Did it seem a little lighter this morning or is it that I’m staying in bed a wee bit longer to reflect. We’re upgrading our Trust, which means I saw my younger brother is still there as someone who would help oversee our desires when we pass.
Change.
Yesterday I watched this beautiful talk with Michael Lerner and Francis Weller at Commonweal. I recommend it.
I walked outside to get the mail and a beautiful hawk was sitting on a branch of a tree. I ran inside to get my phone and friend hawk and I spent some time together. Blessings. Blessed.
And now it’s enough. He lifts and prepares to swoop in a wide curve, to circle in flight.
It’s a day to absorb the excitement of gathering and to begin a slow return to the earth’s turning. At the solstice, even the movement of the sun appears to come to a halt, to re-adjustment, and so do we.
Yesterday we were discussing the odds of intelligent life outside of what we know, and I found myself looking around amazed at what is here. I was astonished at our gathering of family, dogs, and one elderly cat, in our small, intimate space for two days, and now, I am with the intelligent life within and on this planet – well, perhaps diversity is what is better celebrated as we all have different backgrounds, responses, and perceptions.
The continuing rain means a fire in the fireplace and candles aglow, and showers and abundance for All.
This quote comes my way today, guidance for movement into this winter season, and a new year.
“When winter comes to a woman’s soul, she withdraws into her inner self, her deepest spaces. She refuses all connection, refutes all arguments that she should engage in the world. She may say she is resting, but she is more than resting: She is creating a new universe within herself, examining and breaking old patterns, destroying what should not be revived, feeding in secret what needs to thrive… Look into her eyes, this winter woman. In their gray spaciousness you can see the future. Look out of your own winter eyes. You too can see the future.”
–Patricia Monaghan, Seasons of the Witch
On another note, I always thought of the Saint Bernard as a dog who rescues those caught in avalanches. I now know that it’s a myth that these dogs carry brandy in kegs around their necks. Alcohol brings blood closer to the skin, and isn’t helpful in keeping warm. When it’s cold, we want our blood tucked safely inside in its circular route. That doesn’t mean I didn’t imbibe a bit of holiday spirit, but then, I was tucked inside a family womb.
I learned today there is a Saint Bernard. He was confirmed as the patron saint of the Alps in 1923. His image appears in the flag of some detachments of the Tyrolean Alpine Guard. He is also the patron saint of skiing, snowboarding, hiking, backpacking, and mountaineering. And here is his wisdom.
Saint Bernard:
Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love. I love in order that I may love.
Sunrise this morning Looking south for the rising of the sun And the seasons circle round and round
When I was young, I had a tree, a nestinto which I climbed.
I resonate to these words of Richard Powers from The Overstory.
The judge asks, “Young, straight, faster-growing trees aren’t better than older, rotting trees?” “Better for us. Not for the forest.”
She describes how a rotting log is home to orders of magnitude more living tissue than the living tree. “I sometimes wonder whether a tree’s real task on Earth isn’t to bulk itself up in preparation to lying dead on the forest floor for a long time.” The judge asks what living things might need a dead tree. “Name your family. Your order. Birds, mammals, other plants. Tens of thousands of invertebrates. Three-quarters of the region’s amphibians need them. Almost all the reptiles. Animals that keep down the pests that kill other trees. A dead tree is an infinite hotel.” She tells him about the ambrosia beetle. The alcohol of rotting wood summons it. It moves into the log and excavates. Through its tunnel systems, it plants bits of fungus that it brought in with it, on a special formation on its head. The fungus eats the wood; the beetle eats the fungus. “Beetles are farming the log?” “They farm. Without subsidies. Unless you count the log.” “And those species that depend on rotting logs and snags: are any of them endangered?” She tells him: everything depends on everything else. There’s a kind of vole that needs old forest. It eats mushrooms that grow on rotting logs and excretes spores somewhere else. No rotting logs, no mushrooms; no mushrooms, no vole; no vole, no spreading fungus; no spreading fungus, no new trees. “Do you believe we can save these species by keeping fragments of older forest intact?” She thinks before answering. “No. Not fragments. Large forests live and breathe. They develop complex behaviors. Small fragments aren’t as resilient or as rich. The pieces must be large, for large creatures to live in them.”
Trees and Puddles Celebrate the nature we are – our Interdependence
Perhaps because I connect with my pagan roots, this day after the winter solstice, begins a new year for me.
I’m on the ninth floor of an eleven story hotel looking out over Silicon Valley in the rain.
I wake at four and open Mary Oliver’s wonderful book, Owls and Other Fantasies, which I highly recommend.
She begins with this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson from “May-Day”, which invites me to simmer in myself that perhaps each day is a day to ask, “May I”, as I feel into what answers my needs.
Emerson:
Beloved of children, bards and Spring,
O birds, your perfect virtues bring.
Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,
Your manners for the heart’s delight.
Oliver’s whole book invites us into presence and the revelation of transformation that is death, but one essay in particular, “Bird” tells of her rescue of a gull, and what she, and therefore we, learn from the life and transition of this bird.
Oddly, this posted first on my Breast Strokes blog. Perhaps, it, too, asks for acknowledgment and reception of light.
Pelicans swirling the dance of life over Sausalito’s Bay Lift!
It’s the time to celebrate the return of the sun, the light, even as we enter winter.
Henry David Thoreau said: “In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends.”
Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. I sink into the darkness, the touch of candlelight and the scent of pine and cedar. Two squirrels chase around and up and down the redwood tree.
The tilt of the earth’s axis gives us the seasons. It’s a time to honor and reflect.What comes to me now, and how open am I to receive?
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