I find myself in transition, the butterfly in the chrysalis, the moth in the cocoon.  In this place, I monitor stimulation. Photos seem too much. Perhaps it was the time without electricity, the being in the dark that brought me here.

Maybe it’s also related to this being the time of my birth.  It’s a time for rippling outward, as another circle is added to the stone thrown into the fluidity of this world with my arrival. I open out with each year until I reach a different type of shore.

I feel tender, aware that this dismantling of ego to receive the flow that is always here for us, is no simple task, and yet, viewing it as a task is the problem.  It’s simply to open to the connectivity we are, the interbeing as Thich Nhat Hanh says. Everything relies on everything else in order to manifest.

Joseph Campbell says, “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

The experience of being alive, and in that, I feel the partnership of veins and arteries, the beat and pulse that carries blood to and from my heart, and the veins and arteries that running unseen, connect us all.

Today I pulled into rest.  I woke this morning, a heart of contentment.

I’m savoring spider webs, so striking in autumn light.

The shining webs remind me of Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White where Wilber asks his spider friend Charlotte why she did so much for him and saved his life.

“Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.” 

Resting, I’m with Thich Nhat Hanh’s book How To Love.  

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.

Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.

I’m also reading Jojo Moyes book, The Giver of Stars.  It’s historical fiction, based on the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky. Encouraged by Eleanor Roosevelt, a mobile library was set up by the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. Women on horses and mules brought books, materials, and connection to those unable to come into towns.

All of this has me awaiting the rising of the Hunter’s Moon.  Tomorrow it will be full, but tonight, it’s a glorious beacon in the sky, announcing how radiance from one object shines on and affects another. 

Rest with the ease of the moon reflecting light from the sun.  

Peace!

Power is back on which means seeing lanterns, candles, and a headlamp lying about ready to be put away for next time.  Perhaps there is something about the dark which indulges and includes, but the dishwasher has run, and laundry is happening, and I find myself considering grief.

I realize it’s six months since my brother passed away – six months.

I think of pain, how deeply it carves the flesh.  And it’s not just about the pain of losing my brother, which may be tied to loss in general, a loss of family members and friends, and a different type of loss, a loss of democracy, a loss of order, which requires a recognition that we don’t have control.  I have tons of inspirational quotes on surrender, but today I sit with a wider awareness, an expansiveness that allows me to touch the different forms and ways in which spirit flows through. I watch Bella, my beloved cat, as she sleeps and breathes.

I am a 2 on the Enneagram, which means relationship is important to me.  I find pleasure in giving, in anticipating what another might need, but how can I know what another needs?  How do I know what I need? When I work with John Baron and the Alexander Technique, I see how ready I am to help.  I tighten in expectation of how to help. It’s hard for me to let go, to curve into letting go, rather than what I perceive as a more straightforward holding on approach.

I understand that as I change habitual patterns, my world will change, and I feel that happening, and still there will be a return, and all of it is so visceral.  I struggle with this letting go, and these two days without power perhaps gives me more of a leaning into what can be, and what is.

All of this has me considering what we’re up against in this country right now.  We have outside forces working to disrupt, and a government that appears compromised with a head who has no awareness or concept of morality, ethics, right action or right speech.

In high school, I learned about the Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850.  I believe in compromise, and yet compromise didn’t halt the horrors of the Civil War between 1861 and 1865.  

The nation is divided right now.  I sit with that, sit with sorrow and grief, as I watch first Trump, and then Steve Kerr, a master of morality in opposition to what must end, and soon, for all of our sakes.

I returned home to see a huge buck jump over my neighbor’s very high wood fence. Wow!

In the past, there were no obvious fences here, and the deer roamed freely and had their babies in our yards, but now new neighbors put up fences, so we’re fenced in, and I feared the deer might be fenced out. Therefore, I was delighted to see this buck jump right out of their newly landscaped yard. What a treat! Because we’ve been outside so much at night with the power outage, we’ve been hearing browsing down below our deck, and it was wonderful to see in full leap the reason why.

Also, it seems complaints about PGE and their lack of response leapt into gear today, leapt as high as the deer, and so power is back on which means we can water our yard and children can go back to school. Hooray!

Our power is out so I’m camped at Steve’s office after early morning coffee at Peets, and a return to home to shower.   

This morning I watched people stagger in for their caffeine lift. Two women had pulled a coat on over their flannel pajamas, and as though sleep-walking moved along murmuring coffee, coffee, as they wound their way to their chosen source  of renewal.

Before that though, an early morning gift was going outside around three or four to place blankets and pillows on the deck, and resting face up, watch the stars.  With all the lights out in our area, I could see dimensions and layers of stars, knowing some were whole galaxies, not just stars. I saw five meteors flash.

All of this meant I didn’t read the news until 1:30 today.  I find it hard to believe.

It’s Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  One man’s son is here also as his high school is closed to honor the day, and, yet, we are observing a humanitarian crisis, innocent people killed.  Why?

I come to this poem for support.

A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself

nothing but a flimsy web

of questions, you are given

the questions of others to hold

in the emptiness of your hands,

songbird eggs that can still hatch

if you keep them warm,

butterflies opening and closing themselves

in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure

their scintillant fur, their dust.

You are given the questions of others

as if they were answers

to all you ask. Yes, perhaps

this gift is your answer.

