The fog is a soft presence this morning as I view photos of the Northern Lights which though near, I didn’t see them right here. Instead, I watched an interview of Jane Hirshfield with Michael Lerner at Commonweal and was deeply touched with inner light.
The interview concludes with her reading Little Soul poems, written to her first love as she accompanied him as he was dying.
Her wonderful poems are in her latest book The Asking.
I was at the Farmer’s Market yesterday so we’re feasting on abundance: asparagus, strawberries, peaches, and blueberries. The visit reminds me of the work of producing, planting, harvesting, and bringing nourishment closer to me.I’m fed by a hard-working and intricate web of connection.
Wednesday morning I was at the Bayside Cafe for breakfast. A little boy about three or four emerged from the bathroom with his father, and the child was saying “Happiness”. He then walked through the restaurant and out the door repeating “happiness, happiness, happiness” with a slight pause between each word. I’m carrying that with me, such an ease-filled way to be and ripple in the world.
AsCheri Huber shares:
When you think you’re the center of the universe, you’re a misery. When you realize you’re the center of the universe, you’re a blessing.
View from Cavallo Point The work of filmingSerenityMeeting
I read these words of Richard Rohr and feel the long neck of immersion and experience, the fluidity, strength, and agility of birds on land and in flight. His words are ballast, support, inspiration, and guide.
Going to the deepest level of communication,
Where back and forth has never stopped.
Where I am not the initiator but the transmission wire itself.
My son and his wife are in Paris celebrating her 50th birthday. Today they were in Giverny strolling through Claude Monet’s home, and water and flower gardens.
ExuberanceEnchantmentBeautyReflectionDelicacy
I was in San Rafael by the wildlife ponds.
Marsh GrassesTwo Snowy EgretsOne Great White Egret in Contemplation
I’m struck by this quote and invite my voice to reveal my immersion in and reception of the breath.
FromPhilip Shepherd’s book Radical Wholeness.
A person’s voice is like an MRI that reveals immediately how much of her body is available to the breath—and so, too, how much of her being is available to the Present. When the body is liberated from its divisions, it becomes a fluid medium through the entirety of which the breath travels like a wave. Like a living graph, the voice reveals the progress of the breath through the body—and the ways in which the body blocks that progress—to everyone within earshot… If you crave sensation and awareness, you don’t need a magnet in your finger to provide it. The whole of the world lives through you, expressing itself in an avalanche of sensations within. If you could find your way back home to the body, to the breath, to yourself, you would liberate your awareness into the realm of a felt mystery from which you can learn in ways limited only by your willingness to attend to it.
Grandchild finds a Roly-poly or a Roly-poly finds him.Careful Placement
This morning we were awakened by a little bird singing into the camera placed outside. At the Chandler Nature Center, a part of Phoenix, we saw white ducks, a coot, and a Great Blue Heron. It’s a time of unfolding, a living birth.
Desert Flowering ExpandingA Surprise: A Great Blue Heron in Chandler, AZDucksBeautyHome to Grandchild, hidden and wrapped in a young redwood treeDiscovery in Sausalito BalanceThe Explorer
I’m in Phoenix visiting family which is a delight. I’m minimally involved with the news but seeing our democracy in danger of destruction, has me aware. I read this from Heather Cox Richardson today:
“I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S. Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act,’” lawyer Marc Elias, whose firm defends democratic election laws, wrote today on social media. He added: “I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”
In contrast, we sit outside watching a saguaro cactus in which a woodpecker meticulously maintains a home for her babies. The babies pop their heads out of one hole for feeding , which she alternates with opening another hole on the other side.
MaintenanceCaring for family and homeFlowering Atop
Last week I took my usual plethora of photos at Stinson Beach but one stayed with me. This morning, I shared the photo with my son and he pointed out that what I had interpreted as an unusual wave was a shark. He then sent me a diagram showing that, like an iceberg, 90% of the shark can be underwater and we may see only the fin.
Now I see it clearly as a shark, grateful I didn’t pop in for a swim.
It’s Earth Day, as is every day since we, this planet, and our environment evolve as one. Last night I was out with the almost full moon, a reminder of the movement we share.
Heather Cox Richardson is again strong with her substack post. I pull this from it:
The timing of the Interior Department’s new rule can’t help but call attention to Earth Day, celebrated tomorrow, on April 22. Earth Day is no novel proposition. Americans celebrated it for the first time in 1970. Nor was it a partisan idea in that year: Republican president Richard M. Nixon established it as Americans recognized a crisis that transcended partisanship and came together to fix it.
The spark for the first Earth Day was the 1962 publication of marine biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which showed the devastating effects of people on nature by documenting the effect of modern pesticides on the natural world. Her exposé of how the popular pesticide DDT was poisoning the food chain in American waters illuminated the dangerous overuse of chemicals and their effect on living organisms, and it caught readers’ attention. Carson’s book sold more than half a million copies in 24 countries.
Let us honor the Earth we are, the Earth we share, as we celebrate the Earth each day.
Coming TogetherEarth and SkyGathering in the shifting tidesSo many ways to meetA niche for eachWith awareness and care, a place for All!
Today on an early morning walk down Tennessee Road to the beach, I was delighted to see a Great Blue Heron standing regally next to the path. Then on the way back up, I watched him or her catch, tenderize, and swallow a snake. The beach was completely different from the last time I was there, less than a week ago. Each moment received with the gusto of a heron harvesting and digesting a snake.
EleganceVibrancy and VitalityThe hills are alive!The ocean’s danceIn the ShadowsShaking and tenderizing a snakeYum!Down the GulletA place to protect
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