Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Simplicity

More and more I’m caught on simplicity.  Perhaps it’s simply overload. I sit entranced with my morning cup of coffee and all who were involved in its travel to me.  I listen to birds chirping in trees and see them building nests which they protect when I walk by.

I’m aware of climate change.  I check the tide table when I come and go, and yet, in this moment, looking out on green and gray and listening to birds singing, my heart is a beacon of trust, gratitude and the swelling trust in love.

Today I read Angeles Arrien on the Gold Gate we enter as we age. Tomorrow for my friend Elaine’s birthday celebration as she turns sixty, she’s requested we gather at Baker Beach and pick up trash, remove what doesn’t belong there on this beautiful beach.

We’ll look at the Golden Gate from the ocean side, and perhaps that’s what it is to age.  To look back and release what we no longer need so we can see more clearly the miracle of water meeting sand, both changing with the tides.

Elaine Chan-Scherer took this photo from Baker Beach and when we go tomorrow, it will be a different sort of day.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Everyday Delight

I’m entranced with the moon shining as the morning sky comes to light. My eyes are drawn outside even as I consider the room in which I ruminate and communicate.

In Anna Held Audette’s tiny book, The Blank Canvas – Inviting the Muse, she writes, “You need to arrange your studio environment so that it fits you.  Even Van Gogh, who was forced to work under the most rudimentary conditions, wrote, “I have taken some (prints) for my little room to give it the right atmosphere, for that is necessary to get new thoughts and ideas.”

This morning after meditating, I sat, eyes still closed, and gently touched with my hands the seven bones that meet at the eye socket.  Then, I allowed one hand to touch the opposite shoulder and the collar bone. The hand seemed content to stay in the air. I allowed and savored that even as I moved it slightly; the thumb fanned the air as it moved with delicacy and tenderness in and out.

When I opened my eyes, I perused the palm of my hand; it felt heavier with the weight of my eyes.  That led me to Google to investigate photons which have no mass but do have energy. What was happening with my hand? Was it simply that I was noticing the celebration of light in its passage in me, through me, as me?

I was reminded of George Eliot’s wonderful words in her book Middlemarch: “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

I don’t think we’d die from keener vision and feeling.  I think we come more alive. I look up and out and the moon still shines. The sky is shared by moon and sun. We are containers for all.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

A Time to Birth

In the Northern hemisphere, it’s the first day of spring, one welcomed by a “super worm equinox moon”.  I sat outside last night and watched as the earth’s turning allowed me to see the full moon rise.  I felt how clearly love can’t be confined to likes and dislikes. It’s to embrace, embraced, this world we share, even when so much appears unfathomable.  We’re here to open our view and expand with generosity our response.


My neighbor Jeanine Aguerre opened her eyes, ears, and sensitivity this morning when she walked out her door and heard shrieks coming from a pine tree.  Interpreting the sounds as a love song, she grabbed her camera and took these photos of two hawks.


I’m inspired to celebrate spring by allowing my dreams to come together and build a nest, hatch, feed, and wing!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Everyday Enchantment

I began a blog on Live Journal in 2005 when I was going through nine months of treatment for breast cancer. I continued that blog for years, then, transferred over to Facebook but much as I love the quick snapshots of life Facebook provides, I see there is no continuity as to who I am. Therefore I’m starting this blog for three reasons. One, I love connecting with you with more depth than Facebook allows. Second, I want to “promote” my new book that will come out soon: Airing Out the Fairy Tale: My Journey through Nepal and Midlife. Third, I want you to more thoroughly and clearly know the woman I am now.

I’m an elder now, and in many ways, we are all elders. Even the fetus in the womb influences the mother. We are always influencing our environment, the world around and within. What I see though is that we change with age, if we beckon and allow it. I may be less flexible physically but my consciousness is widening and wanting to embrace and be embraced by more than I see, by more than what my immediate reception might perceive. 

I’ll turn seventy this year. It’s a rite of passage, another one, one that feels even more precious. What of myself can I share with you now? What wisdom might I have gained over the years that I’m inspired to impart?

I’ve always believed in enchantment, and more and more I come to see the truth of that as I cultivate my knowing of microorganisms in the soil, and this wider world of which I’m part. I unfold into the beauty, fragility, tenderness, vulnerability and support of living fully while I’m here.

I ask myself: How much can I embrace as I’m embraced? How much peace can I touch within my heart and bring forth to share?