This morning I opened Billy Collins book Water, Water, to learn from the poem “Winter Trivia” that “It takes approximately two hours for a snowflake to fall from a cloud to the ground.” He then goes on to consider what he and his wife do in the two hours that a snowflake falls from cloud to ground.
I’m with that as I sort through the journey of the day, considering passage, transition, coherence, communion, and connection.
In the poem “The Cardinal” Billy Collins writes:
They say a child might grow up to be an artist
if his sandcastle means nothing
until he leads his mother over for a look.
And so, it is for each of us to mother what we do, to be artists in creating our lives as we flow from cloud to ground, and rise back up again, delighting in the dance of impermanence and change.
Flower and FruitBe like water and MirrorRoot, Rise, Ground
When walking outside, I see leaves falling. I flow through the crunch. Today I strolled along the Corte Madera Creek and learned that a concrete channel, installed over fifty years ago, is being restored to its natural state.
I remember these words, and allow a smile to flow down like a leaf to rest in the pelvic bowl.
Lanterns Information on the restoration projectDucks navigate the openingAn expansive changeClouds play over the top of the mountain
Today I took my six year old grandson to school. We were early so we walked to a thick rope swing, a rope thick as his arm, and he climbed up on a broken and deteriorating tree trunk, and swung. He informed me he was an acorn and I was a squirrel. I figured out I was meant to catch him, so I made squirrel sounds, and reached out as he swung one way, and then, another, and, then, in circles.
I, as a squirrel, caught and missed him many times, recognizing my arms were longer proportionally than a squirrel’s arms would be, but then, normally acorns stay in one place.
Then, Grandchild noticed there were six rounds of wood placed next to the stump, and they weren’t there yesterday. Some older children came by, and they, too, were intrigued by the six new circles of wood. Why were they there and who put them there? The conclusion was that they were for taller children who didn’t need to climb up on a stump to catch the end of the rope, or that maybe they were meant to be run along before catching the rope.
Because we had to get to class, we left the children in the discussion, but now, home, I’m with it and with what it is to be an acorn hanging from a swinging branch, and what it is to be a squirrel contemplating acorns and planning for feasting and storage. We’re entering the time of winter as we step on and crunch falling leaves, and so capped like the cap of an acorn, we’re wired to think about surviving when food isn’t plucked simply and easily from trees.
It seemed so simple, this line of rope hanging from a tree. By myself, I might have walked right by it, unaware, unquestioning, but because of immersion with children, and because I’ve been re-reading Winnie the Pooh for the zillionth time, and struggling with The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky for the first, I’m with the minds of children and how they relate and perceive. Aren’t we all meant to meet this world with curiosity and discussion as to possibilities? Aren’t we meant to notice how we connect and transform with the ease of trees, squirrels, acorns, and other beings?
Yesterday we went to Rodeo Beach to see the predicted “big waves”. There was an exhilarating breeze, but very well-behaved and gentle waves, which perhaps was a prediction of the election results which were certainly in favor of the “good guys”. Trump didn’t listen to the protests, and he again claims the elections were rigged, but the lies are now exposed.
Robert Hubbell today: The period from November 2024 to November 2025 has been challenging for many reasons. A difficult emotional challenge has been the constant barrage of lies about what happened in 2024. The presidential election was excruciatingly close. But for two hundred thousand votes in three states, Kamala Harris would be president. Trump did not win a majority of the popular vote. Indeed, most people who voted in 2024 voted against Trump! His narrow plurality was distorted by the “winner-take-all” rules of the Electoral College.
As Republicans unleashed an unprecedented reign of lawlessness, retribution, and mean-spirited actions motivated by bigotry, they claimed the right to do so because of Trump’s alleged “landslide victory”—a lie. They claimed Trump had a “mandate” to override the Constitution. Another lie. They claimed that “the people” supported Trump’s anti-democratic assault on democracy. The biggest lie of all.
The wind is blowing and rain is falling, and the plants where I live are clapping their roots together and rejoicing. Me, too.
Gentle waves at low tide at Rodeo BeachCo-existence Exchange as a freighter enters the Golden Gate.
