Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Transition

Today, Pico Iyer writes a guest essay in the New York Times about when he lost everything in the 1990 Santa Barbara fire.  He says, “Years later a friend would tell me that the Sufis say that you truly possess only what you cannot lose in a shipwreck.”  Living where I do, I am aware of the fragility of the landscape, and the pulse of impermanence.

I read that Trump is a master of the image, of framing and lighting and that’s useful, of course, as here he is again, and then, there is a place of reality, not fantasy.

He’s moved the Inauguration supposedly because of the cold weather, but I wonder about the image of an inauguration with small crowds, many of whom don’t support his lies and deceit.  Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi will not be there.  The image may be out of his control.

I think of how we open and close doors, of how we allow the eyelids to cover and uncover the eyes.  How do we meet what comes and unify the tides?

View of San Francisco from Sausalito Friday morning
Transport
Invitation

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Intention

Angeles Arrien in her book The Second Half of Life, a guide for elderhood, writes of opening the eight gates of wisdom and cultivating four bones, the Backbone, Wishbone, Funny bone, and Hollow Bone. The Hollow bone is the quality of trust, where we maintain openness, curiosity and faith.

The marrow in our bones is pink, living, rejuvenating, healing, alive.  

Today is the day to tackle the wall of books.  I’ve tackled it before.  Books are passed on, but today I’m set. I scent myself with a gift from my son, perfume from Powell’s bookstore so I smell like a bookstore, a beautifully fragrant one, a combination of male and female, the archetype of my age.  I recognize my home is a library, a resource, source.

I begin with a top shelf – small books live there, and there I’m stopped over and over again by words trickling through me like water flowing in a stream.  Or maybe these words are the rocks in my stream giving me a song as Carl Perkins puts it.  

Dante:  This mountain of release is such that the ascent’s most painful at the start, below: the more you rise, the milder it will be.  And when the slope feels gentle to the point that climbing up sheer rock is effortless as though you were gliding downstream in a boat, then you will have arrived where the path ends.

Looking up from Sausalito

Fragile and soft meets longer-lasting counseling movement within

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Good Morning

I wake early today and go outside to look at the moon.  The owls are hooting and now I know this is the mating call of the Great Horned Owl I’ve been hearing, and male and female are back, and if all goes well, we will have baby owls in late March.   What an omen of Joy!

Yesterday I was watching the crows and the hawks screeching across the sky.  Was it battle or play? It looked like play as though each was perfecting its flight and hanging out as our weeks of rain lead to sun today.

Nature shines through more clearly with the leaves fallen and coating the ground.  Branches stroke the heart with their reach and bend.

I’m with this haiku by Issa this morning.  This is one translation.

Does the woodpecker

stop and listen, too?

evening temple drum 

May your day be one of beauty and peace!

Morning Sky to the East



Morning Sky to the South


Posted on by Cathy Edgett · 4 Comments

Morning Light!

This morning I rose, fed kitties, sat down to meditate. Bella came and sat down on her blanket next to me.  For her, meditation means petting and kissing and she returns the gift by licking me. Bella sees living as reciprocal; she always gives back.  

Finally we settle, Bella and I, and come to rest.  I feel how deeply in this moment I have nothing to do and nowhere to go.  That settling falls through me. I rise in response, a spring, motion, movement, process, though I appear still as a mountain, or do I?  Thoughts pop in – are mountains still?

My lids close over my eyes, gently, tenderly.  After awhile, still covered, the balls of the eyes shift, gently, tenderly, right, then, left.  I’m by the window and feel the coming of light.

I allow the lids of my eyes, the center of my head, to rest and rise as gently and tenderly as the coming of the light.  All is ease. Might I keep this as I move through the day?

My teacher of Sensory Awareness, Charlotte Selver, would bring us to a state of bliss, and then, say, “Forget it!” I didn’t want to forget it, wanted to hold on, but now, I’ve learned, release, and something new comes, so I release as the light meets the sky, meeting me, touching, digesting, through and through.

Pittosporum offers scent to air.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

A Spring Is Sprung

Last week I participated in an improv workshop.  Me? I know, and I had fun.

We laughed and bonded, bonded and laughed.  We began with a “Yes, and …” exercise.

Partnered, one person spoke and then the other would say, “Yes, and” and would augment a response. Back and forth it went.  It’s very different from saying simply, yes, or no, and a yes does not mean agreement but it does allow the sharing to expand. My partner and I solved the problems of the world in our back and forth.

Then, Saturday, I attended a “celebration of life” for my neighbor Louise Jenkins, a magnificent woman, who passed easily and gently in the home she and her husband built together after World War II.  Louise was 91 and her children will keep the home and land as it is, property fragrant and vibrant with a lifetime of care, laughter, block parties, bread making, knitting, gardening, connecting, sharing, and fun.

Her children shared that they’d never heard their mother say anything mean about another.  Oh, and then, one chimed in, “except for her grandmother”. She said her grandmother was mean. I’ve been sitting with that, seeing how quickly we may rush to condemn or judge another.

Perhaps, as a child, watching her grandmother, Louise saw the power of words to hurt and divide and she chose not to do that.  I’m not saying she was a saint because Louise wouldn’t want that, but I saw photos of her when she was young and she was beautiful, but truly those photos of her as she aged simply glowed.  Her whole face and being was radiant, a light.

Louise Jenkins philosophy of life is my intention for my remaining years.  That, and “Yes, and ….”

Peace!

And here again is Jeanine Aguerre’s photos of two hawks, monogamous and ready to mate again this year in our “hood”.