Last night before bed a friend shared with me the compassion she was feeling around some challenges in her life. I’m re-reading Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book The Five Invitations, and I’m in his chapter on love.
He writes that there are only two questions that matter. “Am I loved?” “Did I love well?” Since there is no separation, we can include ourselves in that love. He speaks of resting in love, and then concludes the chapter with this.
“When we live from the vantage point of boundless love, we begin to see all the points of connection that join us together. Love breeds love.”
I read those words and come to this video of a horse that knows where he’s needed, a horse that radiates, and is, Love.I’m reminded of Challenger, a horse I worked with when I went through equine therapy after cancer treatment. I remember his presence, his eyes, heart, lungs – huge and healing, and I carry him with and within me thirteen years later. Tears come and heal, liquid Love.
The sky this morning is a dance of clouds, formations changing with wisps of fog threading through. Perhaps it’s how the flower feels when a hummingbird dips its beak in to sip, though maybe I’m the hummingbird sipping nectar from sky and trees.
We live in a natural world-wide web. Trees breathe in and out, twine through roots, and send carbon to neighboring trees when needed. We’re wired to connect.
My son Jeff will be 45 tomorrow. I remember back as I talk to my other son Chris who will be 42 in October with a new baby delivered soon. We talk about babies and breast pumps. Last night they learned that the breast milk pumped from the morning wakes the baby up. The breast milk pumped at night puts the baby to sleep so label the bottles placed in the frig.
Rhythms. I think of how different it was when I was young. We were told we had to compete with the Russians so when I started high school in 1963 I was placed in accelerated math and science programs. It was a left-brain world with no time for art. Competition ruled.
Then when my sons were young and I trained to become a Terwilliger nature guide, I learned a whole new view of science. It’s a living study, a study of life. I wasn’t dissecting a frog or fetal pig. I held a sparrow in my hands, felt her quivering fear, stroked the dry fluidity of a living, moving snake, pure grace.
Yesterday was my sixth Alexander session. The work is to be experienced and lived, not analyzed, and yet, something in me wants to understand how the balancing in my organism allows me to open into feeling myself being breathed. There’s no effort, only ease, no fear like I felt in the little sparrow held in my hands. I ooze a sap of kindness, kindness for myself, and in that, the world of which I’m part.
In fourth grade, I was the fairy godmother who gave kindness in the play, “Sleeping Beauty”. I’ve never forgotten the power of saying those four words as I waved my wand. “I give you kindness.” Now kindness is given to me.
I’m reminded of a quote by Ramakrishna. The winds of grace are always blowing but you have to raise the sail, and perhaps in this moment, Alexander Technique allows me to trim the sails I raise.
Last night a crescent moon dropped gold in the arms of trees, and stars stayed perched in place, and then, this morning, a quiet wrap of fog. I didn’t hear it come and still the birds sing.
Mary Oliver guides this morning with her counsel:
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
Margaret Atwood’s poem “Up” is also a wake-up call as she writes of changing our attitude when we struggle to get out of bed, by imagining it as our deathbed, and then we are given one more hour to live and forgive.
I sit on a bench down below in our yard, commune with a giant redwood tree. I feel its gratitude for the hose of running water I’ve placed at her feet. We appreciate the hum.
When we moved to this house over forty years ago, the tree was a quiet presence at 12 or 14 feet. She was surrounded and protected by giant pines. Over the years, the pines became diseased and had to go, so the protected tree now stands tall and alone in her reach for, and touch of the sky.
One of her offspring grows nearby protected by her branches and shade. Also protected are two little redwoods from Chris and Frieda’s wedding. They were sprouts and now they are four feet tall. That’s exponential growth in 11 or 12 years.
As may be obvious, I love stillness. Right now I’m surrounded with activity as squirrels scamper through the branches of the trees, and jays squawk, crows caw, and smaller birds add higher notes on which to raise and rest the spine.And yet, for a moment, there is no time. I have no idea what time it is, no need to know. It’s Labor Day, a day of rest. I see light coming to the tree, so movement is happening, but time, what, in this moment, is that?
Last night I listened to a Sensory Awareness recording. As I’ve shared, Sensory Awareness is a practice, a cultivation of awareness of the inner/outer environment, recognition of the one world we share.It’s simple really, and yet, like meditation, it’s considered “work”. We’ve been trained to habit which may allow a zoning out, rather than meeting each moment “new”.
Francesca was leading on the recording, and invited us to bring awareness to a daily task. As she released us to our journey, she said “Bon Voyage”. Those words reverberate through me as I sit here now. I see myself waving goodbye as those on shore shout “Bon Voyage”, and yet, I, too, stand on the shore waving. I’m ship, both, all.
I woke this morning saying Bon Voyage to myself, seeing myself rising and carried on the journey of this day.
I performed my morning tasks, ah, performed, no, I was “in” my morning tasks, tasks and I meeting as one. I remembered a Huma session I experienced years ago. I was on the table, and the words “Nothing Matters”, reverberated through me. The practitioner affirmed, “Yes, nothing matters,” and I said, no, that’s not it. Nothing matters. I wanted her to understand that I was feeling that Nothing matters too.
For me, awareness of what we what perceive of as nothingness supports this examination of stillness and movement. I may look like I’m still but my heart is pumping, ears and cells are antennas open to receive, and lungs are processing oxygen and carbon dioxide in a living exchange with trees. Plus, I’m on a planet that’s moving and turning in space.
Bella and I are enjoying the breeze and afternoon ease.
