I’m reading Rachel Corbett’s book, You Must Change Your Life, The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin.

When Rodin suggested to Rilke that he hone his craft by viewing animals, Rilke recalled the teachings of professor Theodor Lipps, a process of conscious observation called “inseeing”.

“Inseeing described the wondrous voyage from the surface of a thing to its heart, wherein perception leads to an emotional connection. Rilke made a point of distinguishing unseeing from inspecting, a term which he thought described only the viewer’s perspective, and thus often resulted in anthropomorphizing. Inseeing, on the other hand, took into account the object’s point of view. It has as much to do with making things human as it did with making humans thing.”

“If faced with a rock, for instance, one should stare deep into the place where the rockness begins to form. Then the observer should keep looking until his own center starts to sink with the stony weight of the rock forming inside him, too. It is a kind of perception that takes place within the body, and it requires the observer to be both the seer and the seen. To observe with empathy, one sees not only with the eyes but the skin.”

Rilke, enthralled, wrote to a friend: “Though you may laugh if I tell you where my very greatest feeling, my world-feeling, my earthly bliss was, I must confess to you: it was, again and again, here and there, in such in-seeing in the indescribably swift, deep, timeless moments of this godlike in-seeing.”

Rilke saw this in-seeing, as empathy, as a way to free himself from the solitude of his mind.

Last night we could watch ten candidates tell us why they should be president. We now have analysis and interpretation of what was said and different interpretations of who “won” and by how much. Perhaps it is for each of us to step into our own in-seeing, our own empathy with each candidate, and feel our way to who can best lead our country now.

Last night I placed a pillow and blankets outside on the deck and lay down to watch for meteors.  It’s like watching for whale spouts: it’s tricky. I didn’t see any but I loved watching the stars come out, one by one.  I made my wish on the first one, then waited, and felt and smelled the air grow cooler and cooler. Little critters rustled about under the deck and through the yard.

Sometimes when I rest outside looking up at stars, I feel small, a speck in the universe, but last night I felt big as though I encompassed all.

Then, this morning I came to Richard Rohr and words from Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights.  She lived from 1797 to 1883.

But the moment she placed this idea of God by the side of the impression she had once so suddenly received of his inconceivable greatness and entire spirituality, that moment she exclaimed mentally, ‘No, God does not stop to rest, for he is a spirit, and cannot tire; he cannot want for light, for he hath all light in himself. And if “God is all in all,” and “worketh all in all,” as I have heard them read, then it is impossible he should rest at all; for if he did, every other thing would stop and rest too; the waters would not flow, and the fishes could not swim; and all motion must cease. God could have no pauses in his work, and he needed no Sabbaths of rest. Man might need them, and he should take them when he needed them. . . . As it regarded the worship of God, he was to be worshipped at all times and in all places; and one portion of time never seemed to her more holy than another.’

I sit with that, one portion of time never more holy than another, and all moving in flow.  How has the concept of God taking a day off for rest affected my life when clearly all is flow, impermanence and flow?

Yesterday I sat by a fountain and watched fish.  They came up to me, up to the camera, perhaps thinking I had food or maybe I was the most fascinating thing around.  I felt we were communicating, fish and me. There was no need to categorize, only presence in a day where some fish swim round and round in a circle, while others live in the bay with ferries and wind surfers flowing by.

My heart continues to swell. I keep reading we are here for one purpose and that is to grow our hearts. Mine is swelling with love. Yesterday gave an extra boost, a giant swell. The gathering to honor Velvet’s life was touching and sweet as could be. She embodied Love, Life, and Joy, and transferred it to others.

One man who more than walked Velvet, who clearly loved her deeply, shared about life in Czechoslovakia before the Russians came and just like that took over ownership of the generational family farm. There were four horses, chickens, gardens, a life.

One daughter-in-law made blueberry cobbler that he said was just like his grandmother used to make. He wouldn’t describe the journey but said, at one point he’d had enough, and fled with his wife and two children to Austria where they were in a refugee camp for two years, and yet, there was happiness. I’ve heard that before from two women who were in a camp when Yugoslavia split apart. Sponsored, he came to this country where he seems puzzled by the layers and levels of discontent.

After such a day, I was shocked to return home and read about the shootings at the garlic festival in Gilroy.

People went through security this year just in case but the killer cut through a fence and used an assault-type rifle, and like that, everything changed.

I sit here now wanting to hold compassion for all, and my heart goes out to those who on a beautiful day suffered the greatest loss. There is no way to explain the way life coils and curves. May we all wind our ways to the center, the center of life and heart.

I rise early, and now it’s 6:00, the moon a slivered crescent in the Eastern sky as the world begins to turn to rose and pink with a few wisps of Karl the fog, the latest phenomenon in the Bay area, giving the fog that moves in and out a name.

Perhaps the name honors Carl Sandburg and his words:

Fog

The fog comes 

on little cat feet. 

