My Story! – Page 32 – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on December 23, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

The Coyote

On Thursday at Rodeo Beach, a coyote passed by me. I took pictures but it wasn’t until I looked at them at home that I realized the coyote was injured.

I checked the symbolism of a coyote: cleverness, resilience, and strategic thinking. It’s also seen as a symbol of death and rebirth, because coyote howling is often heard during times of transition, dusk and dawn.

This coyote wasn’t asking for sympathy though I felt it as he or she was rather mangy but the coyote simply pranced courageously along, an example of how to meet what comes.

I am grateful for a Sensory Awareness class this morning with Misty Hannah. We worked with curiosity, with what we might uncover or discover that we never knew before. She asked: Can we meet this moment as never before?

And I feel in this moment that I meet the teachings of a coyote and the universe gathering as never before. I ask and explore how many universes does it take to lift my foot from the floor? How many universes came together to bring a coyote close to me to share a wound that didn’t slow or alter a path? How many passages open before, in, and around me? How many universes do I bring together as I open to meet what comes?

Curiosity may have killed the cat but a cat has nine lives. Curiosity opens doors.

Clearly tagged and assured in its travels – a gentle gifted teacher and guide!

Posted on December 23, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

A Solstice Pause

The light doesn’t return immediately. There is a pause.

This is my day to slip into quiet, and honor the words and advice of Wendell Berry.

“I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water.”

Circles on Water.

Yesterday afternoon as I returned home, traffic was stopped. It took an hour to drive less than a mile. For some reason, I perceived it as a gift. I rolled the car window down, well, pushed a button actually, looked out at the marsh and listened to Holiday Songs.

As we honor this time of year in whatever way speaks to us, we also prepare for a new one. Intention sets a place of honoring the connections we share, the communities of which we are a part, and which are part of us. My intention is to more clearly see and honor the moments as gifts.

Living, blood flows, circulates, connects, and the breath comes in, nudges and explores, and moves out, changed, like circles on water. Our presence gives weight to the stones.

Nature creates inside a hole in a log resting on the beach

Posted on December 21, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Winter Solstice

Nature calls to me on this shortest day of the year so I go to the Marin Headlands and Rodeo Beach. I carry with me these words from the book Open Heart, Open Mind by Tsoknyi Rinpoche: A shadow is projected by some source of light, and by recognizing and acknowledging our shadow selves we can begin to trace a path toward the light.

The is the time of year to look within and “trace a path toward the light”.

View of San Francisco from The Headlands

Looking out toward the ocean – cloud with wings

I’m surprised to see a banana slug venturing out into the open

Egret and Great Blue Heron by the lagoon

They both take flight when a dog passes nearby

Posted on December 21, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Solstice

It’s a day to pause as the light begins to shift and we prepare to enter a new year.

May this be the year we move into the heart of longing for peace and release the tools and words of war.

I watched a video of the poet Jane Hirshfield last night. She spoke of how Kinship will save us, the acknowledgment of our interconnection. Perhaps we could say to every tree we pass: sister, sister, sister. We can ask our natural friends, our relatives, the mountains and plants, what they can teach us. This is a time to listen.

I’ve always loved the work of Alexander Calder, his mobiles and circuses. Jane was asked if darkness is required in great art. She used his work as an example of such lightness, beauty, and happiness that reflection is required to find the mortality. It’s in the delicacy of his creations. They move and sway, fragile in their time here, as are we.

The psychologist Carl Jung wrote: The whole world wants peace and the whole world prepares for war.

May this be the year we acknowledge our kinship and grow the heart of our desire for peace and the wind and breath chimed grace of love.

Here is the link to the talk if you’re interested:

Posted on December 20, 2023December 20, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Santa’s Reindeer

Santa always makes a trial run at our house but today when I left in the rain, I realized he also trains young reindeer to know the route of the sleigh.

Today I saw two young deer practicing navigational maneuvers in the rain.

Running discretely along the route – a Rain Deer –

The smaller one peeking through – almost invisible like the myths we carry inside

Posted on December 20, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

A Day in the City

Today it’s raining. I listen and think of the salmon now able to swim up into Muir Woods along Redwood Creek. What a gift!

Yesterday, my son, grandson and I went to the Nutcracker Ballet in San Francisco. What a visit to Fantasy, Fairy, and Dream Land. I’m still circling on my toes, lifted into the air. We also went in City Hall where many weddings were taking place, to the Fairmont Hotel to see the decorations and walked around Union Square. Today I balance on integration and knowing enough.

Looking up at a crane adding a new building to a beautiful city!

The decorative candy is continually being replaced

The movie Miracle on 34th Street proves Santa exists

Posted on December 18, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Winter Light

I wake in the night to meditate and listen to the rain. For me, this is a peaceful, inner sky time of year.

But do not ask me where I am going,

As I travel in this limitless world,

Where every step I take is my home.

— Dogen

Posted on December 16, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Forms of Art

Yesterday I sat by Richardson Bay to experience and absorb in the movement of the tide, and then I went to The de Young Museum in San Francisco.

The exhibit at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is “a triennial art exhibition celebrating the voices and visions of Bay Area artists whose contributions enrich our cultural landscape.“

“These artists live locally but are thinking globally, about both the world of art and the world at large.“

“Honoring the Museums’ goal of creating an inclusive environment equally accessible to a diverse range of people, every Bay Area resident, eighteen years of age or older, is welcome to apply to The de Young Open, and this year 7,766 talented artists each submitted an artwork. These artworks were reviewed by twelve jurors-eight Fine Arts Museums curators along with the distinguished Bay Area artists Clare Rojas, Sunny Smith, Stephanie Syjuco, and Xiaoze Xie. The jurors’ decisions were based solely on digitally submitted images of the artworks and made without any knowledge of the artists’ identities.”

“The 883 artworks in this exhibition are installed nearly edge to edge, ensuring the greatest possible representation. The galleries include thematic groupings of art inspired by historical and contemporary political and social issues, the urban environment, the human figure, nature, abstraction, and surreal imagery.”

I offer images to stimulate body and mind, inside and out. I’m not giving the titles chosen by the artists, just allowing you to open and see what comes. The following images begin and end with the natural landscape, a moving, evolving form of art.

Toyon by the water – winter toys for birds

Outside the museum – falling leaves and more permanent artwork

Sunset last night with the moon beginning to offer a crescent of her light again

Posted on December 14, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Stars

This time of year the stars seem more pronounced in their appearance and influence. Our sun, the nearest star, moves quickly across the sky, and then darkness comes. Last night, I was outside watching for shooting stars, when one flashed brightly and appeared to almost swoop into my blanketed lap.

Sound carries this time of year and I hear the leaves fall.

I’ve been buying eggs from Vital Farms, a coordinated collection of family farms. From their information on the hens, I read “Henku” and peruse a photo of “Clever Carla” finding a worm. Even hens sleep in on these cozy winter days, rising at 7, rather than 4. We are influenced by light as we turn tenderly to care, self-care, and compassion for those around us on this earth we share.

My guidance these days is to rest the mind on the breath, as I consider what a hen might say in a haiku.

Nestled in winter,

Sun softens, beckoning, still

Quick light lays inside.

Sunlight brings color to a crystal orb outside a fairy door

Harbor seals hang out on the docks in Sausalito – one is on approach.

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Tis the Season

In reading Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful book Landmarks, I learned that John Constable invented the verb “to sky” meaning “to lie on one’s back and study the clouds”.

I love to look at the sky, the changes, and the stars at night, and I also use this time of year to sink deeper into reflecting, reflection, and going within.