Today with the release of the oddly named “daylight savings time”, we return to nature’s time as leaves fall and we walk through their crunch to understand we, too, fall apart, rest, root, and in connection, rise again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
The change in light allows us to notice and in and with subtlety to refine and define the layers we share.
Madeleine L’Engle: “The child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos.”
Nest in openingCommune in CommunionLeaves allowing time to release
It’s a liminal time, a time when the veil is thin and as Richard Rohr writes: “we are invited to be aware of deep time – that is, past, present, and future gathering into one especially holy moment.” We honor our ancestors, all of our ancestors, and their presence within us.
Today as I sat with day coming to light I was filled with Rainer Maria Rilke’s words:
Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner – what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.
Wave Bench in Old Mill ParkBridge Mirrored in the ParkEnter a Portal in Trees
Last night I was out admiring the moon when I saw lights across the way on the trail at the top of the ridge.I thought hikers, or perhaps, riders on horses as there was an interesting rhythm to the up and down.Today I read about the Pumpkin Head Ride in Marin. You strap a lit pumpkin to your helmet and ride your bicycle on the trails on the hills of Mt. Tam.
To make your pumpkin,All you need is: One or more zip ties long enough to attach the pumpkin to a helmet. Plastic Pumpkin Pail – 8 inches or greater diameter – Led closet light or similar. And, of course, you need to carve your pumpkin head.
I should have taken pictures, but there was an odd eeriness to it, as though watching horizontal skeletons riding along. After all, the veil between the living and the dead is thin right now.
A spider is lurks at a neighbor’s house.The witches are brewingHalloween is here!
I‘ve been making every effort to post positively on this blog. I know we’re all worn down by the horrors, lies, and deceit of the Trump administration, but tonight as I read Heather Cox RichardsonI must post excerpts from what she says. It’s unfathomable that when they control the Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency, and much of the media, they continue to try to set the Democrats up to take the blame.
Heather Cox Richardson:
It appears the administration is using those Americans who depend on food assistance as pawns to put more pressure on Democrats to cave to Trump’s will. Today, Annie Karni of the New York Times reported that Trump has joked, “I’m the speaker and the president,” and Trump ally Steven Bannon calls Congress “the state Duma,” a reference to Russia’s rubber-stamp assembly.
With Republicans refusing to negotiate with Democrats in the normal way, with House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) keeping the House out of session, and with Trump leaving for Asia for a week, Republicans are clearly making the calculation that Democrats who refused to give up their demand for the extension of the premium tax credit to stop dramatic hikes in the cost of healthcare premiums will cave when America falls into a hunger crisis.
I drop down to this:While a great deal has changed in nutrition support programs in the past sixty years, what has not changed is the importance of food assistance programs to retailers, and thus to local economies. In 2020, Ed Bolen and Elizabeth Wolkomir of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that about 8% of the food U.S. families buy is funded by SNAP. In fiscal year 2019, that amounted to about $56 billion. Beneficiaries spent SNAP dollars at about 248,000 retailers. While about 80% of that money went to superstores or supermarkets—in 2025, Walmart alone captured about 25% of that money—the rest of it went to small businesses. Bolen and Wolkomir note that about 80% of stores that accept SNAP are small enterprises. SNAP benefits are an important part of revenue for those smaller businesses, especially in poorer areas, where they generate significant additional economic activity.
Not only will the loss of SNAP create more hunger in the richest country on earth, it will also rip a hole in local economies just as people’s health insurance premiums skyrocket.
And yet, at the same time the Department of Agriculture says it cannot spend its $6 billion in reserves to address the $8 billion needed for SNAP in November, the administration easily found $20 billion to prop up right-wing Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina.
What are we doing here?Yes, what are we doing here, and why?
My friend Karen at one of the many protests holding a sign we made!
I rise at 4 to 4:30 these days, and sit in the dark responding to stars one morning and clouds the next, receiving what comes. Impermanence.
My grandson is six today. He’s entranced with snakes so Jungle James came to his birthday party on Saturday, bringing four amazing snakes, and entertaining children and adults for an hour. The snakes were carefully passed around so we could touch and stroke in alignment with the scales. I’m with the beauty of this earth we share, the love of touch.
To be a branch for a snake to climbLong, longer, longestSnowy Egret at the BayLiving Everywhere – Receive!
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