Is it enough that we see what’s happening in Ukraine, watch pain, bear witness?

I’m with choice these days and how much we step in with change.  In our small personal world, my husband and I are looking at change.  I could say we have complete openness in this choice but age, health, and being near our children are factors.

The book City, written in 1952, is by Clifford Simak. I re-read it periodically as I’m intrigued with how he foresaw that our houses might become complete enough that we wouldn’t want or need to leave them, and then, we couldn’t when something invited us outside.  Friendly robots would take care of logistics and the house would be a container for whatever screen contact we might need.  

We came to this house located on Coast Miwok land in 1978.  Jeff was just four,  and Chris turned one. The question becomes are the house and land holding onto us, or are we holding on to them.

I’m going through books, letters, and cards  beginning to clean out what is here.  What do I need now?  What container do I build for my nourishment and fulfillment, and perhaps it is seeing people in Ukraine that has me even more aware of fragility and the preciousness of contact in what I choose.  This moment, this moment, so “it”, so full of my life and the lives of others.  

Books I’ve collected are on solitude, nature, poetry and the importance and essential nature of silence.

What pulls me now, and what comes is William Carlos Williams, and a red wheelbarrow and cold plums.  

We drove, well, Jeff drove us down to Palm Springs yesterday.  We tried to avoid freeways.  CA is an amazingly beautiful and geographically and politically complex state.  Palm Springs is a dog-friendly place so dinner last night was here.  We were seated and each dog presented with a water bowl and duck treat.  We’re living the good dog’s life now, and every day of course. Gratitude swells.

Today I prepare for entry into this new year.  I took the decorations off the tree on Friday and have been sitting with its glory and inspirational shape for two days, but today is the day it must be carried outside.

In that journey, I’m with Toni Morrison’s words from her book Beloved.  

Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face… Love your mouth… This is flesh… Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms… Love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver — love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts… love your heart. For this is the prize.

I breathe into the space of 365 days and nights opening before me like a kaleidoscope turning.  

Today I was on a Sensory Awareness call with Ray Fowler leading.  He said to “note how allowing space is different from waiting”.  

Just that might be enough to massage my days with murmurs whispering each movement no matter how small or indistinct.

Hafiz: The heart is a thousand-stringed instrument that can only be tuned with love.

This world requires technological knowledge which is why I often call my son for Tech Support.  Today is one of those days.  I was getting email messages asking why I wasn’t responding.  It seems that over 105,000 messages have been stored in an account I don’t check because it forwards to another account.  It was full, which I didn’t know, so now those over 105,000 messages are deleted, and all “should” be working as before.  I say “should” as I thought all was working but there was one more snafu to overcome which I discovered when my sent emails were returned. I believe all is currently working, and if you haven’t heard back from me, that’s why.  

I’m grateful I just posted about being water so I could crash on a shore of adjustment and sink into the sand of passing time.  Does that make sense?  Probably not since my brain fries with computer glitches and then I pour water on, and now I’m water-logged.

I’m grateful I have a son who can “take over my screen” and fix problems from afar.

Okay, back to different forms of water as I now work with organizing files and papers to prepare for the new year.

Peace and ease as I move gently and forcefully into 2022.

Perhaps because I connect with my pagan roots, this day after the winter solstice, begins a new year for me.  

I’m on the ninth floor of an eleven story hotel looking out over Silicon Valley in the rain.

I wake at four and open Mary Oliver’s wonderful book, Owls and Other Fantasies, which I highly recommend.

She begins with this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson from “May-Day”, which invites me to simmer in myself that perhaps each day is a day to ask, “May I”, as I feel into what answers my needs. 

Emerson:

Beloved of children, bards and Spring,

O birds, your perfect virtues bring.

Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,

Your manners for the heart’s delight.

Oliver’s whole book invites us into presence and the revelation of transformation that is death, but one essay in particular, “Bird” tells of her rescue of a gull, and what she, and therefore we, learn from the life and transition of this bird.  

Oddly, this posted first on my Breast Strokes blog. Perhaps, it, too, asks for acknowledgment and reception of light.

I woke this morning thinking of Richard Bach’s book Illusions and then drove to McGinnis to look for birds.  It was early and muddy and beautiful.

We’re getting our tree today.  The weather is crisp and clear.   

Holiday joy abounds as we expand in gratitude and connecting circles of grace. 

In December, my book group meets for an overnight in the city but, of course, with Covid changes, we didn’t meet last year, and now, today we are journeying to San Francisco for lunch.  We’ll take the ferry. I search for my Clipper cards and find four.   Then, I dress up, well I dress up for me, and put on clothes I haven’t worn in all this time.  Very exciting.

We never took our gatherings for granted, and yet, these days, there is an even more intense awareness of gratitude for ability, connection, togetherness,  and health.  

Emily Dickinson: Beauty is not caused. It is.