Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Intertwined

It’s Indigenous People’s Day, a time to reflect back on what was taken by force and cruelty.  I’d like to add ignorance but perhaps that is too kind.

On Saturday, our family gathered on Coast Miwok land to watch the Blue Angels.   The Miwok used to travel across the bay in tule boats.  Now, jets scream overhead as birds show how serene flight can be.

Logically I can say that environmentally and financially “Fleet Week”  makes no sense, but when I hear the roar and see the flash of blue and yellow so precariously, yet harmoniously flying overhead, I lift on the sight of speed, forgetting the cost.

I’m with the words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

We’re considering moving to gather family closer together.  A friend asks if I could leave Mount Tam.  

Maria Popova describes Mount Tam as “the first vertebrae of the mountainous backbone of the Americas that stretches all the way to Tierra del Fuego”.

She celebrates Etel Adman who painted and wrote about Mt. Tam.

Etel Adman: In this unending universe Tamalpais is a miraculous thing, the miracle of matter itself: something we can single out, the pyramid of our own identity. We are, because it is stable and it is ever changing. Our identity is the series of the mountain’s becomings, our peace is its stubborn existence.

Can I leave her, move down the line of vertebrae?  When I went to Nepal, I felt Mt. Tam sent me there, sent me to her sister mountains, mountains connected at the root. Where might she send me now?

On Saturday I was with my grandson who is almost two.  We played a game where we placed a small block on our head, and then leaned left or right and off it fell and we did it again and again. 

Where do I lean now to stretch and gather laughter like an opened cloak?

Etel Adman: “When you realize you are mortal you also realize the tremendousness of the future. You fall in love with a Time you will never perceive.”

Harvest
San Francisco from Cavallo Point on Saturday Afternoon
Sunday Morning – fog wafts in, then out

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Invitation

Each day my inbox contains a covey of inspiring quotes.  I’m hoisted, flown, and carried on words to open and release.  Today something different comes, a quote by Francis Picabia, a French painter: 

Our heads are round so thoughts can change direction.  

I think of trees, open 360 degrees.  

Sculpture Bench in Old Mill Park
Big Wave Bench by Artist and Arborist Chuck Oakander

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Insurrection

I try to leave politics off this blog only suggesting periodically that you read Heather Cox Richardson but this paragraph today – I wish I understood how the people that planned and instigated what happened on January 6th aren’t in jail for treason and I don’t.

From HCR today: Los Angeles Times reporter Sarah D. Wire noted that the rioters who broke into the Capitol on January 6 ran more than 100 feet past 15 reinforced windows, “making a beeline” to four windows that had been left unreinforced in a renovation of the building between 2017 and 2019. They found the four windows, located in a recessed part of the building, Wire wrote, “by sheer luck, real-time trial and error, or advance knowledge by rioters.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-4-2021

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Transformation

Transformation is so clear this time of year, well, every time of year really, every time of day, moment by moment.  I’m not sure why I feel more alert these days but there’s something about the ripening of pumpkins that speaks to me, hollows me out with the rounding need to expand and stem.

Yesterday in a book by Flora Thompson, I read about a children’s game where the children find a place outside and touch the earth lightly, and bounce up and come down, singing, “We are bubbles of earth.  Bubbles of earth. Bubbles of earth.”

I’m inspired to see myself as a bubble of earth.  

Thich Nhat Hanh says that, “When we are able to take one step peacefully, happily, we are for the cause of peace and happiness for the whole of humankind.”

That seems especially key these days especially as thoughts are with the oil spill off Huntington Beach and all the creatures at risk.

The root of the word transform is “to move into beauty”.

May this be so!

Stinson Beach on a foggy day, which is not today –
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Receiving

Today is a beautiful autumn day.  I think of pumpkins ripening in the fields, gathering sunlight, nourishing seeds even as there is that huge open space inside.

I’m with these words of Joseph Campbell:

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

What resilience and trust that requires, and yet there is an energy to it too.  What comes now as the light changes inside and out.  As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

And in these staggeringly complex times, Jimmy Carter guides us with his words: 

“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”

And with that, a return to Hafiz:

I wish I could show you,

When you are lonely or in darkness,

The Astonishing Light

Of your own Being!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Birth

It’s the first day of my birth month.  Each year, there’s something that reminds me of that preparation in the womb.  There are more years behind me than ahead.  This morning Steve and I discuss re-reading Sogyal Rinpoche’s book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.  Yes, we may have many years ahead of us, and we are aware.

I’m with the words of Rilke:  “Love and death are the great gifts that are given to us; mostly, they are passed unopened.”  I want to open them all guided by the words of Maya Angelou.

The desire to reach the stars is ambitious.  The desire to reach hearts is wise.

On the Train

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Autumn

This morning I was out watering at a time in the summer it would be light but instead the darkness was lit by the moon and stars. All was quiet and still, and for some reason, Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence moved through me.

My cat Bella is now on antibiotics and eating a few bites, but in my worry I’ve been with the words that complete the poem “In Blackwater Woods” written by the late Mary Oliver. 

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Recently I learned that the strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.  This tells us why we must be so careful with our words, words we say to ourselves and to  others.

And now, be with The Sound of Silence!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Harvest

It’s a beautiful fall morning.  My father, born in 1921, would have been 100 today.  He died in an accident in 1969.  He was 47, the age my oldest son is now.  Time.  Trust.    Today I’m with James Wright’s beautiful poem “A Blessing”.  There are so many ways to step out of our bodies and into blossom.  

A Blessing
Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

~ James Wright ~

The tide moves in and out
And we Bloom

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Connection

People have mixed feelings about Next Door.  I have mixed feelings about it too but yesterday there was a post about a lost chicken under someone’s car.  What to do?  Advice came clucking  and the chicken was rescued and is cuddled and safe.  It takes a village.  

I was at the Cat Clinic yesterday with my cat Bella.  I was there twice as she had to stay for tests.  We’ll find out the results after twelve today.  They don’t take appointments so there’s usually a  long wait.  Sitting there, I thought of the old advertising slogan, “You meet the nicest people on a Honda!”  I was thinking “You meet the nicest people at the vet.”  In the waiting room, each cat is acknowledged, examined and clucked over.  Yes, chickens are on my mind, and you can make that a political statement if you so desire.

Last night, I took an on-line test on kindness my son sent me.  I was surprised to see how much the day affected my answers.  I was in a super-good mood.

I offer the test to you.  It’s part of a study and anonymous but take it and see how it affects your endorphins.  Invite the questions and answers into your moments and days.  Notice stimulus and response.  

The link to the test is at the bottom of the article but all of it is fascinating.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210921-what-we-do-and-dont-know-about-kindness

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Appreciation

Hildegard of Bingen, born in 1098, wrote, “If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.”  

Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was published on this date in 1962.  Her words, which showed the dangers of DDT, mean we see pelicans flying today.  We hear birds singing. I thank Rachel Carson.

Marcel Proust wrote, “Love is space and time made perceptible to the heart.”

I just finished reading Richard Powers’ powerful book Bewilderment.  I recommend it. 

May we all work passionately to develop empathy and compassion as we fold in and out of this world of Love we share.  

So many niches to explore and bring to Heart