This morning I notice that I feel differently than yesterday morning. Impermanence is beginning to land in me, to float, in this moment anyway. The tides move in and out four times a day – high, low, high low – each day different, each moment, and so this morning I look out on sunshine and feel reflectivity guiding me. I allow myself to feel the moon moving toward Thursday fullness, the sturgeon moon, a Supermoon, the last Supermoon of this year.
Thoreau:
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
My son and I are doing an on-line course in Tibetan meditation. I’m noticing a difference in my responses and so I was feeling a little self-congratulatory, which is certainly not part of the course, but then I hit the roadblock of judgment because I’m not as “mindful” as I want, or think, I should be. At least I’m noticing, and of course, the course is about non-judgment and non-criticism.
Synchronously, I had just read this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
I read it and then my son responded to my text lamenting that I’m not “mindful” more often. Without knowing I’d just read the wisdom of Thich, he replied:
Whenever you notice, smile even if you’re disappointed or annoyed. Smiling works both directions: you do it when mood is positive and it can also cause positive mood. So it reinforces that noticing is good.
Wisdom. Ease.
I’m reminded of what Marion Rosen, my beloved Rosen Method teacher, demonstrated when she’d spread her arms wide like a bird, and now try to say, “I’m sad or unhappy.”
Try it!!
Spreading arms out wide, head flung back, the heart opens, and it’s easy to say and feel in perfect harmony, “I’m Happy! I’m Joy!”.
And so today, well, this moment, my arms are spread wide to reflect the smile on my face.
On another note, I’m reading a book by Julie Cruikshank. Do Glaciers Listen?
It’s another entry into understanding our relationship with the environment we are and share.
Indigenous people knew and know. We can know and honor too.
Words on a bench in my neighborhood Near the bench, crocheted sunflowers in support of Ukraine
In meditating today, I hear the sounds of children playing. Generosity of sound comes to mind.
There must be a party as adult voices provide a background for the textured aliveness and enthusiasm in the voices of children.
Generosity touches the air, strokes connection moving and shared.
Ears open, clear, and stretch in the generous outpouring and generation of sound.
In his book The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche writes about perception using the example of an experiment with a T. Individuals are shown a T, a T with both segments the same length, but people see the segments differently.
Those who live in flat areas like the Netherlands see the horizontal line as longer. Those raised in mountainous regions like Nepal see the vertical line as longer. I live where it’s flat and there’s a mountain, so I wonder how my eye integrates the expanse in the arm and leg of the T.
Right now, I listen to the sounds of children as their voices rise and fall like waves landing and sinking into the sand of my day.
On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. This weekend we pray for peace. A few years ago my husband was in Japan with a Japanese man with whom he worked. They stood at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and paused to honor and reflect on how their fathers fought on different sides of the war, and now they, their sons, worked together. May that continue. You can find your way to pray on-line or simply settle into your own way of adding peace to the world today, as everyday, of course.
The fog has been a gentle blanket. Yesterday around 5:30 PM, I was at Stinson Beach and when I looked up I saw sun on the hills. May we balance on peace, knowing even amidst the current difficulties, the sun shines her light on us.
Looking up from Stinson Beach as I was wrapped in a soft, gentle blanket of fog
If you’re looking for inspiration read The Hummingbird’s Gift by Sy Montgomery.
“Hummingbirds are less flesh than fairies. They are little more than bubbles fringed with iridescent feathers – air wrapped in light.”
Hummingbird nests are woven with spider silk so the nest stretches to fit the tiny creatures as they grow.
“These little bubbles of spunk inspire extraordinary tenderness. One autumn, a ruby-throat, on its lonely, five-hundred-mile migration – a journey across the Gulf of Mexico, which can demand twenty-one hours of non-stop flight – landed, spent, on a drilling platform on the Mississippi coast. It was too exhausted to continue. The oil company dispatched a helicopter to fly it to shore. The hummingbird spent the winter in a gardener’s greenhouse, then left fat and healthy, on its spring migration.”
Accompanied by two quotes, I head out the door for a walk in my neighborhood.
Stanley Kunitz: “It is out of the dailiness of life that one is driven into the deepest recesses of the self.”
Kabir: I felt in need of a great pilgrimage, so I sat still for three days.
The Naked Ladies are out, a sign of summer tilting toward fallPlums ripen slowly in shadeCrossing the bridge over the now dry creekSunflowers in support of Ukraine line the trail EaseMountain Lion restsMatilija PoppyThe fog giving mist
Yesterday afternoon I sat on the couch enjoying the dance of the fog as it moved in and out. This morning we’re wrapped.
Last night I finished reading The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller. It was recommended and as I adventured in, I wasn’t clear why, and thenI was drawn in to life in the far northand how even in seclusion, politics and boundaries intrude.
The narrator lives and survives in the Arctic, near the North Pole. He has moved there in a search for solitude. He writes:
“At first I watched the weather obsessively, for it moved, changed, and spoke with something like the speed I expected from the society of man. But soon it became one seamless movement instead of a series of staccato events.”
“Now I merely took note of subtle changes. Minute shifts in scent and stone. I felt that Eberhard, (his dog) and I had found an even greater communion than ever, for now both of our minds were clear.”
He has read the classics before but, “Now my brain was a rock-pool at low ebb, empty and brackish and yet perfectly shaped to welcome the incoming tide.”
His house burns down. He builds a new one and says, “So the rock is abraded by storm, and thinks little of it.”
I’m reminded of this poem by Octavio Paz.
Wind and Water and Stone
The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.
The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.
The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.
One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.
~ Octavio Paz ~
(Translated by Mark Strand, The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987)
John Muir wrote:
In every walk with nature, one receives far more than they seek.
I agree.
I also believe that we need a social network of support.
From Writer’s Almanac today:
On this day, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, creating the Medicare and Medicaid programs. It was the country’s first national health insurance program.
The Slowdown sends a poem each day to my email box. Today’s poem goes right to the heartand moves down to the gut. Read “Fiery Young Colored Girl” here:
We have ⅓ of an acre, most of which we keep natural for our fellow creatures. A part is fenced though to contain and protect a Japanese garden. Yesterday afternoon we noted movement over the fence, and here is our new friend.
Camouflage
We have four maple trees with red leaves. When grandson was here, he asked how we painted the leaves red. The question made me even more appreciate the variety in nature’s palette.
Maple Leaves
This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.
We’ve been with our grandchild. Being with a young child is a practice of meditation. I watch the movement and openness in hands and feet and feel a response in me. Fluidity.
We read and climb. We tuck, hide, peek, bounce, jump, glide and slide as we make trains both large and small. We pick apples from their tree and eat them and leave some for the squirrels. I’m entranced with what comes forth as we make songs on his suggestions, his mind rounding on all that surrounds.
I’m home now absorbing and integrating. Mingyur Rinpoche offers an online course on meditation through Tergar.org. One son and I are enjoying the course on “Joy of Living”. I’m currently with sound meditation.
Mingyur Rinpoche:
As long as you know you are hearing the sound, that is meditation.
Awareness is always pure and pleasant.
And there is Meister Eckhart: For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again.
Of course this is a practice, and yet pausing to listen and receive, I find myself pulsing with the universe, the heartbeat, the gong, the bell, the dance, the song.
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