I’ve been posting about my six-year-old grandson and his time in the Stanford Pediatric hospital.
Today, I learned he would have an MRI. I’ve never had one but I’ve heard about the pounding and the claustrophobia. Yikes! Worry set in stronger than before.
So, how did he do? Well, he feels he’s too old for naps so even with all that’s been going on since Friday, he is clear. No naps. I’m too old for naps.
It’s been painful for him to lie down flat, but somehow when he lay down for the MRI, he fell asleep and slept through the whole thing, and there you have it. Once again, an example of how we meet what comes. No one told him it would be scary. He met it fresh, well, actually asleep, but what’s fresher than that. His adventure continues. He’s currently writing and illustrating a “graphic novel”. I’m curious to see the result after all of this.
If I ever have an MRI, I’ll say to myself, “Great, I’m in need of a nap.”
Thank you all for all the prayers, concern, and care coming his and our way. I’m so grateful!! I’m swimming in tears. Monday I read him Alice in Wonderful. I never really related to the book, but now I “get” it. I’m big. I’m small, and I’m swimming in tears. And perhaps, the whole thing is a dream!!
What’s more dreamlike than Rodeo Beach in the fog and mist?
A month ago I bought my grandson a book called That’s Good! That’s Bad by Margaret Cuyler and David Catrow. It’s essentially the “Is That So?” story about the back and forth that happens in our world, and how we meet it. It’s about perception.
Today we got a call from the physicians that our grandson needed to return to the hospital. Obviously we united in what I might call “false cheer”. “Oh, the tales that you’ll tell when you go back to school” etc. Meanwhile I drove home in tears.
But then we FaceTimed with him. He was still in the ER as they waited for a room to open up for him. He was hooked up to an IV and excited about all the machines. He bounced up and down to show us how the machine showed his heart rate increasing and decreasing. With sign language, he signed the whole alphabet for us, and showed us a drawing he did, and explained the complexity. He shared how excited he is because he gets to go in an ambulance from one part of the hospital to another, and he gets to have an “overnight”.
Talk about a lesson in perception. I’ve spent the night in the hospital three times, twice for the birth of my children, and once for a lumpectomy. I never greeted it as an “overnight”. I’ve never been in an ambulance but I doubt I would have seen it as an adventure. These last days dealing with the fear and sadness in the ups and downs of this with my grandson have been a huge lesson for me in how I might meet life now. For one thing, all that matters is family, friends, connection, and perception. Everything is so precious, every moment, exchange, breath.I’m precious too. Can I let myself feel that?
I still read the political news which is staggering, and yet surrounding that is the Love we share, the Love that is tangible and matters, and will carry us. I don’t post photos of my grandchild but I have one here of him strapped in ready to go to the ambulance. He has a huge grin on his face as he holds a small carton of milk. He’s wearing his Valkyries hat, and his Grinch pajamas because he loves Christmas so much he wears Christmas pajamas all year. He’s my example of resilience, and how we meet what comes. Life is an adventure. Children show us the way. They give us Joy.
Living in the mist that unites tears and laughter in Receptivity, Resilience and Joy!
I’m re-reading Erling Kagge’s wonderful book Silence: In the Age of Noise. I know stones. As a leader and student of Sensory Awareness, I know how holding a stone or placing in on our body, or passing it to a friend and receiving a stone in return can wake us up. I feel each stone as individual and unique as each of us.
I resonate to these words of Erling Kagge:
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 in their hands, feeling its weight, without uttering a word.
Holding a StoneStones rest in a bowl shaded by Azalea and Pine
I was in my local grocery store, Good Earth, excited to see the beginning of summer season cherries when I turned and fell into the eyes of a little boy in his stroller. His dad was checking out lettuce but his son and I shared a smile wide enough to embrace us both. I felt the arrow and target connect as one.
I walked around him, and he turned with me and again it was such a connection, an expansion of openness and oneness. It was communion that continues even now, hours later. There is such beauty in this world we share, such trust, and we do what we do for the children, for all children, and that’s why the gentle protests continue, nourishing what we believe in, bringing forth what we know is true.
It’s been raining for three days. We lost power yesterday for almost twelve hours but we have a generator for back-up. I was involved in a workshop on Zoom, Mahamudra and the Luminous Mind: The Third Karmapa’s Aspiration Prayer.
Our aspiration, our prayer was for world peace. The focus was on unifying emptiness and luminosity, on cultivating awareness, love and compassion, and wisdom. This is both simple and complex, so I sit here now honoring the simplicity, the gift of it, even as I read the news of Trump. I’m with the challenge of holding it all with compassion and equanimity.
I’m with these words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, spoken after the end of World War II, during the military tribunal he organized to hold Japanese leaders accountable for their own horrific war crimes, including the sack of Manila in 1945. “The soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed. It is the very essence and reason for his being.”
Our commander-in-chief is guilty of war crimes. Let’s hold him accountable. We need to heal.
On another note, I highly recommend Lee Klinger Lesser’s book, Return to Our Senses, A Path to Stability in an Unstable World. It’s a font of guidance and wisdom, and personal examples of how to work with what comes.
She quotes astrophysicist Ethan Siegel: “The air we breathe contains one atom from every breath that every human has ever taken. In fact, right now, if you take a deep breath and then exhale, by the time a year goes by, approximately one atom from that breath will wind up in every other person on Earth’s lungs at any moment in time.”
Like the study of Mahamudra this weekend, that’s hard for me to visualize, and I understand it’s about connection. We’re not separate; we are one! Let’s cleanse and purify the air we share with each loving and compassionate thought and breath. We do it for ourselves, all sentient beings, and our beloved planet Earth.
Earth and SkyMay we slide and climb and build and maintain bridges for All!
