Gratitude! – Page 7 – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on February 26, 2024February 26, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Nature

Yesterday I saw two Great Blue Herons resting by the path along the bay. Today I went out Tennessee Valley planning to walk to the beach but there was a troupe of elders yakking away so I turned right to visit Hayseed Camp which is closed for the winter.

Memories flooded in. When we moved here 46 years ago, Chris was almost one and Jeff was four. In an exploratory mood one day after moving in, I followed a narrow road to the end and parked. Putting Chris in his stroller, and holding hands with Jeff, we went wandering down the path. A cow came over and nuzzled Chris in his stroller.

It’s changed over the years, and now there are no grazing cows. The area, a national park, is kept natural for the plants and animals, with some winding paths for the two-legged.

I used to take Jeff and Chris to a pond that was up and beyond the camp but it’s overgrown now so again the land is kept sacred and quiet for the critters.

My meditation today was on the elements. What a gift to see and be so clearly earth, water, fire, air, and the space that allows it all to move, grow, create, and cohere.

A Great Blue Heron embraced in, and embracing, the day.

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

A Friend

Today I felt drawn to return to the place where, yesterday, I saw the Great Blue Heron. I felt she was the one I bonded with last February when I stayed on a houseboat in Sausalito. I met a woman who also feels bonded to this bird, and said yes, the bird is here at low tide, and in the place I met her last year at high tide. The woman said, “I love her”, and I said , “As do I”. I share more photos of life in the bay.

I startled her at first and she flew to a new spot

Maybe she wanted to give me a better view because she flew to the dock, landed, and pranced along to a more visible place.

A closer look as she turns from one dock to another

Golden Slippers now comes strolling along the dock

And finds a spot to enter the water to feed –

Posted on February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Embrace

Monday the power was out for many in the Bay area, so because we have a generator grandchild arrived in his Halloween skeleton pajamas. No problem. We went to Old Mill Park where he found a tree into which we both could climb, a tree with two rooms so we could separate our tasks into cooking and a tool shop. At one point the tree became a pirate ship, and the wind came up so we needed to “batten down the hatches”.

I sit with it now, climbing in and out of the opening in the tree , especially when the land below became the ocean into which we each went scuba diving to commune with squid.

After I’m with my grandchild living in the land and sea of his imagination, when he leaves, I miss him, and feel slightly dizzy as though my world is set to organize and his is in response to what he sees and creates.

I’ve been to Old Mill Park innumerable times, and never realized the possibilities in this tree. Maybe I never even discerned it as separate from the multitude of tall trees. When I go back by myself, will this tree still open itself to possibility? Will I feel silly climbing up into a tree to view the world from its open enclosure? Will I feel silly swimming in the sea grandchild saw below it?

We were there to view the rushing creek, exuberant with the rain. And yet, for him, in those moments, the invitation was from the tree.

Thich Nhat Hanh:

The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness.

The view of the creek when looking out through the tree

Exquisite what guides, lifts, and expands our paths

Posted on February 2, 2024February 2, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Groundhog’s Day

Since today we’ve had rain and sun, changing so quickly I go from windshield wipers to sunglasses, I wonder how Punxsutawney Phil, the renowned groundhog who’s been predicting when winter will end since 1887, predicts an early spring.

I would expect a 50-50 change of accuracy but according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “on average, Phil has gotten it right 30% of the time over the past 10 years.”

Today we celebrate our love of play and joy in noticing the passage of seasons and time.

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Miracles

Today I was with a little boy who is one year, one month, and some days. He is walking, even running, with an occasional drop to crawl.

I find it amazing to realize I made all these leaps, too, and though at my age, the leaps might not be visible, I believe they are also miraculous, enlivening, and strong.

Albert Einstein:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

And, of course, everything is a miracle.

Posted on January 21, 2024January 21, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Listening

The temple bell stops

But the sound keeps coming

out of the flowers

– Matsuo Bashō

Camellia blooming even through wind and rain

Each in its own time – flowering and buds

Posted on January 20, 2024January 20, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

The Way We Are

I’m re-reading Toni Packer’s wonderful book The Wonder of Presence: And The Way of Meditative Inquiry.

She writes of when she and her husband saw Krishnamurti speak. Her husband “grew up in a puritanical family and was raised to be modest and honest, imbued with a strong drive for bettering himself. The idea of improving himself, of becoming a better person, was a strong motive in his family.” When her husband heard Krishnamurti speak about “human beings’ everlasting endeavors to become something or somebody in the future”, he was struck. He ran to her laughing and light. “Here I’ve been attempting to become a better person all my life – ha ha ha ha ha.”

I’m reminded of when I heard Marion Rosen, my teacher of Rosen Method, say “Perfection is static.” I nearly fell off my chair. What? I’d been trying to be “perfect” all my life and now I was hearing that it wasn’t something I should want or desire. First, what is “perfect” and second where is movement there.

Toni Parker describes this as direct insight which is indescribable, but then she goes on. “It is that wondrous state of being in which the conditioned personality reveals itself for what it is – conditioning giving way to wholeness without lack, all things, people, mountains and oak trees being wondrously the way they are, nothing to be faulted, nothing to be improved.”

I don’t always remember this about striving and perfection but I do think walls have fallen around my perception of who, or what I, the crazy-making I, might be.

Since my walk at Muir Woods, I feel myself curving in delight, immersing in a place where time is just a concept imposed on a beautiful living, changing world we share.

In a landscape of curves, images and visions to see

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

The Elements

Last night I watched the documentary Muscle Shoals. It’s about perseverance, hard work and the connective and collective power of music guided by the sounds of the Tennessee river in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The native people call it the Singing River.

I lived on the Mississippi River for fifth grade and part of sixth so I returned to the rhythm of living by the movement of a river, the momentum and ease in watching life flow by. My mother said it was hard to get anything done when the river called like a friend to be listened to, and to listen and soothe.

It’s raining today. I made a fire and sat by the fireplace, finding my own rhythm reflected in the elements of which I’m made and with which I flow – earth, water, fire, wind, and air giving space.

The warmth, vibrancy, and comfort of a fire

Posted on January 4, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Our Teachers

Yesterday I walked along the fairy trail. It was raining an hour before, and then the sun came out though I was sheltered in an Oakwood Valley of ferns, trees, and streams. It felt magical and now I peruse the photos and see images in the water, trees, moss, and lichen to explore. When I returned home I saw the camellia bush offering buds and blooms.

In being with so much transition, I’m with these words of Robert Thurman:

When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating, than of dying.

Fairy mushrooms light up in decaying a log

I thought I saw two eyes, but it’s leaves caught in a web

Posted on January 2, 2024 by Cathy Edgett

Perception

As I settle into the newness of 2024, as though walking on fresh sand, I reflect on how a four year old views the world. When I told my four year old grandson we were walking toward a special bench, he saw a tree bent lengthwise like a log and ran to it. Is this the bench? Well, of course, it was. It was a place to sit.

When we walked around our yard, most of it natural, he saw a stack of dead bamboo piled to decompose. To him, it was a treasure trove. We now had magic wands, staffs, swords, and walking sticks. When we came upon some fallen branches, he saw antlers, so he and his grandpa made a headband of cardboard and attached the antlers with duct tape, and he was Bambi, the “adult” Bambi, not the baby one.

Today my brain froze as I dealt with computer issues, and I knew it was time to take the advice of Wendell Berry in his comforting and inspiring poem The Peace of Wild Things, and go to the water and birds.

“For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”