The rain continues and my dreams these days are about children, saving the children. I’ve been spending time with my four year old grandson, so perhaps that’s part of it, seeing his innocence and division into “good guys” and “bad guys” and wondering how we might navigate balance and come to peace.
He was into swords for a time, but now he has become Robin Hood so the swords have become a bow and arrow and he wears them on his back tucked into his Robin Hood mask and shirt.
The two of us were at Coyote Point this week, and I was intrigued with this sign. I had no idea how close we came to imitating the East coast with our own Coney Island and Atlantic City. The pungent odor of sewage dumped into the bay saved us from that.
Adaptation Robin Hood with a furry band of menRobin Hood banding his men togetherNo need for a push these daysEnchantment of water, sand, and a stickHe draws himself in the sand – a perfect likenessLunch atop a dragon.
It’s a day to pause as the light begins to shift and we prepare to enter a new year.
May this be the year we move into the heart of longing for peace and release the tools and words of war.
I watched a video of the poet Jane Hirshfield last night. She spoke of how Kinship will save us, the acknowledgment of our interconnection. Perhaps we could say to every tree we pass: sister, sister, sister. We can ask our natural friends, our relatives, the mountains and plants, what they can teach us. This is a time to listen.
I’ve always loved the work of Alexander Calder, his mobiles and circuses. Jane was asked if darkness is required in great art. She used his work as an example of such lightness, beauty, and happiness that reflection is required to find the mortality. It’s in the delicacy of his creations. They move and sway, fragile in their time here, as are we.
The psychologist Carl Jung wrote: The whole world wants peace and the whole world prepares for war.
May this be the year we acknowledge our kinship and grow the heart of our desire for peaceand the wind and breath chimed grace of love.
Wind Chimes
Here is the link to the talk if you’re interested:
Our family gathered on a ranch 1000 feet above Half Moon Bay to celebrate Steve’s 75th birthday.
Pacifica on June 1Quail on the propertyA Pair of QuailView from Pigeon Point LighthouseInside the Lighthouse MuseumWe saw seals but no whalesAnd pelicansRocks and wavesFire in the custom fireplace morning and nightPrayer flags wave in a Tibetan temple above us Looking out and down at the fire pitA sense of the view – mesmerizingChanging skyBeauty and EaseLove caught thought
I wake and think I can’t see until I put my contacts in or put glasses on but I actually can see. The cataract and lens replacement surgery worked, and I’m slowly coming to believe it. It’s clear when I drive. I see road signs and lines that were blurs before. The world is edged with invitations I missed.
Sitting on the couch at home, I realized there is a gap in one tree and I can see through to the ridge, and yet I’m still in a somewhat state of disbelief as it’s become so clear how we create our world and focus.
I’m reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Lyndon Johnson and The American Dream. It’s a fascinating look at all he accomplished and how influenced he was by his environment, parents and grandparents. We all are, of course, whether it’s to absorb, or push against, but he did what he did because of it, and then came to an inability to adapt. This issue of response is often with me. How do I respond to what comes now and now and now?
My iris plant isn’t yet blooming but I resonate to this poem and how when the flowers emerge I’ll see little vases holding flowers perhaps infinitum like fractals. I’m opening to see life the same way as patterns of curiosity open, close, and merge, like night and day.
This poem is from Billy Collin’s poetry book “Musical Tables”.
Not only is it Groundhog’s Day, but it’s February 2, 2022, so 2-2-22.
And if we pause at 2:22 today, we’ll be in a lineup with twosas though entering an Ark.
And with that, I bring forth Pema Chodron’s words from This Sacred Journey:
My children met the Sixteenth Karmapa when they were teenagers, and I asked him if he’d say something to them. I said to him, “The children are not Buddhists, so is there something you could say to them with that in mind?” He just looked right at these young teenagers and said, “You are going to die. And you’re not going to take anything with you except your state of mind.” You die, but your state of mind continues. So how we work with our thoughts right now really matters.
And right now I’m thinking of the number 2 as a place of balance and harmony.
Today the Lunar New Year begins the Year of the Tiger. The tiger gives people hope and is associated with bravery, courage, and strength. It’s a time to wear red for good luck and to ward off evil spirits. It feels like Christmas to me, a time for birth and honoring our time on earth.
I’m with this quote of G.K. Chesterton:
What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. I was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.
I invite that now.
One thing I’m noticing is the importance of looseness in the lips, shoulders, and armpits. Do we allow breathing under our arms, the flow out from the heart? Do we taste the freedom blooming there?
I came across a poem I wrote a few years ago and it guides me now, this early morning, as I rise to welcome this new day and year. I shine in the early morning dark.
Lighthouse to myself,
Armpits open to air, shine
Beacon inside out
When Thich Nhat Hanh and his followers walked in a Peace March, others passed them, as they were walking slowly and mindfully and being peace, but then, they were shown a shortcut, and they arrived first. Life can be like that, pure ease, when we embody interbeing, and live as a torch or lighthouse of peace.The moon is new; may we be too.
It’s a day to honor courage. The word comes from the French, couer, the heart.
We honor one man today, Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 1957, he said:
“I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.”
Spiraling open the layers of LoveSo many ways – how does each of us unfold Building bridges
My intention for this new year is to listen, listen to myself, others, and the world.
I just finished reading Etel Adnan’s book, Shifting the Silence. An artist and writer, she was born in 1925 and passed November 14, 2021. This book looks at aging and loss. What is it when we lose someone to Alzheimer’s or death?
I’m struck by certain passages and sentences.
Etel Adnan:
Bach’s music is the needle of the cosmic balance.
This has taken me into the core of a silence that underlines the universe: underneath the mesh of sounds that never cease there’s a strange phenomena, a counter-reality, the rolling of silent matter.
Silence is a flower, it opens up, dilates, extends its texture, can grow, mutate, return on its steps. It can watch other flowers grow and become what they are. We’re at the turn of the year, I have to invite somebody or something. The live thickness of the silence makes sounds free themselves and expand. The year is turning, has turned. 2018 is gone forever, gone into being the new year, people are dancing, 2019 has just entered, wide-eyed, utterly new.
Silence is the creation of space, a space that memory needs to use … an incubator. We’re dealing here with dimensions, stretching inner muscles, pushing aside any interference. We’re dealing with numbers, but not counting. Silence demands the nature of night, even in full day, it demands shadows.
She goes on to say: I consider the light that enters the room in the early hours of the day as a messenger of the sun, a direct voyager, a particle, a wave, who knows, but an object of sorts that left its solar source, covered miles, and landed on my skin. So the universe constantly visits us while waiting for us to reverse that itinerary.
Morning is still dark here this winter day, and I trust the turning, the turning that seeds, the silence that breathes and breeds in me.
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