It’s Saturday in August, vacation time, and there’s a scent of fall, a shift in the light, morning light later, evening dark earlier. I feel the shift inside.
I woke this morning from dreams that were rich, inviting, exciting. In my dreams, I walked across a multitude of bridges rising steeply like the initial climb of a roller coaster. I looked off to the side though there was no railing, and all was blue water and sky and tall sailing ships flowing by.
Even in the dream, it felt like a dream, like Oz. Flowers opened their petaled hands, and then, knowing it was time to go home, I entered a small boat and motored across the sea to wake in my bed with Tiger snuggled close to me.
I lay there, stretched on inner guidance, felt acupuncture from within.
This upcoming Full Moon is the Sturgeon Full Moon in honor of the freshwater fish that filled rivers and lakes in North America before overfishing, pollution, and damage to their habitat destroyed their numbers.
Out hiking with two friends many years ago I saw what I thought was a sturgeon making its way up Redwood Creek. I questioned when I read today that sturgeon are freshwater fish, but then I learn we have White Sturgeon on the Pacific coast and they move between ocean and freshwater but not with the consistency of salmon and steelhead.
I think the sturgeon I saw was the Jonathan Livingston Seagull of the Sturgeon World.
And that brings me to this, a wonderful philosophy for today and everyday.
WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING TODAY DO IT WITH THE CONFIDENCE OF A 4 YEAR OLD IN A BATMAN T-SHIRT.
The fog is always different here. It floats in and out and sometimes disappears but today it moves like a leopard, the sky peeking through like reverse spots. The spots on leopards are called rosettes because they resemble the shape of a rose.Fog spots open and close, as they come together and let go.
Now the fog momentarily changes course. It lines up like a spine.
I’m very aware of my own spine because I’ve now had two Alexander Technique sessions. I chose to begin this work because I realized we are living in times where we have to speak. I need to loosen up my vocal cords, release my throat and neck and look around like an animal on the savanna emerging from the woods. I need to be clear on predator and prey, and nourish my energy for pouncing strength.
This morning I’m with this quote from Anne Frank:
“Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes… Families are torn apart: men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find their parents have disappeared.”
And it’s happening here, in this country, in 2019.
I was speaking with a friend from Toastmasters this week. I left the club a few years ago to focus on my book.
My friend said the club is now filled with people in their forties which is good as our club was on the elderly side but she said these younger people don’t know history we lived through and take for granted.
They didn’t live through the Vietnam era. They didn’t watch the news every night on TV, the same news that everyone in the country watched. They didn’t eat dinner seeing body bags coming home. They didn’t live when there was a draft so the military was made up of a range of backgrounds and ethnicities. Everyone was invested in whether their draft number was high or low.
Eliminating the draft changed the composition of the military, and in addition, war has become, even more dramatically, a money-making enterprise. Blackwater, a privately owned military company, makes money paying mercenaries to fightwithout allegiance to ethics or cause.
Today the photo of Melania holding a baby orphaned in the mass shooting in El Paso is shocking. She and Trump are smiling as he does a thumbs-up. Thumbs up for what? What can they be thinking? What don’t they understand?
Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, shares this today in his daily meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation. He is encouraging each of us to honor our inner mystic, bring it forth.
Episcopal priest Matthew Fox writes:
The crises we find ourselves in as a species require that as a species we shake up all our institutions—including our religious ones—and reinvent them. Change is necessary for our survival, and we often turn to the mystics at critical times like this. Jung said: “Only the mystics bring creativity into religion.” Jesus was a mystic shaking up his religion and the Roman empire; Buddha was a mystic who shook up the prevailing Hinduism of his day; Gandhi was a mystic shaking up Hinduism and challenging the British Empire; and Martin Luther King, Jr. shook up his tradition and America’s segregationist society. The mystics walk their talk and talk (often in memorable poetic phraseology) their walk.
Rohr writes that Howard Thurman (1900–1981) was “a mystic who sought to make peace between religions and founded the first major interracial, interfaith church in the United States, urged people to “listen for the sound of the genuine.” Rohr shares excerpts from one of Thurman’s talks.