It sits looking 

over harbor and city 

on silent haunches 

and then moves on.

I’m driving south today to Menlo Park via Half Moon Bay and Woodside.  I need the ocean and bay more and more these days as I honor transition and flow.  Today is a celebration of Velvet’s life, a joyful spirit now transitioned out of her body into a wider world and she is here patting my heart with her paws and tapping my being with jumps and barks.  

“Wake! Wake!” she harks, and honoring her spirit, all spirit, I do.  

I’m in a small group where we’re exploring vulnerability. Despite admiring Brene Brown’s work with vulnerability as open-heartedness, I still struggle with the word. At times it suggests weakness to me, rather than softening the tissues into love, reception, trust, and connection.

In thinking about it, I remembered Michael Lerner’s spring letter from Commonweal. You can read it all here but I want to give a taste of what has softened my heart into the deepest pitter-pat feeling of love, trust, reception, and connection.

http://angleofvision.org/2019/05/30/ml-spring-letter/#more-568

Michael Lerner:

Yesterday I visited the house where Maimonides lived. It is a simple house. The ground floor is now a Chinese restaurant. At first this seemed a sacrilege to me. But I wanted to sit in his house. I entered and ordered rice and tofu. My tremor has increased. Sometimes it is difficult to feed myself. This was one of those days. A young waitress saw my plight. She walked over to my table. She smiled kindly. She placed a napkin on my lap and tucked another into my shirt. She took the spoon and began to feed me, spoonful by spoonful. As you might feed a baby. It was the first time I have ever been fed by a stranger in public.

Does the spirit of Maimonides inhabit this house? Is this Chinese restaurant a kind of hidden shrine to his memory? This kind young woman evoked his spirit for me. After a time, I could feed myself. When I finished, I tried to offer her an expression of my gratitude. She shook her head. She would not allow money to soil what had passed between us.

This young woman in the home of Maimonides was a living expression of what I have learned in my 75 years on this earth.

Love heals.
Love is the most powerful force in the world.
True service requires love, wisdom, and will.
A life of service is the path to inner peace.

She, in her late twenties, was in that moment the teacher of an old man in his mid-seventies. I will never forget her. She nourished my soul.

Before he shares the above, he writes this:

I am here in homage to two of my greatest inspirations—Ibn Arabi and Maimonides. I wrote an essay in 2010 about them after a visit to Cordoba, Spain. I called the essay Out of Cordoba.  This was my introductory note.

This essay began after a visit to Cordoba, Spain, in May 2010. It is an inquiry into three great spiritual and philosophical visionaries of 12th century Andalusian Spain. Ibn Arabi was the greatest Sufi mystic of all time. Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher of all time. Averroes’ translations reintroduced Aristotle to both Islam and the West.

Ibn Arabi deeply influenced three leading thinkers of the contemporary Traditionalist School—the gnostic tradition of Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Like Ibn Arabi, they embrace the Perennial Philosophy which they affirmed was at the heart of all great spiritual traditions. Leibnitz coined the term Perennial Philosophy, and Aldous Huxley wrote an eponymous book with that title in 1945. The Traditionalists reject the Renaissance, humanism, and the whole turn away from the Perennial Philosophy in the West as a tragic error for humanity.

Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King sourced their non-violent visions of justice and renewal in the Perennial Philosophy. So have countless others. But Michel de Montaigne’s skepticism and doubt—on which so much of Western culture and achievement rests—critiqued the Perennial Philosophy. He drew on the Greek pragmatic philosophies—Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism. I ask whether the Perennial Philosophy might support the collective wisdom we need for the Great Work of healing ourselves and the earth.

The fog blows in and birds squawk. Evening comes. It’s been quite a day. I went to Rodeo Beach this morning and was surprised by the number of surfers as the surf seemed small to me, but there was talk of swells, and then, they came.

Elaine and I walked up the hill in search for the labyrinth, which we found and walked. When one is up on the ridge with fog and mist, enchantment insists that oneness exists. As we trust in the flow between us, we encompass what we are, bees to flowers, and waves to shore.

I rise and look out the window.  A hummingbird flutters there. Yesterday as Marlene and I sat on a high bluff overlooking Abbott’s Lagoon, a huge hawk flew by looking us right in the eyes.  What a wingspan and thrill and full heart response! I’m sitting with close encounters with large and small these days. Now a plump little bird sits on the slender branch that swings and he or she sentries all around.

Yesterday was one of those exquisite days as they all are of course.  I left at 7:00 in my convertible, top down, so enjoyed a range of smells and temperatures as I drove over Mt. Tam to Stinson Beach for breakfast and a walk.

Rare for me, I forgot a book to take in to breakfast so thoroughly enjoyed my food, the people, and the view through the gap to the beach and waves.

It was low tide and the waves were gentle and slow.  Ocean and I synced in mood.

I offer pictures to share the day.