Cathy's Blog!

Posted on February 12, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

A Sense of Balance

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl but I’m aware of the back and forth and the final score. Before 2022, the 49’ers would have won with the first overtime score, but new rules changed the game. Now, the 49’ers are discussed as though they are losers when they went to the Super Bowl and the game was as close as could be.

I’m reminded of a writing class I took with Pam Houston. Her book was on the NY Times best seller list and she was thrilled to share the news with a friend. The friend asked, “What number?” and then, “How many weeks?” Houston knew then this was a no-win as perhaps only the Bible has that top spot. The win is within.

The money that was spent on this game, on advertising, betting, attendance, is unfathomable, and meanwhile we have a measure on our ballot, measure A, that will cost each household possibly $300.00 a year, though depending on when you bought your house only $30.00 a year. It’s to augment our deteriorating schools. It needs 55% to pass, and probably will pass, but it’s strange to consider what is spent on weapons and war, and what the world could be with cooperation, not competition.

Meanwhile increasing light invites sap to rise as the earth turns toward Spring.

A bird and Buddha commune in the spring light

Camellias continue to offer beauty and scent

Posted on February 9, 2024February 9, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Peace

Yesterday’s news sent me into nature. I planned to go to Stinson Beach but the road down is closed due to the storms. I curved my way up Mt. Tam to walk, sit, cleanse and reflect.

Home, I read about Aikido, founded in the late 1920’s by Morihei Uyeshiba. When he watched hoodlums beat up his father, he vowed to train in the martial arts, and he did. After winning, he began to examine what it meant to dominate others. One day he was challenged to a duel by an expert swordsman, a naval officer. As the officer continued to charge him with the sword he simply moved out of the way until the officer, exhausted, sat down.

Uyeshiba walked to a nearby garden and sat down. He reported:

I felt that the universe suddenly quaked, and that a golden spirit sprang up from the ground, veiled my body, and changed my body into one of gold. At the same time my mind and body became light. I was able to understand the whisperings of the birds, and was clearly aware of the mind of God, the Creator of the universe. At that moment I was enlightened: the source of budo is God’s love – the spirit of loving protection for all beings. Budo is not felling the opponent by our force; nor is it a tool to lead the world into destruction with arms. I understood: The training of Budo is to take God’s love, which correctly produces, protects, and cultivates all things in Nature, and assimilate and utilize it in our own mind and body.

The secret of Aikido is to harmonize ourselves with the movement of the universe. It’s a way to live and harmonize as one family. We recognize the only opponent is within, and we work to correct our own mind. Obviously, that’s not easy to do. It is a practice, but more and more I see the value in honoring the practice and dedicating myself to harmony and cultivating peace.

The view begins to open to ocean and sky

Looking east to Angel Island, Tiburon, and Belvedere

Posted on February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Embrace

Monday the power was out for many in the Bay area, so because we have a generator grandchild arrived in his Halloween skeleton pajamas. No problem. We went to Old Mill Park where he found a tree into which we both could climb, a tree with two rooms so we could separate our tasks into cooking and a tool shop. At one point the tree became a pirate ship, and the wind came up so we needed to “batten down the hatches”.

I sit with it now, climbing in and out of the opening in the tree , especially when the land below became the ocean into which we each went scuba diving to commune with squid.

After I’m with my grandchild living in the land and sea of his imagination, when he leaves, I miss him, and feel slightly dizzy as though my world is set to organize and his is in response to what he sees and creates.

I’ve been to Old Mill Park innumerable times, and never realized the possibilities in this tree. Maybe I never even discerned it as separate from the multitude of tall trees. When I go back by myself, will this tree still open itself to possibility? Will I feel silly climbing up into a tree to view the world from its open enclosure? Will I feel silly swimming in the sea grandchild saw below it?

We were there to view the rushing creek, exuberant with the rain. And yet, for him, in those moments, the invitation was from the tree.

Thich Nhat Hanh:

The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness.

The view of the creek when looking out through the tree

Exquisite what guides, lifts, and expands our paths

Posted on February 2, 2024February 2, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Groundhog’s Day

Since today we’ve had rain and sun, changing so quickly I go from windshield wipers to sunglasses, I wonder how Punxsutawney Phil, the renowned groundhog who’s been predicting when winter will end since 1887, predicts an early spring.

