I’m struggling a bit with the news these days. Enough said.
I continue to work with my own expansiveness, my own stretch and reach, allowing my feet to reach into what’s beneath me, even as I rise, like a tree, well-rooted and branched.
Today I’m with the words of Thich Nhat Hanh:
Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water.
The day was to go one way, and then a change, so now another, an open space. I’m out early this morning, well not early if it were summer, but this time of year 6:00 is still dark. The crescent moon is a cradle and stars are shining, winging my brain.
I oil my circle
of archetypes, prayers, gears.
Wind chimes.
I find myself wanting to eat some acorn mush in celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day though I’ll probably pass. I live on Coast Miwok land, and I’m grateful for its sanctuary, its feeling of bounty and peace.
We’re now learning that humans may have arrived in North America at least 20,000 years ago, 5000 years earlier than previously believed. We’re also learning that they came by boat as well as foot, so they traveled down the “Kelp Highway” abundantly sustained by resources along the coast.
I’m visualizing their travels even as I celebrate that it’s also Thanksgiving Day in Canada. The earliest recorded Canadian Thanksgiving dates back to 1578, well before the Pilgrims and the Native Americans feasted at Plymouth in 1621.
Canada sits above us and leads the way.
Yesterday I read Jill Ker Conway’s book, The Road from Coorain. Born in 1934, she went from birth on her parents’ thirty thousand acre sheep station in the Australian outback to become the first woman president of Smith College in Massachusetts. She was seven before she saw her first girl child, and eight when she was herding sheep from horseback.
Influenced by the land on which she lived, she writes “It is hard to imagine a kookaburra feeding St. Jerome or accompanying St. Francis. They belong to a physical and spiritual landscape which is outside the imagination of the Christian West.”
She also delves into Britain’s rule of and influence on a country that was first inhabited by Aboriginal people between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago. On Wikipedia, I read that “their artistic, musical, and spiritual traditions are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history.”
It’s a day to celebrate the richness of the past, the diversity, and how we now open in abundance and generosity to bring forth and recognize the bud and bloom of all that is here, this moment so precious, this moment explored and shared.
The poet William Stafford, was a registered pacifist in the United States. From 1942 to 1946, during WWII, he worked in camps and projects for conscientious objectors. He was paid $2.50 per month for assigned duties such as fire fighting, soil conservation, and building and maintaining roads and trails. This poem speaks volumes to me.
Learning
A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.
~ William Stafford ~
(The Way It Is)
In 2005/2006, I went through treatment for breast cancer, or as Molly Ivins put it, I was poisoned, and burned. She added that she was mutilated, but I ‘just” had a lumpectomy so didn’t feel as violated as those who had more.
I finished treatment in June and went through horse therapy to “re-empower” me. I’m not sure I was re-empowered but I loved the horses, and the time with them, and learning how they responded to my energy. It was a lesson in how we respond to the energy of others, and our own, and how we interact.
That September, I was invited to participate in a fashion show, a gift to the oncologists and doctors who had contributed to the survival of a group of women, and one man. Yes, men can get breast cancer, and he was quite a dapper soul.
We each had three outfits to wear down the runway. I wore pink lingerie, brown sportswear, and a beautiful black outfit with the risk of very high heels. Everyone wore formal dress for the runway and grand finale.
It was a beautiful, fund-raising event. It comes to me now when I read that Desiree Anzalone, the great-granddaughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Sr., has died from breast cancer. She was just 31.
We are reading of her because she is famous, but my understanding is that all the young women in that show passed away rather quickly afterwards. I was the oldest in the show at 56. There was a woman in her 20’s and others in their 30’s and 40’s, and a few in their young 50’s.
Cells multiply more quickly in the young so when they get cancer, they are more at risk. My family is gathering today, socially distanced, of course, to celebrate my son’s birthday. I give thanks for all the scientists and doctors and dedicated people who mean I’m here. The young man who handed us a gown for radiation always made sure each gown was warm, and he said a prayer over each one. Tears come. We live in a world of care.
