Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

“Tree Cookies”

I’m reminiscing on my six year old grandson’s attention to detail at his nature camp.  He had been nervous as he was going to a camp where he didn’t know anyone.  I know the feeling but then we saw deer as we drove in, male and female deer, and that was the beginning to an inclusive letting down.  

The children were directed to a picnic table where “tree cookies” were laid out, rounds of tree trunk, and there were bins of colored pens so each child could make their own nametag.  He carefully wrote his name on his tree circle, and I thought that was it.  I handed him a green string to put through the hole of the tag, but he wasn’t finished.  He then outlined the three letters in another color, and then, another and meanwhile I’m thinking he’s done, and we’re moving along, but then he carefully colored the whole round in, and I thought of how I might have done it.  I might have just written the letters – no elaboration or gift of time and flow.  He put the string through and tied it himself in a double knot though other children went to the counselor to have it done.

I’m still with the experience as I come to Ellen Glasgow’s words: “Though it sounds absurd, it is true to say I felt younger at sixty than I had felt at twenty.”

I may not have the energy or agility of the age of twenty, but there’s such a beautiful continuing way of learning.  My grandson is my teacher.  I’m older than sixty, and yet here I am expanding my age rings that may one day be cut into cookies, in which children write their names.

When I picked him up from camp, the nametag was turned around, with the word “LEF” on it.  They had played a game where he became a leaf.  I wondered if it was worth mentioning that “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking”, but then, I realized it doesn’t matter. He was thrilled to be a leaf, a nurturer.  He shared that other children were a slug, or a bug, but as a leaf he  provides food and beauty.  We were careful on the way home to not step on any leaves, an almost impossible task where they live, and yet, my heart is tender in reflection, in caring for the ground on which we walk, and what’s underneath.

As I gather age rings like the trunk of a tree, I feel myself expanding into widening rings of youth.  I branch and leaf. I’m free.  And the children’s song from Marlo Thomas and Friends comes to me: Free to Be …. You and Me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCUGMMEF2Zk

Each Tree Trunk and Leaf, Unique!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Ripening

I’m slowly reading Joan Chittister’s book The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.  

And, of course, this can apply to any of us at any age.  There’s always someone to mentor.

Chittister: 

Now, too, we have a responsibility to mentor the generations after us in the values and ideals that built a society based on equality, respect for others, and pluralism. More than that, we have the spiritual responsibility to see life as a moral force rather than simply a private enterprise.

We need to come to understand to the center of our souls that age is not a disease.  It is a new experience in how to live life, how to milk it dry of goodness, of energy, of gratitude, of calm and quiet creativity.  

The burden of a lack of commitment to accomplishment means that we have moved into a period of suspended animation, that aging is nothing more than deterioration.  The truth is that aging means aging. Nothing more, nothing less. It is just us grown ripe.

The blessing of a commitment to accomplishment is that, as we continue to bring out considerable skills, experience, and insight to bear on the present needs of humankind, we will certainly become wiser, definitely spiritually stronger, and more than ever a blessing to the rest of society.

Emily Dickinson wrote: We turn not older with years, but newer every day.

Pelicans in formation at Rodeo Beach

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Contemplation

I’ve been immersing myself in meditation, specifically in Satipatthana meditation, with a current focus on the anatomy of the body, the parts, and the elements of the body, earth, water, fire, wind, and space.

I had blood drawn early this morning after fasting since yesterday afternoon.  It went easily and well, and when he finished, he asked me to write my whole name in cursive, then, print, and then write who I was signing for.  Since I was clearly the one whose blood had been taken and the one signing, I felt unclear on what to write, so I asked, “Do I write me?”  “You write self”, he said.  Self.  

My meditation is currently on not-self, no-self, not-me, no me.  Of course I know not to take it literally, so I can function in the real world, but somehow in that moment without my morning coffee, I felt the obvious as unclear.  

He’d just drawn beautiful red blood with its lovely qualities of fluidity and cohesion into two tubes, and labeled it as coming from me, and it will be analyzed to determine my health, so why did I struggle to consider the word “self” to document my experience.

That brings me to an Amy Poehler joke on aging. “My memory is like a cat. It doesn’t come when called.” 

Another piece of this was I could hear and feel his steady breathing as the blood flowed into the tubes, so I matched mine with his, and I threw in a little calm, as I knew he had a full day ahead of him, and I felt we were bonded in an act of intimacy for a time.

This act of meditating has me viewing life differently, and I see that as a good thing whether I’m me, this man, the lab, the rain when I walk outside and the ripening sky as day comes to light.

With gratitude, I listen and receive, honoring I’m, “constantly being re-created”.  

Brenda Ueland:

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really

listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that

we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.”  

The creek rushing through Mill Valley, exuberant from all the rain.
A miniature Gravity Train planter outside Gravity Tavern

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 1 Comment

Ripening Wisdom Shared

In connecting with friends this year, I’m honoring the words of Georgia O’Keefe. “To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”

I’m honoring that going through what I’ve accumulated in 70 years of living is a process of seeing, mindfulness, absorbing, reflecting, and choosing what I need now.  In this I feel a deepening in my relationship with my friends, a deeper, clearer look at how we grow and what we share.

Last night I saw Gary Snyder and Jane Hirshfield speak at the Mill Valley library.  300 people had registered and were let in first. Then, about fifty of us waited to see if there was room for us.  Those who had registered but arrived past the 6:45 cut-off time were demanding to be let in. There was intense energy at the front door as Angie Brennan, the head librarian, explained over and over again the rules of access. You would have thought we were trying to get into a rock concert.  Finally room was made for us all though some of us stood.

Jane Hirshfield spoke first, and was wonderful as always, but Gary was a little more of a rambler since I last saw him. He began with remembering back to when he was 7 and came to the MV Library.  He said it hadn’t changed. The beautiful structure, though reinforced, is intact. 

 He then rambled through the decades, sometimes off by one or two, but what’s the difference between the 1950’s and 60’s  when you’re going to be 90 in May. His history is fantastic, and listening to him, I saw why the mandala is such a lovely image for the self, especially as we expand on decades.  With maturity, we are spinning in a circle, never quite sure where the dial will land with what we want to share.

Be patient with we elders, I say to the young.  Our wisdom is run through a blender, and we’re in the process of pureeing the chunks.

Moss outside the library – lush with rain

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Simplicity

More and more I’m caught on simplicity.  Perhaps it’s simply overload. I sit entranced with my morning cup of coffee and all who were involved in its travel to me.  I listen to birds chirping in trees and see them building nests which they protect when I walk by.

I’m aware of climate change.  I check the tide table when I come and go, and yet, in this moment, looking out on green and gray and listening to birds singing, my heart is a beacon of trust, gratitude and the swelling trust in love.

Today I read Angeles Arrien on the Gold Gate we enter as we age. Tomorrow for my friend Elaine’s birthday celebration as she turns sixty, she’s requested we gather at Baker Beach and pick up trash, remove what doesn’t belong there on this beautiful beach.

We’ll look at the Golden Gate from the ocean side, and perhaps that’s what it is to age.  To look back and release what we no longer need so we can see more clearly the miracle of water meeting sand, both changing with the tides.

Elaine Chan-Scherer took this photo from Baker Beach and when we go tomorrow, it will be a different sort of day.