The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers
– Matsuo Bashō
Listening
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Opening the Door to the New Year
The New Year
This day offers space, a white sheet, a blue sky.
What calls us now? What meets us? What relationships beckon like tides moving in and out?
How do we meet this day as never before?
What comes together and breaks apart and comes together again?
As this box of Picasso Tiles says: Be creative. Be unique. Be you.
Candle, Heart, and Fire Light
It’s the time of year where we light candles and inhale the scent of winter, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. I’m savoring the shared cheer. It’s a tender time, and may this pause to absorb all the holiday traditions nourish us on our journey into a new year.
The Coyote
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.
A Solstice Pause
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.