There is something in everyone of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and if you can not hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born. . . .
Sometimes there is so much traffic going on in your minds, so many different kinds of signals . . . and you are buffeted by these and in the midst of all of this you have got to find out what your name is. Who are you? . . .
Now there is something in everybody that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. . . . I must wait and listen for the sound of the genuine in you. . . .
Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall that separates and divides will disappear and we will become one because the sound of the genuine makes the same music.
I have wanted to avoid politics on this blog, but when I asked my friend how she brought Vietnam into Toastmasters where politics is forbidden, she said Vietnam was not a political issue. It was a moral one.
When Rodin conceived a sculpture that would depict the poet Dante, he didn’t realize it would evolve beyond representing Dante to representing all poets and creators. May we do the same!
Rodin’s The Thinker outside the Legion of Honor, facing out –
I’m not feeling well today, so enjoying the sanctity of home, I dip into trees as they’re sliced into paper to anchor words in books. The living trees look into this room, approving this bound way to transform.
I peruse book shelves until one book calls and a page beckons. I look up and a hummingbird flutters by offering nectar to my heart.
I’m feeling peace around my brother’s passing on April 14. As I talk to people, I learn more and more I’m not alone. We bond in the bands that are stretched and expanded, offering horizons beyond what we see or logically know. We loosen what’s caught.
Today, I’m drawn to open W.S. Merwin’s book, “Present Company”. I come to this poem.
To ______________
There is no reason
for me to keep counting
how long it has been
since you were here
alive one morning
as though I were
letting out the string
of a kite one day at a time
over my finger
when there is no string
I sit with that, aware that the tsunami of tears has calmed. Moisture fills my eyes and heart, the moistening connection that never severs, only lengthens and strengthens each breath, no strings attached.
Rocks that form a turtle coming out of a rock-hard shell
This morning I’m with two things, this quote by Toni Morrison: If you want to fly, you have to give up things that weigh you down.
And David Brooks, an opinion columnist in the New York Times writing about Marianne Williamson and how she is the one to beat Trump with her message which is an uprising of decency. Wow!
We’re ripe for change, and yes, a return to decency, ethics, and morality, a return to speaking openly of love and how we’re wired to care.We thrive on connection.
Yesterday, my intention was to spend time with Rodin’s sculptures at the Legion of Honor. Reading about how he worked spirit into clay had me inspired to again visit his work but then the fog around the Legion led me down steps, many steps, to the beach, and rocks that seem like animals held still and a low tide that revealed starfish, or sea stars, as they are otherwise known, and anemone waiting patiently for the return of the sea.
I love the summer fog, its wrap of mystery, mysticism, and mist. It opens dreams.
Yesterday, my Sensory Awareness group, a quartet, met on a Zoom call. We were exploring balance and dizziness by noticing and experimenting with different ways to be with our tongue which leads to examination of all. At one point, Siri joined in, and said, “I can’t help you with that.” How right she is. There are enjoyments and moments only we can create.
As I felt my tongue, allowed it out into the air flickering and tasting like a snake, my breath changed. I felt my tongue like a tail, yes, an augmentation to my balancing act. When I allowed my head to come forward, I felt the muscles around my occiput let go, and sinuses filled with fresh air. My eyes bloomed, and breath came, breath came up from the earth into my feet, up through my heart, and into the air, a shower, an embrace.
Perhaps this sounds silly but maybe today you’ll feel inclined to place a finger on the muscular organ that is your tongue. Maybe a quiver of intention will sharpen your attention as you honor this place the Egyptians called the Rudder of the Soul.
I’m noticing now that when I’m involved in a task, my tongue often comes out to help. It offers ballast and balance.
After this exploration with friend tongue, I went to my local grocery store, Good Earth, and chose three bunches of fresh basil. Unwilling to stifle or stuff them in a bag, I carried them through the store like a bouquet.
Home, I rinsed the leaves, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, then, garlic, a little salt, and then slowly pouring in olive oil pulsed it all together in the food processor. Presto, pesto!
I felt such gratitude in doing this simple task that I felt compassion for those so burdened with servants that they may never have worked with or prepared their own food, never washed a favorite dish. It’s a balance of course, but Steve and I are living in gratitude these days, each moment, pure grace.
