When in crisis, we often want to keep busy with our hands, that connector to our heart. That’s where we reach out and touch, reach out and receive.
Today I do the simple tasks of living, laundry, dishes, bed making with awareness of connecting hands and heart.
It is a weight and a fullness. Moisture fills the body, sadness, a reach to understand this parting of the veil, opening to the light.
I’m trying to stay with the weight of the grief, to not run away from it, and I know it’s not just about my cousin, that it’s about all the grief we’ve experienced in our lives as though it creates a mountain on which we climb until we reach our own peak and lift.
Yesterday on my return I drove to the bay to sit, just sit in the abundance of life here. Sausalito is filled with people from other places, different accents and the excitement of curiosity and not knowing exactly where you are.
About a month ago as I was processing this deep feeling of grief, I wrote these words for myself and I share them now.
Like gathering tufts of wool sheep have left on branches and trees, we gather the spirits of those we love who’ve passed, make a cloak for ourselves of wisdom we weave and share.
This morning I drove east to Rio Vista to visit my cousin and say goodbye as she transitions into a new journey. The drive was exquisite through the delta and past the golden summer lands of California.
On the roundabout I miscounted when to exit so I ended up on a deserted gravel road which was perfect as I needed a pee break.
On the left side of the road was an old-fashioned windmill with a gathering of cows.
And on the other side was this.
At my cousin’s house, she showed me a box of cranes, 100 cranes, that my sister-in-law had made and sent to her to help her with her journey of healing and coming to peace and wholeness.
This morning the sky was a mix of clarity, fog, and a vibrant pink streak. Now all is blue with some white streaks of clouds. Touch possibility and guidance in change.
Rumi:
Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.
I’m both anchored and soaring in this summer light. I know many are suffering from excessive heat but here is perfect temperature and peace.
In my meditation this morning I could feel how clearly the bones come down in response to gravity and the nervous system rises and soars to some inner call.
All is changing, and yet at this moment my world is quiet and still. I put a blanket down outside last night to watch for meteor showers. What a gift to lie flat and receive the light of stars. I didn’t see any shooting stars but I did see two airplanes, lights flashing, as they flew by.
Black Elk:
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit and that its center is really everywhere; it is within each of us.
I’ve been going through old journals and keeping and tossing.
I came across a sweet memory. A hummingbird flew into a friend’s house, and to guide him or her back out, she filled glasses with water, and put a flower in each one, and set them in a path to the open door, and out the hummingbird went.
There is such kindness in the world.
Last night, I watched the documentary, Going Clear, about Scientology. It’s shocking and important to see how a cult develops when we hand our power and inner knowing over to another. Instead we need to trust what we know, and feeling within, follow the vases filled with flowers that guide our way.
I’ve now cleaned everything out of one room except the moveable bookshelves. The closet is empty and now when I speak, the room echoes. Nothing catches or holds the vibrations of my words.
I take that inside. What if I’m not holding onto memories, especially judgments and/or grudges? I feel I need some anchoring within, some awareness of my travels, connections, and pilgrimages, so I can respond with the wisdom of lessons learned through experience, and yet when is it too much? When is there a need to open and cleanse?
How much do I need to hold onto to feel connected and safe?
Might I choose to be like a bird with the warmth of a nest and the ability to fly through a sky bracketed with branches like shelves? What wisdom does the bird harvest from grasses and leaves?
I’m reading The Starship and The Canoe by Kenneth Brower. He writes about two men, a father and son. The father, Freeman Dyson, is a renowned astrophysicist who designs a spaceship to explore the stars. The son, George Dyson, lives in a tree house and explores the coastal wilderness and waters of the Northwest in a canoe he designed and built.
At one point, George is camped by the Icy Strait. He is alone as the full moon rises when he hears wolves howling near him.
“Wolves had come down silently from the forest and had infiltrated the beach grass. It seemed to George that the sound went straight to the center of his being. It passed through the center and out the other side, traveling over Icy Strait toward the moonlit mountain.
All his sensibilities quickened. Now and again, when the wolves stopped for a moment, George heard each grass blade rustling, each wave lapping. Waiting for the wolves to resume, he heard the blowing of humpback whales as they swung in close to shore.
The wolves were ending their song, when, from the sea, the whales answered it. George swears that this is true. The whale music was, he says, like whistling, trumpeting, and singing combined. It resembled no work of man he knew, but it blended perfectly with the chorus of the whales. The forest’s mournful ululations mingled with the brass winds and wood winds of the deep. The Earth was singing to its moon, and the sea was harmonizing.
George sat silent in the middle of the music, yet did not feel left out. It seemed to him that the two worlds, land and sea, were coming together in him. This morning he had padded, like the wolves, in bare feet on the mossy forest floor, and this afternoon he had paddled Icy Strait, like the humpback whales. A triumvirate, they praised the moon: lupus, George, leviathan.”
Because a new window shade is installed in the room where I write and navigate, I’m having the room painted on Monday which requires moving everything out to begin again. I meditate on optimum feng shui, planning to consciously create a place of nourishment for where I am now. What surroundings do I need to nourish and touch more deeply within?
In this exploration, I go through years of notes from the past. I reflect on my trip to Nepal in 1993, a trip inspired when I received a midlife call. I responded to Sogyal Rinpoche who said to go into nature, and so I did. I went to Nepal without expectation, trusting the call. I was a hollow bone, the place shamans envision and become to invite an inner journey to enter and expand.
In midlife, we birth again, unfold into a wider womb.
I feel that call to birth again as I approach the age of 74. It’s been thirty years since I was trekking in the Everest region of Nepal. At one point, I was walking on a narrow trail through a village when a tiny, old woman beckoned me into an equally tiny, old space, a small opening in a wall of stone. Flickering candlelight revealed a Tangka painting, a photo of the Dalai Lama and sacred books.
Alone, I turned around in this tiny womb, and left a donation. When I emerged, the woman, an elderly, wrinkled nun, placed some kernels of burnt popcorn in my hands. I still taste that burnt offering, feel the touch of the nun and the kernels etched within me.
Clay tablets caught in fires in ancient temples turned to stone. The clay of my memories forms anchors in stone as I age, as I climb to a deeper knowing and trust in all we share.
I respond to the words of Winnie the Pooh.
Sometimes the smallest things take the most room in your heart.
We watched the Fourth of July fireworks on a hill near where one son and his wife live. We walked to our spot with folding chairs, and sat with neighbors as fireworks erupted around us. We shared a view, and when I looked at the photos, I saw galaxies and thought of the Big Bang happening around and in us.
That morning we had brunch with friends who have a ten year old. For her tenth birthday, she was offered a trip anywhere, Hawaii, the Galapagos, whatever she wanted. She chose a place of her own, a “she-shed” placed in a back corner of their yard. She allowed me into her world of enchantment, a lovely lavender abode with places to express, honor, and bring forth her creativity which is varied and unique. In her nature cupboard, she carefully opened a box to reveal the perfect, preserved skeleton of a mouse. In another, the discarded skin of a reptile lay treasured in display.
This morning I woke from a dream where I felt the abundance around and in me, the earth thriving beneath my feet, the sky filled with the flight of birds. We live in an exciting and vibrant world. My focus is there, on growth and change, and these words of Emily Dickinson.
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
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