Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Breathing

Yesterday was the conclusion of a nine month group I’ve been in to explore the layers of unfolding from conception, then, birth, to death.  We learn to walk, talk, relate, lead, and then how do we meet that final breath?

I found myself allowing the exhalation to explore as it let go, to be curious about my nooks and crannies.  How much could that precious breath touch before it released back into a wider world?  Of course in the world of non-duality there is no in and out though it may feel that way.  

What I know is that for some reason, I tend to hold onto breath, to keep a little in reserve, just in case.  It goes with my need to keep a supply of food, blankets, and books in the house, just in case, just in case, of what I might ask?

In this exploration of curiosity of just how much is happening inside this organ of skin I perceive of as “mine”, I came to a settling into ease and peace, an expansion of ah and awe.  A gift!

Last night I finished reading High Conflict by Amanda Ripley, a book I recommend as a way to soften the differences between us.  

Many of us read The Lord of the Flies when young, and may have been raised on survival of the fittest, a philosophy now disproved as more and more we see interconnection and the essential need for communication as we each fulfill our niche.  

We may have feared the chaos, cruelty, and violence in Lord of the Flies, but there is another story.  In 1965 a group of boys were shipwrecked on a remote Polynesian island.  Rutger Bregman in his book Humankind describes how the boys hollowed out tree trunks to catch rainwater.  They worked in pairs, drawing up a schedule of chores for gardening, cooking and guard duty.  They started a fire and kept it going for 15 months until they were rescued.

How did they do this?  They created rituals.  When there was a conflict between two of them, each boy would go to the opposite ends of the island to calm down.   They made a guitar out of a piece of driftwood, a coconut shell, and six steel wires scavenged out of the ruins of their boat.  They started each day with songs and prayers.

We can change the story.  We can listen to each other and feed back a loop, a response, that shows we have received the other and what they are saying.  We all want to be heard.   

We’ve been living in a world getting more and  more divided, when, at heart, we all want the same things – family, friends, connection, clean air and food, and space in which to breathe.  

May we extend each breath, inviting it further in, and allowing it to reach further out, as we connect our intention by massaging our hearts.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Memorial Day

We pause and honor those lost in war.  

We pause.

Seeing my hair woven into nests of birds, I give thanks for connection shared.

Mark Nepo:

In a world that lives like a fist, mercy is no more than waking with your hands open.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Gratitude

I woke this morning in a field of gratitude, not just gratitude in one place, like heart, stomach, and/or lungs, but I woke as though I was immersed in a field, held in a gathering of sunflowers, daisies, and strawberries. 

Rumi’s words fluttered through me like butterflies.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

Then, on Nextdoor, I saw a photo of a whale frolicing and waving its tail.  It was taken at Stinson Beach yesterday.  The whales are here.

That led me to open Amanda Ripley’s book, High Conflict, Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.  One focus of the book is the tightly knit community of Muir Beach, ten minutes from where I live.  It’s peaceful there and yet the community became embroiled in conflict.  

My intention is to read this book this weekend. I suggest it as a tool, guide, refuge for us all as we navigate through pain and trauma to meet in a field “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing”.   Let’s meet there.

The hills are turning gold

As we honor and resound

In our yard, Oak and Redwood root together and share a cleansing air

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

A Pause

It’s memorial weekend.  We remember.  Some put flowers and, or flags on graves.  Memory is caught, held, and shared like flowers as they come together and fall apart.

I’m filled with grief at the tragedy in Uvalde, and how some, even now, are allowed to spout lies at the NRA convention which should not be held. 

The Buddha’s last words were Be a lamp unto yourself.

And so today, we light our lamps as we merge with the lights of those so recently and tragically taken from us.

Anne Lamott writes: Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

This three day weekend, may we pause and reel connection to Source, the place to begin.  

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Healing

I went to the Muir Beach overlook yesterday.  The fog is in so I dressed for winter and felt the news of these days melt and flow away.  I met two friends.  One just lost her husband after 16 months battling pancreatic cancer.  The three of us lost a very good friend this week, and so I sink into melding with the ocean and rocks to give expansion, compassion, and comfort with transition, passage, and grief.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Counterbalancing

I find myself mind-boggled with the news and events of the days, and so I come to Yeats.

