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
Winter Light
Seasons
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.’”
Wind Chimes
My grandson goes to a wonderful preschool. I just watched a video made by one of the classes. It’s called the Wind Chime Restoration Project.
At the entry to the school was a windchime that the parents and children loved ringing when they came to school and left. One day it broke.
One class, the Opals, decided to fix it. The children drilled, painted, and threaded. As one child put it, it took a long, long time.
The video contains each child’s words. Words that repeated were, “I love you Wind!”
The wind chime became the voice of the wind for the children as they saw themselves as protectors of the wind and the chimes.
Each child speaks of being very gentle with the chimes, and shows how to be very careful when touching them. The chimes are painted in different colors with messages from the children fluttering above them.
The video ends with the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass.
We need acts of restoration not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.
Land in Support
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.”
Tides and Light
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
The Nervous System
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.”
Halloween
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.
Morning Prayer
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!
Tenderness
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.”
Hold a Stone
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.
