Posted on by Cathy Edgett

What Drives Us

When I was young we loved to pile into the car for a drive or road trip.  Drive-in movies with homemade popcorn were a special treat.  We’d play in our summer pajamas on the swings and playground equipment until the light dimmed, and then we’d run to the car to snuggle in.   I remember the magic and delight of watching Cinderella on the big screen with the sound popped right into our station wagon.  

I used to love to drive but traffic has become such an issue that sitting stopped has taken away the appeal, but my nineteen month old grandson loves cars.

Watching him, I’m entranced with all the levers and gears, the technology that moves us from place to place.  He holds the car keys, and puts them in the slot, or in a more modern car, touches the screen. 

I think what a marvel a car is, realizing it contributes both to our autonomy and a sense of isolation.  We are pilots of our destiny, well, until we hit another red light, or a traffic jam.  For now though, it’s fun to travel the roads of imagination.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 3 Comments

Playing with the Wind

I spent yesterday with my grandson who is now 19 months old.  He loves wind chimes so I’ve created a forest of them here at my home.   He has one at his house that celebrates children.  If you want a wind chime, this is one place to go. There are many. People love wind chimes.

https://cosanti.com

I’ve given this little being our children’s giant tinker toys.  They’re huge. He or his dad had put four sticks together with two wheels to look to me like fancy barbells but to Keo they were drums.  He drummed away , each drum separate or one placed on the other, and then, he lifted them one by one and pointed, “Up!”

Naturally I obey his every suggestion, and since we were outside, I saw some hooks and nails along the covering for the deck, so I maneuvered this way and that until I figured out how to hang the drums.  They looked slightly strange hanging there all a-kilter, so I didn’t take a picture but this morning it hit me.  If the wind can play chimes, why not drums?

The news these days is sobering as our President works to keep our country a democracy with freedom for all.  I nourish on a child in the park, on children everywhere.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Reflection

I always leave this day, Memorial Day, open to contemplation as present and past join hands.

I believe in the words of the Jesuit scientist Teilhard de Chardin: “Love is the physical structure of the universe.”

May love allow us to better balance this world we share.  

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Memorial Day Weekend

I’m reading “We Came, We Saw, We Left: A Family Gap Year” where a family of five travels together for a year.  I’m paused now where they are in Stone Town, the capital city of Zanzibar and a World Heritage site.  When they visit the small museum, they learn that slavery created this cross-cultural outpost.  

“Slaves were captured in the interior of Africa, brought to Zanzibar, and then exported to the rest of the world.”

“At the height of the slave trade, sixty thousand humans were trafficked through Zanzibar every year.”

“The exhibit that packed the most emotional punch was on the lawn outside: a full-scale sculpture of several women with chains around their necks looking up from a pit in the ground.”

I had to stop reading to absorb unimaginable numbers and pain.

I always find this an odd weekend to navigate.  It began as a way to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers.  

On May 30, 1868, at Arlington National Cemetery James A. Garfield said: 

“We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.”

After he spoke, 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who are buried there. After World War I, Memorial Day was established as a national holiday to honor all those who’ve died in American wars. It’s a weekend to remember as we move forward to change.

–

Look for the Gull skimming the waves

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Rising with the Moon

The moon symbolizes enlightenment to Buddhists, and you may have noticed the brightness of this full moon.  It was a bright light both in the evening and in the morning.

Yesterday was the Day of Vesak, a day to celebrate Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death.  Since I was at the ocean last week, I’ve continued to feel the waves in the oceans in me, the continents, the always moving change and flow.

Mark Twain wrote: 

 I am an old man, and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

I’m with that this morning, laughing with the twitter-tweeting of birds.  I’m eating my first cherries of the season, and yes, my life is a bowl full of cherries as I offer the pits to the yard wondering if one or two will choose to sink into the ground and rise as a tree.

Morning Moon
Low tide in the Bay

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Transformation

Today I learned from Writer’s Almanac that it’s World Turtle Day and we’re meant to dress either in green or as a turtle.  I’m in blue today so I am choosing to be the water that supports turtles and life.  Watching the ocean this week allowed me to feel even more fully how we are the ocean and the wave, and how each wave is precious especially as it curves and curls to bow and meet the ground.

Thich Nhat Hanh: Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat.

To celebration of change.

Fog pours over the ridge today

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Presence

Eckhart Tolle: When you are present, you can sense the spirit – the one consciousness in every creature – and love it as yourself.  

Evening

Cypress Trees
Rose in my Garden
Texture
At the Zoo
Getting Along

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

The Ocean

I spent the day with my 18 month old grandson, and then drove over to the ocean to Half Moon Bay for the night.  What a gift.  The sound of the ocean – the waves – all drops and rolls in trust and ease.

How appropriate are these words by Lynn Ungar for me today..

And you–what of your rushed and useful life? Imagine setting it all down—papers, plans, appointments, everything—leaving only a note: “Gone to the fields to be lovely. Be back when I’m through with blooming.”

Sunset
Morning

Morning Walk

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Empathy

In both my book groups we’ve read Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

What has most stayed with me is a Black girl’s suggestion for punishment of Adolph Hitler.  Let him be Black in the United States.  

Years ago, I read Hannah Arendt’s book on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichman, one of the architects of the Holocaust.  She titled the book  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

In his introduction to Arendt’s book, Israeli journalist Amos Elon writes:

[Arendt] concluded that Eichmann’s inability to speak coherently in court was connected with his incapacity to think, or to think from another person’s point of view. . . . He personified neither hatred or madness nor an insatiable thirst for blood, but something far worse, the faceless nature of Nazi evil itself . . . aimed at dismantling the human personality of its victims. The Nazis had succeeded in turning the legal order on its head, making the wrong and the malevolent the foundation of a new “righteousness.” In the Third Reich evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm. . . . Within this upside-down world Eichmann . . . seemed not to have been aware of having done evil. 

I sit with that today as I consider these words of Albert Einstein.  “Mankind invented the atomic bomb, but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.”

Of late, I’ve been blessed to spend time with my grandson.  At 18 months old, he is pure joy, an enchanting dance and song as he explores and discovers.  The books he “reads” are about community and generosity, empathy and feelings.

As he grows, may the world become more kind and empathetic.  

I have mixed feelings on zoos, though I understand it’s a way to teach and study and even help endangered species reproduce.  It’s a fun place to be and the children’s playground at the SF Zoo is pure delight. The Sculpture Learning Plaza is a fascinating way to learn.

http://www.sfzoo.org/animals/exhibits/sculpturelearningplaza.htm

Recently I was by the bay and saw Canadian Geese parenting their little ones.

A Bald Eagle caged and sitting on the ground at the zoo.
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Sea Shanties

On Sunday, my grandson, his dad, and I are journeying to Angel Island. Realizing it is grandson’s first sea voyage, I thought I should check out some sea shanties, and came across Fisherman’s Friends. Enjoy!