Birds are tweeting and flowers are blooming. The air is full and sweet, and I sit with stillness, sit still to absorb and receive.
Balance
It’s said we come from stardust. When one is with a little one, it feels so clear. Big eyes answer one’s own with memory and depth.
I’m in Menlo Park spending time with a three month old. I watch him; he watches me. We reflect each other and the universal heart explodes and explodes. Love!
And then there is the political news. Yesterday we were at the playground. The teeter-totter goes up and down, as swings swing back and forth.
Walking from place to place, we passed daffodils flung gaily from the ground. I want the EPA to be reinforced, not taken apart, and parks given the allegiance and support they deserve to give to us. It’s even more clear now. Vote for the people and this planet we share. Vote for the children, each precious and deserving one!
Delight
It’s light later and earlier these days. I bought daffodils yesterday and my azaleas are blooming. My grandson, now three months and one week old, is enchanted with all he sees. He was born at a time to watch the leaves return, and the days grow longer. I want to meet each day with the delight of a three month old, and reach to touch with hands and heart what I see and what I don’t see.
Rooting
I’ve taken all artwork off the walls in two rooms and enchanted with walls bright with fresh paint, I seem unwilling or unable to mar the clear and clean surface with choices of the past.
Because mirrors and paintings are on the floor awaiting my decision, I see them differently, and come to this quote by D. H. Lawrence:
“It is a question, practically of relationship. We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe . . . . For the truth is, we are perishing for lack of fulfillment of our greater needs, we are cut off from the great sources of our inward nourishment and renewal, sources which flow eternally in the universe. Vitally the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.”
“We must plant ourselves again in the universe.”
I’m reminded of a baby’s rooting reflex, how a baby turns toward stimulus to suck. The Earth is here; she calls; she offers nourishment and support.
Illumination
Though I know that change is constant, sometimes I resist it until I don’t.
I was up in the night beckoning and receiving a wider view. I love the spaciousness of early morning hours with nowhere to go and nothing to do, so that what’s deep within comes creeping and dancing forth.
When my sons were young, we spent the night at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We placed our sleeping bags near the octopus tank, and in the evening darkness, he/she unwrapped to explore. We watched with care.
My inner felt like that this morning, a nuzzling forth and a peering out. There can be safety in the dark.
In cleaning, cleansing, and opening space in my home, I feel spacious. There’s more to go but certain sections have objects touched, contemplated, and chosen to stay because they give me joy, and touching inside gives joy too. I welcome and give thanks for this poem.
INSIDE THIS CLAY JUG
A POEM BY KABIR, TRANSLATION BY ROBERT BLY
Inside this clay jug
there are canyons and
pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons
and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside,
and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that tests gold is here,
and the one who judges jewels.
And the music
that comes from the strings
that no one touches,
and the source of all water.
If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.
Surrender
This morning I read Richard Rohr. “We don’t have to know.”
Last night I read Pema Chodron: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.
Some days I think I’m doing well, and other days, not so much, but today I know there is no “I” and I don’t have to know.
May unity, trust, and receptivity guide, treasure, and lead us all.
Space
Years ago I was at a weekend retreat at Asilomar.
Wayne Muller spoke about his book Sabbath, about the importance of a day of rest. He laughed because what the book encouraged he was unable to do because he used his day of rest to write the book.
I love it when there’s space to see what comes. Yesterday, among other things, it was Rupert Spira who came my way. I watched him on youtube and took in his message of love. We also enjoyed Chinese food for the Chinese New Year. There was no plan, only reception, and in that, beauty and grace.
Many years ago, we bought what we called a dinosaur egg at an art show. It’s made of concrete and is huge. It’s graced our entry all these years holding a plant that has begun to overtake the house. Yesterday I removed the plant and lugged the egg outside. The entry is bare, open to space.
Energy
Today begins the Year of the Rat, an industrious little fellow. I meditated this morning feeling energy flow. I’ve cleaned out enough that I’ve saved what nourishes me, and let other pieces go. Today is a pause to recollect, recollect the past.
For fifth and most of sixth grade, we lived seven miles outside Bettendorf, Iowa in a beautiful home that overlooked the Mississippi River. There was an island in that part of the river so the water would freeze and we could ice skate over and be with trees. In summer, we swam off a dock and traveled in a boat my father built. We could water ski from the dock. Next to our house was what I felt as a forest at the time. If I were to return, I’m sure it wouldn’t be the same but in those years of change, I could go there and be alone with birds, leaves, squirrels and trees.
Much of my life revolves around water and trees. There, I feed, and now this morning the birds are beginning to wake. And there’s that word wake. We each leave a wake as we move in our various ways.
Trees and animals, humans and insects, flowers and birds:
These are active images of the subtle energies that flow
from the stars throughout the universe. Meeting
and combining with each other and the elements of
the earth, they give rise to all living things.
– Hua Hu Ching
Love; Right; Truth
I woke this morning, embraced and bathing in Love. Love is the only answer. It’s the fabric of the universe, the tissue that connects us, and there is enough. Love is abundant, like life.
When I had my first child, I couldn’t imagine such love, and then, came the second, and there was an expansion of that love, a deeper immersion, a bath. Love expands like the universe.
I watched Adam Schiff’s speech this morning. “Right matters and truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.”
I don’t know why so many people are defending lies and corruption, but I’m expanding to trust that Love, Right, and Truth carry the day.
On Thursday, I walked home after taking my car to the garage to be checked. I like to cut over to the marsh on this bridge rather than walking on the road. I came to this sign.
I back-tracked wondering why this sign right now. I think as a country we’re being asked to return to the values on which this country was founded, and yes, it was written by white men, but we have expanded to be more inclusive, and we need to keep moving forward with Love of the Truth and facts that demonstrate what’s right.
Flow and Letting Go
Today I’m reflecting on Gabrielle Roth and her five rhythms. The five rhythms (in order) are Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. The 5 Rhythms, when danced in sequence, are known as a “Wave.” A typical Wave takes about an hour to dance.
The fastest way to still the mind is to move the body. My mind is active these days so clearly I need a little more movement, and yet, the rain and cold say “stay inside”.
Today I intend to move a little more gracefully, receptively, and rhythmically through the wave of my day.
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