I would expect a 50-50 change of accuracy but according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “on average, Phil has gotten it right 30% of the time over the past 10 years.”

Today we celebrate our love of play and joy in noticing the passage of seasons and time.

Posted on January 27, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Opening

My four-year old grandson is here. We play with dinosaurs. I wonder what the attraction is but it seems many children go through the dinosaur stage. Perhaps there’s something in the earth’s memories coming forth. I thought it might be related to our use of fossil fuels but now I read that those come from bacteria not dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are relatively new on the planet, so again, perhaps there is some connection we sense and respond to the call.

For this visit, I placed out some wonderful packaging I received to go along with four dinosaurs that adorn the fireplace hearth. We play with them, and then, he wraps them, and other objects around the house, and I open gifts. What is it about unwrapping a gift?

In my book group yesterday, someone mentioned how for environmental reasons, she’s using reusable bags for gifts. I’m doing the same and yet I realized yesterday in opening many gifts wrapped by my grandson that there is something in the opening for both giver and receiver that feeds us, nourishes us. We both enjoyed the anticipation and savoring, the wonder. What could it be?

Perhaps it relates to our own openings, our sense doors, and the way we open, receive, and respond to what comes in this magical world we share.

How do I become still? By flowing with the stream.

– Lao Tzu

Posted on January 26, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Forest Bathing

Yesterday I went to Muir Woods to bathe in sound, light, beauty, trust. Oddly when I was going through my photos to post this I got a fraud alert on my PayPal account. Balance is the key as we’re shown by creek, creatures, trees.

As a hermaphrodite, a banana slug is resourceful when it comes to finding a mate.

The creek offers challenge for a swim upstream

A salmon’s journey to a place to lay her eggs

Posted on January 23, 2024January 23, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Transition

Last week I bought yellow tulips as a beckoning to spring. They were buds that opened, and now today their petals are soft, transparent and falling so I offer them to the yard.

I’m with these words of Toni Packer:

The immense challenge to each one of us is this: Can we live our daily lives, at least for moments at a time, in the wonder of presence that is the creative source of everything?

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Miracles

Today I was with a little boy who is one year, one month, and some days. He is walking, even running, with an occasional drop to crawl.

I find it amazing to realize I made all these leaps, too, and though at my age, the leaps might not be visible, I believe they are also miraculous, enlivening, and strong.

Albert Einstein:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

And, of course, everything is a miracle.

Posted on January 21, 2024January 21, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Listening

The temple bell stops

But the sound keeps coming

out of the flowers

– Matsuo Bashō

Camellia blooming even through wind and rain

Each in its own time – flowering and buds

Posted on January 20, 2024January 20, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

The Way We Are

I’m re-reading Toni Packer’s wonderful book The Wonder of Presence: And The Way of Meditative Inquiry.

She writes of when she and her husband saw Krishnamurti speak. Her husband “grew up in a puritanical family and was raised to be modest and honest, imbued with a strong drive for bettering himself. The idea of improving himself, of becoming a better person, was a strong motive in his family.” When her husband heard Krishnamurti speak about “human beings’ everlasting endeavors to become something or somebody in the future”, he was struck. He ran to her laughing and light. “Here I’ve been attempting to become a better person all my life – ha ha ha ha ha.”

I’m reminded of when I heard Marion Rosen, my teacher of Rosen Method, say “Perfection is static.” I nearly fell off my chair. What? I’d been trying to be “perfect” all my life and now I was hearing that it wasn’t something I should want or desire. First, what is “perfect” and second where is movement there.

Toni Parker describes this as direct insight which is indescribable, but then she goes on. “It is that wondrous state of being in which the conditioned personality reveals itself for what it is – conditioning giving way to wholeness without lack, all things, people, mountains and oak trees being wondrously the way they are, nothing to be faulted, nothing to be improved.”

I don’t always remember this about striving and perfection but I do think walls have fallen around my perception of who, or what I, the crazy-making I, might be.

Since my walk at Muir Woods, I feel myself curving in delight, immersing in a place where time is just a concept imposed on a beautiful living, changing world we share.