Gratitude! – Page 2 – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on November 2, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Kairos Time

Today with the release of the oddly named “daylight savings time”, we return to nature’s time as leaves fall and we walk through their crunch to understand we, too, fall apart, rest, root, and in connection, rise again.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

The change in light allows us to notice and in and with subtlety to refine and define the layers we share.

Madeleine L’Engle: “The child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos.”

Posted on October 31, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Thresholds

It’s a liminal time, a time when the veil is thin and as Richard Rohr writes: “we are invited to be aware of deep time – that is, past, present, and future gathering into one especially holy moment.” We honor our ancestors, all of our ancestors, and their presence within us.

Today as I sat with day coming to light I was filled with Rainer Maria Rilke’s words:

Ah, not to be cut off,

not through the slightest partition

shut out from the law of the stars.

The inner – what is it?

if not the intensified sky,

hurled through with birds and deep

with the winds of homecoming.

Posted on August 12, 2025August 12, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Enchantment

I was at Rodeo Beach today. The fog was in and the beach was covered with Vellella vellella, a result of the recent full moon tides.

I hadn’t realized each apparent individual is a hydroid colony, composed of tiny, anemone-like creatures. Related to jellyfish, they are carnivorous, and catch their prey, mainly plankton, with tentacles dangling in the water.

Autumn is on approach when the pink naked ladies come out in display.

Posted on August 8, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Trees

I finished the book My Head for a Tree: The Extraordinary Story of the Bishnoi, Guardians of Nature by Martin Goodman. These guardians show us how to live when we honor and value interconnectivity, oneness, wholeness, and this world we share.

I spiral on the words on my Flying Edna Desktop Calendar. “I do not go to the forest to be alone. I go to be with the ones who speak without human words.”

As we’re inundated with stories of political horror, it’s important and essential to be with the beings who give us oxygen, and share our roots and nourish our soil and soul.

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Thanks

Today I read the news and then I balanced it with the poem “Thanks” by W.S. Merwin. You can read the poem here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57937/thanks

He ends with:

we are saying thank you

thank you we are saying and waving

dark though it is

Looking up through redwood trees at Old Mill Park

Posted on July 13, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Connection

In reading The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, I learned that “When Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945, it is said, the first living thing to emerge from the blasted landscape was a matsutake mushroom.”

I’ve been at Green Gulch Zen Center and farm for four days. I parked at Muir Beach and after crossing a wooden bridge, I walked into a land of gardens, bunnies, quail, deer, and flights and songs of birds. I can’t imagine one country dropping a bomb on another but I can imagine the mycelium web of mushrooms surviving the damage. I offer photos of invitation.

From the Muir Beach Overlook on a foggy, July day.

Honoring the Coast Miwok who lived and nourished on the land for more than 10,000 years.

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Peace

Thursday through Sunday I’ll be in a Sensory Awareness workshop at Green Gulch Zen Center with Lee Klinger Lesser titled How does my love for life want to express itself? She suggests we bring an object or symbol that represents how our love for life wants to express itself in the midst of these times that we are living.

As I reflect on this, two poems of Naomi Shihab Nye come to mind. One is called “Kindness”. The other is “So Much Happiness”.

You can find both poems at poets.org.

Here is the last stanza of “So Much Happiness”.

Since there is no place large enough

to contain so much happiness

you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

into everything you touch. You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit

for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,

and in that way, be known.

Posted on June 11, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Interdependence

Yesterday I had a tooth extracted, and a bone graft put in place. In four months, the bone will have integrated with my own bone, so I can have an implant. For now, I am aware of the integration, the curiosity of my bone with this, what may seem like an intrusion, and the care with which the procedure was done. My dentist’s son, who is 18, wants to be a dentist, so I gave permission for him to be there, too. Sometimes I close my eyes for dental procedures, but yesterday when I opened them, I saw three faces peering in, the dentist, the assistant, and his son. Three people were taking care of one small area in the rear of my mouth. How amazing is that?

Plants reach to cover rocks and people with death donate bones for grafts. Transformation!

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Children in Nature

Yesterday I was at the beach for a five year old’s birthday party. Five children to celebrate a five year old. Each child’s party favor was a kite. In the howling wind, the father patiently put each kite together and each child waited patiently for their turn. Grandson got a green King Cobra kite, which he found thrilling since he loves snakes and the color green.

I’m with the words of Julia Butterfly Hill:

If we take action out of anger, we’re only making more problems in the world. But when you can take action out of love, then miracles can happen.