I found myself eating peanuts yesterday as I read Jimmy Carter’s book A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety.
I learned that at the age of five, he set up his own business, picking peanuts, boiling them, and packaging them in small bags which he then walked two miles to town to sell. He was an entrepreneur at five.
NASA is grateful to him for saving the Space Shuttle program which continues to benefit us here on earth.
His words are on the Voyager Golden Record: “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”
It’s a time to honor darkness as it comes, harvest. The veil between the living and the dead is thin. The ancestors come through and with a pause of reflection, we feel the ancestry we all share. Today, tonight, and tomorrow, is a time to expand out into viewing our planet and the world of varying roles from a wider space.
This Morning’s Offering of LightThe moon still reflecting on Halloween morning The stream in Muir Woods yesterdayBalancing a Fall
I’ve been with my grandson who is three, almost four. It’s pure delight to enter into an imagination where we are moles, lions, jaguars and bears as we protect and feed our baby animals, which are an assortment of all the stuffed creatures he’s been given over the years. I feel myself as fluid when I become another animal, feel what it is to use my mouth and claws to hunt and defend. I see grandson exhibit patience as he waits to pounce on prey, and twists and turns in all sorts of ways, and I do too.
We become the gentle rabbit hiding in the grass, and the curious monkey who peers through a handle-hold in his bed which is lifted so we climb up and down a ladder as we move from the floor to the safety of our blanket and pillow-filled den.
It’s an immersive world being with him as he interprets differently than I so I’m constantly adjusting interpretation and explanation . The blind hanging vertically becomes a carwash for the matchbox cars.
I sit here now looking out on blue sky with a soft touch of fog. How many animals am I today? How do I meet the floor on all fours?What is it to sit in a chair as a bear and type?
I’m reminded of a book by Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age. It’s about racism, and the joy of being with a three year old. I recommend it as a way to live even more aware.
When I was driving him around town, I took a wrong turn and we stumbled upon a library. When I saw the sign, I slammed on the brakes and parked, and grandson was as excited as I. Books – another way to expand. He chose one about a woman born the same year as I, 1949, and her journey to becoming an astronaut after seeing Sputnik fly overhead in 1957. Dreams fulfill.
Outside the library, blueberries growA frog invites entry to a world of booksWho could not respond?And there’s always a stick to be found and floated even on days when jammies are the uniform of the day.A Haven
Years ago, I read Marion Milner’s book published under the name Joanna Field, A Life of One’s Own.
I was inspired by the exploration. Today I again receive these words of Marion Milner:
I had just begun to ponder over the fact that all the things which I had found to be sources of happiness seemed to depend upon the capacity to relax all straining, to widen my attention beyond the circle of personal interest, and to look detachedly at my own experience.
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