My Story! – Page 30 – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on January 27, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Opening

My four-year old grandson is here. We play with dinosaurs. I wonder what the attraction is but it seems many children go through the dinosaur stage. Perhaps there’s something in the earth’s memories coming forth. I thought it might be related to our use of fossil fuels but now I read that those come from bacteria not dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are relatively new on the planet, so again, perhaps there is some connection we sense and respond to the call.

For this visit, I placed out some wonderful packaging I received to go along with four dinosaurs that adorn the fireplace hearth. We play with them, and then, he wraps them, and other objects around the house, and I open gifts. What is it about unwrapping a gift?

In my book group yesterday, someone mentioned how for environmental reasons, she’s using reusable bags for gifts. I’m doing the same and yet I realized yesterday in opening many gifts wrapped by my grandson that there is something in the opening for both giver and receiver that feeds us, nourishes us. We both enjoyed the anticipation and savoring, the wonder. What could it be?

Perhaps it relates to our own openings, our sense doors, and the way we open, receive, and respond to what comes in this magical world we share.

How do I become still? By flowing with the stream.

– Lao Tzu

Posted on January 26, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Forest Bathing

Yesterday I went to Muir Woods to bathe in sound, light, beauty, trust. Oddly when I was going through my photos to post this I got a fraud alert on my PayPal account. Balance is the key as we’re shown by creek, creatures, trees.

As a hermaphrodite, a banana slug is resourceful when it comes to finding a mate.

The creek offers challenge for a swim upstream

A salmon’s journey to a place to lay her eggs

Posted on January 23, 2024January 23, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Transition

Last week I bought yellow tulips as a beckoning to spring. They were buds that opened, and now today their petals are soft, transparent and falling so I offer them to the yard.

I’m with these words of Toni Packer:

The immense challenge to each one of us is this: Can we live our daily lives, at least for moments at a time, in the wonder of presence that is the creative source of everything?

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Miracles

Today I was with a little boy who is one year, one month, and some days. He is walking, even running, with an occasional drop to crawl.

I find it amazing to realize I made all these leaps, too, and though at my age, the leaps might not be visible, I believe they are also miraculous, enlivening, and strong.

Albert Einstein:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

And, of course, everything is a miracle.

Posted on January 21, 2024January 21, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Listening

The temple bell stops

But the sound keeps coming

out of the flowers

– Matsuo Bashō

Camellia blooming even through wind and rain

Each in its own time – flowering and buds

Posted on January 20, 2024January 20, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

The Way We Are

I’m re-reading Toni Packer’s wonderful book The Wonder of Presence: And The Way of Meditative Inquiry.

She writes of when she and her husband saw Krishnamurti speak. Her husband “grew up in a puritanical family and was raised to be modest and honest, imbued with a strong drive for bettering himself. The idea of improving himself, of becoming a better person, was a strong motive in his family.” When her husband heard Krishnamurti speak about “human beings’ everlasting endeavors to become something or somebody in the future”, he was struck. He ran to her laughing and light. “Here I’ve been attempting to become a better person all my life – ha ha ha ha ha.”

I’m reminded of when I heard Marion Rosen, my teacher of Rosen Method, say “Perfection is static.” I nearly fell off my chair. What? I’d been trying to be “perfect” all my life and now I was hearing that it wasn’t something I should want or desire. First, what is “perfect” and second where is movement there.

Toni Parker describes this as direct insight which is indescribable, but then she goes on. “It is that wondrous state of being in which the conditioned personality reveals itself for what it is – conditioning giving way to wholeness without lack, all things, people, mountains and oak trees being wondrously the way they are, nothing to be faulted, nothing to be improved.”

I don’t always remember this about striving and perfection but I do think walls have fallen around my perception of who, or what I, the crazy-making I, might be.

Since my walk at Muir Woods, I feel myself curving in delight, immersing in a place where time is just a concept imposed on a beautiful living, changing world we share.

