In December, my book group meets for an overnight in the city but, of course, with Covid changes, we didn’t meet last year, and now, today we are journeying to San Francisco for lunch. We’ll take the ferry. I search for my Clipper cards and find four. Then, I dress up, well I dress up for me, and put on clothes I haven’t worn in all this time. Very exciting.
We never took our gatherings for granted, and yet, these days, there is an even more intense awareness of gratitude for ability, connection, togetherness, and health.
This morning I’m with the beauty and wisdom in this Carol video, O Holy Darkness.
I remember taking a course in Child Psychology at UCLA when I was 18. In 1968, we were propagandized that the “Communists” were programming their children. We had to fight back against that threat. Of course, our own propaganda was that we were the good guys and our children were allowed and given complete freedom and possibility in this “land of the free”.
Angela Davis, an avowed Communist, came to teach and there was turmoil and concern. In order to work as a tour guide on campus, I had to sign that I was not a Communist. I doubt I knew what that meant at the time. I knew my father believed in the Domino Theory and not wanting another World War II, he thought we were right to be in Vietnam. He didn’t live long enough to learn the truth of that.
Now, we are trying to teach our children a more whole history. Watch this beautiful movement into the embrace, the holy embrace, of wholeness.
It’s the time of year where we turn more deeply into ourselves even as we gather and celebrate the precious carving of dark and light.
I notice how softly I can move the air through which I pass through. I blow kisses like the wind, center the chimes of enchantment within.
I’ve changed the colors in my home from autumn gold and orange to red and green. Inside reflects outside as the branches on the trees are bare but berries shine red and share space with pine cones on green wreaths.
Circling.
Helen Keller wrote: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.
Feeling with the heart, celebrating hearts gathered everywhere.
Yesterday when I came to my Sensory Awareness Zoom class, I thought I felt fine, but as we worked with feeling the support of the floor, standing was too much. I needed to get down on the floor to fully receive and feel the support. We were working with boundaries, and I felt how my cells had been invaded by something foreign, and potentially dangerous, though the purpose was to potentially save my life.
I felt nauseous and tiredas I processed the effects of the Covid booster shot the day before.
Then we went to the wall, and placed our hands there. At first, my feet were so sensitive from noticing, my hands needed time to meet, to truly meet and receive the wall, but then the support came through. I rested my forehead and hands on the wall and receivedand filled with reception, woke. I was no longer tired. I was awake, soothingly, comfortably, easily awake.In relationship, when we notice what is always here, there is the possibility of renewal, connection with the core, the inner-outer cord of support.
Martin Buber wrote: All real living is about relationship.
And Marion Milner discovered through her own explorations in her wonderful book A Life of One’s Own that:
But now concentration, instead of being a matter of time tables and rules, was a magician’s wand. By a simple self-chosen act of keeping my thoughts on one thing at a time instead of dozens, I had found a new window opening out across a new country of wide-open horizons and unexplored delights.
We’re not alone. We’re living Relationship.
Elaine Chan-Scherer took photos of the sunset at Ocean Beach last night. We’re in the time of December King Tides, though Queen works, too, and the tides are extraordinarily high balanced with a shore-revealing low.
Enjoy the December light and receive the gift of her perception capturing these moments blending water, fire, earth, and air.
Elaine’s sunset photos of Ocean Beach Anchors of Support Touched
I love this time of year, and today I’m gifted to receive my booster shot. I’m told hydrating helps with the side effects, so I’m guzzling water with glee.
I’m reading Robert Bly in the mornings. The poem “Surprised by Evening” ends with these words.
The day shall never end, we think:
We have hair that seems born for the daylight;
But, at last the quiet waters of the night will rise,
And our skin shall see far off, as it does under water.
And our skin shall see far off, as it does under water.
A friend’s mind is deteriorating with Alzheimer’s. She is afraid of chairs with wheels, and doesn’t remember any of us. What does this mean?
I re-read Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Memory, and in this moment, all gathers in me, a blossom held, a flower, releasing to more deeply reveal the core. ‘
It’s the second day of December. At 5:00 in the morning, it’s still dark and I’m out with the stars. I reflect on the number of people I know who’ve passed away this year and looking up at the stars lighting the sky, I feel peace. It’s a month where people move even more deeply within as we light candles and come together to celebrate another year, a year of transformation, a celebration and honoring of the cycles of birth, growth, learning, and death.
As Annie Dillard writes:
Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall.
Yesterday, in honor of Native American Heritage Day, I watched the 1970 film “Little Big Man” which I recommend.
Earlier, I walked and sat by the bay with a friend. We talked about the practice of Tonglen, a practice of “taking and sending”. In Tonglen, we visualize taking in the pain of others with our in-breath, and sending out whatever will benefit them with the out-breath. In that, we begin to feel love for ourselves and others.
On Tuesday evening we were the “victims” of a costly scam. No, we weren’t victims. Yes, we lost some money but we three agreed it was clever, and a learning experience, and we’re glad and grateful we don’t have to make a living by lying. We toasted the five men for giving us the gift of knowing even more clearly we don’t need to live like that. They gave us a gratitude tonic.
I feel compassion for those who think they gain something by cheating others. I feel grateful for what I learned, the joy in knowing I can’t be taken advantage of because all is one and shared. I’m complete in myself, and that can’t be taken from me. That awareness brought expansiveness in all areas to me, and I felt relief over conflicts I’d been agonizing over. It was gone, a positive and powerful affirmation of the value in release and trust in knowing it’s about how we meet what comes. Don’t hold on. Flow with the tides and streams. Be one with the sky.
Today I learned of a friend’s horrific family tragedy. Her husband was driving home with a pecan pie for Thanksgiving on Highway 99 when his car was hit by a car crossing a double yellow line. That person is essentially unhurt but my friend’s husband is in critical condition with severe brain damage.
Where does one put it?
How does one breathe into and expand around that?
Today in a Sensory Awareness workshop, we experimented with the power in a gesture.We held the right hand up at shoulder level, palm out, with fingers upright and joined, like some statues of the Buddha, showing a Mudra representing “Fear not!”
Fear not!
Egret by the Bay The power of a lineGreat Blue Heron
It’s a day to gather within ourselves and with others and give thanks. My father used to chop the celery and onion by hand the night before and cook down the giblets, but now with the aid of a food processor, I rise at five and do it in the morning. Click, zip, whiz, and now the turkey is stuffed and roasting in the oven.
Yesterday I saw four river otters playing in the bay. I also sat in the rock garden at Flamingo Park near me. The rocks are decorated by families in the neighborhood. Gifts abound.
This is the week designated for gratitude. The light spreads its rays as though we are meant to climb out of ourselves into connection with a wider world. We can also be grateful for who and what we are, this wonderful assemblage in time and space.
Alan Watts:
What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.
I woke this morning with Tiger tucked alongside me and realized he’s been grieving the passing of his sister Bella, and today it seems we both came to peace.
I thought of the words of Albert Einstein: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another,” and so Bella is here in another form.
Robert Bly has passed away at the age of 94. What an amazing man. I remember being at Asilomar for a workshop and I walked by his workshop that was intended for men, but he waved his hand and invited me in.
Such Joy!
I love his translation of Basho’s poem, and today with his passing though the temple bell has stopped, “the sound keeps coming out of the flowers”.
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