My son and his wife have two new rescue greyhounds. Though both come from the same racetrack in Florida, the two are very different in personality. Ebi is a cuddler, and Ginger romps and bounces with an abundance of rambunctious energy.
It says something about each of us, our own unique way of being in the world, and noticing what we need and how we respond.
I’m enthused about oxygen being made on Mars. I feel our vision expanding outward as it did in the 60’s. President Biden is offering vision and work that brings change. We need that right now as the world begins to open up for some of us, and we each respond in our own unique way.
I read the following words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, and feel a shift in my being. I want to live in a way that the Earth is grateful for me. We try to keep our yard creature friendly and hospitable but I haven’t seen any deer this year. A friend shares this with me.
“I discovered tiny, twin baby fawns curled up by my water faucet three days ago. This morning a mother doe was here with her older triplets”.
Gratitude is most powerful as a response to the Earth because it provides an opening to reciprocity, to the act of giving back, to living in a way that the Earth will be grateful for us.
Today the fog is a wrap as I sit, contemplate, and appreciate the earth I am and the earth where I live.
Water rationing is beginning again so it will be a return to buckets in the shower to capture every drop. I worry about the plants and explain to them that they, too, need to carefully utilize every drop.
I’m with Thich Nhat Hanh this morning.
We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be; to be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.
It’s one step but Derek Chauvin’s conviction of murder for killing George Floyd sends a ribbon of fresh air through us all. The world held its breath waiting to hear that murder would be punished, and now with the sentencing, it will.
Yesterday I went to Lake Lagunitas with a friend. It was the first time in over a year I was in a car with someone other than my husband, but we’re both a month out from two vaccinations and felt it was safe.
We went to the lake because there’s a bench there for my friend’s sister who passed away in an accident years ago. It’s a peaceful place, and we hoped to see a river otter or two, and possibly a beaver or two. We walked ¾ of the way around the lake and then sat waiting for what we might see, and then, right there – the magic of a little head and body as an aquatic friend swam byand into the reeds.
Lake Lagunitas LupineA Home Wild Iris GraceBreathStonesThe moon rising in the afternoon sky
America today is caught in a plague of gun violence.
It wasn’t always this way. Americans used to own guns without engaging in daily massacres. Indeed, it always jumps out at me that the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, when members of one Chicago gang set up and killed seven members of a rival gang, was so shocking it led to legislation that prohibits automatic weapons in the U.S.
Eighty-nine years later, though, in 2018, another Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 children and wounded 17 others. In response, then-President Donald Trump called for arming teachers, and the Republican-dominated Florida legislature rejected a bill that would have limited some high-capacity guns.
Our acceptance of violence today stands in striking contrast to Americans’ horror at the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre.
My book group met last night to discuss In the Distance by Herman Diaz. Yes, it has violence but my understanding is it’s meant to present both a mythical and more “true” view of the Wild West. It’s a book about loneliness, not fitting in or knowing where one is, and yes, cruelty, injustice, and violence.
The question becomes whether the violence in the book was exaggerated. People felt it was unrelenting. It was certainly harsh but reading the news each day feels unrelenting too.
The time period in the book is 1849 and begins with the Gold Rush in CA and moves through peripherally to the Civil War and beyond. It is fantastical in one way, and it’s not always easy to read, and though the author struggled to write the scenes of violence, he’s making a point and looking at a piece of history in this country.
Growing up in the 1950’s, I was taught how amazing we were as a country, and when I went to Bastogne in Belgium, I cried as I stood in the memorial and saw and felt what the U.S. had contributed to World War II. I know that life is complex but we are having to face that this country was founded on violence. Can we change it now?
Heather concludes her column today with this:
In 1997, the NRA’s challenges to the Brady Bill had made their way to the United States Supreme Court. Printz v. United States brought together the idea of unfettered gun ownership and Republican government. The court held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to perform background checks. This both freed up gun purchases and endorsed states’ rights, the principle at the heart of the Republican policy of dismantling the active government that regulates business and protects civil rights.
We are in a bizarre moment, as Republican lawmakers defend largely unlimited gun ownership even as recent polls show that 84% of voters, including 77% of Republicans, support background checks. The link between guns, cowboys, race, and government in America during Reconstruction, and again after the Brown v. Board decision, helps to explain why.
F.M. Alexander, the founder of Alexander Method said to smile like you’re smelling a rose.
That’s my practice these days as I look out on a new day coming to light.
Smile like you’re smelling a rose or jasmine, pittosporum, limbs of a tree, or even your own hand. What draws you nowinto the wonderful workings of the organisms we are?
