This morning we were awakened by a little bird singing into the camera placed outside.  At the Chandler Nature Center, a part of Phoenix, we saw white ducks, a coot, and a Great Blue Heron.  It’s a time of unfolding, a living birth.

I’m in Phoenix visiting family which is a delight. I’m minimally involved with the news but seeing our democracy in danger of destruction, has me aware. I read this from Heather Cox Richardson today:

“I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S. Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act,’” lawyer Marc Elias, whose firm defends democratic election laws, wrote today on social media. He added: “I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.” 

In contrast, we sit outside watching a saguaro cactus in which a woodpecker meticulously maintains a home for her babies. The babies pop their heads out of one hole for feeding , which she alternates with opening another hole on the other side.

The other day I watched a little girl struggle to open a heavy door at Blue Barn restaurant.  Her father kept offering to help until finally she allowed it, and when the door opened, she closed it, and went for it again.  Finally, together they again opened the door, and entered the space, but she wasn’t finished.  She turned around and pushed from the other side.

My grandson likes to be the one to open the door to their home when we arrive.  We knock and wait, as we hear scurrying and discussion inside. Perhaps it is the energetic feel of the movement of the heavy door, the power involved, or something about inside and outside, but I find it intriguing to consider how I might pause before I open and close each door. How do I transition each precious breath?

This is the first, wildest and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness.

– Mary Oliver

Last night I watched the Worm full moon as it began to eclipse, and then, this morning there it was, a full disk shining through the trees. In two weeks, we’ll see a solar eclipse, and meanwhile the increasing light is beckoning buds to emerge, and birds to mate and nest.

Alan Watts:

You are something not that comes into the world, but comes out of it – in the same way as a flower comes out of a plant, or a fruit comes out of a tree. You are an expression.

On Friday, I walked Tennessee Valley with a friend.  We saw a bobcat on our way to the beach, and a Great Blue Heron on the way back.  The bobcat reminded me of my cat Tiger, just as friendly and playful.  We watched the bobcat hop for and trap lunch, and the heron catch a fish.

I’m with this Australian Aboriginal proverb:

We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.