Today I pulled into rest. I woke this morning, a heart of contentment.
I’m savoring spider webs, so striking in autumn light.
The shining webs remind me of Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White where Wilber asks his spider friend Charlotte why she did so much for him and saved his life.
“Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
Resting, I’m with Thich Nhat Hanh’s book How To Love.
If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.
When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.
Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.
I’m also reading Jojo Moyes book, The Giver of Stars. It’s historical fiction, based on the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky. Encouraged by Eleanor Roosevelt, a mobile library was set up by the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. Women on horses and mules brought books, materials, and connection to those unable to come into towns.
All of this has me awaiting the rising of the Hunter’s Moon. Tomorrow it will be full, but tonight, it’s a glorious beacon in the sky, announcing how radiance from one object shines on and affects another.
Rest with the ease of the moon reflecting light from the sun.
Power is back on which means seeing lanterns, candles, and a headlamp lying about ready to be put away for next time. Perhaps there is something about the dark which indulges and includes, but the dishwasher has run, and laundry is happening, and I find myself considering grief.
I realize it’s six months since my brother passed away – six months.
I think of pain, how deeply it carves the flesh. And it’s not just about the pain of losing my brother, which may be tied to loss in general, a loss of family members and friends, and a different type of loss, a loss of democracy, a loss of order, which requires a recognition that we don’t have control. I have tons of inspirational quotes on surrender, but today I sit with a wider awareness, an expansiveness that allows me to touch the different forms and ways in which spirit flows through.I watch Bella, my beloved cat, as she sleeps and breathes.
I am a 2 on the Enneagram, which means relationship is important to me. I find pleasure in giving, in anticipating what another might need, but how can I know what another needs? How do I know what I need? When I work with John Baron and the Alexander Technique, I see how ready I am to help. I tighten in expectation of how to help. It’s hard for me to let go, to curve into letting go, rather than what I perceive as a more straightforward holding on approach.
I understand that as I change habitual patterns, my world will change, and I feel that happening, and still there will be a return, and all of it is so visceral. I struggle with this letting go, and these two days without power perhaps gives me more of a leaning into what can be, and what is.
All of this has me considering what we’re up against in this country right now. We have outside forces working to disrupt, and a government that appears compromised with a head who has no awareness or concept of morality, ethics, right action or right speech.
In high school, I learned about the Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. I believe in compromise, and yet compromise didn’t halt the horrors of the Civil War between 1861 and 1865.
The nation is divided right now. I sit with that, sit with sorrow and grief, as I watch first Trump, and then Steve Kerr, a master of morality in opposition to what must end, and soon, for all of our sakes.
I returned home to see a huge buck jump over my neighbor’s very high wood fence. Wow!
In the past, there were no obvious fences here, and the deer roamed freely and had their babies in our yards, but now new neighbors put up fences, so we’re fenced in, and I feared the deer might be fenced out. Therefore, I was delighted to see this buck jump right out of their newly landscaped yard. What a treat! Because we’ve been outside so much at night with the power outage, we’ve been hearing browsing down below our deck, and it was wonderful to see in full leap the reason why.
Also, it seems complaints about PGE and their lack of response leapt into gear today, leapt as high as the deer, and so power is back on which means we can water our yard and children can go back to school. Hooray!
There’s no wind, another day of no wind. My nine wind chimes are silent sentries, hanging straight, and yet PGE has continued to cut power to my area because they insist there is wind.
This continual bombardment of non-facts is getting to me, and yet I can be grateful. It allows me to work with balancing on same-same, and Is that so? I think to myself, “shoulders have space,” and in response, shoulder blades float apart, left and right, each a sail open to catch the wind, like wings in flight.
I don’t mind when I don’t have electricity because of wind and/or rain, but when there is neither, and the only sound is the sound of neighboring generators, I struggle with equanimity. I don’t live in the wilderness. I’m a ten minute drive from San Francisco when there is no traffic, which is rare. Yesterday traffic was grid-locked much of the day. We talk of evacuating during a fire. We can’t even move cars on a clear, calm day.
