Yesterday, I walked to the beach at Tennessee Valley. The birds and flowers are resting. It’s a time to move inward and reflect on what nests within, what comes from release and connecting to birth.
I’m with these words of Annie Dillard:
We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water.
I slow to split the light of the present.
I know many of my friends, like me, are depressed with the political situation, and yet we just spent time with our five year old grandson, a time of wonder, beauty, exuberance, inspiration, innocence, and trust. He believes in Santa, and I think of the story I love:”Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”. We must focus on children, become like children and believe in generosity and sharing the abundance that is here knowing there’s more than enough when we each cultivate our own knowing and experience of enough.
Silence is essential.
We need silence, just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
When my son graduated fifth grade, the children stood in tiers and sang “We are the World”. The song came out in March that year, 1985, and most of us had never heard it. We adults watched and listened in tears.
I thought I could share the video here but if you go to Youtube you can find it and listen. I’m inspired and lifted each time I do. U.S.A. for Africa: We Are the World.
I’m also with the words of John O’Donohue from his poem “A New Beginning”.
You can find the whole poem online but it ends with these words which make me wonder if we’ve become complacent. Some of us have been accused of being “woke”, but maybe not woke enough.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
I just read the book Orbital by Samantha Harvey. It allows us to orbit the earth in the International Space Station and even more appreciate the preciousness of this earth we share.
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
– Mary Oliver
Yesterday I read an essay by a father, Dave Kim, who was surprised how much his 8 year old son loved the book Heidi published in 1881 by Joanna Spyri. He and his son went to the village where the book is set, Heidiland, and again, his son loved exploring and understanding whether it was a real little girl, or a composite who lived there.
His son was especially enchanted with these words which I remember reading as a child. It’s sunset and Heidi is with her goatherd pal, Peter:
A golden light lay on the grass and flowers, and the rocks above were beginning to shine and glow. All at once she sprang to her feet, “Peter! Peter! Everything is on fire! All the rocks are burning, and the great snow mountain and the sky! … Look at the rocks! Look at the fir trees! Everything, everything is on fire!”
Dave Kim writes: This was one of his son’s favorite moments. “Do rocks actually glow in Switzerland?” his son asked him one morning.
I’m with that as I consider which books my now five year old grandson responds to. One favorite is Ziji, The Puppy Who Learned to Meditate by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Torey Hayden. When he spends the night, we read it before he goes to sleep.
Yesterday a friend was here and pulled a book off a shelf, The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. They made a “spell book” to conjure up lost words that were left out of the most recent edition of the Oxford-Junior Dictionary. Words like acorn, bluebell, dandelion, heron, kingfisher, newt and otter were replaced with attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail.
The outdoor and natural were displaced by the indoor and virtual. Most of us interact virtually each day, and this morning I read a poem on-line by Wendell Berry about watching one leaf fall, and I felt that leaf falling through me bringing peace, integrating all the ways we perceive.
Today I’m with the words of Robert Hubbell on how we deal with our shock, anger, disappointment, and fear.
Robert Hubbell: Worst of all, the early effort to slice and dice the electorate into parcels of blame is the most harmful exercise Democrats can engage in at this moment. We can deconstruct the 2024 election at our leisure. Today, we face the imminent threat of a fascistic regime intent on deporting ten million immigrants, repealing Obamacare, outlawing contraception and abortion, appointing white nationalists to the cabinet, placing an anti-vaxxer in charge of the health of women and children, putting climate-change denialists in charge of environmental agencies, and packing the military and national security community with Putin-friendly isolationists.
I balance and breathe in words of Thich Nhat Hanh from “The Wounded Swan”:
Love and understanding can ease the suffering of all beings. The truth is the truth, whether or not it is accepted by the majority. Therefore, I tell you children, it takes great courage to stand up for and protect what is right.
My five year old grandson called me yesterday so excited to tell me that the watch he got for his birthday matches the clock at his school. They are the same. He also told me about the hands, the three hands, the red second hand that goes so quickly round and round.
I realized I was older when I got my first watch and maybe never had the concept they wouldn’t be the same, or the realization of how amazing that is.
His parents feel they have to move. They won’t raise their child in a dictatorship which Trump, Vance, and Musk have declared this will be, for our own good, since they know best.
I don’t see where one can go. We share a planet. We are tied. We may be in different time zones but the minutes match.
We each choose our own way to meet this day. I’m with the wisdom of turtles and a seal I watched lounging in the bay yesterday.
Yesterday I read about and visited a new park in Greenbrae called “Alex’s Playground and Discovery Gardens”. Alex was 7 when nearly five years ago, he died in a horrific and tragic accident at his school.
Several months before he died, he told his mother if anything ever happened to him, he would be a baby hummingbird so that he could be with her.
The day after he died, his mother saw a small hummingbird in their garden who was there for a brief moment and then flew off with a friend.
Recently his mother was attending a show by the Lego sculptor Sean Kenney when she saw a giant hummingbird built with 31,565 Lego bricks, its bill in an equally large Lego flower.
She was able to buy it and now today it sits in a new playground that the family is donating in memory of Alex.
I think of the gazebo in Blackie’s Pasture in Tiburon and the playground in Boyle Park in Mill Valley, both honoring the loss of a child. What a beautiful way to honor the loss, to create a place where children gather, laugh, and play.
The sculpture also is a reminder of the Hummingbird Alliance, a nonprofit the family formed after Alex’s death to push for stronger gate safety rules.
Ron Charles writes about books in The Washington Post. In today’s post, he lauds my good friend Marlene. Enjoy!
Ron Charles:
Back in February, I mentioned how entranced I was by the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalogue. Alas, my excitement was never made manifest in an actual garden. But at least I inspired Book Club reader Marlene Buono to order a variety of heirloom seeds from Baker Creek.
Marlene writes:
“Though you can’t tell from the photo, the cucumbers have the best sense of humor. They are the tricksters of the summer garden as they let you harvest three or four of them in the morning, then by nightfall, there are five more to pick, none of the which were there eight hours ago. The tomatoes yell out, ‘Subterfuge!’ to the cucumbers (with whom they share a raised bed), but the cucumbers are too caught up in their game of hide-and-seek to listen, let alone figure out what the word ‘subterfuge’ means. The tomatoes prefer to be seen and plucked when ripe, and do not consider keeping mum about their location even mildly funny.”
I would definitely read a seed catalogue written by Marlene.
For next year’s tomatoes, she says, “I may try the Abe Lincoln Original and the Paul Robeson, since I’m feeling patriotic having filled out my ballot with the hopes of putting a woman in charge.”
Cathy's Blog! 