I drove to Stinson Beach this morning. I was early enough to be alone on the beach at low tide. When I lay back on the sand, I heard the waves from underneath and all around, pounding jets, surround sound. Sandpipers skittered and one turkey vulture enjoyed a breakfast of decaying seagull.
“Awakening is truly nothing more or less than being right here in this moment, just as it is, and just as we are.”
— JOAN TOLLIFSON
In his four years, I’ve taken a multitude of photos of my grandson but in the last few months, I’ve started asking first, and when I saw him yesterday, he said he appreciated that, and he would let me know if he wanted his picture taken, or not.
I replied that when I don’t see him, I take photos of birds, plants, animals, the landscape, and the ocean. He asked me if I ask them first, and I’ve been thinking about that. I think I do, not directly but with sort of a heart tug of connection and acknowledgment.
Recently I read an article on getting rid of “clutter” and why sometimes it’s difficult. It suggested the “stuff” might also be attached to us. It’s a two-way street. This has allowed me to be more respectful of what, where, and when I release. I find it comforting to acknowledge that it isn’t all about me, but that I live in a world of connection, attachment, and bonds that come together and sometimes fall apart.
The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers
– Matsuo Bashō
When I was a Girl Scout in Des Moines, Iowa, I learned that if I was lost in a forest, to look for moss as it would be growing on the north side of trees. Yesterday at Muir Woods I saw moss growing 360 degrees around a tree. There is moisture at Muir Woods and maybe it is for us to feel and invite fluidity flowing 360 degrees around and in us too.
As to judgment, Ram Dass had this to say:
When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all of that. And you are constantly saying, ‘you’re too this, or I’m too this.’ That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.
Yesterday I saw a man setting up his violin to serenade the trees. The creek was so loud I didn’t hear his playing but I’m sure the trees felt the vibrations and intention stirring through their cells. Today I receive myself as a tree.
This morning I watched the moon through the trees to the west, then turned to greet the morning star. Do we see light more clearly in the dark, beckon contrast that merges in the beating heart? It’s the last day of the month of November, and now we sink like flakes of snow and drops of rain into this month of December, a time of gathering to beckon, birth, integrate, and share light.
Yesterday I fell into Erling Kagge’s beautiful book Silence: In the Age of Noise. He is a Norwegian explorer and the first person to reach the South Pole alone.
He writes:
Americans have built a base even at the South Pole. Scientists and maintenance workers reside there for several months at a time, isolated from the outside world. One year there were ninety-nine residents who celebrated Christmas together at the base. Someone had smuggled in ninety-nine stones and handed out one apiece as Christmas gifts, keeping one for themselves. Nobody had seen stones for months. Some people hadn’t seen stones for over a year. Nothing but ice, snow and man-made objects. Everyone sat gazing at and feeling their stone. Holding it in their hands, feeling its weight, without uttering a word.
Ducks float around my boat. I’m the center of a carousel, a stillpoint, a pole.
I’m with these words of Pablo Neruda:
Does the earth chirp like a cricket in the symphony of the skies?
Which leads me to wonder what sound stirs the water as the feet of the ducks paddle around.
In Charles Genoud’s book, The Body as Presence, he writes;
Munindra, a 20th-century Indian teacher from Bengal, taught that if a meditator is sitting and he knows that he is sitting, then he is meditating.
Sitting, we know we are sitting. Then, standing, walking, lying down, we know the bars that hold the notes, the tune of our heart, harmonizing the parts.
I’m going between two places, a floating home, and a more permanent home. I’ve been struggling with navigating doing laundry and such at night in the permanent home since that requires going through a kitchen that is being remodeled as it is completely emptied and torn apart. Wires burst and hang sadly forth from open walls. It seems 1950’s wiring is not up to code. Who knew?
I feel like a spelunker when I put on my headlamp to navigate through the kitchen in the dark to the garage and the washer and dryer. Why am I not doing it during the day? Because it’s filled with men who know what they’re doing and I don’t. I stay away on a magical float, a houseboat complete with birds surrounding it in its up and down float.
As we move into increasing hours of darkness and the sharpening guide of slanted light, I’m with these words of Thich Nhat Hanh:
Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the earth revolves.
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