Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Networking

Researchers have found that land plants evolved on Earth about 700 million years ago and land fungi evolved about 1,300 million years ago.  Fungi connect with mycelium; they network.  

In reading Robert MacFarlane’s book Is a River Alive?, I learn about Giuliana Furci who is known for her advocacy and research into the fungal kingdom.  Her relationship is such that she can be in a car in a dark forest and sense a certain type of mushroom.

She says about hopping out of a car to discover a colony of Avatar-blue mushrooms, “I didn’t see the mushrooms, exactly.  I heard them. If you know how to listen, fungi just … tell you where they are. I’ll get this feeling that there’s a fungus around. I feel, no, I know, that there’s something – no, somebody – who wants to see me. You get a call-out from them.”

“The fuzz in the matrix. That’s still the best way I can describe it. I can say very definitely that it’s a communication – a two-way interaction.  The fungi know I’m there, as well as the reverse. Fungi have a different vibration to plants and animals. The colours move differently, I find. And fungi has a … shine that’s different to the shine of plants. It’s more … opague. And they have a very different energy than plants – much more of a watery or liquid feel.”  

And now we organize a fluid energy to protest against dictatorship and cruelty. We connect and infiltrate to destroy their plans.

As Henry David Thoreau wrote:  “This is the only way, we say, but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.”

We are radii, connecting through the environmental webs that nourish and sustain us all.  

Mushrooms on the Oakwood Trail in January
Umbrellas for Leprechauns
Transformation Climbs

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Freedom

It’s worth reading all of Heather Cox Richardson today but tears come as I read the conclusion.

President Biden spoke yesterday when world leaders and more than two dozen U.S. veterans of D-Day gathered to commemorate D-Day. They met above Omaha Beach at the Normandy American Cemetery, where the remains of 9,388 Americans, many of whom were killed on D-Day, are buried. 

Biden: “Let us be the generation that when history is written about our time—in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years from now—it will be said: When the moment came, we met the moment. We stood strong. Our alliances were made stronger. And we saved democracy in our time as well.”

During the ceremony, the past and the present came together. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky shook the hand of a U.S. veteran in a wheelchair. When the man tried to kiss Zelensky’s hand, the Ukraine president instead stooped and hugged him. “You’re the savior of the people,” the man said. Zelensky answered, “You saved Europe.” The exchange continued: “You’re my hero.” “No, you are our hero.” 

As the crowd cheered, the old man turned to look at the younger one and said, “I pray for you.”

Prayer

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

A Friend

Today I felt drawn to return to the place where, yesterday, I saw the Great Blue Heron. I felt she was the one I bonded with last February when I stayed on a houseboat in Sausalito. I met a woman who also feels bonded to this bird, and said yes, the bird is here at low tide, and in the place I met her last year at high tide. The woman said, “I love her”, and I said , “As do I”. I share more photos of life in the bay.

I startled her at first and she flew to a new spot
Maybe she wanted to give me a better view because she flew to the dock, landed, and pranced along to a more visible place.
Walking along the dock
Pause for a Pose
Another Pause
A closer look as she turns from one dock to another
And she continues along
Checking out a place to drop
A perfect place to fish for lunch
Golden Slippers now comes strolling along the dock
And finds a spot to enter the water to feed –
Another way to fly
Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 1 Comment

Good Morning

Birds are tweeting in the early morning light as I reflect on these words from Joanna Macy in “Positive Disintegration”.

We can place the self between our ears and have it looking out from our eyes, or we can widen it to include the air we breathe, or at other moments we can cast its boundaries farther to include the oxygen-giving trees and plankton, our external lungs, and beyond them the web of life in which they are sustained.

View from Cavallo Point
Rising
A sparkling jewel
Crossing the Bay
Transit
Breathing in and out
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Memorial Day

We pause and honor those lost in war.  

We pause.

Seeing my hair woven into nests of birds, I give thanks for connection shared.

Mark Nepo:

In a world that lives like a fist, mercy is no more than waking with your hands open.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Going Home

In going through my journals, I come across these words and this experience by Dawn Prince-Hughes.  She has Aspergers.  In wanting to understand human communication, she began sitting outside the window of the enclosure for the silverback gorillas at the Seattle zoo.  One day she arrived upset. Congo, a silverback male gorilla noticed and rushed to the window.  He motioned to her to put her head on his shoulder. They touched through the glass and felt the glass as fluid.

She says: I probably stayed with him like that, with my head on his shoulder, for 30 minutes or so. I think it was probably the first time I was genuinely comforted by another person. Congo really set the standard for what social interactions should be like between me and another human being.  You just can’t worry about looking like a fool. You can’t worry about getting hurt. You can’t worry about whether you’re right or not. It just boils down to wanting to be connected at all costs, at all risks. I no longer wanted to allow the permeability of my spirit to seek smaller and smaller shelters. It requires a completely open heart. I felt like I found a way to go home through the glass.  

Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Reflecting

When someone I love passes, makes a  transition to non-form, I feel a portal open.  I honor the sacred time.

I listen, receive.  

These words of T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets – Little Gidding, comfort me.

And what the dead had no speech for, when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

“Tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”

What vibrates now?    

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Receiving

When I went through chemotherapy, I learned that in receiving, I was giving. I didn’t have the energetic resources to give anything but reception and I saw the gift in that, the beauty of completing a circle of exchange.

Gracious acceptance is an art – an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about receiving things, which can be much harder than giving.
– Alexander McCall Smith.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Earth Day

Today the fog is a wrap as I sit, contemplate, and appreciate the earth I am and the earth where I live.

Water rationing is beginning again so it will be a return to buckets in the shower to capture every drop.  I worry about the plants and explain to them that they, too, need to carefully utilize every drop.

I’m with Thich Nhat Hanh this morning.

We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be; to be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.

Friendship

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Sensory Awareness

I came to Sensory Awareness in 1993 and for me, it’s been a lifeline, a lifeline of fluidity and connection.

Here’s a beautiful offering and taste.

Find a comfortable place to watch and participate as Stefan leads us From Isolation to Connection.