I begin the day with these words of Wendell Berry: We are either beginning or we are dead.
One son and I have been discussing how to live guided by: Alertness, Mindfulness, and Ardency.
I’ve been most puzzled by the meaning of ardency but then I thought of Hildegard of Bingen and her work with “greening”.
I’m reading Matthew Fox’s book: Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic – and Beyond. Julian lived 700 years ago and survived and advised through the bubonic plague that killed almost 50% of Europeans. She is a wise and loving guide.
From Fox’s book:
“Julian holds thoughts about awe that anticipate some of the deep insights from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Hescel in the twentieth century. For Heschel, “awe is the beginning of wisdom” and thus awe plays a prominent place in our quest not just for knowledge but for wisdom – a quest Julian also celebrates. In addition, Heschel has this to say about awe: “Wonder, radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.”
Fox continues:“Julian seems to bring this sense of wonder to the table in spades – as did her ancestors, Hildegard, Aquinas, and Eckhart. Awe is so stunning to our system and our consciousness, proposes Heschel, that we become “shocked at the inadequacy of our awe, at the weakness of our shock.””
“Heschel warns us of what happens when we lose our sense of awe. “Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a marketplace for you.” It is telling that both Heschel and Julian talk about the intrinsic relationship of “awe” and “reverence”. Awe gives birth to reverence, but consumerism and capitalism can abort awe.””
After twenty years of study of the brain, a researcher at Stanford determined the right hemisphere of the brain is all about awe.
I’m reminded of Jill Bolte Taylor’s Ted Talk and book: My Stroke of Insight.
Yesterday a friend shared that with the pandemic and shelter-in-place, she started using her living room. It had always been kept ready for company but now with no one coming she had taken it over and the coffee table was covered with her “stuff”. She falls asleep there, dreams.
Another shared that when she grew up the dining room was used once a year for Passover and the rest of the time they ate in shifts in the tiny kitchen.
If our dreams symbolize how we use the rooms in our “house”, how are we using our actual rooms?
I’m looking around now as spring is here and morning is a symphony of birds twittering and tweeting and I know it’s time to clean out. We will be opening our homes and ourselves, and how is that for us now?
We turn with the tidesand flowers offer scent as they bloom.
Today I listen to Alicia King sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, the Black national anthem. I find it unfathomable what we’re seeing and what’s been happening to people in this country who are Black.
I’m wondering why police are carrying guns rather than using Tasers. Isn’t a Taser enough defense for police monitoring driving and similar conditions? Why is a gun right there at hand? I read that the two are meant to be on opposite sides of the police person and that they are different in feel and even color.
It seems an inexcusable mistake, and yet it’s been excused in the past.
My younger brother, my only sibling, passed away two years ago in April and I find myself thinking about death.
I find comfort in these words of Rabindranath Tagore:
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
This weekend in a Sensory Awareness workshop with Miren Salmeron I felt the flow and connection of blood, organs, and bones, as though I was a tide pool, and all this movement and changing, flowing densities was happening within me. There was nothing for me to do, no need to orchestrate. What a relief!
It was ease, compassion, kindness, reception, Love. I am an aquarium, though as a living organism, permeable, not glass.
The experience felt like pregnancy where we allow expansion and birth.
Thich Nhat Hanh in Walk Like a Buddha wrote:
When the Buddha walked, he walked without effort. He just enjoyed walking. He didn’t have to strain, because when you walk in mindfulness, you are in touch with all the wonders of life within you and around you.
Thich Nhat Hanh gave us this poem.
Breathing in,
I calm my body.
Breathing out,
I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment.
When we pause and spread our arms like wings on a bird, or branches of a tree, we embrace and feel embraced. We’re pumped with air, given space, and when we smile, the muscles of the face, connected to the seventh cranial nerve, change the nervous systemand our relationship with air, our vital nourishment and need.
Gratitude arises when we bring an open and full presence to our life, and its sweetness is a feeling of homecoming.
I read Heather Cox Richardson this morning and I’m grateful for her columns and for our President Joe Biden. Today she looks at what Trump allowed and encouraged, and how Biden stepped in to save lives. I’m grateful for many things but this morning and last night birds are chirping away. What a wonderful greeting of Spring.
I’ve been inspired by the creative responses to the pandemic.When I got my two shots of the vaccine at the Civic Center, I was reminded of the years of county fairs I attended there. When my sons were young, their various exhibits entered by the schools won prizes and ribbons. In their categories, every child won something.
Now, I read that live drive-in opera is coming to the Civic Center. The fair this year, like last year, is cancelled, but we have drive-in opera instead. My heart lifts in the notes, high and low, that carry us along.
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