I was raised that Thanksgiving was about the Native Americans helping those who came to their land to survive.  It was about giving, sharing, relationship, and fragility.  

Today I read that President Lincoln first declared Thanksgiving a holiday because he felt the nation had been blessed in fighting for freedom during the Civil War even though it was still going on.

President Roosevelt changed the date so there would be more time to shop before Christmas.  Read this and laugh at how silly we are:  

https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2019/11/28/when-president-roosevelt-tried-to-save-christmas-and-america-ended-up-with-two-thanksgivings/#344dfcdd53fe

For me, it’s a day to come to peace, to savor and rest, gather and feast, and it’s not just one day; it’s more.   

I rise at five, make two pie crusts for pumpkin pies, and place them in the fridge to meld before I roll them out.  

Then I mix sugar, spices, eggs, pumpkin, and evaporated milk.  One pie is in the oven and the other will go in soon. I make cranberry sauce with fresh cranberries, spices, sugar, and orange juice.  Cranberries pop with heat. Yum! Yum!

The house is smelling like pumpkin, cranberries, and because I always buy an evergreen wreath before Thanksgiving and hang it inside, fresh pine.

I walk outside.  Rain in the night brings forth sweet smells.  I’m alive with gratitude and trust that this time of harvest can focus on gathering and harvesting ease, connection, love, and peace.

Yesterday I’m sitting by the bay when four children pass by – four boys.  They are serious, and the older one is explaining how to catch fish. The younger ones ask questions.  This is serious play.  

I don’t know why they aren’t in school but I’m grateful they aren’t.  They don’t catch any fish while I’m there but that’s not the point.

A seal frolics; boats pass, and birds float and fly.  Peace twines.  

I walk outside at 5:30 this morning.  Stars are shining and an owl hoots.

I come inside to be with Tiger and Bella who are grateful the heater is running.

It’s the week of Thanks Giving – giving thanks.

I finished Timothy Egan’s book last night, A Pilgrimage to Eternity, about his pilgrimage on the Via Francigena, the path from Canterbury to Rome.

As I processed the book, I traveled in my dreams, trying new things.  I hit a home run though I haven’t held a baseball bat in years.

At the Abbey of San Caprasio, founded in 884, Egan asks Father Gilvanni Perini what kind of pilgrim stops at his outpost.  Father Perini responds that people are searching for something and they learn how to think clearly. He says people used to take a siesta in the afternoon.  Now they work, work, work, all the time. They don’t have time to think.

“Then they start walking on the Via Fancigena.  Now they have time. More time than ever in their life. They are not used to having time to think.  They are out of practice. A lot of people on the Via, they won’t even go into a church. They say that they’re walking to practice mindfulness.”  He stifles a chuckle. “Mindfulness.  They used to call it living.”

And in the Cathedral of Santa Margherita, the author has an experience I won’t describe, but it makes one wonder, or believe more firmly in what surrounds us, in more than we usually see.  

The book honors kairos time, which opens a door to forgiveness, as it’s not linear time, but a time for action. What can release?

And these words “The way is made by walking. There is no way,” seem to be attributed to a great many, which may serve to thread the universality of giving steps to land.

Savor this week of gathering. Step out of linear and into kairos time.

Today I attended a Leadership Transition Ceremony for Veteran’s PATH.   Eleven years ago, my friend and teacher Lee Klinger Lesser and her friend and a Soto Zen Buddhist priest and teacher Chris Fortin created a program Honoring the Path of the Warrior which is now Veteran’s PATH.

I wish I had words for the depth of love in the room, the sharing of open hearts and tears of gratitude, love, healing, and peace.

Years ago, when I first met some of the vets I was struck by their integrity, honor and stance.  They were part of the Sensory Awareness workshops in which I participated and they brought a sense of service, and I learned more of what is required of those who defend freedom in the world.  I learned of their wounds, and perhaps in that, understood more of what my father experienced during World War II, and what my grandfather endured in World War I. I understood warriors share a bond.   

PATH in Veteran’s Path stands for Peace, Acceptance, Transformation, and Honor.

Charlotte Selver, my first teacher of Sensory Awareness said:

“If you have two things – the willingness to change, and the acceptance of everything as it comes, you will have all you need to work with.”

These words guide the veterans, as do Charlotte’s words, “A moment is a moment.”

I share the creed of Veteran’s PATH.  May it guide us all.  

Veteran’s PATH Creed

I live a life of meaning, purpose and joy.

I practice meditation and mindfulness with discipline, commitment and curiosity.

I cultivate an attitude of generosity, kindness and service.

I contribute to the safe and welcoming community of Veteran’s PATH.

I value the importance of each moment. I know this moment matters and I commit to make a difference now.

I use difficulties and challenges as opportunities to learn.

I will not turn away from my inherent wholeness or the wholeness of others.

I will use my own healing to support the healing of others.

I will use my energy, heart and spirit to ease suffering and cultivate compassion and connection.

I journey forward on a PATH of peace, acceptance, transformation and honor.

