Living – Relationship

Yesterday when I came to my Sensory Awareness Zoom class, I thought I felt fine, but as we worked with feeling the support of the floor, standing was too much.  I needed to get down on the floor to fully receive and feel the support.  We were working with boundaries, and I felt how my cells had been invaded by something foreign, and potentially dangerous, though the purpose was to potentially save my life.

I felt nauseous and tired as I processed the effects of the Covid booster shot the day before.

Then we went to the wall, and placed our hands there.  At first, my feet were so sensitive from noticing, my hands needed time to meet, to truly meet and receive the wall, but then the support came through. I rested my forehead and hands on the wall and received and filled with reception, woke. I was no longer tired. I was awake, soothingly, comfortably, easily awake. In relationship, when we notice what is always here, there is the possibility of renewal, connection with the core, the inner-outer cord of support.

Martin Buber wrote: All real living is about relationship.

And Marion Milner discovered through her own explorations in her wonderful book A Life of One’s Own that: 

But now concentration, instead of being a matter of time tables and rules, was a magician’s wand. By a simple self-chosen act of keeping my thoughts on one thing at a time instead of dozens, I had found a new window opening out across a new country of wide-open horizons and unexplored delights.

We’re not alone.  We’re living Relationship.

Elaine Chan-Scherer took photos of the sunset at Ocean Beach last night. We’re in the time of December King Tides, though Queen works, too, and the tides are extraordinarily high balanced with a shore-revealing low.

Enjoy the December light and receive the gift of her perception capturing these moments blending water, fire, earth, and air.

Elaine’s sunset photos of Ocean Beach

Anchors of Support
Touched

Centering

Today I’m reading about the heart in the womb, its formation and beginning to beat between four and five weeks.

I honor the music of the beating of heart, my heart, connecting the cells in my body, bathing and nourishing the cells in a rhythm of growth and possibility.  I feel my roots in pelvis and feet, grounded on this planet we share.  I’m touched by the tiniest branches into which blood reaches, invites, and cleanses.

I’ve been in the South Bay checking out areas, climates, houses, and now I’m home.  It’s been raining and the smell of wood smoke fills the air.  It’s like when we moved here 44 years ago.  I feel nourished in my cells by moisture, gratitude, and growth.

At times, I feel overwhelmed with possibilities, and in this moment, I feel peace.  My heart has been beating and supporting me for many years.  I trust it knows what I need and what draws me forward as I meet what comes and comes.

Jiddu Kristhamurti: 

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

Anne Frank wrote during the Holocaust “Whoever is happy will make others happy.”

And so water sinks into soil.  

Morning Comes to Light

I wake and all is silent. I read Mary Oliver’s poem “When Death Comes” and then these words of Thomas Merton:

Let me seek then, the gift of silence and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into a prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer.

Emily Dickinson now comes to body and mind.  

To live is so startling that it leaves little time for anything else.

Guidance arrives and settles – lands, flows, flies.

Rain brings water to the mountain. The creek rises and flows, then lifts.

Celebration Time

Rain!!    It was a weekend with two birthday celebrations augmented with the joy of rain.  Even in CA, two year olds have rain boots and raincoats and there’s nothing cuter than watching them bounce and prance about.

And today, the clean air invigorates and birds are happily out and about.

Ducks frolic in the marsh
Egret surveying the scene
Circling
Egret filled with fish

Birth

Last night I was outside with the full moon, and now I receive the news that a baby we have been waiting for is born.  What a relief!  I know that childbirth in this country is mainly safe but years ago, a friend died in childbirth at a hospital in Palo Alto, and so I’m always on alert until the little being is through the canal and here, seen, and cared for.

Her mother had a tough and long labor and now this little girl is here and my grandson has a new cousin.  He loves music and rhythm, and so alive with vision and possibility, he channels Gene Krupa and the joy of playing the drums.   

The Reward for Labor

Autumn Light

There’s a softness to the light as darkness comes.  I light a candle each morning and settle into the pulsing approach of winter, this seasonal exchange of light and dark.  I circle my spine and pelvis, dig more deeply into expansion, grateful for more time to look up and out and be with more stars than the essential gift of our sun.   

Being with the wisdom of the cave

Impermanence

When we were in Monterey recently, I was enchanted with the aquarium. I’d never seen anchovies circling in the Kelp Forest before. Now, I read that they’re not always there. These will be eaten by bigger fish within two weeks.

That morning, I’d been enchanted with this sculpture. After seeing the anchovies, I knew what it represented.

Anemone waiting for the tide to come

Nature

We were in Monterey this weekend with the rhythm of the tides. Here are anemones at low tide Saturday morning.

Full Moon

The July full moon is called the Buck Moon because antlers of male deer are in full growth mode.  I woke in the night and the room was bright with moonlight.  Look up tonight and savor reflecting within as growth comes.

Rising with the Moon

The moon symbolizes enlightenment to Buddhists, and you may have noticed the brightness of this full moon.  It was a bright light both in the evening and in the morning.

Yesterday was the Day of Vesak, a day to celebrate Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death.  Since I was at the ocean last week, I’ve continued to feel the waves in the oceans in me, the continents, the always moving change and flow.

Mark Twain wrote: 

 I am an old man, and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

I’m with that this morning, laughing with the twitter-tweeting of birds.  I’m eating my first cherries of the season, and yes, my life is a bowl full of cherries as I offer the pits to the yard wondering if one or two will choose to sink into the ground and rise as a tree.

Morning Moon
Low tide in the Bay