Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Adaptation

We’ve been with our five year old grandson for three days so I haven’t read the news until this morning.  As I read, I try to embody the words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

What is most important is not to allow anxiety about what happens in the world to fill your heart. If your heart is filled with anxiety, you will get sick, and you will not be able to help.

Our family gathered to celebrate the Fourth of July, and we played croquet, feasted, talked, and watched fireworks from a hill walking distance from our son’s home.  Grandson’s parents were backpacking in Big Sur to celebrate their 17th anniversary.

On Sunday, we went to our local library to get books on snakes.  I didn’t expect it to be crowded but it happily was, especially in the children’s section where there was a table for coloring and drawing, one with puzzles, a tent with stuffed animals, and yes, a section on snakes.  I don’t know why grandson’s current fascination is snakes though yes, they are beautiful and adaptable, so we returned home with the two books he chose, though we could have taken out 100 books.  It’s hard to integrate a world where systems that help the people are being dismantled and eliminated, and yet, so far, we still have libraries, places to gather, share and learn lifetimes of knowledge and creativity, and feel wrapped in blankets of love, generosity, and care.  

Waiting for Fireworks
Chatting with another five year old through the fence
A fairy door invites entry when strolling along the street

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Freedom

As we await a vote that benefits the super-wealthy, destroys our country with debt, and leads to children starving, each of us must look at what matters.

John Lewis in Across That Bridge wrote:

Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. 

Last night I watched a recording of an event put on by the Tergar Institute.  Uvinie Lubecki, Ocean Vuong, and Ronan Harrington spoke.  I’m inspired by their intelligence and commitment to the world and themselves.

Some notes: 

Uvinie: I saw no other way.  Purpose is a way of being.  It’s how we drink a cup of tea.  Awareness, Love and Compassion, lead to connection and wisdom.

Ocean: Develop the voice you already have.  Re-read a book like Moby Dick.  Understand why it’s a classic.  Live the Buddha’s final words: Go forth with earnestness. Try with all your heart. Our youth are afraid of being “cringy”, of shame. Give ourselves permission to fail so there is no shame.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: Failure is the mother of success.

Ronan: Speak truth to power.  Resilience requires balance.  Know when to open and close so you don’t ruin your health as he did trying to save the world, and now he recovers from pain and addiction.  Resilience requires boundaries.

Awaiting the Vote
May our flag represent freedom, not oligarchy
May we live in connection and honor, respect, and celebrate diversity.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Movement of the Tide

We’re at Nick’s Cove in Point Reyes.  We made our usual stop at the bookstore in Pt. Reyes Station, and I bought Brooke Williams book, Encountering Dragonfly: Notes on the Practice of Re-Enchantment.  It’s a meditation on nature and connecting our inner and outer worlds through observing and being in the natural environment. It advocates a planetary and individual need to re-enchant.

Meanwhile, we’re savoring our current abode on the north side of Tomales Bay as the tide comes in and the tide goes out.  It’s June and almost the new moon, so the change is dramatic.  When the tide is high, the waves pound underneath our deck and lodging.  Looking out, it’s like being in a boat. At low tide the eye is stretched and the other side seems closer.  An egret feeds, and I, too, am nourished and fed.

Egret Fishing as the tide comes in.
Looking across Tomales Bay
Sunset last night
Looking west in morning light
Through the trees

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

How We Meet What Comes

The following poem comes from Stefan Laeng who read it at his meditation class on Tuesday. It is by the late great German comedian Hanns Dieter Hüsch (who was born not far from the birthplace of Charlotte Selver, our teacher of Sensory Awareness,).  It’s his translation with the German original below.

When the soldiers come

Lure them onto the roof of the dove 

Lure them into the nest of the swallow 

Lure them into the cave of the lioness 

Lure them into the forest of the deer. 

Approach them with open hands 

Full of bread, and salt, and fruit, and wine

So that they loose their way in the brushwood of your virtues; 

So that they get lost in the maze of your friendliness. 

Let them be amazed.  

Let their generals and presidents be ashamed. 

Let their henchmen run aground. 

Be a lowland of courtesy 

Intelligence be your weapon 

Patience be your strength 

Love be your narrative 

Your silence be your victory

So that the governors marvel greatly.*

* Some of you may recognize this as a biblical reference. Matthew 27:14

In German:

Wenn die Krieger kommen
Look sie auf’s Dach der Taube
Lock sie in’s Nest der Schwalbe
Lock sie in die Höhle der Löwin
Lock sie in den Wald der Rehe. 