In a landscape of curves, images and visions to see

Posted on January 19, 2024 by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Moss on Trees

When I was a Girl Scout in Des Moines, Iowa, I learned that if I was lost in a forest, to look for moss as it would be growing on the north side of trees. Yesterday at Muir Woods I saw moss growing 360 degrees around a tree. There is moisture at Muir Woods and maybe it is for us to feel and invite fluidity flowing 360 degrees around and in us too.

As to judgment, Ram Dass had this to say:

When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all of that. And you are constantly saying, ‘you’re too this, or I’m too this.’ That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

Yesterday I saw a man setting up his violin to serenade the trees. The creek was so loud I didn’t hear his playing but I’m sure the trees felt the vibrations and intention stirring through their cells. Today I receive myself as a tree.

Posted on January 19, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Muir Woods

Yesterday I wanted to see if the salmon were in Redwood Creek so I parked above and walked down. The path was wet and it was narrow with roots, so I was careful but coming back up, I slipped, and so as not to fall into a well of redwood trees, grabbed a tree, wrenching my leg and foot, and wrenched it further pulling myself up to stand firmly on slanted ground. Slowly and painfully, I limped my way back to the car.

Today I rest, leg propped up by a fire with books as comfort and support. I come to Simone Weil’s book Gravity and Grace.

“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter when there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.”

Yesterday, I learned from a ranger that though I didn’t see a salmon, one was seen three days ago, and the big push may come with this next rain. The creek has to be just the right depth for the salmon to make it up to reproduce. There’s a number to call at Muir Woods to get the news on the salmon, and there’s something so exciting in knowing what this next storm brings, that I feel currents flowing in me, inviting what’s new as I open to the grace in empty space.

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Movement

Today I’m with how much my life, our lives, are influenced by the flow of water, the cycle of water. In my case, I’ve known and ridden on the Des Moines river, the Mississippi river, the Intercoastal Waterway, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the San Diego and San Francisco Bay.

When we lived in Des Moines, Iowa my father built a boat in the garage so we could go out boating. When we moved to a house outside Bettendorf, Iowa we had that boat for floating and water skiing on the Mississippi river.

We moved there when I was nine. I named our new puppy,, a Weimeraner, Mr. Sippi. My grandmother gave me Mark Twain’s memoir Life on the Mississippi to read. One may know only a part of a river, and yet be influenced by the whole.

Today I perused Wikipedia to learn: The Mississippi River begins as a trickle flowing out of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. From there the river flows 2,348 miles until it pours into the Gulf of Mexico below New Orleans. The Mississippi River drains 33 states and its watershed covers one-half of the nation.

The Missouri river, the longest river in the US – North America flows 2,341 miles from its headwaters at the confluence of the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson Rivers in the Rocky Mountains at Three Forks, Montana, to its confluence with the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri. It crosses seven states: Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

If we consider the Mississippi-Missouri river system, the total length forms the world’s fourth longest river, after the Amazon, Nile, and Yangtze rivers.

The song This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land comes to mind. Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. at a time when a man who foments division is receiving votes.

A tender is a small ship that carries people and supplies to and from a larger ship and shore. How can we tender and be tender with ourselves as we navigate the rivers that connect, and sometimes divide?

In the movie Muscle Shoals, Blacks and Whites are shown playing music together with no noticing of skin color at all. A river reflects the ground beneath and the colors of the sky. May we, too, unite in meeting what comes with tender eyes as we trust the landing, integration, and fluidity of water and light.

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

The Elements

Last night I watched the documentary Muscle Shoals. It’s about perseverance, hard work and the connective and collective power of music guided by the sounds of the Tennessee river in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The native people call it the Singing River.

I lived on the Mississippi River for fifth grade and part of sixth so I returned to the rhythm of living by the movement of a river, the momentum and ease in watching life flow by. My mother said it was hard to get anything done when the river called like a friend to be listened to, and to listen and soothe.

It’s raining today. I made a fire and sat by the fireplace, finding my own rhythm reflected in the elements of which I’m made and with which I flow – earth, water, fire, wind, and air giving space.