God guard me from these thoughts  men think

In the mind alone;

He that sings a lasting song

Thinks in a marrow bone.

Circling in the Light

“Hope is the thing with feathers” – Emily Dickinson
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Enough

When my children were young, there were times I wanted to lock them in a closet, to keep them here with me, to keep them safe.  Today I think if they were still young, I wouldn’t let them go to school today.  We would stay home together and cuddle and snuggle and read books and go to the park, the mountain, the beach.  We would play with Legos and Tinker Toys, and talk about ethics, morality, compassion, kindness, non-judgment, community, and peace.

Non-judgment – today’s challenge is to not judge those who vote against background checks and common sense regulation of guns.  Why do they vote that way?  Money.  Power and Money!

From Heather Cox Richardson:

Increasingly, NRA money backed Republican candidates. In 2012 the NRA spent $9 million in the presidential election, and in 2014 it spent $13 million. Then, in 2016, it spent over $50 million on Republican candidates, including more than $30 million on Trump’s effort to win the White House. This money was vital to Trump, since many other Republican super PACs refused to back him. The NRA spent more money on Trump than any other outside group, including the leading Trump super PAC, which spent $20.3 million.

The unfettered right to own and carry weapons has come to symbolize the Republican Party’s ideology of individual liberty. Lawmakers and activists have not been able to overcome Republican insistence on gun rights despite the mass shootings that have risen since their new emphasis on guns. Even though 90% of Americans—including nearly 74% of NRA members—support background checks, Republicans have killed such legislation by filibustering it.  

I think we’ve all had enough.   

The flower and the bee come together – the result –
Honey

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Sorrow

I had trouble sleeping last night as I felt and thought of the parents and children affected by the tragedy in Texas yesterday. We are all affected, all pained, all bent. I come to this poem by John O’Donohue from his wonderful book To Bless the Space Between Us.

For a Parent on the Death of a Child

No one knows the wonder

Your child awoke in you,

Your heart a perfect cradle

To hold its presence.

Inside and outside became one

As new waves of love

Kept surprising your soul.

Now you sit bereft

Inside a nightmare,

Your eyes numbed

By the sight of a grave

No parent should ever see.

You will wear this absence

Like a secret locket,

Always wondering why

Such a new soul

Was taken home so soon.

Let the silent tears flow

And when your eyes clear

Perhaps you will glimpse

How your eternal child

Has become the unseen angel

Who parents your heart

And persuades the moon

To send new gifts ashore.

~ John O’Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

Early Morning to the East

To the South

Morning comes as Mourning continues

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Grief

Tonight, we grieve, again.  Another shooting, another – when will it stop?

19 children and 2 adults – no reason.

The stapes is the smallest bone in the human body.  Shaped like a stirrup, it’s located in the middle ear where it conducts sound vibrations to the inner ear.  The inner ear.  What isn’t reaching the inner ear?   What isn’t penetrating so we more fully hear?

I sit outside as the sun sinks through the wind stroked trees. Birds flit and sing. I breathe in peace as I sink to the ground in grief.

Where the redwood rises
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Life

I’m reading William Elliott’s book Tying Rocks to Clouds, a title I love.  He interviews various spiritual leaders to find guidance for his own path.  He asks them a series of questions about their beliefs and ideals.

As I answer for myself, I feel the purpose of life is for each of us to fulfill in our own unique way. I think of the sea star, the creature that eats by extruding its stomach out through its  mouth to envelop a meal.  When the food is digested, the stomach is drawn back into the body.  It’s an image I can use to consider how I might meet another person or event, to more clearly expand how I listen, receive, and perceive.

On that note, Robert Hubbell has this to say.

The wife of a supreme court justice participated in an attempted coup. That fact is outrageous and should matter to every American and should remain on the front pages of every newspaper in America until the justice resigns or recuses himself from all election-related cases.

I say he should resign.  He’s tainted in a multitude of ways and should never have been allowed on the Supreme Court.   

It might seem easy to ignore Clarence and his wife in light of Heather Cox Richardson’s column today where she issues a warning that you might need to skip reading about the abuses in the Southern Baptists church.  

And with that, on this beautiful day, I trust in balancing beams of love with shared awareness and care.  We can’t heal what we don’t know, and the more we learn of abuse, the more we can focus on healing the wounds.  May this be so!

Looking out my window –