The political news requires time in nature. Today I went to Cascade Falls amidst warnings to pack a go-bag. Fire season is here, and yet it’s beautiful as can be, and the truth is if a fire comes roaring I don’t think we’re going to “escape”, and so it is. Strange times as we navigate feelings of vulnerability amidst presence, beauty, and joy.
This week my friend and colleague Karen Roeper gave an inspiring speech to the graduating class at the Roeper School in Michigan. The school was founded by her parents in 1941 when they were forced to leave Nazi Germany. Already involved in education, they came to America in 1939 vowing to establish a school that would educate children to participate in the world as caring, humane adults.
Karen’s theme in her speech is love.
She shares an excerpt from an interview with the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. He was asked, “If you could change one thing as Surgeon General that would be immutable for the long haul, what would it be?”
He responded: “If I could change one thing, it would be: I would want us to very explicitly, and unapologetically place love at the center of our lives as a galvanizing force in our society.”
He continued on to talk about how our current society is locked in a struggle between love and fear.
Karen quotes her mother from her 2007 commencement speech: “If you really love yourself, then you will love life itself and you won’t want to hurt or harm others.”
Buddhist Jack Kornfield offers a practice: “When you are walking around the world, see every person as once having been a newborn child.”
Yesterday I spent time in my neighbor’s beautiful yard which is an offering to serenity for all who come, plants, animals, birds. I share a taste.
I’m up in the night with the moonlight and critters who explore in the dark, though this almost full Strawberry moon offers light.
The last few days I’ve spent time with my neighbor’s mother who is suffering from memory loss, or is she suffering? It’s her experience, yes, but there is an immediacy to it, a presence. Perhaps it is that she’s been through the anger stage of losing control, of not being able to live on her own, or drive, and so now there is a settling into gentleness, a tender rhythm.
I feel embraced in a softening sea as I lose fear around one more thing I might fear. Yes, it requires the help and patience of others, but perhaps there is a gift in it, too, a gift for the neighborhood as we absorb memories flickering like stars.
Steve and I were married 53 years ago on this day, June 19th. Now, it’s a legal holiday, Juneteenth, honoring the end of slavery in the United States. May we continue to honor and cultivate the interconnectedness that brings peace.
I’m reading the book Wintering by Katherine May.
As we approach the excitement and celebration of the summer solstice, I’m with these words of D.H. Lawrence:
We must get back into relation: vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe … We must once more practice the ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath and the last.
Yesterday a friend and I took the ferry from Larkspur Landing to the city. We enjoyed lunch with our book group at MOMA and walking back to the ferry I was struck by a sculpture that I wanted to find the name of which led me to an on-line exploration of sculpture in San Francisco. Check it out:
We went up to the gardens at the SalesForce building, rather an eyesore from where I see it in Marin, but up close, it rises beautifully, and the gardens are amazing, so I offer a taste.
I’m re-reading Annie Dillard’s wonderful book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I’ve read it many times over the years, each time with new receptivity and absorption.
Today I’m with this: What if I fell in a forest? Would a tree hear my fall?
I’m reminded that we can feel warmth from the moon shining in the night if we pause to receive.
This weekend we were at a house with wire fencing to keep the animals out of the gardens. Grandson had seen butterflies and a caterpillar, and with concern he went into the house and returned with a long strand of yellow yarn which he proceeded to weave through the wires an inch or so above the ground. He said it was so the insects would see the fence and not be hurt.
Annie in her book invites us to return to seeing like a child. I see yarn weaving through my thoughts.
For four nights, my family gathered in a house in the Redwood trees on Kings Mountain in Woodside.
I’m still vibrating with the beauty and clarity – sun, mist, stars and the rising embrace of trees from a ground moist with the clasp, movement, and release of fog. The first days were hot and clear and then the fog moved in and out, a meditation on the elements reflected and shared with all. Here’s a shared taste beginning with the path down from the house.
I read about a message found in a fortune cookie: About time I got out of that cookie.
I laugh as I consider the boxes we navigate in a world, both complex and simple.
President Biden spoke at West Point yesterday. He said to the Cadets:
Hold fast to your honor code, which says, quote, “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate those who do,” end of quote.
And above all, hold fast to your oath. On your very first day at West Point, you raised your right hands and took an oath — not to a political party, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States of America — against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
West Pointers know better than anyone: Freedom is not free. It requires constant vigilance.
I would add to vigilance, education fueled by the complexity revealed in literature. In the May 27th New Yorker, there’s an article by Anthony Lane, Abridged Too Far. At first I thought it was a joke. It’s about an app called Blink. “It takes an existing book and crunches it down to a series of what are called Blinks.”
The article ends with a look at Blink’s presentation of the fallen angels in the book Paradise Lost.
“They’ve just lost their first big battle against God and plummet to hell. But despite their defeat, Satan wants to continue the struggle against God. He assembles his demons to talk strategy.”
Lane comments “Talk about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People!” He continues that Blinklist with its high-tech alchemy transmutes “literature into business, turns the inhabitants of literature, even the ones with tattered wings, into businessmen. Listen, rapt, as the devils crunch the numbers and kick around ideas for going forward:
Moloch suggests open warfare against heaven. Belial advocates for doing nothing. Mammon argues for making hell a little nicer so they can all live a happy life of sin.
And Lane concludes: “I’m with Mammon, all day long. Life is short, and so, if you look at your phone, is literature. Blink and you’ll miss it.“
And with that, honor this day by remembering all that’s been sacrificed to hold in place an honor code that states “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate those who do”.
This weekend I pause, reflect, and connect the present which encompasses honoring the past and what we create now.
This morning I was drinking my coffee looking out the window at the redwood tree which is one at the base and rises as two. I watched a squirrel scamper up, then, turn around, and perch in the sun. When I went to get my camera I figured he or she would be gone, but there was my friend still there even as I opened the door and went outside.
Velcro was patented in 1958. I discovered it in the 70’s as a wonder for children’s shoes. Spiderman and Superman shoes were easily entered and clasped.
Dave Barry said, “Your modern teenager is not about to listen to advice from an old person, defined as a person who remembers when there was no Velcro.”
Certainly now there’s a different parameter for listening to those who lived before computers, the internet, or smartphones. How is knowledge categorized? Where is wisdom found?
I resonate to Rumi:
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
And Brother David Steindl-Rast:
It’s not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.
And these two dogs, rescue greyhounds, who earned a living and now savor retirement with ecstatic motion and gratitude, though in this moment they capture the ease and joy of repose.
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