The passage of the virus is showing us how we are all connected, and last night there was an underwater volcanic eruption near the Tonga Islands. This morning a tsunami warning has been issued along the west coastof the U.S.
I remember we had a tsunami warning when my children were in elementary school. The principal marched the children up the hill for safety. Nothing happened but the concern was ocean water could sweep up through the Tennessee Valley to the school. I felt the principal did the right thing, and the children loved being outside, and yet, he was criticized.
I vote for erring on the side of caution, and so today a pause and gratitude for Mother Nature and her wake-up calls as we respond to her need to move, juggle, and jiggle the elements we transition, transform, and share.
It’s the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.. He said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Above Tennessee Valley Tennessee Valley beach on Thursday – Winter Light
I haven’t stayed connected with my high school class but thanks to social media, I am now connected. This morning I learned that another from my class of 1967 has passed away. She had dementia the last few years. I try to align the information with the exuberant cheerleader I remember. She’s not the only one I know my age who has gotten dementia and passed away.
It’s an odd entry into this new day where gratitude is the only song I need. I hear the garbage trucks as my garbage sorted into three cans, trash, recycling and compost, is carted away.
Connection –
Molting –
Trust that bonds are never broken, simply carried away – like the moon pulling the tides.
Today I felt like Mole in one of my favorite books, Wind in the Willows. Spring was calling. One room in particular beckoned. I moved the desk to open and wash the windows. Then, I looked around in quest of a whole new look. I moved the couch, then, the bookcase, piling up books to give away. Now, candles are lit, lights are on, and it’s open, fresh, and cozy, all at the same time.
I won’t go down to the river like Mole. I’m pleased to taste and ingest this day of response, knowing spring this time of year is a quick guest, and winter will return.
Thich Nhat Hanh inspires reflection, exploration and contemplation with “Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile.”
Exhaling, I play with how deeply from within the smile comes.
How far does it extend?
Is there a bow of connection with in and out?
I’m reminded of the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel.
In archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality.
That brings me to Frederick Franck:
While drawing grasses I learn nothing ‘about’ grass, but wake up to the wonder that there is grass at all.
Frederick Franck: I know artists whose medium is life itself, and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel or guitar. They neither paint nor dance. Their medium is Being. Whatever their hand touches has increased life…. They are the artists of being alive.
Ah, to be an artist of being alive, and with that, “breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile.”
It’s gray and wet today and I feel myself wrapped in a blanket of fullness, of knowing enough, as though not one more thing can enter. Of course, that’s this moment. Perhaps that acknowledgment brings change, or not.
I wonder what these early days in January ask of us, what we ask of them. Years ago, I signed up for a yoga class with the intention to start the New Year “right”, but then the instructor spoke of this as a fallow time of year, and she kept the lights low, and we moved slowly and mainly rested on our mat.
I’m guided by these words of Rumi:
“Let yourself be silently drawn by what you love. It will not lead you astray.”
I focus on the word retreat, and settle into the sound and meaning of the word treat, guided so gently by what I love. On the top of the mountain yesterday, I felt held, and focused on two hands, two eyes, two ears, two so we can hold both life and death as passage and guide. I wondered why the two words ears and tears are so close as though we listen more clearly when we allow liquid to flow out of containment into a wider world, a world we share with acknowledgment of love and care.
One son, his wife, and my grandchild have Covid. I feel fragile in knowing all we share, tender in trusting they will be fine, knowing again there is a separation over which there is no control, only letting go.
Heart-shaped abalone shell in the center of the labyrinth
As we deal with issues of life and death, I find it essential to turn to nature so today I did. I share my rainy-day journey through pictures. I walked the labyrinth listening to the sound of the ocean, birds, and cows and their calves mooing.
Looking up in the rain from the almost top of Mt. Tam Moss on an Oak on the Mountain Stinson Beach Commonweal View from Commonweal Daffodils bloom in the rain Approaching the LabyrinthThe Labyrinth – a place to balance and heal Offerings in the center of the labyrinth View from Commonweal in rain – it could be Ireland Decomposers
I looked up and though it was raining, there was a glow of rose everywhere.
I’m going up the mountain today to be spaciously aware with friends who are making the most challenging and difficult of health decisions right now. May we all be well and gently whole!
My intention for this new year is to listen, listen to myself, others, and the world.
I just finished reading Etel Adnan’s book, Shifting the Silence. An artist and writer, she was born in 1925 and passed November 14, 2021. This book looks at aging and loss. What is it when we lose someone to Alzheimer’s or death?
I’m struck by certain passages and sentences.
Etel Adnan:
Bach’s music is the needle of the cosmic balance.
This has taken me into the core of a silence that underlines the universe: underneath the mesh of sounds that never cease there’s a strange phenomena, a counter-reality, the rolling of silent matter.
Silence is a flower, it opens up, dilates, extends its texture, can grow, mutate, return on its steps. It can watch other flowers grow and become what they are. We’re at the turn of the year, I have to invite somebody or something. The live thickness of the silence makes sounds free themselves and expand. The year is turning, has turned. 2018 is gone forever, gone into being the new year, people are dancing, 2019 has just entered, wide-eyed, utterly new.
Silence is the creation of space, a space that memory needs to use … an incubator. We’re dealing here with dimensions, stretching inner muscles, pushing aside any interference. We’re dealing with numbers, but not counting. Silence demands the nature of night, even in full day, it demands shadows.
She goes on to say: I consider the light that enters the room in the early hours of the day as a messenger of the sun, a direct voyager, a particle, a wave, who knows, but an object of sorts that left its solar source, covered miles, and landed on my skin. So the universe constantly visits us while waiting for us to reverse that itinerary.
Morning is still dark here this winter day, and I trust the turning, the turning that seeds, the silence that breathes and breeds in me.
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