Cathy's Blog!

We enjoyed a beautiful Thanksgiving Day, and now, I softly percolate the day after.  The hills were green, and the sky magnificent with clouds and light as we drove south, and then, freezing temperatures brought us all inside to feast.  Now, I’m home aware that there’s one more day in November, and then we enter December, the last month of this year.

There’s a sense of pause and then a leap toward transformation and change.

In Chinese mythology, the Dragon’s Gate is located at the top of a waterfall cascading from a legendary mountain.  If a carp makes the jump at the top of the waterfall, it becomes a dragon.  

I’m reminded of a story I love, The Reluctant Dragon, written by Kenneth Grahame, and published in 1898.  A young boy meets a poetry-loving dragon and they become friends.  When the dragon is discovered by the local people, they call St. George in fear, and ask him to come and destroy the dragon.  

When St. George arrives, the boy introduces him to the dragon, who is not inclined to fight. The two decide to stage a fight.  The dragon is given an imaginary wound, and declared reformed by St. George. The people accept the reformed, poetry loving and peaceful dragon.

Tonight, I sit contemplating. What do I want and need in this upcoming last month of the year? I’m inspired to leap to the top of my waterfall dreams, and become what streams a fire of peace, poetry, connection, friendship and ease.  

In Timothy Egan’s book, A Pilgrimage to Eternity, he writes of walking through a section of the Via Fancigina where trees are revered.  

I love this passage.

The people of Lazio have long known that trees have feelings.  Recent studies suggest that many species experience pain, communicate with one another, send out distress signals, and lead complicated sex lives. None of this is a surprise to the forest dwellers of Etruria.  Every May, a Wedding of the Trees takes place atop nearby Mount Fogliano in front of thousands of dancing women and men. Two sturdy hardwoods, chosen for outward virility, are draped in ribbons and garlands, and sealed for life by a priest. The marriage is notarized, a way to ensure leafy fidelity through troubled years ahead. The union is pagan in origin, though that hasn’t kept the monks who live in a local nearby monastery from blessing the entire event.”

Last week I was in Mill Valley watching as trees were decorated for the Holiday season.  We embrace many traditions this time of year.  

Remember the words of Maya Angelou:

“Survival is important, but thriving is elegant.”

I spent yesterday with new grandchild.  Mainly I sat and held him, and looked into his eyes, and watched him sleep.

What is the enchantment of a new being in one’s arms?  It’s incomprehensible that such a being exists, such a culmination of evolution, and combining of generations from the past.

I’m with these words of Pir Elias Amidon:

 Every time you think you’ve got it, it goes.

    Every time you let it go, you’ve got it.

Lately, there’s something in me knowing the words of Rilke are so true.

How surely gravity’s law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of the smallest thing

and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing—

each stone, blossom, child—

is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,

push out beyond what we each belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered

to earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again

to learn from the things,

because they are in God’s heart;

they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God