And thanks to easy information access, I learn that the tongue is anchored to the floor of the mouth, and various muscles keep it “suspended” in the throat.
And so, I bring it out to play, and run it back and forth between my teeth, mind in teeth meeting flexibility and strength, the wave that is the tongue.
Sunset last night – moon floats off to the right – a rudder for the sky
I’m both fuzzy and clear this morning. My sense is that I’m wrapped in a cocoon and there’s clarity in the cocoon, well, not clarity so much as trust, that this is a momentary resting place where I dismantle, dissolve, and reassemble, honoring presence along the way.
I sit with fear, fear that one could go to a shopping mall and be shot, and I know in truth that something can always happen, so this fear is irrational, and yet it’s there. And I go even further with my scenario. Would I be the one killed, injured, or the one left behind, and what does any of that mean in terms of my living, being, doing, this moment, this day?
I can make myself crazy or I can honor that we never know and so it is to be present, present, present, and in this moment, I’m happily ensconced in a cocoon of some semblance of a body, and some wrapping of a home that’s surrounded by plants I care for as they care for me.
Yesterday I shared an Emily Dickinson Poem, “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain”.
I had listened to Billy Collins and Marie Howe discuss the ambiguity of the poem, the nuance, and multiple meanings.
A friend questioned the last line concerned because it ended with a dash. Had I forgotten to post the whole poem? Well, that’s Emily; she loved her dashes.
Researching the poem further, I now learn that not all editions include this last stanza, but, for me, it’s the most important of all.
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –
Why do I and others find this poem important? In living, we play with the ground, with the responding aliveness and lift from the pull of gravity. We’re in a dance, and yet, for many of us, when we start to question our “existence”, there comes an awareness of the space between the molecules. Where is our support? We’re mainly air.
Her “then” and dash open up this dance of connection and exchange. We don’t know what she “Finished knowing”, but we know that she wrote and examined and explored her inner world and she did her domestic tasks. Her inner world was vastand she “went downstairs and made cookies”, as Collins and Howe put it.
This poem reminds me of the work of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido. He said we’re always coming back to balance. Think of walking. Unless we shuffle, there’s great courage in allowing one foot to leave the ground, explore the air, and come back down. We may do it thoughtlessly, unconsciously, but when slowed down and analyzed, we can see it is a big deal to take a step.
For her, a “plank in reason” broke, and she fell down, down, down. Did she fall down into her own knowing, essence, and strength as she explored world after world?Did her “fall” take her further downward or bring her out? She leaves the poem open for our own exploration, for us to figure out.
I prefer to believe that she fulfilled what Morihei Ueshiba spoke of when he said:
“Iron is full of impurities that weaken it; through forging, by exposure to heat, cold and hammering, the impurities are forced out and the ironis transformed into razor-sharp steel. Human beings develop in the samefashion.”
I think Emily Dickinson used poetry as a way to forge, hammer, examine, and transform, and that is why she leaves the poem with a simple word and a dash – next –
And with that the breath moves in and out like summer fog on a ridge.
It’s Bay area cool where I live so I’m curious about where the term “dog days of summer” originated. I thought it might have to do with days where we lengthen our tongues into ice cream scoops.
Now I learn that in the summer, Sirius, the brightest star visible from any part of Earth and part of the constellation, Canis Major, the Greater Dog, rises and sets with the sun. The term refers to the 20 days before and the 20 days after the alignment of Sirius with the Sun – July 3 to August 11 – so we’re in the dog days of summer, and because dogs wisely lie down and reflect, I’m in contemplative mode.
My mother was raised Christian Science and she simplified it for me to “All is Love”. That philosophy has served me well. Therefore I’m puzzled these days because lately there seems to be a great deal of humor and angst about whether the word “love” is appropriate in political discussion.
Mahatma Gandhi used nonviolent resistance to free India from the ruling domination of the British. I’m sure at the time it seemed futile, but as Margaret Mead is said to have said, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
For me, that commitment is the love of which my mother spoke.
