I head outside and walk briskly feeling I’m back in the Midwest where I grew up. No loitering or sitting on benches, just moving along, as I hope the country does as we strive for and implement morality, and cultivate and honor democracy.
I read that salmon are in Coyote Creek near where I live, so I went to check and didn’t see any today, which may be because the tide is pouring in, so no ducks, fish, or otters, only waves in the water and reeds.
I’m with words from Anne Bancroft in Weavers of Wisdom: The Senecas hold a stone and when it becomes warm and pulsing, they enter the silence within.
The creek this morning!Thanks to the rain, mushrooms sprout in our yard.And there’s this!Intricacy
This is a celebratory week. I focus gratefully on what Thanksgiving means to me.It’s a time of reflection, a time to gather and share, a time for family and friends. It’s also a time to celebrate and honor courage, and so today I focus on Senator Mark Kelly and his sense of duty and commitment.
Senator Kelly issued the following statement in response to Pete Hegseth’s tweet:
When I was 22 years old, I commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy and swore an oath to the Constitution. I upheld that oath through flight school, multiple deployments on the USS Midway, 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, test pilot school, four space shuttle flights at NASA, and every day since I retired – which I did after my wife Gabby was shot in the head while serving her constituents.
In combat, I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets. At NASA, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died on Columbia. I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much.
Secretary Hegseth’s tweet is the first I heard of this. I also saw the President’s posts saying I should be arrested, hanged, and put to death.
“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”
Standing in the WavesThe crescent moon last night moving toward Full!
In reading The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng, I come across and reflect on this exchange on free will.
“I said, “There must be free will to choose. Do you know the poem about the two roads, and the one not taken?”
“Yes. That has always amused me, because who created the two roads in the first place?”
It was a question I had never considered.”
Of course, that opens up questions on creation that may go beyond our thoughts on free will, but I’m with the roads that tangle and untangle before us. What guides us in our choices? How do we meet what comes?
The beach at Tennessee Valley yesterdayThe rains are opening up the stream to the oceanWays to crossCut down Eucalyptus TreeBeauty in the Grain
I read about Ken Burn’s offering on the American Revolution, a look at the complexity that led to the formation of the United States. Part of the motivation was a want and desire to expand beyond the Appalachians. I’m reading The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng. The book begins in 1939, in Penang, and looks at the circumstances that led to WWII in Asia, so focuses on Malaysia, China, and Japan.
We teach children simplicity, good and bad, and that’s necessary at first, like teaching how to get along in society, but then, we mature and learn the complexity of relationship, complexity in ourselves. We learn to navigate, move, and integrate the pieces we are.
Right now, the United States is divided by those who gain personally in division. We need to expose our shadow, to look openly at our history and in exposing, embrace a history that is complex. Hiding or denying doesn’t help us now.
In looking at the whole more clearly, we further honor the planet we share.
Branching, discarding, and transforming in the FallSacred HeartMushrooms sprout in the rain in our yardMr and Mrs Mallard and an egret in the Corte Madera marsh
Each material has its own shadow. The shadow of stone is not the same as that of a brittle autumn leaf. The shadow penetrates the material and radiates its message.
Sverre Fehn: (1924-2009)
I’ll never look at my shadow the same way again.
Light is not something vague, diffused, which is taken for granted because it is always there. The sun does not rise every day in vain.
Alberto Campo Baeza: (1946 – )
I’m grateful the earth turns giving us both night and day and the transitions between.
This morning I opened Billy Collins book Water, Water, to learn from the poem “Winter Trivia” that “It takes approximately two hours for a snowflake to fall from a cloud to the ground.” He then goes on to consider what he and his wife do in the two hours that a snowflake falls from cloud to ground.
I’m with that as I sort through the journey of the day, considering passage, transition, coherence, communion, and connection.
In the poem “The Cardinal” Billy Collins writes:
They say a child might grow up to be an artist
if his sandcastle means nothing
until he leads his mother over for a look.
