Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Ukraine

Today in a meditation for peace I felt the words U Crane – and thought You Crane, as we each reach with the beauty and long curving necks of the bird, and the strength of the cranes that raise buildings into the sky to create a halo of peace for this region.

This morning I read of the deaths of a woman and her two children killed by Russian military artillery in Ukraine.  She worked for a software company with one location in Palo Alto, and now I read of the destruction of a maternity hospital. Where do we put such pain?

I focus on the intricacy of the sunflower, a symbol of this region.  The sunflower is a bouquet, a composite of many smaller flowers. It’s thick stalk holds a heavy flower to the sky and gives us oil, the new gold.

May we each gather and focus the energy of desire, like a magnifying glass focuses the sun, radiating spirals of smoke to signal a return to peace.  

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Return

My head just cleared.  I’ve been dealing with a horrible cold and cough.  It has encouraged mindfulness, though not an open, expansive mind but a rather small mind as nothing much can enter and move through.  My focus has been on breath and the effort involved when air and mucus seem to battle for space.  I’ve been given an opportunity to notice how I receive and utilize air.  

I’m grateful to feel “back” and yet perhaps there is a place for the break for an even greater appreciation of ease in breath.

I’m with ease in the words of Meister Eckhart: If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

Outside the Good Earth grocery store
In our yard, Redwood and Pittosporum mingle!

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Balancing

I’m up early today, surprised to hear the tinkling sound of rain on the roof.  My cat and I look out and rejoice.  Well, I rejoice, cat not so much.  

I’m with what it takes to balance news from Ukraine with our daily lives.

I meditate and come to Pico Iyer:

So, in an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.

That reminds me of the poem “Stone” by Charles Simic:

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Receiving

Yesterday I was at Stinson Beach on a misty day.  

I carried the words of Rilke: The future enters us in order to transform us long before it happens.

I looked at empty crab shells, rocks, waves, sky, and sand.  What enters me now?

What moves within?

Science at the Beach
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Life

I’m reading a friend’s book, Sara Bragin’s The Living in Her Dying.  It’s about the time she spent with her mother as her mother was transitioning. It shows how much we need an advocate at such a time, and the learning that occurs when we show up to be with the loss of the womb in which we came.

The end of life process is with me these days as I feel the approach of a change over which I may not have control.

Last night I had one of those experiences that takes one out of their body and into awareness of so much more.  My cat Tiger is getting older, and needing body warmth, comfort, and support sleeps snuggled in with us at night.  When I got into bed last night, he came over with a look that lit the room, that was more than his huge eyes.  I felt the gift of this livingness, this gift of being in a body for a time.

I was reminded of Thomas Merton’s words about being on a street corner, and …

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . . 

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”

He uses the word God.  I might use the word Spirit or Light or Grace but the feeling and knowing, believing and honoring – that is the gift.

What’s happening in Ukraine is with us all.  We are united in this.  We feel the attacks; we share the fear and yet Tiger gave me such an invitation with his eyes, and way of being.  I wake as light, flowing light, light that is both particle and wave as am I.  

Tiger
A Portion of Our Yard
Serenity
And the wind chimes

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Mourning

Lou Andreas-Salome was Rilke’s teacher, muse, lover and friend.  This is from her book, You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke.  The memoir was written in 1927, a year after he died.

Mourning is not as singular a state of emotional preoccupation as is commonly thought: it is, more precisely, an incessant discourse with the departed one, in order to draw him nearer. For death entails not merely a disappearance but rather a transformation into a new realm of visibility. Something is not just taken away but is gained, in a way never before experienced. In the moments when the flowing lines of a figure’s constant change and effect become paralyzed for us, we are imbued for the first time with its essence: something which is never captured or fully realized in the normal course of lived existence.  

There’s a little bird singing in the trees today. I try to get a picture but one moment the song comes from one tree, and then another. I’m circled – notes calling leaves to come forth from trees.

New Leaves in Spring

The Redwood grounds growth

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Bearing Witness

Is it enough that we see what’s happening in Ukraine, watch pain, bear witness?

I’m with choice these days and how much we step in with change.  In our small personal world, my husband and I are looking at change.  I could say we have complete openness in this choice but age, health, and being near our children are factors.

The book City, written in 1952, is by Clifford Simak. I re-read it periodically as I’m intrigued with how he foresaw that our houses might become complete enough that we wouldn’t want or need to leave them, and then, we couldn’t when something invited us outside.  Friendly robots would take care of logistics and the house would be a container for whatever screen contact we might need.  

We came to this house located on Coast Miwok land in 1978.  Jeff was just four,  and Chris turned one. The question becomes are the house and land holding onto us, or are we holding on to them.

I’m going through books, letters, and cards  beginning to clean out what is here.  What do I need now?  What container do I build for my nourishment and fulfillment, and perhaps it is seeing people in Ukraine that has me even more aware of fragility and the preciousness of contact in what I choose.  This moment, this moment, so “it”, so full of my life and the lives of others.  

Books I’ve collected are on solitude, nature, poetry and the importance and essential nature of silence.

What pulls me now, and what comes is William Carlos Williams, and a red wheelbarrow and cold plums.  

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Creativity

After sharing something about my past with a friend, she said, “You’re continuing to air out the fairy tale”.

That reminds me of words from Suzuki Roshi’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind:

“The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.”

Perhaps that’s why people are risking so much and fighting so hard for their freedom in Ukraine. We want and need the space to be mischievous. We want and need to experiment, discover, and find our own personal ways to fence and control.

We need the space to do so, the permission to decide what opens our own unique gates.

Playing with Space and Weight

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Come Together Now

It’s early morning and I read the news for the day, news I receive from Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Hubbell.  I pause to reflect on people dying for a cause, defending a cause.

Yesterday I watched a Red-Shouldered hawk sit on a post above our yard.  He flew overhead with a screech and then his mate came to the same post.  Steve says he’s hearing the higher-pitched screech of babies.

It’s Spring and I trust that change is coming as countries unite to fight a frightened bully and speak with the screech of the hawk, a bird of prey that is a gift to our yard and other yards.

I seem wrapped in the colors of the flag of Ukraine, blue and yellow, blue for the sky and yellow for the sunflowers they grow under a blue sky that shines above the current gray.

A wide-eyed view
The moon yesterday morning