Yesterday I walked down Tennessee Valley to the beach. Access to the beach is currently closed due to the threat of storms breaking through the dam, but I could see and hear the ocean, and was accompanied by the sounds of chortling streams, birds, frogs, and a gentle breeze.
Yesterday I saw two Great Blue Herons resting by the path along the bay. Today I went out Tennessee Valley planning to walk to the beach but there was a troupe of elders yakking away so I turned right to visit Hayseed Camp which is closed for the winter.
Memories flooded in. When we moved here 46 years ago, Chris was almost one and Jeff was four. In an exploratory mood one day after moving in, I followed a narrow road to the end and parked. Putting Chris in his stroller, and holding hands with Jeff, we went wandering down the path. A cow came over and nuzzled Chris in his stroller.
It’s changed over the years, and now there are no grazing cows. The area, a national park, is kept natural for the plants and animals, with some winding paths for the two-legged.
I used to take Jeff and Chris to a pond that was up and beyond the camp but it’s overgrown now so again the land is kept sacred and quiet for the critters.
My meditation today was on the elements. What a gift to see and be so clearly earth, water, fire, air, and the space that allows it all to move, grow, create, and cohere.
Meditating this morning, I was aware of my heart, this pinkish-red organ generously pumping air in and out to nourish and keep me alive. My heart felt soft and spongy, sensitive and receptive, and I felt the weight, the wet weight of so much horrifying news that comes my way each day. None of it is particular to me so perhaps I could avoid it but then a feeling of compassion poured in, connectedness, and happiness to feel the tenderness in meeting joy and sorrow as one.
Because we’ve had so much rain, the ground outside is mushy. In its wetness, mushrooms, Mush Rooms, have sprung up like lanterns for leprechauns and mycelium. Perhaps my feeling of mushiness today is a reflection of what I don’t always see like mushrooms proclaiming the underground presence and connection of mycelium. Today I give myself time to be in a Mush Room and reflect on receptivity, hidden connection, and change.
The wind and rain are wild today. I kept expecting Mary Poppins to drop in as the windchimes swing announcing change. In my study of the four elements of which we’re composed, earth, water, fire, and wind, for some reason wind can sometimes be elusive for me.
I know it is the breath, spirit, pushing, pulsing, moving, vibration and support, so I feel awareness and awakeness blowing through, and then I pause, and listen. With that, the tolling of the chime slows and stops, for a moment.
I’m reading In Praise of Listening by Christian McEwen. Two tidbits round my thoughts.
John Cage, a composer and musical theorist wrote this about listening for the muse.
When you start working everybody in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.
And there’s the inspiration of the Zen name of Leonard Cohen who practiced Zen meditation for more than thirty years. His name in the monastery was Jikan, “the silence between two thoughts”.
A friend spoke recently of feeling his hands as clouds. I know the sky above today’s gray, roiling turmoil is blue, even as the clouds of touch, change, thoughts and feelings blow through.
Today on a Sensory Awareness call with Misty Hannah, she worked on being with not knowing, with stepping into the unknown and letting the unknown surprise us. What happens when we peel a spring onion? What responds inside? Outside? Together? Apart?
She requested we not name what we noticed. I listened to the rain on the roof, trees, and outside walls without naming it, and felt an answering response within – fluidity – waves – connection.
Later, Michael Atkinson pointed out that medieval maps had an area called Terra Incognita, Unknown Territory, marked, at times, with “There be dragons here!” or “Here are dragons.”
What happens when we allow entry into unknown territory? Are dragons enlivening this Chinese Year of the Dragon? What are we exploring and what explores within us? How do I meet what comes?
Yesterday I stepped out of my car into a puddle. It was an experience of awakening – dry, wet, warm, cold – Awake!
Today I felt drawn to return to the place where, yesterday, I saw the Great Blue Heron. I felt she was the one I bonded with last February when I stayed on a houseboat in Sausalito. I met a woman who also feels bonded to this bird, and said yes, the bird is here at low tide, and in the place I met her last year at high tide. The woman said, “I love her”, and I said , “As do I”. I share more photos of life in the bay.
Today I was waiting for sandwiches I’d ordered when looking out over the bay, I thought I saw a beak. Yes, a Great Blue Heron. What a gift!
I’ve been immersing myself in meditation, specifically in Satipatthana meditation, with a current focus on the anatomy of the body, the parts, and the elements of the body, earth, water, fire, wind, and space.
I had blood drawn early this morning after fasting since yesterday afternoon. It went easily and well, and when he finished, he asked me to write my whole name in cursive, then, print, and then write who I was signing for. Since I was clearly the one whose blood had been taken and the one signing, I felt unclear on what to write, so I asked, “Do I write me?” “You write self”, he said. Self.
My meditation is currently on not-self, no-self, not-me, no me. Of course I know not to take it literally, so I can function in the real world, but somehow in that moment without my morning coffee, I felt the obvious as unclear.
He’d just drawn beautiful red blood with its lovely qualities of fluidity and cohesion into two tubes, and labeled it as coming from me, and it will be analyzed to determine my health, so why did I struggle to consider the word “self” to document my experience.
That brings me to an Amy Poehler joke on aging. “My memory is like a cat. It doesn’t come when called.”
Another piece of this was I could hear and feel his steady breathing as the blood flowed into the tubes, so I matched mine with his, and I threw in a little calm, as I knew he had a full day ahead of him, and I felt we were bonded in an act of intimacy for a time.
This act of meditating has me viewing life differently, and I see that as a good thing whether I’m me, this man, the lab, the rain when I walk outside and the ripening sky as day comes to light.
With gratitude, I listen and receive, honoring I’m, “constantly being re-created”.
Brenda Ueland:
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really
listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that
we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.”
We celebrate the heart today, Valentine’s day. Birds are twittering and gathering as a new season comes to light. Though a pink candy heart says “Be Mine”, I see “Be Ours” as we meet to expand in connection, togetherness, and delight.
Teilhard de Chardin in The Divine Milieu:
Throughout my life, through my life, the world has little by little caught fire in my sight until, aflame all around me, it has become almost completely luminous from within.
A neighbor who devoted the last twenty years of her life to preserving the community in which I live passed away on Sunday. She was young. I know her through her weekly emails and hearing her impassioned speeches at the Civic Center when we’d gather to speak for the animals and plants who live here and prioritize them over unscrupulous and dangerous development.
The work of Congressman Philip Burton gave us The Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a place loved, well-visited, and revered. Sharon Rushton may not be as well-known as Philip Burton but she worked just as hard to preserve the areas that enrich and enliven our quality of life.
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