Trees: Monitors of Change

This morning as I meditated I looked out on the redwood tree that rises and grounds our yard.  She is my teacher, my guide.  The wind waves her branches as breath moves through me.  Sunlight filters through.

Yesterday I was with friends at The Lumberyard in Mill Valley.  Until recently it was a lumberyard.  Mill Valley had a mill.  Much of the wood came from the neighborhood town of Corte Madera which means cut wood.

One massive tree is still preserved at The Lumberyard which now hosts a restaurant, a bakery, and assorted gift shops.  I’m with impermanence and the beauty in change.

The shifting light this time of year makes sacredness so clear.  

Many of us cut down trees and bring them into our homes to then recycle and transform.  Again, so precious is this life we’re given for a time, a time to breathe and connect as we deal with what for some is horrific, and allows us to see that with time we move toward change.

In his 1994 novel “The Crossing,” Cormac McCarthy creates a character who says that “the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it.” In fact, “men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose.”

We are seeing the wicked begin to be held to accountability.  May that continue to be so.

Even in December, fuchsias bloom in a neighbor’s yard
Azaleas offer too!
A gigantic presence at The Lumberyard
I see two tummy buttons in the trunk of this saved tree.

Light

This morning I watched the moon through the trees to the west, then turned to greet the morning star.  Do we see light more clearly in the dark, beckon contrast that merges in the beating heart?  It’s the last day of the month of November, and now we sink like flakes of snow and drops of rain into this month of December, a time of gathering to beckon, birth, integrate, and share light.  

Morning moon shining through redwood tree trunk that rises as two

Yesterday’s rain glistens!

Lichen

From The Marginalian, I learn about David George Haskell’s book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature.

He writes about the symbiotic relationship of lichen, and how they show us how life forms and continues not in competition but in interdependence.  

 “We survive and thrive not through combat but through collaboration.”  

When I was a Terwilliger nature guide we would sing with the kids: “Annie Algae and Freddie Fungus took a Lichen to each other.”

We’d look for the colors and varieties of lichen on Ring Mountain, where it’s prolific as there’s no pollution.  My yard is the same way, is a garden of lichen on chairs, windchimes, and trees.    

Haskell writes: We are Russian dolls, our lives made possible by other lives within us. But whereas dolls can be taken apart, our cellular and genetic helpers cannot be separated from us, nor we from them. We are lichens on a grand scale.

Wow!  

And may that knowing bring us to peace in the world.  We survive and thrive together.  It’s time to end conflict and war, and live in prosperity and peace.  

Lichen grows on the leg of a wooden chair
And on the branches of trees

Our Children, Our Future

Today I’m with the photo of a four-year girl released by Hamas.  I think of my four-year old grandson, of all the children on the planet.  This cannot continue.  It must stop.  I don’t know the solution to something so complex, but I feel we must hold the images of children in our hearts and minds and come to a peace that benefits us all.  

This piece from four years ago by Robert Reich is a good start:

Giving Thanks

We say it’s a day when really it’s a week, a month, a year, all gathered in a cornucopia of gratitude.  I find myself with memories this week, past gatherings, and celebrations of the fall of leaves.  I miss my parents as this day approaches.  I miss all those who’ve passed and aren’t here at a table we share, and yet I feel the expansive clasp.  The table is vast.  

Morning Sky Today!

Jimmy and Rosalyn

I continue to read about these two amazing people, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, who lived in Plains, Georgia and carried peace, human rights, and care-giving throughout the world and within their souls.  Imagine if Jimmy had won a second term, a man who wore a sweater rather than turning up the heat and put solar panels on the White House which were then removed by the next administration.  These two people were hard-working visionaries, and so we mourn her passing which will probably be soon followed by his.  

I woke from a dream this morning where I was in a small boat enjoying waves on either side of me, and then, everyone was in boats, too, enjoying the rise and fall of waves.  There is so much discord right now and yet with the cultivation of perception we can find and create a boat that fits the current waves of up and down.

This week is one of Thanksgiving and celebration where I live.  We each choose what that means to us as we gather together or choose solitude.  May we remember we share a planet, a sacred earth, where people like the Carters show us the way.

Doors are everywhere!
Berries for the winter birds
The fairies are here!
Offerings at hidden doors
I see the body of a jellyfish in a mushroom rising.
Whimsy amidst the trees
A Tiny Habitat!

Seasons

I made a fire in the fireplace last night as I listened to the welcome sound of rain. I lit candles to savor the quivering light in the dark.

My neighbor gave me a fairy door to go with my other fairy door.  A local man makes each one individually and gives them away.

Yesterday my neighbor and I  took a walk on the Oakwood Valley Trail to immerse in the fairy landscape there.  Water was still dripping from the morning rain, and it was a land of enchantment. 

Clearly there are all sizes and types of fairies.  I was reminded of Cathedral Woods on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine.  We beckon our landscapes to open, to nourish what flourishes within and in the soil beneath our feet and the trees that rise from roots twined to feed.

I also nourish on words as lanterns, as stars and fairy lights.

So many I know are facing personal challenges right now, and the world is on edge and off balance, so I come to poetry and these words of  Mahmoud Darwish: 

 ‘A poem in a difficult time / is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.’” 

The gift of a Fairy Door
My Neighbor’s Fairy Door
Fairy door along the trail
A piece of coral and a leprechaun
Tending a tiny garden – embracing a rock
Fairies
A gathering of Grace
Peeking forth
Fairy Umbrellas
Mushrooms like butterflies offer a view of transformation
A Treat
Water tenderly all that comes
Home where Jasmine blooms as we embrace the week, the month, a year of Thanksgiving!

Wind Chimes

My grandson goes to a wonderful preschool.  I just watched a video made by one of the classes. It’s called the Wind Chime Restoration Project.

At the entry to the school was a windchime that the parents and children loved ringing when they came to school and left.  One day it broke.  

One  class, the Opals, decided to fix it. The children drilled, painted, and threaded.  As one child put it, it took a long, long time.

The video contains each child’s words.  Words that repeated were, “I love you Wind!”

The wind chime became the voice of the wind for the children as they saw themselves as protectors of the wind and the chimes.  

Each child speaks of being very gentle with the chimes, and shows how to be very careful when touching them. The chimes are painted in different colors with messages from the children fluttering above them.

The video ends with the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass.

We need acts of restoration not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.

Morning light filters through branches offering leaves to the ground – soft chimes.
Pelicans at Rodeo Beach – the beat of their wings chimes.
Wind moves through the rocks – waves chime filtering through the sand.

Support

The news these days is challenging. I offer pictures of Old Mill Park as a pause to balance and support.

The Path
Bridge over the creek in autumn
Together, we rise!
Invited to come and sit
Come Closer
Shadow and light
Looking up, the sky
Looking down, the creek
Embracing All

Land in Support

We’re home from Half Moon Bay and it’s raining.  Pure delight.

Frederick Franck: 

When a monk complained about the world’s evil, the Buddha stretched his hand toward the Earth: “on this Earth I attained Liberation.”

Note the whale spout in the background

Sunset from The Distillery on November 3rd
Later in a different spot on the same day
Morning November 4th
Important sign in the land of Herons
It’s Pumpkin and fancy Gourd Time!
A wedding with a touch of fog, a blessing of mist
A stroll along the ocean in Half Moon Bay