I note though that the Blue Angels haven’t been practicing for their weekend display. Perhaps someone realized it might appear insensitive to hear jets screaming and rumbling overhead when we sit below without power, knowing our president has given permission to slaughter people as well as the environment. Maybe cancelling the Blue Angels flying over the Bay Area might make sense.
We live in a world of interdependence, and that requires each organism to function at the height of intuitive and intellectual powers though we seem to be struggling with an honoring of that. Meanwhile, PGE insists the wind is coming, and while food spoils, there is no update, and there is no wind.
I comfort myself with the words of Thoreau. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” What I see, in this moment, is sunlight spreading gold over a landscape so still it could be a photo.
Meanwhile at 5 this morning, I enjoyed a lovely conversation with a local man who was grateful his coffee stand had power. I was grateful too. I bought two lattes, two hard-boiled eggs, two bananas, and two baked goodies for $14.00. I kept insisting he undercharged me. He said he doesn’t believe in $5.00 lattes. Maybe the whole lesson in this is an affirmation of what we already know. Shop local and support the person who provides coffee at five in the morning and eggs from chickens that live down the street. Coyote Coffee. Hooray!
I don’t want to appear in a less than positive mood. Aware of my occiput, I bend my head forward to beckon elasticity, and in response, the laughter of the universe, the ringing, twinkling of stars in the sky bell, chimes.
I wonder if God/Goddess isn’t playing with PGE as something must show there is wind when all is as calm as can be. They wouldn’t mislead, would they?
And so it is to enjoy the universe at play, and be with these words of Thich Nhat Hanh.
When we walk like we are rushing, we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth. Be aware of your contact between your feet and the earth. Walk as if you’re kissing the earth with your feet.
I can do that. Breathe in calm. Breathe out peace.
And now it’s afternoon.I wrote the above this morning content with a private vent. I didn’t have wifi and figured spewing anger into the air was even worse than walking angrily on the ground.
I decided to go outside and water the yard, but then I got another emergency text that outdoor watering was not okay, and indoor use was limited. Pumping water requires electricity and since PGE, well, you might begin to see. I was absorbing that, yes, okay, fine, we’ve done water rationing before but then I looked at my plants wilting in the heat, and explained the situation to them, and while we, well, while I, was trying to calm, Blue Angels rumbled and streaked overhead. It’s Fleet Week, and clearly not too windy for Blue Angels to fly.
And now I read of a fire in Moraga that was quickly extinguished, though the Moraga Police Chief Jon King said of the power shutoff. “Honestly, it made it more difficult. We rely a lot on technology.“
He added that, with no light and spotty cell service, the evacuations were a challenge. Police, firefighters and fellow neighbors went door-to-door to make sure residents got out.
Our power is out so I’m camped at Steve’s office after early morning coffee at Peets, and a return to home to shower.
This morning I watched people stagger in for their caffeine lift. Two women had pulled a coat on over their flannel pajamas, and as though sleep-walking moved along murmuring coffee, coffee, as they wound their way to their chosen source of renewal.
Before that though, an early morning gift was going outside around three or four to place blankets and pillows on the deck, and resting face up, watch the stars. With all the lights out in our area, I could see dimensions and layers of stars, knowing some were whole galaxies, not just stars. I saw five meteors flash.
All of this meant I didn’t read the news until 1:30 today. I find it hard to believe.
It’s Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. One man’s son is here also as his high school is closed to honor the day, and, yet, we are observing a humanitarian crisis, innocent people killed. Why?
All day I’ve received text and phone messages that PGE will be turning off power in my areaduring the night. They don’t know when it will be back on. Local schools and libraries have been informed so they will be closed. Tomorrow will be an interesting dayas I’m wondering what will be open and how far the range. Candles have been lit and will now be blown out. It’s Dream-time.