My good friend Emma sings with the Threshold Singers of the East Bay. They sing to the terminally ill and dying.They also sing for newborns in the NICU. They sing for those crossing thresholds of birth and dying. I recommend the article and listening to the songs. Be soothed in support.
Today I read the words of Ajahn Sumedho: A life without generosity, respect, and giving to others is a joyless life. Nothing is more joyless than selfishness.
I contrast what Trump and cronies are doing with what Grant did when Lee came to him to surrender the Civil War. From Heather Cox Richardson:
But the images of the wealthy, noble South and the humble North hid a very different reality. As soon as the papers were signed, Lee told Grant his men were starving and asked if the Union general could provide the Confederates with rations. Grant didn’t hesitate. “Certainly,” he responded, before asking how many men needed food. He took Lee’s answer—“about twenty-five thousand”—in stride, telling the general that “he could have…all the provisions wanted.”
By spring 1865, the Confederates who had ridden off to war four years before boasting that their wealthy aristocrats would beat the North’s moneygrubbing shopkeepers in a single battle were broken and starving, while the Union army, backed by a booming industrial economy, could provide rations for twenty-five thousand men on a moment’s notice.
Tuesday this week added extra trauma for many of us as we worried Trump would carry out the horrific things he said, but I continue to see how essential it is to stay with what we know is true, humane, and good. We do it for ourselves and the world. We feed and care for those who are hungry, and in need, and in that, we teach and feed ourselves on Joy which includes sorrow and grief, and happiness, tenderness, and care!
We push uphill to enjoy the downhill ride.Exploring and creating stories down by the silent creekCaressed by a Tree
In John Keat’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, he writes that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
I saw that yesterday at the No King’s Protest. I stood and waved with others at the exit to a freeway. On a beautiful Saturday like yesterday, people are on their way to West Marin and the beaches. As two lanes merge into one, they’re going slowly or often stopped, so it’s an intimate exchange as we stand on the sidewalk with our signs, music playing and joy and cheer waving with our signs. It’s festive and invigorating, and a huge percentage of the people in the cars join in, waving, honking, smiling, and they are so beautiful. They understand compassion, unity, care and the flowing energy and expansion of love. Those who drive by compacted, ignoring and frowning are not beautiful. They are a downer. Of course this is my perspective. One might say I resonate with those on “my side”, and yet, there is beauty in seeing movement, resonance, response, awareness, and joy. I saw so clearly that love and care for others is a beauty treatment and brightens the heart and eyes. We share a path and unity and care for all carves and curves the places to nourish and share and know enough.
A grandmother standing next to me!Another grandmother named GraceAnother grandmother – grandparents were out for our grandchildren!My Grandson’s Sign with help from Dad!
I was on a poetry/meditation call where a woman shared she envisioned this inner/outer world we share as a teabag immersed in a cup of water. She sees us immersed in an ocean of water and air flowing in and out.
The image is with me as I reflect back to 1976 when Republican President Gerald Ford officially recognized February 1 as the first day of Black History Month, a month to honor the accomplishments and contributions of Black people throughout our history.
Now, the Trump administration denies and stomps on that contribution. How does that affect us all, this denial of inner and outer flow? One can only feel compassion for a tragic group of people isolated and contracted in fear and hate. What a horrific way to live on a planet that teaches and shows us how to thrive in connection, generosity, reflection, and inner and outer flow.
Sunset in Half Moon BayEarth turns and the path of sunlight returnsWaves of Daylight
I rise for my journey south to be with family but read Heather Cox Richardson first, and learn how NORAD started tracking Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve.
From Heather: On December 24, 2025, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, will celebrate seventy years of tracking Santa’s sleigh.
According to legend, the tradition of tracking Santa’s sleigh began in November 1955, when a child trying to reach Santa on a telephone hotline advertised by a Sears, Roebuck & Co. store in Colorado transposed two digits. It was not Santa who picked up the phone, but Colonel Harry Shoup of Continental Air Defense Command, known as CONAD, located in Colorado Springs.
He realized this was an opportunity to promote our air defense system that protected us and Canada from Soviet bombers coming over the North Pole.
A few weeks after the young child’s call, Shoup told his public-relations officer to inform the news wire services that CONAD was tracking Santa’s sleigh as it traveled from his home at the North Pole. Reporters loved the story, and the following year they called to see if the trackers would be operational again.
In 1957,* Canada and the U.S. formed the North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD. By charting Santa’s ride, the agency illustrated the military’s mission to protect the citizens of the continent by tracking an object traveling from the North Pole, over the Arctic Ocean, to Canada, and beyond.
By Christmas Eve 1960, NORAD was posting updates and tracking the flight of “S. Claus.” It reported that the sleigh had made an emergency landing on the ice of Hudson Bay. When Canadian fighter jets stopped by to check on the incident, they found Santa tending to a reindeer’s injured foot. Once the animal was bandaged, the jets escorted Santa’s sleigh as he completed his annual flight. Since then, fighter jets have frequently intercepted the sleigh to salute Santa, who reins in his team to let the slower jets catch up.
Over time, NORAD became the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and its mission expanded to include collecting information about the Earth’s atmosphere, coastal waters, and intelligence. It is still key to U.S. and Canadian defense.
And what began in 1955 as a way to familiarize war-weary Americans with Cold War–era defense systems has become an operation in which more than 1,000 Canadian and American military personnel, Defense Department civilian workers, and local participants near Colorado Springs, where NORAD is headquartered, volunteer to answer the more than 100,000 phone calls that come from children around the world on Christmas Eve. It is a testament to the longstanding U.S.-Canadian friendship.
For one night a year, the hard-edged world of international alliances, intelligence, radar, satellites, and fighter jets turns into a night for adults to create a magical world for children.
And we’re all children!Rest and NestReflect on our future!
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