sweet.
I think of all the children in the world, each coming with different gifts. How do we honor and utilize each one? How do we do that for ourselves?
Right now, it’s dark outside and inside this room, there’s only the light of this screen. I light a candle, watch the flame, a nostril moving light through air. Cat Bella is on the chair next to me, insisting on attention. I kiss her, and use words with her, each word a touch, a flame.
Air responds to words like candlelight, and soon the sun will bring her full embrace to the day, a day between Lincoln’s birthday and Valentine’s Day.
Bliss.
This moment clarifies bliss as it opens to nurture and inspire the courage of Lincoln as we kiss our own hand to fluff the air as it moves in and out.
Like this day, we are new; we are Baby Light!
Yesterday my daughter-in-law asked me why my third book was so different than the first two. I answered that I didn’t want to write it and I had too many editors, too much outside input. It doesn’t mean there isn’t value in the book for me and the reader, but I feel a fourth one brewing that will again return to the fullness of my own voice.
In the book “Airing Out the Fairy Tale”, I reveal that I was called to find my own ground, the ground of my birth, before culture and society put its stamp on me, and of course that stamp was how I took my environment in, but I needed to trek in a time period no longer available, and people felt I should share my experience since it was such an amazing and unique adventure and opportunity. For me, it was a difficult and challenging time, and difficult and painful to go back to unravel, dissect, and reveal.
Yesterday spending time with my son, his wife, and their child, I felt again how we continue to learn. This grandparenting is a letting go, a receiving of the new. I hope a fourth book comes my way but yesterday reminded me that it is to know and honor “enough” and to trust how the path reveals.
Namaste!
I read that there are four archetypes – child, mother, father, grandparent.
I spent yesterday with my grandchild and his mother, and his father before he went to work. We giggled and laughed, and played very seriously too. Grandchild loves owls and is intrigued with the book “Wake up, Little Owl”.
We went to the park, and the library for story time, and out to lunch and then to a facilitated group meeting of mothers and babies. It was a relaxed, enriching, joyful day, a day where I did not check political news, and was floating on cherubic clouds.
The woman who orchestrated story time led us in singing songs and acting them out. The parents enjoyed swinging and clapping as much as the babies ranging in age from almost four months like my grandchild of joy to one year and two months. Some crawled; some stood and toddled; others watched; all waved goodbye.
In gratitude, I celebrate the words of Gilbert K. Chesterson who wrote: I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. Yes!
Rachel Carson who warned us to protect our natural environment wrote:
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder … he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.“
May we each create this for ourselves and for those around us. Children work hard to learn to lift their heads and crawl. They move forward and then draw back. This country has drawn back, and now we work together to leap forward for all children, for the child within, for male and female, for the adaptive and resilient wisdom of the elder, and for this earth we share. Peace. Gratitude. Wonder. Love.
Because of the response to my post on death, I’m remembering back. I always go to the ocean when someone I love passes. When my father passed in 1969, I went to the ocean in San Diego, found comfort there. With my mother I went to Pierce Point in West Marin where I could walk out on a piece of land with the ocean on one side, and Tomales Bay on the other. I knew my mother was there. I figured my brother would be at a surfing beach so I went to Mavericks Beach near Half Moon Bay and watched the waves as they broke on meeting the shore.
Watching surfers, I wondered if the wave notices when it carries the weight of the surfer who hitches a ride while standing on his or her board. Is there a sense of pride for the wave, or acceptance, or nothing noticed or changed at all?
With that I wonder how each of us carries the weight of grief. Where do we find support? How, and for how long?
As the caterpillar doesn’t recognize when a butterfly flutters by, that, it, too, will one day fly, so, too, we can’t seem to comprehend, or maybe we do, in some wider way, just as we know the wave is part of, and encompasses, sea and land.
I learn today of the passing of a friend’s sister and sit with words of comfort.
After my mother’s passing, I wrote many poems.
This is one:
after her death
mother’s words cool
like brownies in a pan
and yet they warm my mouth and heart
like a lightning bug’s glow in my hand
My greatest comfort though comes from these words of John Squadra:
When you love, you complete a circle. When you die, the circle remains.
And there is this by A.R. Ammons.
The reeds give
way to the
wind and give
the wind away
Which brings me to the passage of wind and these words by Jorie Graham.
A wind moving round all sides,
a wind shaking the points of view out like the last bits of rain ...
May we live fully and well, honoring the veils of view.
The wind is howling and though it’s February, I’m reminded of the saying, “The month of March blows in like a lion and goes out like a lamb”. When I was a child growing up in Iowa, and the wind blew in like this, we’d head out to an open field with our kites.
Today I read that the saying may come from the stars. In March, Leo the lion is the rising sign, and as April arrives, it’s Aries, so March ends, a lamb before the ram.
Now, sitting in a room newly painted and open to contemplation with still bare walls, I look up and notice the trees outside are painting on one wall. I’m touched with the beauty, a lesson delicately swaying the gift of change.
My heart ties ribbons to the tail of a kite.
I wake and savor my morning ritual, notice feet on the floor, arms moving up to reach two bowls, kitties fed. Now, they’re back to sleep. Bella is here next to me. Each morning she takes my chair and I move her to her chair. After rounds of petting, she goes to sleep.
I go through my senses, hear the heater running and Bella purring, the wind outside, smell and taste coffee, feel air moving in and out as I touch the keys of the keyboard, and sit on the pillow softening my chair as my feet in their socks rest on the wood floor. Such joy in knowing enough. Outside the window is pure delight as trees reach to light, light last night from the full moon and now more directly, the sun.
I harvest this moment.
Four wise women met for dinner last night and discussed our greatest learning. “Choose Joy” was the agreed upon answer. Joy! This moment, each moment, enough.
I’m with the words of Lao Tzu, the 6th century Chinese mystic, philosopher, and founder of Taoism.
“If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.”
I’m also with Frank Ostaseski’s Five Invitations.
The day opens before me, a map without lines, open to possibility, exploration, and trust in what comes. I anchor lineage, propel and nurture what seeds and grows in receiving joy and cultivating the ease of peace.
The fog is in and a crow is cawing. I look out as the day comes to light. I keep reading of the beauty and importance of noticing the transition of light, of noticing how I’m affected by the change, night to morning, through the day, and transitioning to night.
This morning I feel support, and a brightening as I see the yellow blossoms on the acacia tree that turn gold in the morning sun.
I offer my mantra of the last few days, these words of Pablo Casals.
“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”
“The CHILD must know that he is a MIRACLE, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world will not be, another child like him.”
“To the whole world you might be just one person, but to one person you might just be the whole world.”
Isn’t that the way to enliven transition and plant seeds in night and day?
Cathy's Blog! 