This morning in my meditation I felt layers in my eyes, levels of perception within the living mechanism of my head, and considered how that inner noticing might affect the patterns and dimensions in my visual and sensory intake. How do I parcel what I see? How minutely and wholly do I bring the outside world into my being?
The hands and feet contain more than half the bones in the human body. Each hand has 27 distinct bones.
I play with flexibility in my hands and feet, probes that meet, touch, receive, and change my world.
Barefoot, I stamp on a mat made of river stones. Stimulation rises in me like sap in trees. I greet the interface, connect what swirls, a Mobius strip.
Last night I sat outside with my cat Tiger. We sat in the moonlight, savoring stars, and listening to the hoots of an owl. This morning I watch the sky come to light with its brief blush of pink.
This comes from Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac today.
On this day in 1971, John Lennon released his second solo album, Imagine. The title track was the best-selling song of his solo career and was included on BMI’s list of the top 100 most-performed songs of the 20th century. Lennon said that he and Yoko Ono received a prayer book, which inspired him to write the song. He said: “The concept of positive prayer … If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion — not without religion but without this my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing — then it can be true.”
The song’s call for peace and tolerance continues to resonate with people all over the world. Jimmy Carter said, “[I]n many countries … you hear John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ used almost equally with national anthems.”
Yesterday I worked in the yard, aware of wind chimes. I wondered how it is to be still and then the wind blows through bringing movement and sound. Are we any different?
Even as the wind chime hangs there, movement is happening, just more slowly than we perceive. How do I cultivate stillness, and allow the wind to blow through me bringing movement and my own vibratory slant to the air?
A friend’s email always ends with these words of Naomi Shihab Nye from her poem “Kindness”.
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.”
Last night the not yet half moon was a beacon in the sky spreading light. It seems as though as the days shorten, the moon offers even more light. Plants respond to the change in how to receive as do we.
Yesterday coming back from Woodside, we and other cars were speeding along 280 when traffic came to a halt. We creeped along for 30 minutes, or so, and then came upon the reason why. A horrific crash left crushed cars spread across two lanes of the four lane highway. Lights flashed from trucks and ambulances. Like that, lives changed.
As each of us looked, and drove past, there was a difference in the quality of the driving, a slow down from the previous 85 to 65, a visceral knowing of fragility and gratitude. It could have been one, or many of us.
I was grateful for the carriage in which I rode. My son who was in a different car on a different freeway, his slowed to 15 mph, pointed out that at the Folger Estate Museum, where we’d just been, we’d been looking at carriages from the past, carriages which would have required days to travel as we were, open carriages with no shock absorbers or air conditioners, and though we were in different cars on different freeways, we were communicating. How amazing is that!
This morning I wake and feel my body responding to seeing such a crunch of metal, a safety we take for granted, feel my spine extending, and again I think of the sea star with it’s five armed reach.I’m living; I move, moved.
Yesterday after brunch we went to the Folger Estate, a former estate now a beautifully preserved museum from the past, the CA past, which includes the Native people, but also those who came in 1840 and divided the land into grants. Today the buildings are preserved, children are educated, and horses are housed.
We sat under oak and bay trees and savored soft talk.
Today I feel a call to turn my yard toward fall, to be in the preserve that is mine for a time to care for, an extension of my receptors and probes, like fingers and toes.
A section of the Main Stable on the Folger Estate
A portion of the 188 foot long and 75 foot wide stable.
As I again contemplate this stable designed by Arthur Brown Jr. who later designed the City Hall, Coit Tower, and the Opera House in San Francisco, and the Hoover Tower on the Stanford University campus, I think of how we are told Jesus was born in a stable. I’ve never visualized it quite like this.
Enjoy your day as you expand on the meaning of words, and the mobility, flexibility, and airiness in your tissues, the blessings in this moment, this symphony we share that titled simply is Life.
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