The tides move in and out, and today I wake balancing the flow of the personal, my daughter-in-law’s grief over the passing of her mother and her father’s current ill-health, and what is happening in Ukraine.
After 9-11, the world united, and then there was war. Perhaps this time, the world uniting can lead to peace. Meanwhile each of us can feel the fragility of this spinning orb we share.
We have differences of opinion, and different responses, and it’s also very clear we need to get along.
I think of the marsh with all the different niches, so that each bird, each beak, feeds.
I can’t stop thinking of the people of Ukraine. I see photos of people fleeing with their pets. This invasion is not okay, and the response is showing what people want and need.
It seems resistance is working. People in Russia are protesting this action, and Ukraine is defending themselves, and calling for help. Perhaps, this time, humanity will prevail, and the wounds of this disputed region can heal.
I’m pleased with the Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Heather Cox Richardson has this to say about her:
Similarly, it seems to me a mistake to characterize Jackson as a part of a “radical progressive agenda” unless democracy itself has become such a thing. Jackson’s tightly reasoned briefs show a focus on democracy that is similar to that of her mentor, Breyer. She has become famous, for example, for a 2019 opinion rejecting the idea that a president’s advisors cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. “Presidents are not kings,” she wrote. “This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Like Breyer, as well, Jackson has a “reputation for pragmatism and consensus building,” according to former president Barack Obama, who nominated her as a district judge.
At today’s event, Jackson defined America as “the greatest beacon of hope and democracy the world has ever known.”C
Anticipating criticism suggesting that Jackson’s judicial experience has been brief, Vladeck also compiled a chart of the judicial experience of all Supreme Court justices since 1900. The information showed that Jackson’s 8.9 years of prior judicial experience is more than four of the justices currently on the court—Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett—had combined. It’s also more experience than 4 of the last 10 justices had at their confirmations, or 9 of the last 17, or 43 of the 58 appointed since 1900.
My husband and I spent this week with our grandchild. I avoided the news as much as possible as I stayed absorbed in the imaginary, and therefore real world of a two year old. We looked out the window of their home and saw a jungle with lions, tigers, and bears. We put a soft, child-size bowling pin on our nose and one on our head and were in a marching band playing trumpets and trombones. Innocence, and then, there is the opposing force of war and I’m thrown into a tailspin of not understanding why and how we do this again and again.
When we returned home, the man who stays in our home when we’re gone was incredibly upset. Though born in Moscow, he came to this country as a young man and became a citizen. He was recently in Ukraine. He has friends there. He had been continuously on the phone hearing of bombs dropping and fear, fear, fear. News of the war I’d been avoiding became personal. I, too, wanted to hide in my house and protect myself and my children.
I think of Leo Tolstoy’s book War and Peace. What if everyone read it? Would we still destroy? Can we look more wholly and generously at this planet, not a very big one these days, we share?
We spent yesterday at the Hiller Aviation Museum with our grandchild. As far as he knows, he flew a Blue Angels jet and a 747. I think of words from the 60’s, “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came.” What if no one on either side was willing to fight? I think of the Christmas Truce of 1914 when weapons on both sides were set down and people on both sides of the trench celebrated together. Can’t we do that now?
At the museum yesterday, Space Camp was happening. The children were in two teams, the red team and the blue team. Each team would launch a rocket-powered car. The children were not allowed to chant for their team. The idea was to learn about rockets and not to divide, cheer, and say one team was “better” than another. That works for me.
Because I’m with death these days, this process I see as transformation, warp and weft, tangling and untangling, I feel the words of Carl Perkins roll through me.
If it weren’t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song.
With death, we become the stream, allowing others a more vibrant and fragrant place as they fill in where we were as we liquify and aerate, dissolve and reform.
When you love, you complete a circle. When you die, the circle remains.
Ebi and Ginger, two rescue greyhounds, were with us on our trip to Palm Springs. There’s nothing like being greeted as though you are the most amazing person in the world even if it’s just that morning comes and you’re there.
On our return, our cat needed to go to the Cat Spa. He’s older now and his fur mats in a way we can’t comb through so I sat and talked with a lovely woman as Tiger was outwardly pampered though he didn’t seem to recognize it, but then, he calmed and now he’s happy to be home and freshly groomed.
Life –
My son attended a funeral on Thursday. It was done in the traditional Chinese way. He appreciated the ceremony, the ritual, and suggested he might want some of that when I go. I’ve said I want simplicity, a scattering of ashes in nature, no ceremony at all. He pointed out that I won’t be here, which is true, so this morning I’m with how to satisfy us both which even as I type this sounds ridiculous and I laugh both inside and out. I’m tickled by this odd need to control even when I’m entering and merging with other streams.
Ebi and GingerTiger View from the overlook at Joshua Tree
I’m reading Mary Rose O’Reilley’s book, The Barn at the End of the World.
She writes of trying to make a recipe from an African cookbook. When the pot is overflowing with 1/16 of the ingredients for the Ethiopian stew supposedly for four, she calls her son, an African enthusiast, and learns that a recipe for four is a recipe that feeds four families, or maybe four villages. We each measure differently.
She shares how the poet Mark Doty in writing about the death of his partner from AIDS, “the process of decline gradually stripped Wally of all that was not Everything, and how in that millrace he became most himself. Doty says that death is “the deepest moment in the world … even if that self empties into no one, swift river hurrying into the tumble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents.”
I soften, carried on the tides, breathing connectedness, touching in and out.
Can it be 17 years since my mother passed on this day? It was 2005 so it must be. I offer comfort to a friend who is grieving the loss of her husband three months ago. Time may not heal pain but it does allow a more open embrace.
The morning sky to the east with the moon still a light to the west
I seem caught in the roots of Joshua trees, the arms of Cholla cactus, as I hold and process sun and moonlight in new ways. This journey rings through me.
It was complex as my daughter-in-law’s mother passed away recently, so we carried grief with us as well as love and gratitude.
We were wrapped in the words of Pema Chodron: You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.
And there is Bell Hooks:
Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. The word “love” is most often defined as a noun,
yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.
And now I come to Galway Kinnell’s poem “There Are Things I Tell to No One”
Those close to me might think
I was sad, and try to comfort me, or become sad
themselves.
At such times I go off along, in silence, as if listening
for God.
And then the poem goes on to explain what he means by “God”. This poem speaks to what I felt at Joshua Tree, what I feel now – flow – the ever-moving, balancing and giving flow – the Oneness we are with Gratitude as Blood.
We’re home, after a journey on back roads down, across, and up a huge swath of CA, a state so beautiful, vast, and varied that enchantment expands.The complexity of the landscape helps to explain the variety of perspectives, opinions, and conclusions in this exquisite and complex state.
We return to flowering plum trees, singing birds, buzzing bees, and continuing sunshine.
Morning in Palm SpringsThe Sacred Land of Joshua Tree A Sense of ScaleKeys View: The Coachella Valley, San Andreas Fault, Santa Rosa mountains and the Salton Sea Amazing Rock FormationsPeek Through Cholla Cactus Garden in Joshua Tree Sun Shining Through 11:30 AM looking up in Palm Springs
We drove, well, Jeff drove us down to Palm Springs yesterday. We tried to avoid freeways. CA is an amazingly beautiful and geographically and politically complex state. Palm Springs is a dog-friendly place so dinner last night was here. We were seated and each dog presented with a water bowl and duck treat. We’re living the good dog’s life now, and every day of course. Gratitudeswells.
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