We are approaching the end of the year, which is a time of presents and presence.  It is a time to give. If you’re looking for a place to give to heal the world, I suggest you check out Veteran’s PATH.  We heal together, and as those in our military are trained, we leave no one behind.   

Check them out at: https://www.veteranspath.org

I go to bed early these days though it seems late, but then I rise at 2 or 3, light a candle, sit with a cat on my lap and peel layers of velvet in the dark.

Last night I watched as dusk came, a soft blend of violet deepening into black.

This morning I feel my heart as I take in the news, news so depressing one can only use it as a knife to open and carve even more deeply and gently into the tints and hues of how we love.

My book group met yesterday and we discussed Anne Patchett’s Dutch House.  It deals with forgiveness, but also how we each might be inspired to “do good” or “be good”.  What does that mean to each of us, and how do we receive another’s needs even as we process and proceed with our own?

We also discussed how influenced we might be by family patterns and habits.  How do we choose, form, and cultivate our way? How do we listen and bring forth what is ours to bring forth in our lives, right here, right now, this amazing, miraculous, unique day?

I have no answers other than to know that when I’m up early, I seem touched by radiance as though I’m a candle and the wick is lit from within.  

Lately, I find myself with the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, her focus on the iris, and I come to one I painted years ago, though I don’t paint but something drew my hand needing to come through.  I look at it now and it’s as though the flower is a figure dancing at the end of a delicate branch.  

May your day evolve transitioning softly light to dark and dark to light as mine does now.  Again there is a purple tint in the wrap of fog, layers of fragrance, skinned, like trust revealed and held in the center, the core, the ovary of the flower we are, the berth that births.

A friend is losing her memory.  It’s tragic to watch, and frightening.  What does it mean for me?

I woke in the night, rose, and meditated, feeling my way, knowing I can’t control what happens, and ironically memories keep flowing in.  I think of Annie Dillard’s words in her book, An American Childhood.  “Living, you stand under a waterfall.”

She asks, “What does it feel like to be alive?”

Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!

It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation’s short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”

I sit with that today.  

The day comes to light with a rose-pink glow.  I’m touched, invited outside. It’s the time of the Full Moon and meteor showers.  Mercury visibly passed by the sun yesterday. We’re invited into a wider world than the particulars that may absorb us at times.  We in the Northern hemisphere, are entering a magical time of year, more darkness in which to feel the Light.

Yesterday my Sensory Awareness group worked with our shoulder blades, with laying back to feel them fully, and in feeling that support, feeling our front.  First, we looked at a tree, no front or back, though one part may face north or south, but a lovely receptivity to all parts of the tree, and in that, to all parts of ourselves.  How does my back meet my front? How does front meet back? How much support do I feel from the circulation of air, from the back of a chair or from the floor?

Connecting with myself, I connect with the wider world of which I’m part.

This comes from Writer’s Almanac today. “On this day in 1980, the NASA space probe Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Saturn, 40,000 miles from the top of the gas giant’s cloud layer … Voyager 1‘s images reveal seven main rings, each named with a letter of the alphabet and made up of thousands of strands held in formation by the gravitational pull of the planet and its dozens of moons. The rings are made of ice particles — some as big as a car — and bits of debris from broken up moons, comets, and asteroids. Voyager 1 also discovered the “shepherd moons”: Prometheus and Pandora, small moons that interact with Saturn’s “F” ring and keep it separate from the other rings.”

How exciting is that, and that was almost 40 years ago.  What is ours to discover, uncover, and explore today?

Invite and give yourself a pause. 

Allow the lids to slip over the balls of the eyes.

How do you receive? 

How is vision now?

Many of us were raised to look for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and sometimes it seems to set down on someone I know, but I read Ovid now and consider how gold might be spread, and how many transitions and levels there might be in each of us as we meet each moment as it comes.

Ovid, Metamorphoses

The threads that touch seem the same, but the extremes are distant, as when, often, after a rainstorm, the expanse of the sky, struck by sunlight, is stained by a rainbow in one vast arch, in which a thousand separate colours shine, but the eye itself still cannot see the transitions.  There, are inserted lasting threads of gold, and an ancient tale is spun on the web.

It’s Veteran’s Day, a day to bow our heads as we come to understand how to speak to each other in ways that open empathic threads as ways to connect.

My grandson has a new little cousin.  Two new babies are in the world, well, more than that, of course, but my focus is on these two, a boy and a girl.

I’m also entranced with toes and feet.  The toes on a baby’s foot are amazing, like little pearls, and yet, that foot won’t touch the ground for months.  It feels like hallowed ground, and has me aware of my feet, and how I touch the ground.

I feel such reverence in my steps these days as though each one is a stone tossed in a pond rippling outward in circles. How carefully do I touch the ground with my 70 years?

What resonates in the meeting and all that’s involved in each step, that range of motion in each foot and ten delightful and delighted toes?

I am a swing, a merry-go round, a ferris wheel, a playground of excitement and moment to moment, and daily, yearly thrills!

I’m grateful for life, and the cycles that renew, grateful for expansiveness and the connective weave of breath.