Posted on by Cathy Edgett

It’s Spring

The sun is shining directly on the earth’s equator today at 8:33 AM, and now crosses the equator heading north.   Do we feel the shift, the increasing light in the northern hemisphere, the opening to bud in the warmth?

This morning I woke up thinking of wringer washing machines.   Well, first I was thinking about fear.  How do we live with and process fear? The image of the wringer washing machine came to me.

My childhood friend’s mother had one in the basement where we often played.  This was Iowa after all, and basements were exciting enclosures filled with hiding places, mystery, and discovery.   Plus, her mother brought us treats artfully made. We each got our own little package to open and munch, piece by tiny piece.

Memory taste buds enhanced, I read about wringer washing machines.  They save water.  Yes, they require a little more participation but right now when water is so important, perhaps that makes sense.  In addition, hands-on participation can do more than clean the clothes.  

These words came my way yesterday.  Perhaps that’s what brought forth the connection between how we bodily deal with our lives. Our hands integrate and cleanse our busy, and sometimes fearful and grieving minds.

The words are by Elena Barnabé.

“Grandma how do you deal with pain?”

“With your hands, dear. When you do it with your mind, the pain hardens even more.”

“With your hands, grandma?”

“Yes, yes. Our hands are the antennas of our Soul. When you move them by sewing, cooking, painting, touching the earth or sinking them into the earth, they send signals of caring to the deepest part of you and your Soul calms down. This way she doesn’t have to send pain anymore to show it.

“Are hands really that important?”

“Yes my girl. Think of babies: they get to know the world thanks to their touch.

When you look at the hands of older people, they tell more about their lives than any other part of the body.

Everything that is made by hand, so it is said, is made with the heart because it really is like this: hands and heart are connected.

Think of lovers: When their hands touch, they love each other in the most sublime way.”

“My hands grandma… how long since I used them like that!”

“Move them my love, start creating with them and everything in you will move.

The pain will not pass away. But it will be the best masterpiece. And it won’t hurt as much anymore, because you managed to embroider your Essence.”

~Elena Barnabé

If you’re intrigued:

Why You Need a Wringer Washer (and How to Use it)
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Peace Tickled by Ease

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, there’s mist and green, and birds chirping and tweeting in greeting and meeting. 

Late afternoon yesterday a Great Blue Heron swept over our heads as we sat outside.  Later, I heard a noise and went outside to check. It was the moon.  The moon wasn’t rising noisily.  Our neighbor was pulling garbage cans up to the street, but it brought me out to the beauty happening right here, this moving light, an orb brightening the sky as the earth turns and journeys around the sun.

The full moon rises tonight, the Worm Moon, announcing the arrival of spring.

Perhaps it’s the wiggle I feel, the wiggle of worms opening the earth to aerate and breathe.

There’s a stirring inside, an impulse led by light.

I settle, allowing roots to stretch and test, balancing a nest of rest, a cradle for eggs and birth. Heart knows the moon, a shared caress.

Wave Bench in Old Mill Park – invitation in support and curl


Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Reflecting

When someone I love passes, makes a  transition to non-form, I feel a portal open.  I honor the sacred time.

I listen, receive.  

These words of T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets – Little Gidding, comfort me.

And what the dead had no speech for, when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

“Tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”

What vibrates now?    

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Surrender

Lately I’ve felt myself flowing down the middle of the stream, recognizing so many things are happening both personally and globally that it’s easiest and best to center in that flow.

A long-time friend passed away yesterday.  Steve sent her husband the Mary Oliver poem “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field “. He responded that he hadn’t known the poem but had bought a white owl sculpture last week.

How can we not believe in the support of the earth, water, and air that connects us with every breath and beat of our heart as hearts branch out through lungs and the reach of arms, wrists, and hands?

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Ukraine

Today in a meditation for peace I felt the words U Crane – and thought You Crane, as we each reach with the beauty and long curving necks of the bird, and the strength of the cranes that raise buildings into the sky to create a halo of peace for this region.

This morning I read of the deaths of a woman and her two children killed by Russian military artillery in Ukraine.  She worked for a software company with one location in Palo Alto, and now I read of the destruction of a maternity hospital. Where do we put such pain?

I focus on the intricacy of the sunflower, a symbol of this region.  The sunflower is a bouquet, a composite of many smaller flowers. It’s thick stalk holds a heavy flower to the sky and gives us oil, the new gold.

May we each gather and focus the energy of desire, like a magnifying glass focuses the sun, radiating spirals of smoke to signal a return to peace.  

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Return

My head just cleared.  I’ve been dealing with a horrible cold and cough.  It has encouraged mindfulness, though not an open, expansive mind but a rather small mind as nothing much can enter and move through.  My focus has been on breath and the effort involved when air and mucus seem to battle for space.  I’ve been given an opportunity to notice how I receive and utilize air.  

I’m grateful to feel “back” and yet perhaps there is a place for the break for an even greater appreciation of ease in breath.

I’m with ease in the words of Meister Eckhart: If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

Outside the Good Earth grocery store
In our yard, Redwood and Pittosporum mingle!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Balancing

I’m up early today, surprised to hear the tinkling sound of rain on the roof.  My cat and I look out and rejoice.  Well, I rejoice, cat not so much.  

I’m with what it takes to balance news from Ukraine with our daily lives.

I meditate and come to Pico Iyer:

So, in an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.

That reminds me of the poem “Stone” by Charles Simic:

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Receiving

Yesterday I was at Stinson Beach on a misty day.  

I carried the words of Rilke: The future enters us in order to transform us long before it happens.

I looked at empty crab shells, rocks, waves, sky, and sand.  What enters me now?

What moves within?

Science at the Beach
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Life

I’m reading a friend’s book, Sara Bragin’s The Living in Her Dying.  It’s about the time she spent with her mother as her mother was transitioning. It shows how much we need an advocate at such a time, and the learning that occurs when we show up to be with the loss of the womb in which we came.

The end of life process is with me these days as I feel the approach of a change over which I may not have control.

Last night I had one of those experiences that takes one out of their body and into awareness of so much more.  My cat Tiger is getting older, and needing body warmth, comfort, and support sleeps snuggled in with us at night.  When I got into bed last night, he came over with a look that lit the room, that was more than his huge eyes.  I felt the gift of this livingness, this gift of being in a body for a time.

I was reminded of Thomas Merton’s words about being on a street corner, and …

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . . 

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”

He uses the word God.  I might use the word Spirit or Light or Grace but the feeling and knowing, believing and honoring – that is the gift.

What’s happening in Ukraine is with us all.  We are united in this.  We feel the attacks; we share the fear and yet Tiger gave me such an invitation with his eyes, and way of being.  I wake as light, flowing light, light that is both particle and wave as am I.  

Tiger
A Portion of Our Yard
Serenity
And the wind chimes