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
We are all affected by what is happening in the world. In feeling that connection, I’ve upped my meditation time. I honor a need to go within and renew in compassion, and in that, I feel a deeper connection with those I meet. We all share in this world we create.
Yesterday, at my ophthalmologist appointment, I learned my eyes are doing great. If you’ve ever had the test for your peripheral vision, where you click when you see a flashing light, you’ll know how delighted I was to hear that I caught them all. I’m seeing more than straight ahead. I round to curve and spiral what surrounds.
I sync to these words of Alan Watts
“The sensitive nervous system is part of the external world. And the external world is an event in the nervous system. The inside of the box is outside the box, and the outside is inside. I mean, you know, it seems to flip flop perpetually.”
It’s a time to honor darkness as it comes, harvest. The veil between the living and the dead is thin. The ancestors come through and with a pause of reflection, we feel the ancestry we all share. Today, tonight, and tomorrow, is a time to expand out into viewing our planet and the world of varying roles from a wider space.
Each morning I receive wisdom and guidance from the Center for Action and Contemplation. This morning Richard Rohr recalls his first experiences with the prayer of the Pueblo people in New Mexico:
In 1969 when I was a young deacon in Acoma Pueblo, one of my jobs was to take the census. Because it was summer and hot, I would start early in the morning, driving my little orange truck to each residence. Invariably at sunrise, I would see a mother outside the door of her home, with her children standing beside her. She and the children would be reaching out with both hands uplifted to “scoop” up the new day and then “pour” it over their heads and bodies in blessing. I would sit in my truck until they were finished, thinking how silly it was of us Franciscans to think we brought religion to New Mexico four hundred years ago!
Because many of us are affected by this time of bombardment from world events outside of us, events we hear or read about, it’s a time to be tender with ourselves, to cultivate and allow inner knowing and, in that, to respond with nourishing calm.
Rather than closing our hearts to so much pain, or becoming debilitated by it, we can let our hearts break open and allow energy and life to move through us, as us.
We can be the example we want to see in the world.
Thich Nhat Hanh who had to flee Vietnam wrote: “When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked all would be lost. But if even one person on the boat stayed calm and centered it was enough. They showed the way for everyone to survive.”
Yesterday I fell into Erling Kagge’s beautiful book Silence: In the Age of Noise. He is a Norwegian explorer and the first person to reach the South Pole alone.
He writes:
Americans have built a base even at the South Pole. Scientists and maintenance workers reside there for several months at a time, isolated from the outside world. One year there were ninety-nine residents who celebrated Christmas together at the base. Someone had smuggled in ninety-nine stones and handed out one apiece as Christmas gifts, keeping one for themselves. Nobody had seen stones for months. Some people hadn’t seen stones for over a year. Nothing but ice, snow and man-made objects. Everyone sat gazing at and feeling their stone. Holding it in their hands, feeling its weight, without uttering a word.
On Wednesday a friend and I sauntered the path that circles around the top of Mt. Tam. We climbed up to the Lookout Tower, the first place to catch a fire in the area. I’m still vibrating with the peaceful trampoline feeling of each cell bouncing within the sacredness of an open, expanded, and shared view.
My grandson turned four yesterday and was celebrated and honored with a Halloween birthday party of 50 people, most of them small. It was a feast of princesses, dragons, and Spiderman. A Harry Potter character arrived, and Madeleine, and the Cat in the Hat.
A castle Bouncy House was a hit as children climbed in and slid out.
Watching children bounce, slide, and play, I thought of how peace might be obtained. We each have a Bouncy House, or maybe every block in a neighborhood has one, and we gather to bounce and feast where there’s a place for everyone at the table and more than enough to share.
This weekend, we watched the movie Finding Nemo with my almost four year old grandson. Having seen it as an adult, I didn’t expect it to be so traumatic for a child that age. First, Nemo is lost and the father is frantic. Then Nemo is captured by a diver attempting to save a life, but to grandson it was torture to see Nemo trapped in a bowl.
After the movie we went online to look at all the sea creatures in the movie, and to explain the story a little more clearly. What’s with me now is how our planet is like a fish bowl. We share an aquarium that circulates water and air, and right now the disturbances, for us all, are huge.
Thinking of Wendell Berry’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things”, I went to the marsh to “rest with the grace of the world” and be free.
My youngest son is 46 years old today. It’s a warm, sunny day with so much twittering it sounds like spring, but the Monarch butterflies are flying about which means fall.
Perhaps a day of celebrating birth unites all the years, brings the seasons together like a womb holding and preparing for emergence of a new coherence and birth.
I read recently that when two sand dunes approach, come together, and part, they leave behind a tiny sand dune. I’ve never observed this for myself but I immerse in the image of connection, separation, and birth.
The windows are open, unusual for here, and in the night I heard all the critters that come out to explore and feed in the dark. I forget how active the night is, and perhaps that’s another entry into appreciation of where life leads me now as I age and mature. What am I coming to see that I didn’t notice or acknowledge before? What fills and guides me now?
I just finished reading Returning Light: Thirty Years on the Island of Skellig Michael by Robert L. Harris.
The book is a poetic meditation on his 30 years as a caregiver and guide on the Irish island of Skellig Michael. He’s there from May to October, observing and living with thousands of birds, especially puffins, and the memories of the monks who a thousand years ago built on this rock a place to isolate and meditate. It’s a place for the waves of light to unite loneliness and belonging.
Harris writes: Emptiness. And light changing, and changing, the vision of ourselves.
Light! Change! Vision!
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