Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Serenity

Today I pause and knit patterns of presence. I reflect and integrate what shapes and informs intention, honoring reception.

I’m with these words of Wendell Berry:

It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.

Waves of light flow through.  Like trees and flags, I receive the wind as it moves, patterns generous in weaving change.

My mother, who passed in 2005, was born a year after Queen Elizabeth II.  I remember her talking about playing with paper dolls that were the young Margaret and Elizabeth.  I think of how we each have our own path, both imposed and created. Elizabeth was born into a role, as are we all, and then we have choice in how we respond and flow, give and receive, move and pause.

As a child, I cut out paper dolls with my grandmother.  I would be impatient and sloppy. Though she wouldn’t comment directly, she would example by holding her scissors precisely and cutting carefully around the curves, and say words that repeat in and out of me these days. 

“The way we do one thing may reveal the way we do all things.”

Memories slide in and out; gentle guidance weaves the day.

Morning Weaves

Trunks of trees wrapped in yarn

Fluidity

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Knitting Us Together

The Mill Valley Arts Commission (MVAC) has created a project of crocheted and knitted art that covers the trunks and some branches of downtown trees.

At the end of October, the squares of yarn will be taken down, washed and sewn together into blankets and donated where needed. 

These are outside the Book Depot in the Square.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

A Beautiful World

I was outside last night with the moon and stars, and now this morning the sky was still bright with stars.  Light comes and the birds sing and flit joyfully these late summer days.

This morning I read Garrison Keillor on his experience at the Mayo Clinic. He exclaims over the care he’s receiving and how many of the nurses these days are male, a vocation carefully chosen, appreciated, and enjoyed.   

I remember my mother’s care from a male nurse, and the care I received when I went through radiation treatment.  The male nurse who handed us our gown, always made sure they were newly warmed.  He prayed for us each day.   

Celebrating the dedication of teachers and medical workers, male, female, and evolving choice is a way to deal with challenges in the news.

Today I dance with the words of one of my favorite authors: A.A. Milne:

“What day is it?” asked Pooh. “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet. “My favourite day,” said Pooh.

Avocets at low tide in the marsh

Serenity

Reaching for Touch

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Nature’s Gifts

Yesterday Monarch butterflies accompanied my walk and today birds were out enjoying the early morning marsh.  I saw avocets, willets,  egrets, ducks, gulls, and smaller birds.  The special treat was a Heron in the reeds.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

September

These last four months of the year go together as beginning, harvest, fruition, celebration, and rest.

I feel myself in the pause as though just being is enough.   Last night I sat outside with the stars and crescent moon.  During the day, I sat under a maple tree looking up.  This morning seeing light arrive later, I light within.  I am candle, illumination, trust.

Rumi:

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Looking up, down, and within

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Connection

When our book, Breast Strokes, came out, Jane and I gave a reading at Books Inc. 

Though I was nervous beforehand, ridiculously so, when we began and shared what we knew, I enjoyed it.  I signed up for Toastmasters to deal with pre-nerves.

I was launched into a club of friendliness, fun, and support: Club 1441.

The last of the three founding members passed away in June.  What’s important to note about Toastmasters and change is that in 1970, Helen Blanchard was the first woman to join a Toastmasters club.  She did so by signing up under a man’s name, “Homer Blanchard”.  Admitting women was allowed in 1973, three years later. 

In 1980, there were no clubs In Marin that would admit women, so Ed Sotelo and his wife Eleanor formed Club 1441 so they could participate together.  The club, vibrant, adaptable, and alive, continues today surviving the pandemic by meeting on Zoom.

Today I read about a Supreme Court justice raised to believe men are superior to women, dominant.  My mind is boggled.

I come to Etty Hillesum who wrote from a concentration camp in 1943:

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves.

And so I come to an article on bees.  Bees are sentient beings, and perhaps we already knew that but this article shows to what an exhilarating extent.

The more we learn, the more we celebrate all that connects us, our interdependence and essential, individual contribution, whether male, female, human, plant, or bee.

As Alan Watts wrote: 

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/16/bees-are-really-highly-intelligent-the-insect-iq-tests-causing-a-buzz-among-scientists

The last of the summer plums

At the O’Hanlon Gallery in Mill Valley

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Art

Yesterday I went to the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts to see Holly Wong’s Guardian of the Spirits,  a “suspended installation of cellophane, dichroic film, silk and polyester organza, gold fabric, vinyl tablecloth, transparencies and thread”.   That may sound strange but it’s a beautiful, flowing, clear and patterned airiness.  It moves as one walks by, and then, guarded by the spirits, one looks up to the second floor, and there overhanging is a long gun sticking out from the turret of a tank.  Walking up, one sees the tank with a teensy-tiny Russian flag atop is breaking through a wall.  The flag of Ukraine hangs from the gun.

Art! 

Heart stops and beats even more receptively again.  

Guardian of the Spirits

Close In

The whole display

Russian Tank by James Vogel

Tank with flag of Ukraine

The Russian flag atop

In my yard this morning

Opening and Reception are Everywhere

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Circling

Joni Mitchell’s song The Circle Game is whirling through my head. And “we go round and round in the circle game”.

I’m doing eye exercises which makes me aware of the roundness of the eyeball and how I can use exercises to stimulate and visualize movement and fluidity there.  I’m widening and nourishing how I see, how I receive.  It’s about intimacy with ourselves and with the world.

The earth is round, twirling, and circling the sun.  We are motion and movement spinning change.  

Charlotte Selver, my  teacher of Sensory Awareness, work I came to in 1993, said of the work:

“This work is a very spiritual work. It has to do with waking up, with getting spirited to the last molecule. Spirited. Because it sits everywhere in us. Everywhere.”

Everywhere!

Enjoy the curves, awakening the spirit in living aware.  

Morning Fog now gone to return when earth and air combine to invite formation again

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Celebration

This morning is dark and cold, well, it feels cold to me.  It may still be August but the smell and feel of Fall fills the air. 

I’m celebrating and integrating these words of Audre Lorde: 

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

Maple Tree turning the light

Lamp lit by the sun
Circling facets