The star Sirius, though white to blue-white in color, radiates in our sky with many colors. She, and somehow I see her as a she, can be seen as a rainbow star, a twinkling composite signaling change.
Bella loves to rest in curves – no straight lines for her
I thought that August is a month with no set holidays and therefore it’s meant to be celebrated jubilantly and spaciously each of its 31 days. Then, this morning I read that today is Ice Cream Sandwich Day, International Beer Day, and National Coloring Book Day. Tomorrow is Watermelon Day.
What is this human need to name and categorize?
Yesterday my son introduced me to Catherine Ingram and her article on “Facing Extinction”. Okay, that isn’t the most inviting way to begin a day that celebrates ice cream sandwiches, beer, and coloring books, but she moves through categories, essential categories and comes to Love, the binding fabric we share.
Jonathan Franzen, winner of the National Book Award and many other literary honors, writes in his latest book The End of the End of the Earth: “Even in a world of dying, new loves continue to be born.” This is now the time to give yourself over to what you love, perhaps in new and deeper ways. Your family and friends, your animal friends, the plants around you, even if that means just the little sprouts that push their way through the sidewalk in your city, the feeling of a breeze on your skin, the taste of food, the refreshment of water, or the thousands of little things that make up your world and which are your own unique treasures and pleasures. Make your moments sparkle within the experience of your own senses, and direct your attention to anything that gladdens your heart. Live your bucket list now.
And she concludes with words of Leonard Cohen:
“It is in love that we are made; in love we disappear.”
There are a great many of us sharing the planet today. In 1952, there were 2.6 billion people on the planet. Now, there are 7.7 billion.
I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1949 though we moved to Ames, Iowa when I was six weeks old. Now I live in the San Francisco bay area. No wonder I often feel overwhelmed with the numbers of people, the crowds. I like solitude and nourishing on, and in, my own space.
Today as I look out, fog moves in to cloak blue sky and I pull into the flow of my blood, the marrow in muscles doing tiny push-ups and sit-ups of their own. I am an ecosystem. My lungs branch and reflect the branches of the trees which now lean in close since most of what I see is gray, but now wait, a lighter gray and further trees reveal, and I choose now where to place my visionary plate.
Tiny birds are twittering outside my window and bouncing up and down on the branches of the redwood tree. I feel an empathetic lift in me.
I’m also lifted on words from Samantha Wallen who was a writing coach, guide, and inspiration for me in writing my book Airing Out the Fairy Tale.
In her July newsletter she featured my book and our work together, and her work with an organization called EIT, “Entrepreneurs in Training”. She writes of going to Soledad prison where she and other volunteers were greeted enthusiastically by the men gathered there, how deeply they were affected as they settled in to listen to the gifts of men’s stories.
She writes, “Some of them run film production for the entire state system, some are electrical engineers and keep the tech and electricity running smoothly for the prison, some are liaisons between their cohorts and the warden and hold mentorship roles because they take the opportunity to grow and learn. Many have awesome business skills and ideas they are ready to implement with the right resources and support!”
She continues, “But the #1 story I heard over and over again was, “I want to serve, to give back, to have an impact and make a difference with the one precious life I’ve been given.”
Isn’t this what we all want, to serve, give back, have an impact, and make a difference with the one precious life we’ve been given?
I sit with that as I sit with Samantha’s words on Airing Out the Fairy Tale. She writes, “In her book Cathy says, “The journey to Nepal was a journey of reconciliation with myself, claiming all my parts, looking into mirrors to see other than what I’d known.”
She says that “telling your story is an intimate act. It is an act of freedom. Receiving someone else’s story is also an act of intimacy and freedom. It brings us closer to ourselves, closer to our fellow humans, closer to the pulse of life. It is a place to “be with the gods, to be where the air churns with prayer,” as Cathy so beautifully said of her experience in Nepal in her book.”
I consider now how a book is offered and then the question becomes how it might be received. Am I affected when you read my words? Am I the birds or the branch, the air or the tree?
If you are interested in bringing forth your own book, or learning more about Samantha, click here; https://writeinpower.com
My journey honoring and celebrating the precious life I’ve been given
Cathy's Blog! 