I wake in the night to meditate and listen to the rain. For me, this is a peaceful, inner sky time of year.
But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.
— Dogen
Winter Light
Forms of Art
Yesterday I sat by Richardson Bay to experience and absorb in the movement of the tide, and then I went to The de Young Museum in San Francisco.
The exhibit at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is “a triennial art exhibition celebrating the voices and visions of Bay Area artists whose contributions enrich our cultural landscape.“
“These artists live locally but are thinking globally, about both the world of art and the world at large.“
“Honoring the Museums’ goal of creating an inclusive environment equally accessible to a diverse range of people, every Bay Area resident, eighteen years of age or older, is welcome to apply to The de Young Open, and this year 7,766 talented artists each submitted an artwork. These artworks were reviewed by twelve jurors-eight Fine Arts Museums curators along with the distinguished Bay Area artists Clare Rojas, Sunny Smith, Stephanie Syjuco, and Xiaoze Xie. The jurors’ decisions were based solely on digitally submitted images of the artworks and made without any knowledge of the artists’ identities.”
“The 883 artworks in this exhibition are installed nearly edge to edge, ensuring the greatest possible representation. The galleries include thematic groupings of art inspired by historical and contemporary political and social issues, the urban environment, the human figure, nature, abstraction, and surreal imagery.”
I offer images to stimulate body and mind, inside and out. I’m not giving the titles chosen by the artists, just allowing you to open and see what comes. The following images begin and end with the natural landscape, a moving, evolving form of art.
Stars
This time of year the stars seem more pronounced in their appearance and influence. Our sun, the nearest star, moves quickly across the sky, and then darkness comes. Last night, I was outside watching for shooting stars, when one flashed brightly and appeared to almost swoop into my blanketed lap.
Sound carries this time of year and I hear the leaves fall.
I’ve been buying eggs from Vital Farms, a coordinated collection of family farms. From their information on the hens, I read “Henku” and peruse a photo of “Clever Carla” finding a worm. Even hens sleep in on these cozy winter days, rising at 7, rather than 4. We are influenced by light as we turn tenderly to care, self-care, and compassion for those around us on this earth we share.
My guidance these days is to rest the mind on the breath, as I consider what a hen might say in a haiku.
Nestled in winter,
Sun softens, beckoning, still
Quick light lays inside.
Tis the Season
In reading Robert Macfarlane’s wonderful book Landmarks, I learned that John Constable invented the verb “to sky” meaning “to lie on one’s back and study the clouds”.
I love to look at the sky, the changes, and the stars at night, and I also use this time of year to sink deeper into reflecting, reflection, and going within.
Trees: Monitors of Change
This morning as I meditated I looked out on the redwood tree that rises and grounds our yard. She is my teacher, my guide. The wind waves her branches as breath moves through me. Sunlight filters through.
Yesterday I was with friends at The Lumberyard in Mill Valley. Until recently it was a lumberyard. Mill Valley had a mill. Much of the wood came from the neighborhood town of Corte Madera which means cut wood.
One massive tree is still preserved at The Lumberyard which now hosts a restaurant, a bakery, and assorted gift shops. I’m with impermanence and the beauty in change.
The shifting light this time of year makes sacredness so clear.
Many of us cut down trees and bring them into our homes to then recycle and transform. Again, so precious is this life we’re given for a time, a time to breathe and connect as we deal with what for some is horrific, and allows us to see that with time we move toward change.
In his 1994 novel “The Crossing,” Cormac McCarthy creates a character who says that “the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it.” In fact, “men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose.”
We are seeing the wicked begin to be held to accountability. May that continue to be so.
Light
This morning I watched the moon through the trees to the west, then turned to greet the morning star. Do we see light more clearly in the dark, beckon contrast that merges in the beating heart? It’s the last day of the month of November, and now we sink like flakes of snow and drops of rain into this month of December, a time of gathering to beckon, birth, integrate, and share light.
Lichen
From The Marginalian, I learn about David George Haskell’s book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature.
He writes about the symbiotic relationship of lichen, and how they show us how life forms and continues not in competition but in interdependence.
“We survive and thrive not through combat but through collaboration.”
When I was a Terwilliger nature guide we would sing with the kids: “Annie Algae and Freddie Fungus took a Lichen to each other.”
We’d look for the colors and varieties of lichen on Ring Mountain, where it’s prolific as there’s no pollution. My yard is the same way, is a garden of lichen on chairs, windchimes, and trees.
Haskell writes: We are Russian dolls, our lives made possible by other lives within us. But whereas dolls can be taken apart, our cellular and genetic helpers cannot be separated from us, nor we from them. We are lichens on a grand scale.
Wow!
And may that knowing bring us to peace in the world. We survive and thrive together. It’s time to end conflict and war, and live in prosperity and peace.
Our Children, Our Future
Today I’m with the photo of a four-year girl released by Hamas. I think of my four-year old grandson, of all the children on the planet. This cannot continue. It must stop. I don’t know the solution to something so complex, but I feel we must hold the images of children in our hearts and minds and come to a peace that benefits us all.
This piece from four years ago by Robert Reich is a good start:
Giving Thanks
We say it’s a day when really it’s a week, a month, a year, all gathered in a cornucopia of gratitude. I find myself with memories this week, past gatherings, and celebrations of the fall of leaves. I miss my parents as this day approaches. I miss all those who’ve passed and aren’t here at a table we share, and yet I feel the expansive clasp. The table is vast.
Jimmy and Rosalyn
I continue to read about these two amazing people, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, who lived in Plains, Georgia and carried peace, human rights, and care-giving throughout the world and within their souls. Imagine if Jimmy had won a second term, a man who wore a sweater rather than turning up the heat and put solar panels on the White House which were then removed by the next administration. These two people were hard-working visionaries, and so we mourn her passing which will probably be soon followed by his.
I woke from a dream this morning where I was in a small boat enjoying waves on either side of me, and then, everyone was in boats, too, enjoying the rise and fall of waves. There is so much discord right now and yet with the cultivation of perception we can find and create a boat that fits the current waves of up and down.
This week is one of Thanksgiving and celebration where I live. We each choose what that means to us as we gather together or choose solitude. May we remember we share a planet, a sacred earth, where people like the Carters show us the way.
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