The news is so depressing on many fronts that sometimes I wonder what to post and then I read these words of Emily Dickinson and feel inside, and go outside.
Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.
I’m up in the night with a moon almost full, and a huge circle around her. The Pittosporum are blooming offering scent to a magical world.
On Friday, I walked Tennessee Valley with a friend. We saw a bobcat on our way to the beach, and a Great Blue Heron on the way back. The bobcat reminded me of my cat Tiger, just as friendly and playful. We watched the bobcat hop for and trap lunch, and the heron catch a fish.
I’m with this Australian Aboriginal proverb:
We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.
Yesterday, I was thrilled to receive a new laptop computer. My son said it should last me ten years. I thought then this could be my last computer, a rather sobering thought, and then I wondered what the world will be like in ten years.
A few years ago in a Sensory Awareness workshop, an elderly woman said she felt the past like the force of gravity, supporting her. A discussion ensued as to whether for the young, the future is a force like gravity pulling them forward. Perhaps the mid-life crisis is that place between, a place of balance and choice, an awakened urgency drawing us to pause, reflect, create and absorb.
Today I feel like I’m balanced in the center of a teeter-totter, arms spread in honoring the joy that is life continuing at my age. It rained in the night and now the sun is a light in the clouds. It feels like a torch, an Olympic torch that lights the games we play as we honor individuality, cooperation, and the spirit that unites family as team.
I went through photos last night. Here’s a taste of the past, a wee taste.
I’m in a group where we’re studying Satipatthana meditation. This module has been on death, so inhaling as though this is our last breath and exhaling into rest. It’s very useful when the temperature of anger arises, to consider what if this is my last breath, and feel a cooling down. It’s a practice, so of course, not always an immediate response. Some of us struggle with attachment to self-righteousness.
Yesterday’s discussion led to dying with dignity and the importance of an advance medical directive. We have our medical directives, but learning about Five Wishes, I see there is more that might be conveyed as to our wishes, my husband and mine.
I just read Kara Swisher’s book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. I recommend it because I think it’s important to know the history of what most of us use every day, and many times a day. It’s shocking to realize how quickly we’ve gone from typewriters to word processing to such a full and compelling integration of the internet. It’s not a dry read as she gives an intimate, and often cynical look at the players. Nero may have gone down in history as watching Rome burn, but some like Zuckerberg and the devolving Musk may be aiming for a three-way tie. There are good guys too, like Steve Jobs and Apple.
With all of this, I’m with the last lines of Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of the Five Remembrances.
My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.
I had never heard of The Moth but a friend recommended the book How To Tell A Story and now I’m intrigued. I read the Foreword and stopped to contemplate, and then, the Introduction, and another pause. I was caught on the alignment that occurs when we tell and listen to a story, and discover and uncover the theme.
“Sometimes you have to figure out who you’re not before you can become who you are.”
Those words affirm my belief that we’re here in a testing ground, exploring, interacting, responding, and learning the steps to climb to higher ground.
Reading the stories, I thought I had no story to tell but then I read: What are the moments from your life, big or small, that stick with you?
Immediately I was in Mexico City at the age of 19 when I learned my beloved, healthy father had died in a motorcycle accident. Alive, then dead.
There’s a saga in the challenges of my return, and a three month break from school as my mother, brother, and I navigated logistics and loss.
Even now, 55 years later, my heart swells with the increasing moisture of love and tears come.
At the time, and even now when someone I love dies, I feel space open up as though life here is a matte painting, and they are showing me what’s beyond container and containment.
There is much for me to explore in continuing with this book, and so I ask you now:
What moments come to you that you want to examine and share, with yourself, and perhaps in that, with others?
We have an Aura, a moving picture display that changes every 30 seconds showing an array of photos of our grandson from birth to his current age, four years old. It’s a reminder of change. It’s so obvious in a child; we see and talk of change each time we see him.
As an adult, we may come to forget our moment to moment change. We glance in the mirror and may not even recognize who or what we see. Habit-formed, we launch into our daily tasks.
President Biden gave a stirring State of the Union speech last night. We live in a society that has exclaimed over youth perhaps to the denigration of elders. I would like to see younger people in politics but we have two men of nearly the same age competing for the presidency. The difference between the two is unimaginable, and yet, here we are.
President Biden is an inspiration for us all, young and older, that it’s never too late to continue cultivating wisdom, as we bring forth our inner power, perseverance, determination, compassion, love, energy, humor, and care.
Yesterday, I re-visited Jacques Lusseyran’s inspiring book And There Was Light. He shows us how to bring forth our inner light to overcome and defeat the darkness that needs to be met and expanded around until it disappears in an open web of connection and trust.
This comes today from The Center for Action and Contemplation, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist, writes of our place in nature:
In the indigenous view, humans are viewed as somewhat lesser beings in the democracy of species. We are referred to as the younger brothers of Creation, so like younger brothers we must learn from our elders. Plants were here first and have had a long time to figure things out. They live both above and below ground and hold the earth in place. Plants know how to make food from light and water. Not only do they feed themselves, but they make enough to sustain the lives of all the rest of us. Plants are providers for the rest of the community and exemplify the virtue of generosity, always offering food….
Many indigenous peoples share the understanding that we are each endowed with a particular gift, a unique ability…. It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. If the bird’s gift is song, then it has a responsibility to greet the day with music. It is the duty of birds to sing and the rest of us receive the song as a gift.
Asking what is our responsibility is perhaps also to ask, What is our gift? And how shall we use it?
The rain continues and my dreams these days are about children, saving the children. I’ve been spending time with my four year old grandson, so perhaps that’s part of it, seeing his innocence and division into “good guys” and “bad guys” and wondering how we might navigate balance and come to peace.
He was into swords for a time, but now he has become Robin Hood so the swords have become a bow and arrow and he wears them on his back tucked into his Robin Hood mask and shirt.
The two of us were at Coyote Point this week, and I was intrigued with this sign. I had no idea how close we came to imitating the East coast with our own Coney Island and Atlantic City. The pungent odor of sewage dumped into the bay saved us from that.
In his four years, I’ve taken a multitude of photos of my grandson but in the last few months, I’ve started asking first, and when I saw him yesterday, he said he appreciated that, and he would let me know if he wanted his picture taken, or not.
I replied that when I don’t see him, I take photos of birds, plants, animals, the landscape, and the ocean. He asked me if I ask them first, and I’ve been thinking about that. I think I do, not directly but with sort of a heart tug of connection and acknowledgment.
Recently I read an article on getting rid of “clutter” and why sometimes it’s difficult. It suggested the “stuff” might also be attached to us. It’s a two-way street. This has allowed me to be more respectful of what, where, and when I release. I find it comforting to acknowledge that it isn’t all about me, but that I live in a world of connection, attachment, and bonds that come together and sometimes fall apart.
This year we have an extra day to mold like clay.
I’m with the words of Mary Oliver:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
I have an eye appointment and then head south to spend time with my grandson.
Yesterday I scraped my hand and watching blood surface and flow thought of how when we mature, our skin becomes thinner and thinner. We become more and more permeable to the moment, to the beauty, joy, connection, and sharing of each day.
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