~ Denise Levertov ~

Last night the not yet half moon was a beacon in the sky spreading light.  It seems as though as the days shorten, the moon offers even more light. Plants respond to the change in how to receive as do we.

Yesterday coming back from Woodside, we and other cars were speeding along 280 when traffic came to a halt.  We creeped along for 30 minutes, or so, and then came upon the reason why. A horrific crash left crushed cars spread across two lanes of the four lane highway.  Lights flashed from trucks and ambulances.  Like that, lives changed.

As each of us looked, and drove past, there was a difference in the quality of the driving, a slow down from the previous 85 to 65, a visceral knowing of fragility and gratitude. It could have been one, or many of us.

I was grateful for the carriage in which I rode. My son who was in a different car on a different freeway, his slowed to 15 mph, pointed out that at the Folger Estate Museum, where we’d just been, we’d been looking at carriages from the past, carriages which would have required days to travel as we were, open carriages with no shock absorbers or air conditioners, and though we were in different cars on different freeways, we were communicating. How amazing is that!

This morning I wake and feel my body responding to seeing such a crunch of metal, a safety we take for granted, feel my spine extending, and again I think of the sea star with it’s five armed reach. I’m living; I move, moved.

Yesterday after brunch we went to the Folger Estate, a former estate now a beautifully preserved museum from the past, the CA past, which includes the Native people, but also those who came in 1840 and divided the land into grants.  Today the buildings are preserved, children are educated, and horses are housed.

We sat under oak and bay trees and savored soft talk.

Today I feel a call to turn my yard toward fall, to be in the preserve that is mine for a time to care for, an extension of my receptors and probes, like fingers and toes.

As I again contemplate this stable designed by Arthur Brown Jr. who later designed the City Hall, Coit Tower, and the Opera House in San Francisco, and the Hoover Tower on the Stanford University campus, I think of how we are told Jesus was born in a stable. I’ve never visualized it quite like this.

Enjoy your day as you expand on the meaning of words, and the mobility, flexibility, and airiness in your tissues, the blessings in this moment, this symphony we share that titled simply is Life.

You can learn more about the Folger Estate here: https://www.huddartwunderlichfriends.org/

I rise and watch the day come to light. My “baby” was born 42 years ago tomorrow. I sit with memories, a sky rising with light. Birth expands around words, like a womb, shared.

October is my birthday month.  I click into a lower gear, preparation for birth perhaps.

I notice, probably as I did in the womb, it’s getting a little crowded in here, time to emerge and trust more space.

Yesterday I went to Rodeo Beach, drawn to the waves, though there was no wind and all was calm.  The beach up close to the cliff is composed of small pebbles so lying there, bare feet and legs, I felt massaged, cells drawn out like periscopes to see and perceive. Oddly I felt like a mermaid even though I was aware of my legs, but my torso seemed predominately core, and I felt so clearly how like a Sea Star, I extend out in all directions, oriented to five, five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot, two arms, two legs, and a head, all reaching to probe and receive.

I played with that while noticing detritus on the beach.  How can we differentiate between life and death when all is so present and involved?

This morning I woke feeling what I interpreted as the quantum field though it felt like bliss.  My heart sparked waves of connection.

Having savored days sitting by the ocean watching waves, I still seem to be floating in a rhythm of up and down, a flow of in and out, a living awareness that light is both particle and wave.  

I’m aware of ankles and wrists, desiring them to open with more fluidity to connect hands and feet, to more clearly meet and expand my ability to receive and touch the inner and outer world.

All of this seems to originate in the area of the heart, a vibrational frequency that comforts and lifts my head on its stem to survey what surrounds in a rise of curiosity.  

I peruse the savanna of my life, the trees, reach back wondering if I can remember living in trees, then climbing carefully down from that safety to explore and stand on two feet.

What unites and invites me now?  I shiver with anticipation as I both reach and wait to receive.

I’m not sure why this little fire hydrant has such meaning for me but it stood steadfastly outside our room in Spanish Bay, like a little sentry ready to protect the trees and me from fire.

I appreciate how it’s painted to blend in.  In certain light, it stands unseen, and I wonder what else I don’t notice or see, depending on the light, and my openness to insight.

I’m also impressed with a push-button fireplace.  I’ve used them before but somehow this time I can’t stop thinking of what’s involved in making a fire: cutting wood, carrying it in, arranging it just right, lighting it, and now we push a button, wait twenty seconds, and voila a fire with a timer, so fire for an hour or two and then it turns itself off. 

I’m reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s third Law: 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)

That brings me to cookies.  I love cookies, all kinds of cookies, chocolate chip, oatmeal, lemon drops, but just like too many cookies in the stomach, too many cookies on a computer can be a problem.  I’ve calmly mentioned that I’ve been having problems posting on WordPress. It seems I needed to delete my cookies. 

At first, I was gingerly going through deleting them one by one, but my son said to delete all of them, and then, choose the ones I want to keep.  It seems we need cookies, but not all of them. I did this, hoping all my problems were solved but that’s not it and so now I’m switching from Safari to Chrome, and a different computer, and trusting technology as magic, I’ll see if this posts. If not, I’ll find a tree to dance around after gathering wood to make a “real” fire. Ah, and it seems this is not the day for that, as here you and I are, blissed in connection, trust shared.

May this day refresh each moment with awareness of changing light and in honor of William Blake, the cultivation and reception of Energy as eternal delight.