I’m reading Ocean Vuong’s book, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I can’t read it straight through. It’s a meditation, a poem, a history, a story of love, compassion, generosity, fear, hurt, and sorrow.
I come to these lines, and pause, step back, embrace more fully and wholly the ocean of his name and what he’s saying.
He writes of a man speaking of his son’s death – “I’m broken in two.”
And the author says, “In two, it was the only thought I could keep, sitting in my seat, how losing a person could make more of us, the living, make us two.”
He goes on and then writes: “Into – yes, that’s more like it. As in, Now I’m broken into.”
I think of the passing of those I love. Yes, I’m broken “into”.
Outside watering, I pluck golden plums from the tree and, like the birds and squirrels, I feast. The plums are small, bite-size, and come in abundance each year. I water the wind chimes of which I have many and consider support and how I receive the early morning light as it moves, a dance of shadow and brilliance, exchange and touch, with garden, earth, and me.
The joke about where I live is that when it rises to 74 degrees, people ask, “How are you doing in this heat?” We are delicate flowers but I slept with windows and doors open and woke to birds twittering and calling me to come outside where the words “holy, holy, holy” fill my chest.
Since it’s fall, I figure the birds are singing with pure joy since it’s late in the year to look for a mate.
Perhaps because I was born in October, this time of year feels super-sacred to me, as though I’m still in the womb, adding an extra pound or two, well, unfortunately that part is still true, but there’s such reverence for me on this first day of September.
Yesterday a friend and I planned to go to our local Shakespeare in the Park and we were near. We saw the actors and stage, but then it was so beautiful in Old Mill Park, we moved down by the stream to talk. It’s quite something to hear Shakespeare from afar. Perhaps it’s how the stars feel as they listen to our calls. Surely our drama and complaints vibrate the gravitational field both near and far.
I’m more aware of vibration these days, more aware of what I put out into the world as to anger or blame, and what I bring in to myself as to “shoulds”. I believe there is a place to let all that go, and rejoice, and call like the birds in fall. And now one cheeps and chirps right outside the window. “Come out and play,” and so I will.
I sit outside with my laptop, aware of the changing light. The wind blows through the trees, and the fog is on approach.
I know this is a hectic weekend for some, Labor Day weekend, though the intention was, and the purpose is, for renewal and rest.
My long-term book group has been looking for a light, happy book but not too light, obviously, but happiness has an appeal. This month we chose a book by Miriam Toewes, All My Puny Sorrows.
I thought this weekend would be the perfect time to read it, and it is, and because it deals with living and dying, I often need to pause.
There are many wonderful lines from the book, but I am most struck with the pianist’s advice to a student on how to play the piano. “Learn to play around the notes on the piano.”
I sit with the broader meaning, the awareness of space, and its expansiveness, and how the space between galaxies is increasing.
Aligned with the universe, I, too, can expand, can increase the space between, and in, my cells.
A friend recently “diagnosed” me as a Seeker. I receive that as a compliment even as I release the ties that seek.
Yesterday I was at the Presidio in San Francisco, one of my favorite places. I share its spaciousness here.
The day is bright with early autumn light, windows are open and the air is fresh. Each cell drinks in the fullness of what it is to be awake.
I’ve been working with Alexander Technique. I pause to notice my habit and focus on thinking up, and when I rise I think forward and up. When I’m ready to come down to a chair, I allow my knees and hips to bend. There is ease. I rise and fall as easily as the tides.
Years ago, I took a wilderness survival course with Peter Wolf, his real name. The focus besides gathering wood and making fires was open focus. We walked through the forest alone, noticing movement, something changing, or out of place.
Blindfolded, we walked barefoot, holding onto a rope so as not to get lost, and received what we heard and felt. How quiet were our feet on the earth, how receptive?
Yes, we predators look straight ahead, but we are also prey, so our peripheral vision sweeps and culls from the sides. We’re here because we’ve survived within an ever-changing environment. We live in relationship and cultivating this knowing enriches our souls.
This morning I note that the weight of my brother’s passing, the grief, is held in wider hands. The environment offers support, the birds, the trees, and now, a wisp of fog drops down on the ridge like a hand assuring that yes, my environment is wide in support, is here.
A song from childhood comes to mind. “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” Today, we might say, in honor of and with respect to Mother Earth, “She’s got the whole world in her hands.”
Now I listen to Mahalia Jackson. She sings, “You’ve got the whole wide world in your hands.”
The Great Mahalia!
Hallelujah and thanks to those who gave us Labor Day weekend – a salute to inclusion and honoring the work that supports us all
I usually do my daily post first thing in the morning but today, our son Chris spent the night so he and his dad could head out early for a Labor Day weekend bonding and exploring trip.
The day began with excitement as they prepared, and Steve requiring more time than Chris, allowed Chris and me to toss tantalizing and extravagant new ideas back and forth. Then, printing out maps for their trip threw my computer into a stagnant mode, and that required a fiddling fix.
I usually begin the day slowly, with meditation, and then, the slow, gentle pouring of water heated to 200 degrees through a coffee cone. Today I was tossed in a percolator, and that required time to come to ground.
After savoring the delight of connection through phone, text, and email, I went outside to hang clothes on the deck to dry. The wind blew through.
The word “psithurism” means the sound of wind in the trees and rustling of leaves. I breathed with the words of Thich Nhat Hanh,
“Breathe in and think, I am solid; breathe out and think, I am free”.
Emily Dickinson wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.“
Breathing solid, new, and free, I’m a bell, a bowl , deeply struck, sweetly rung. I’m seaweed on a rock.