If you watched the debate, you noticed a fly stuck to Pence’s head for two minutes. I believe that flies have a place in nature’s balance, so with no intent to malign the fly, I share the symbolism of what we saw last night.
When the fly spirit animal makes its way into your life, this usually serves as a warning that there’s danger lurking somewhere.
It means to catch your attention when you are spending too much of your time with someone or on something that has a destructive influence.
The fly meaning brings the focus to anything that’s causing harm to your life, whether of your own choosing or not. An example of this is giving in to societal pressures and indifference.
Just like the cricket spirit animal, the meaning of the fly also speaks about hate, spite, malice, or blame. It buzzes to be heard and flies overhead annoyingly until you are forced to swat or kill it with anything you can get your hands on.
The fly totem has also been known to represent lies, gossip, excuses, and anything that’s dirty or impure.
However, before you dismiss the fly as nothing but bad and undesirable, the fly symbolism also speaks about cures for sicknesses (just like the deer symbolism).
The meaning of the fly also serves as a reminder that you reap what you sow.
Interpret as you will but I do wonder how a fly got into the debate. Perhaps Ruth Bader Ginsberg watches and speaks from above. Enjoy and savor this precious new day!! The good and righteous continue to buzz.
I suggest we make it take a fly to lunch day. It will be a cheap and gratitude full date.
As David Frum wrote today: Through all of the scandals and the crimes and the disasters of the past four years, Mike Pence was the man who pretended not to notice. And now there was a fly on his head, and he pretended not to notice that too.
My youngest son is 43 today. I wonder if as one grows older, your children’s birthdays are more important than your own. His age means I have to look at my own, and I can relate to 43 more than my upcoming 71.
His gift request was an “autobiography” from his father and me. It might sound simple, but it is an archaeological dig going back through what to share especially when you start at the beginning. I was born. I weighed.
I sent what I’d written to both sons last night and they both appreciated it and requested more.
I’m with that this morning, the journey backward in time. It might sound easy but it’s like peeling an apple to get to the core. What’s important for them to know, for me to know, for me to bring forth and share?
I want them to know me, and yet there’s this place of tenderness right now on what I regurgitate, like a mother bird feeding her tweeting babies chewed worms.
I’ve been going through my journals of which I have multitudes. In 1999, I was going through something painful. I wrote that there was a crackling pain in my chest like fire, prying me open, lacing ash and silt with space to grow new form. The crack in my trunk felt like a burning. I was split by fire like a redwood tree that expands into a family of trees growing in a circle.
I’m with that now and these words from Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
“Everything that has already happened is particles, everything in the future is waves.”
I look at my doodling from that time period and it is as though a woman is a rocket ship taking off into the waves.
I’m going through journals of the past. The air has cleared, and temperatures have dropped. I closed windows and doors last night and added an extra blanket to our bed. What a shift.
In 1993, Jon Carroll published a column on his daughter who was a trapeze artist.
He wrote: “The wonderful lesson of trapeze is that if you pay attention, if you stay within the timing of the moment, if you consider that every dead spot is just the place where you start to do your trick …, well, then you can learn how to fly.” His daughter said, “Once you get the timing down, anybody could do the tricks.” “Timing is more important than strength.”
I sit with that today as we’re knocked back and forth like billiard balls by the latest from the Trump campaign, and what members of the White House staff are calling the “Rose Garden Massacre”.
I loved seeing the decreasing moon in the sky this morning.
Change is a given, like timing.
The news – what can I say, but poetry comforts me in every way.
Yesterday a friend introduced me to this poem, “Above the Paradox Valley”. May it allow stillness to open the wisdom in the spirit of your dance.
This morning I opened my October National Geographic to these photos. I then read the words but first my heart was stabbed with the pain of what has happened, and will continue to happen unless we take these images in and bring forth the change we want to see.
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