Serenity

Today I pause and knit patterns of presence. I reflect and integrate what shapes and informs intention, honoring reception.

I’m with these words of Wendell Berry:

It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.

Waves of light flow through.  Like trees and flags, I receive the wind as it moves, patterns generous in weaving change.

My mother, who passed in 2005, was born a year after Queen Elizabeth II.  I remember her talking about playing with paper dolls that were the young Margaret and Elizabeth.  I think of how we each have our own path, both imposed and created. Elizabeth was born into a role, as are we all, and then we have choice in how we respond and flow, give and receive, move and pause.

As a child, I cut out paper dolls with my grandmother.  I would be impatient and sloppy. Though she wouldn’t comment directly, she would example by holding her scissors precisely and cutting carefully around the curves, and say words that repeat in and out of me these days. 

“The way we do one thing may reveal the way we do all things.”

Memories slide in and out; gentle guidance weaves the day.

Morning Weaves

Trunks of trees wrapped in yarn

Fluidity

Smiling

My son and I are doing an on-line course in Tibetan meditation.   I’m noticing a difference in my responses and so I was feeling a little self-congratulatory, which is certainly not part of the course, but then I hit the roadblock of judgment because I’m not as “mindful” as I want, or think, I should be.  At least I’m noticing, and of course, the course is about non-judgment and non-criticism.  

Synchronously, I had just read this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh: 

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

I read it and then my son responded to my text lamenting that I’m not “mindful” more often.  Without knowing I’d just read the wisdom of Thich, he replied: 

Whenever you notice, smile even if you’re disappointed or annoyed. Smiling works both directions: you do it when mood is positive and it can also cause positive mood. So it reinforces that noticing is good.

Wisdom. Ease.

I’m reminded of what Marion Rosen, my beloved Rosen Method teacher,  demonstrated when she’d spread her arms wide like a bird, and now try to say, “I’m sad or unhappy.”  

Try it!! 

Spreading arms out wide, head flung back, the heart opens, and it’s easy to say and feel in perfect harmony, “I’m Happy! I’m Joy!”.

And so today, well, this moment, my arms are spread wide to reflect the smile on my face.

On another note, I’m reading a book by Julie Cruikshank.  Do Glaciers Listen?

It’s another entry into understanding our relationship with the environment we are and share.

Indigenous people knew and know. We can know and honor too.

Words on a bench in my neighborhood

Near the bench, crocheted sunflowers in support of Ukraine

Loving Awareness

Yesterday, these words of Ram Dass carried me: We are simply loving awareness.

He said to radiate loving awareness.  I move the words through me in two ways.  Loving awareness, the two words expansively one, all one, no “me”, and then, this individual me saying I love Awareness.  I weave the two in and out as though playing an accordian or receiving food like an anemone in the rising and sinking tides.  

Stefan led yesterday introducing the concept or image of “pockets of peace”.  Within us, we each have pockets of peace.  I felt myself like one of those children’s cloth books with pockets that open with zippers, buttons, or velcro.  Soon the pockets were opening like origami swans spreading their wings.  I opened to, or was opened – layers and ripples – a sea of peace.

Summer fog – a moving blanket of moisture and ease