Trees need space for light and air to move through just as we do.
I admire the men who climb up into trees and cut branches by hand.
Tree Pruning
Miracles
Today I read Wislawa Szymborska’s poem “Miracle Fair”.
The poem begins with:
The commonplace miracle:
that so many common miracles take place.
And she begins a list, a way for each of us to view, expand, and embrace what comes to us as we meander through night and day.
A miracle that’s lost on us:
the hand actually has fewer than six fingers
but still it’s got more than four.
A miracle, just take a look around:
the inescapable earth.
An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:
the unthinkable
can be thought.
~ Wislawa Szymborska ~
I balance that with the Israel attack on a Gaza hospital killing 20, including journalists and medics. One needs fingers and toes to count the number of dead. One needs a see-saw to balance joy and sorrow, gratitude and grief, as we center in the heart that holds it all.
My son sends me photos of his friend, a red-shouldered hawk, he sees on his morning walks.
Swirling
Today in my meditation, I saw and felt the day turn to light as the earth turns on its axis and we move around the sun. Yesterday, I got my hair cut and asked my hairdresser why one side flips up and the other side curls under. I learned that our hair spirals in a circle around our head, each of us with a swirl as individual as our fingerprint.
I’m swirling in movement today, anchored in the cord of impermanence, change.
Adaptation
Sometimes life feels like a bunch of pick-up sticks. Clasped together in our palm, we let go, either willingly or with a push from outside, and the sticks fall, so we’re given the opportunity to put them back together again in a whole new form.
I read about humans needing to adapt to increasing heating patterns on the planet. Impermanence. Change, and how do we meet what comes?
Tennessee Valley
An early morning walk on a day of Oneness:
The Present
It is a time of presence, of going within, and honoring light and dark. I revel in fluidity moving in and out like ocean and atmospheric waves.
If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future, if you are at peace you are living in the present.
– Lao Tzu
Counterbalancing the News
Feeling a bit on edge this morning, I went to Rodeo Beach to balance where water meets rock and sand.
Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far. Jodi Picoult
Freedom
It’s worth reading all of Heather Cox Richardson today but tears come as I read the conclusion.
President Biden spoke yesterday when world leaders and more than two dozen U.S. veterans of D-Day gathered to commemorate D-Day. They met above Omaha Beach at the Normandy American Cemetery, where the remains of 9,388 Americans, many of whom were killed on D-Day, are buried.
Biden: “Let us be the generation that when history is written about our time—in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years from now—it will be said: When the moment came, we met the moment. We stood strong. Our alliances were made stronger. And we saved democracy in our time as well.”
During the ceremony, the past and the present came together. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky shook the hand of a U.S. veteran in a wheelchair. When the man tried to kiss Zelensky’s hand, the Ukraine president instead stooped and hugged him. “You’re the savior of the people,” the man said. Zelensky answered, “You saved Europe.” The exchange continued: “You’re my hero.” “No, you are our hero.”
As the crowd cheered, the old man turned to look at the younger one and said, “I pray for you.”
Embraced
I read these words of Richard Rohr and feel the long neck of immersion and experience, the fluidity, strength, and agility of birds on land and in flight. His words are ballast, support, inspiration, and guide.
Going to the deepest level of communication,
Where back and forth has never stopped.
Where I am not the initiator but the transmission wire itself.
— Richard Rohr
Memories
Yesterday, I was thrilled to receive a new laptop computer. My son said it should last me ten years. I thought then this could be my last computer, a rather sobering thought, and then I wondered what the world will be like in ten years.
A few years ago in a Sensory Awareness workshop, an elderly woman said she felt the past like the force of gravity, supporting her. A discussion ensued as to whether for the young, the future is a force like gravity pulling them forward. Perhaps the mid-life crisis is that place between, a place of balance and choice, an awakened urgency drawing us to pause, reflect, create and absorb.
Today I feel like I’m balanced in the center of a teeter-totter, arms spread in honoring the joy that is life continuing at my age. It rained in the night and now the sun is a light in the clouds. It feels like a torch, an Olympic torch that lights the games we play as we honor individuality, cooperation, and the spirit that unites family as team.
I went through photos last night. Here’s a taste of the past, a wee taste.
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