And so, it is for each of us to mother what we do, to be artists in creating our lives as we flow from cloud to ground, and rise back up again, delighting in the dance of impermanence and change.
Flower and FruitBe like water and MirrorRoot, Rise, Ground
When walking outside, I see leaves falling. I flow through the crunch. Today I strolled along the Corte Madera Creek and learned that a concrete channel, installed over fifty years ago, is being restored to its natural state.
I remember these words, and allow a smile to flow down like a leaf to rest in the pelvic bowl.
Lanterns Information on the restoration projectDucks navigate the openingAn expansive changeClouds play over the top of the mountain
Today I took my six year old grandson to school. We were early so we walked to a thick rope swing, a rope thick as his arm, and he climbed up on a broken and deteriorating tree trunk, and swung. He informed me he was an acorn and I was a squirrel. I figured out I was meant to catch him, so I made squirrel sounds, and reached out as he swung one way, and then, another, and, then, in circles.
I, as a squirrel, caught and missed him many times, recognizing my arms were longer proportionally than a squirrel’s arms would be, but then, normally acorns stay in one place.
Then, Grandchild noticed there were six rounds of wood placed next to the stump, and they weren’t there yesterday. Some older children came by, and they, too, were intrigued by the six new circles of wood. Why were they there and who put them there? The conclusion was that they were for taller children who didn’t need to climb up on a stump to catch the end of the rope, or that maybe they were meant to be run along before catching the rope.
Because we had to get to class, we left the children in the discussion, but now, home, I’m with it and with what it is to be an acorn hanging from a swinging branch, and what it is to be a squirrel contemplating acorns and planning for feasting and storage. We’re entering the time of winter as we step on and crunch falling leaves, and so capped like the cap of an acorn, we’re wired to think about surviving when food isn’t plucked simply and easily from trees.
It seemed so simple, this line of rope hanging from a tree. By myself, I might have walked right by it, unaware, unquestioning, but because of immersion with children, and because I’ve been re-reading Winnie the Pooh for the zillionth time, and struggling with The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky for the first, I’m with the minds of children and how they relate and perceive. Aren’t we all meant to meet this world with curiosity and discussion as to possibilities? Aren’t we meant to notice how we connect and transform with the ease of trees, squirrels, acorns, and other beings?
Yesterday we went to Rodeo Beach to see the predicted “big waves”. There was an exhilarating breeze, but very well-behaved and gentle waves, which perhaps was a prediction of the election results which were certainly in favor of the “good guys”. Trump didn’t listen to the protests, and he again claims the elections were rigged, but the lies are now exposed.
Robert Hubbell today: The period from November 2024 to November 2025 has been challenging for many reasons. A difficult emotional challenge has been the constant barrage of lies about what happened in 2024. The presidential election was excruciatingly close. But for two hundred thousand votes in three states, Kamala Harris would be president. Trump did not win a majority of the popular vote. Indeed, most people who voted in 2024 voted against Trump! His narrow plurality was distorted by the “winner-take-all” rules of the Electoral College.
As Republicans unleashed an unprecedented reign of lawlessness, retribution, and mean-spirited actions motivated by bigotry, they claimed the right to do so because of Trump’s alleged “landslide victory”—a lie. They claimed Trump had a “mandate” to override the Constitution. Another lie. They claimed that “the people” supported Trump’s anti-democratic assault on democracy. The biggest lie of all.
The wind is blowing and rain is falling, and the plants where I live are clapping their roots together and rejoicing. Me, too.
Gentle waves at low tide at Rodeo BeachCo-existence Exchange as a freighter enters the Golden Gate.
Today with the release of the oddly named “daylight savings time”, we return to nature’s time as leaves fall and we walk through their crunch to understand we, too, fall apart, rest, root, and in connection, rise again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
The change in light allows us to notice and in and with subtlety to refine and define the layers we share.
Madeleine L’Engle: “The child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos.”
Nest in openingCommune in CommunionLeaves allowing time to release
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