On Thursday at Rodeo Beach, a coyote passed by me.  I took pictures but it wasn’t until I looked at them at home that I realized the coyote was injured.

I checked the symbolism of a coyote: cleverness, resilience, and strategic thinking.  It’s also seen as a symbol of death and rebirth, because coyote howling is often heard during times of transition, dusk and dawn.

This coyote wasn’t asking for sympathy though I felt it as he or she was rather mangy but the coyote simply pranced courageously along, an example of how to meet what comes.

I am grateful for a Sensory Awareness class this morning with Misty Hannah.  We worked with curiosity, with what we might uncover or discover that we never knew before.  She asked: Can we meet this moment as never before?

And I feel in this moment that I meet the teachings of a coyote and the universe gathering as never before.  I ask and explore how many universes does it take to lift my foot from the floor?  How many universes came together to bring a coyote close to me to share a wound that didn’t slow or alter a path?  How many passages open before, in, and around me?  How many universes do I bring together as I open to meet what comes?

Curiosity may have killed the cat but a cat has nine lives.  Curiosity opens doors.  

The light doesn’t return immediately.  There is a pause.

This is my day to slip into quiet, and honor the words and advice of Wendell Berry.

“I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water.” 

Circles on Water. 

Yesterday afternoon as I returned home, traffic was stopped. It took an hour to drive less than a mile.  For some reason, I perceived it as a gift.  I rolled the car window down, well, pushed a button actually, looked out at the marsh and listened to Holiday Songs.

As we honor this time of year in whatever way speaks to us, we also prepare for a new one.  Intention sets a place of honoring the connections we share, the communities of which we are a part, and which are part of us. My intention is to more clearly see and honor the moments as gifts. 

Living, blood flows, circulates, connects, and the breath comes in, nudges and explores, and moves out, changed, like circles on water.  Our presence gives weight to the stones.

I wake in the night to meditate and listen to the rain. For me, this is a peaceful, inner sky time of year.

But do not ask me where I am going,

As I travel in this limitless world,

Where every step I take is my home.

— Dogen

I made a fire in the fireplace last night as I listened to the welcome sound of rain. I lit candles to savor the quivering light in the dark.

My neighbor gave me a fairy door to go with my other fairy door.  A local man makes each one individually and gives them away.

Yesterday my neighbor and I  took a walk on the Oakwood Valley Trail to immerse in the fairy landscape there.  Water was still dripping from the morning rain, and it was a land of enchantment. 

Clearly there are all sizes and types of fairies.  I was reminded of Cathedral Woods on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine.  We beckon our landscapes to open, to nourish what flourishes within and in the soil beneath our feet and the trees that rise from roots twined to feed.

I also nourish on words as lanterns, as stars and fairy lights.

So many I know are facing personal challenges right now, and the world is on edge and off balance, so I come to poetry and these words of  Mahmoud Darwish: 

 ‘A poem in a difficult time / is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.’” 

We’re home from Half Moon Bay and it’s raining.  Pure delight.

Frederick Franck: 

When a monk complained about the world’s evil, the Buddha stretched his hand toward the Earth: “on this Earth I attained Liberation.”

I’m in Half Moon Bay nourishing on changes in tides and light.

Although the moon is a vast and great light, it is reflected in a drop of water. The whole moon and even the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew on a blade of grass.

– Dogen