Geh ihnen entgegen mit offenen Händen 

Voll Brot und Salz und Obst und Wein.
Dass sie sich verlaufen im Knüppelholz deiner Tugenden
Dass sie sich verirren im Labyrinth deiner Freundlichkeit. 


Mach sie staunen.
Beschäme ihre Generäle und Präsidenten
Lass ihre Handlanger in’s Leere laufen
Sei eine Tiefebene voll Höflichkeit. 

Dein Gewehr sei die Klugheit
Deine Kraft sei die Geduld
Deine Geschichte sei die Liebe
Dein Sieg sei dein Schweigen
So dass sich die Landpfleger sehr verwundern.

Western Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

A garter snake slides in for safety
Climb like moss
Golden Slippers stirs the mud

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

The Protests Today

I went with a friend to Tam Junction near my home.  There were 450-500 of us standing at the freeway exit, so we were seeing people close-up in their cars, coming from north and south.  It was an amazing experience, a cacophony of horns honking and people waving and smiling.  Traffic was slow so there were literal thank you’s as windows rolled down and children and adults smiled and cheered.  Dogs were very interested and supportive. Tears come now as I contemplate the feeling of a unity that unintentionally, and in greed, Trump and his cronies have created.  

My friend and I both took naps when we returned to our homes.  It was a great deal to absorb, so beautiful and freeing to stand with a group of people and sing, “This land is your land, this land is my land.”  Yes, this land is our land. No Kings since 1776.

Now, rested, I open a book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin.  

“The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe.

This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create form, but of the life we get to live.”  

The nature we are, and of which we are a part.
We are a network, connected like mushrooms in the soil from which we rise.
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Networking

Researchers have found that land plants evolved on Earth about 700 million years ago and land fungi evolved about 1,300 million years ago.  Fungi connect with mycelium; they network.  

In reading Robert MacFarlane’s book Is a River Alive?, I learn about Giuliana Furci who is known for her advocacy and research into the fungal kingdom.  Her relationship is such that she can be in a car in a dark forest and sense a certain type of mushroom.

She says about hopping out of a car to discover a colony of Avatar-blue mushrooms, “I didn’t see the mushrooms, exactly.  I heard them. If you know how to listen, fungi just … tell you where they are. I’ll get this feeling that there’s a fungus around. I feel, no, I know, that there’s something – no, somebody – who wants to see me. You get a call-out from them.”

“The fuzz in the matrix. That’s still the best way I can describe it. I can say very definitely that it’s a communication – a two-way interaction.  The fungi know I’m there, as well as the reverse. Fungi have a different vibration to plants and animals. The colours move differently, I find. And fungi has a … shine that’s different to the shine of plants. It’s more … opague. And they have a very different energy than plants – much more of a watery or liquid feel.”  

And now we organize a fluid energy to protest against dictatorship and cruelty. We connect and infiltrate to destroy their plans.

As Henry David Thoreau wrote:  “This is the only way, we say, but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.”

We are radii, connecting through the environmental webs that nourish and sustain us all.  

Mushrooms on the Oakwood Trail in January
Umbrellas for Leprechauns
Transformation Climbs

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Unity

Saturday is the No Kings Mass Protest.  I have three locations within walking distance of my home, so I’m hoping enough people come that the three become one.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince wrote that “there is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak”.  

May we meet in comradeship and climb together towards the same peak for unity, peace, community, protection, and connection in our country and the world.   

Peace

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Interdependence

Yesterday I had a tooth extracted, and a bone graft put in place.  In four months, the bone will have integrated with my own bone, so I can have an implant.  For now, I am aware of the integration, the curiosity of my bone with this, what may seem like an intrusion, and the care with which the procedure was done.  My dentist’s son, who is 18, wants to be a dentist, so I gave permission for him to be there, too.  Sometimes I close my eyes for dental procedures, but yesterday when I opened them, I saw three faces peering in, the dentist, the assistant, and his son.  Three people were taking care of one small area in the rear of my mouth.  How amazing is that?

Plants reach to cover rocks and people with death donate bones for grafts. Transformation!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

History

Heather Cox Richardson today:

 In April, John Phelan, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Donald J. Trump, posted that he visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”

The Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the U.S. Navy, overseeing the readiness and well-being of almost one million Navy personnel. Phelan never served in the military; he was nominated for his post because he was a large donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He told the Senate his experience overseeing and running large companies made him an ideal candidate for leading the Navy.

We all know the day. Pearl Harbor was December 7, not June 7th.

Here’s a history of the American Revolution, thanks to Heather: