By the Docks of the Bay
Mother’s Day
It’s a day of complexity and fragility as we honor Mother and Mother Earth as represented in our own mother,
My mother passed gently and sweetly in 2005, passed as she lived, gently and sweetly, and so today, a sweet, gentle sadness comes in as part of me.
A crow is energetically cawing around our house today. I remember when I had a tiny basket of three tiny brightly wrapped chocolate eggs resting on our wall system. One day the three eggs were replaced with three tiny rocks. I believe it was our local jay that gave the exchange.
We don’t know how closely we’re watched by our surroundings, by birds and trees, plants and people, and so on this day it is to celebrate our own mother, our own tendencies to mother, and this beautiful earth we share birthed moment by moment, and year by year.
Pausing to Reflect
Victor Frankl:
Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our happiness.
I
Nina Simone:
I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
Kabir:
Wherever you are, that is the entry point.
Dogen:
Mountains and oceans have whole worlds of innumerable wondrous features. We should understand that it is not only our distant surroundings that are like this, but even what is right here, even a single drop of water.
Poetry
There are so many poems that give me pause. I feel the beat of my heart, the flow of my blood, embraced, entranced, enhanced. This morning it’s this poem by William Stafford.
Living on the Plains
That winter when this thought came — how the river
held still every midnight and flowed
backward a minute — we studied algebra
late in our room fixed up in the barn,
and I would feel the curved relation,
the rafters upside down, and the cows in their life
holding the earth round and ready
to meet itself again when morning came.
At breakfast while my mother stirred the cereal
she said, “You’re studying too hard,”
and I would include her face and hands in my glance
and then look past my father’s gaze as
he told again our great race through the stars
and how the world can’t keep up with our dreams.
~ William Stafford ~
(The Way It Is)
Spring
This morning as I meditate, I feel spring in my heart, the opening scent of flowers, the invitation to unreel the layers of the bud, build a nest, fill it with eggs of creativity, and birth what’s here.
Yesterday, Steve and I decided he needed an x-ray of his arm, swollen and bruised from a fall and so we rushed out of the house even before I could grab a Kindle or book. I waited outside of the medical office and meditated and took photos of flowers lining sidewalks and streets. I realized I was near a library but it closed as I walked up, so I sat on a bench and sat, and felt, and thought of porches with rocking chairs and benches, and how enclosed life can be with ATM’s and self-checking, and everything delivered and left right at the door.
Because I watched and enjoyed The Wizard of Oz with my grandson this week, I came home and watched Pollyanna. Okay these movies are fantasies, very colorful fantasies, escapism, and yet, what is it when so much has left technicolor for a darker view of life? Another shooting – oh, my!
How do we balance what we view, and how we involve and evolve with immersion in the flowers blooming everywhere, except perhaps Tahoe which continues to stay white with snow. Yesterday I appreciated the gift of sitting outside with nothing to do and nowhere to be. Steve is fine, just swollen and bruised, and I feel the opening call of spring even as I more firmly root.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve.
Celebration Time
Yesterday I drove down to Menlo park, entranced with the clouds. They resembled images sent back from outer space.
Today is a full moon, Buddha’s birthday, and Cinco de Mayo.
From Writer’s Almanac: It’s the birthday of the man who said, “No man is lonely while eating spaghetti”. Christopher Morley, born in Haverford, Pennsylvania (1890), wrote a hundred books.
Morley said, “You can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.”
It’s a day to read, and either fast, or eat rice, guacamole, or spaghetti, or all three.
The Mill Valley Marsh
Today I was early for my dentist appointment so I strolled along the marsh.
More Photos for May Day
May Day
As a child, we made baskets for this day and filled them with candy and flowers, and hung them on our neighbors’ doors. This morning I read that baby swans were just born at the Las Gallinas ponds, so out I head for a May Day celebratory treat.
Your Own Drummer
Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within you.
Rainer Maria Rike –
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