An anonymous neighbor is planting crocheted sunflowers in and around the “hood”.
Here’s ours tied around the trunk of an elderly plum tree.
Sunflowers
Sacred Space
My grandchild has a special place outside, a large, sturdy box painted by him and his cousins, attached to a smaller one. He can crawl and sit inside.
We then created another special place with a slightly falling apart cardboard palace, some benches, two chairs, and yoga mats for the top. Two special places, private and not, into which he can crawl in and out.
I was sitting outside in a chair and he was inside one set of boxes, when I meant to say we were each in our special place, but what came out was sacred. I said, “We are each in our sacred place”, and it felt so right and true.
Though we were each reflecting privately, he in what he calls “his office” and I in my office of nature watching a bird’s chest swell in and out with song, we both were in sacred places shared.
As David Whyte wrote and says:
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self; the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another…
And there we were, shared essence, witnessed, complete.
Enchantment
I’ve been with my grandchild who is now two years, five months.
Months count at his age, spinning joy along to three.
I’ve been a dragon, both friendly and scary. I’ve been The Reluctant Dragon of Kenneth Grahame fame, spouting poetry and wrapping a delightful little being in giggles and hugs.
I’ve been with the purity of presence, each moment full, spacious, empty, all at one time. It’s an expansion of sensory awareness that requires a landing into a different view of time.
I’ve been reading 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. He writes of time as experienced by a child, non-linear time, and so now I balance on rings wired with the wonder of childhood, the delight of feeling my feet bounce up and down on the ground as my head lifts with birds singing in trees overhead.
Because I thought yesterday was April Fool’s Day as the days run together when with a little one, we planned to play a joke on daddy. I would say I was taking Grandson home to live with me, and Daddy would be sad, and then, we’d shout “April Fools”. Well, Little Guy got so excited with the joke that the lounge chair he was sitting on folded up with a pounce, and there he was sandwiched between. By the time we got him out and hugged all hurt away, the joke was forgotten which worked since it was the wrong day.
Now today I’m with the beauty of seeing with the open embrace of a child. I watched him water the plants with a teeny-tiny cup, the water shared equally, and he did this over and over again. The equal sharing was very carefully measured out and he ran back and forth for more water until each plant had enough.
I, too, am watered with love, presence, gratitude, and shared care.
I offer the words of Ajahn Brahm from “In Brief”.
Too long I was told that the spiritual path is dry and intellectual. That wisdom is cold. But I have seen with my own eyes that in the hands of great masters, wisdom is warm and full of humor.
My Great Master shows me this.
As Gary Snyder says, Nature is not a place to visit. It is Home.
A Pause
I remove Poetry of Presence, An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems from the shelf and the book opens to this poem by Fudy Joudah.
Mimesis
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles.
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord.
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking.
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
Community
I’m going through “stuff”. It seems a wise thing to do at my age, the age of the Wise Woman. I again dip into these words by Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her beautiful book “Gift from the Sea”.
“Woman must come of age by herself. She must find her true center alone.”
I went to Nepal to discover that or so I thought and came home both clear and confused as I left an environment of simplicity to re-enter one of complexity, and yet, each day I understand the truth of these words for men and women and all in between. Yes, we must find our true center alone, and we are also part of a community, many communities expanding outward.
This piece, written by Kathleen Yale, is from the spring issue of Orion magazine.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, droves of shiny black Matabele ants (Megaponera analis) assemble for daily termite raids. But their appetite puts them at risk, for their prey bites back with a matched ferocity, often ripping off limbs.
In 2017 myrmecologist Erik Frank observed a group of wounded ants releasing a pheromone plea for rescue while another group of paramedic ants roamed the area. Back in the nest, these “nurse” ants licked clean the wounds of their injured – a first for the known nonhuman animal world. Untreated, the loss of a limb is usually fatal, but Frank found that 90% of tended ants survived their injuries.
From a clade that doggedly focuses on the collective and typically regards individuals as expendable comes this image of a tiny tongue cleaning a neighbor’s wound. And although this caretaking is likely less about mercy and more about group survival, an appealing sense remains: it’s easier to go after the prize with community health care at your back.
It’s Spring
The sun is shining directly on the earth’s equator today at 8:33 AM, and now crosses the equator heading north. Do we feel the shift, the increasing light in the northern hemisphere, the opening to bud in the warmth?
This morning I woke up thinking of wringer washing machines. Well, first I was thinking about fear. How do we live with and process fear? The image of the wringer washing machine came to me.
My childhood friend’s mother had one in the basement where we often played. This was Iowa after all, and basements were exciting enclosures filled with hiding places, mystery, and discovery. Plus, her mother brought us treats artfully made. We each got our own little package to open and munch, piece by tiny piece.
Memory taste buds enhanced, I read about wringer washing machines. They save water. Yes, they require a little more participation but right now when water is so important, perhaps that makes sense. In addition, hands-on participation can do more than clean the clothes.
These words came my way yesterday. Perhaps that’s what brought forth the connection between how we bodily deal with our lives. Our hands integrate and cleanse our busy, and sometimes fearful and grieving minds.
The words are by Elena Barnabé.
“Grandma how do you deal with pain?”
“With your hands, dear. When you do it with your mind, the pain hardens even more.”
“With your hands, grandma?”
“Yes, yes. Our hands are the antennas of our Soul. When you move them by sewing, cooking, painting, touching the earth or sinking them into the earth, they send signals of caring to the deepest part of you and your Soul calms down. This way she doesn’t have to send pain anymore to show it.
“Are hands really that important?”
“Yes my girl. Think of babies: they get to know the world thanks to their touch.
When you look at the hands of older people, they tell more about their lives than any other part of the body.
Everything that is made by hand, so it is said, is made with the heart because it really is like this: hands and heart are connected.
Think of lovers: When their hands touch, they love each other in the most sublime way.”
“My hands grandma… how long since I used them like that!”
“Move them my love, start creating with them and everything in you will move.
The pain will not pass away. But it will be the best masterpiece. And it won’t hurt as much anymore, because you managed to embroider your Essence.”
~Elena Barnabé
If you’re intrigued:
Inspiration
Inspired by space and earth.
Peace Tickled by Ease
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, there’s mist and green, and birds chirping and tweeting in greeting and meeting.
Late afternoon yesterday a Great Blue Heron swept over our heads as we sat outside. Later, I heard a noise and went outside to check. It was the moon. The moon wasn’t rising noisily. Our neighbor was pulling garbage cans up to the street, but it brought me out to the beauty happening right here, this moving light, an orb brightening the sky as the earth turns and journeys around the sun.
The full moon rises tonight, the Worm Moon, announcing the arrival of spring.
Perhaps it’s the wiggle I feel, the wiggle of worms opening the earth to aerate and breathe.
There’s a stirring inside, an impulse led by light.
I settle, allowing roots to stretch and test, balancing a nest of rest, a cradle for eggs and birth. Heart knows the moon, a shared caress.
Reflecting
When someone I love passes, makes a transition to non-form, I feel a portal open. I honor the sacred time.
I listen, receive.
These words of T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets – Little Gidding, comfort me.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
“Tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”
What vibrates now?
Surrender
Lately I’ve felt myself flowing down the middle of the stream, recognizing so many things are happening both personally and globally that it’s easiest and best to center in that flow.
A long-time friend passed away yesterday. Steve sent her husband the Mary Oliver poem “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field “. He responded that he hadn’t known the poem but had bought a white owl sculpture last week.
How can we not believe in the support of the earth, water, and air that connects us with every breath and beat of our heart as hearts branch out through lungs and the reach of arms, wrists, and hands?
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