Today I’m with these words of Robin Wall Kimmerer.
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
This morning I rise and realize I’ve made 47 Thanksgiving dinners, 41 of them in this house. This day honors tradition so I use my father’s recipes and the pans my mother-in-law gave us almost fifty years ago.
Two onions and a bunch of celery simmer in two sticks of butter. Giblets and the neck simmer also. They’ll come together in the dressing and gravy. One kitty and I will split the liver, a once a year treat. When my mother was alive, that was hers.
The day is exquisite with blue sky and a high of 65 predicted.
In Heather Cox Richardson, I learn that Thanksgiving as we know it was introduced by Abraham Lincoln to heal the wounds of the American Civil War.
Thanksgiving is about unity, about coming together, though this year we are advised to do it virtually, and we will. I read that people who serve and have served in the military are upset with people whining over not being able to gather when they were often overseas for the holidays, many times year after year. This year we’re asked to come together, separately for the health and well-being of us all.
Heather Cox Richardson:
Lincoln established our national Thanksgiving to celebrate the survival of our democratic government.
Today, more than 150 years later, President-Elect Joe Biden addressed Americans, noting that we are in our own war, this one against the novel coronavirus, that has already taken the grim toll of at least 260,000 Americans. Like Lincoln before him, he urged us to persevere, promising that vaccines really do appear to be on their way by late December or early January. “There is real hope, tangible hope. So hang on,” he said. “Don’t let yourself surrender to the fatigue…. [W]e can and we will beat this virus. America is not going to lose this war. You will get your lives back. Life is going to return to normal. That will happen. This will not last forever.”
“Think of what we’ve come through,” Biden said, “centuries of human enslavement; a cataclysmic Civil War; the exclusion of women from the ballot box; World Wars; Jim Crow; a long twilight struggle against Soviet tyranny that could have ended not with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but in nuclear Armageddon.” “It’s been in the most difficult of circumstances that the soul of our nation has been forged,” he said. “Faith, courage, sacrifice, service to country, service to each other, and gratitude even in the face of suffering, have long been part of what Thanksgiving means in America.”
“America has never been perfect,” Biden said. “But we’ve always tried to fulfill the aspiration of the Declaration of Independence: that all people are created equal….”
Biden could stand firmly on the Declaration of Independence because in 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal of slave owners from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that promoted the common good.
And they won.
There’s so much to be grateful for. Yes, there is controversy with this holiday and yet a day, a few days really if one is cooking, set aside, to give thanks. My turkey is soaking in a dry brine, and today I make pies, pumpkin and mincemeat. There may be only the two of us but Thanksgiving eve pie can count as dinner with a salad perhaps.
I believe pumpkin pie has all the nutrients we need except vitamin C and an orange can take care of that.
Today I’m with E.M. Forster:
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind if they do not enter into our daily lives?
Fog enveloped our home this morning, and like a letter still closed, I reveled in the peace of enclosure. Now the sun slants in such a way I see wires across the way I never noticed before. Light is such a powerful presence these days.
I read that turkeys are bred for slaughter, so even when the president pardons a turkey, the turkey dies soon after. It seems a lose-lose for turkeys, though the ones who wander around our neighborhood seem to do fine with their constant gobble-gobble as though you won’t catch me.
Today I felt my breath taking a ride on the blood, as I suppose it always does but today I noticed and was reminded of what my brother said once about a “rodeo snail”. I’m slowing for the holiday, grateful I’m not a turkey and grateful for the unity we come together to share. I miss my mother, father, and brother even more this time of year, as though they are sliding closer on the increasing slant of light.
Yesterday I was at the playground with my one year old grandson. He loves to be pushed in a swing, and swooped down a slide. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling sparkly and twinkly as I rise and fall in the majesty of unifying my being in the glorious play of shadow and light.
I read the choices our President-elect Joe Biden is making and rejoice with these words of Audre Lorde.
“Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.”
Yesterday Miren Salmeron led a workshop on Sensory Awareness. Her intention was to explore the words of Pema Chodron: Peace and War begin in our hearts.
She led us to our navel, the place where we received nourishment in the womb. I saw myself tethered in space like an astronaut, tethered to a wider world, receiving nourishment. We speak of landing somewhere, and I felt myself as land and sea, as my own earth floating in a wider space.
I felt my heart held by my lungs, my heart nourished and supported as it rests on my diaphragm like a bird on a branch.
I felt my back open up, and even now there’s transparency, translucence.
What does this mean for my life? I’ll see what comes but in this moment gentleness comes to my lips and jaw, softness. I see the day come to light.
Yesterday I watched the light on the yellow leaves of the tree. This morning a different sense of light as it touches my skin and eyes, and massages my ears, nose, and feet.
I’m with gratitude this morning, enjoying sitting and watching the day come to light.
Yesterday, I watched Elizabeth Strout talk about her writing, specifically her two books on Olive Kitteridge. Book Passage brings authors right into our home.
Strout said she’s always been interested in other people, in how they see the world. What does it feel like to be another person? She said novels help us with this. We enter the life of another. She said, “Wherever there’s a person, there’s s story.”
Her earliest friend was the physical world. There were no kids around where and when she grew up in Maine. She went to NY, a place she loves, but then left to return to the light of Maine.
I’m with the light here, especially this time of year. I revel in it. We are light after all.
Strout spoke of point of view and how with Olive, she gives us how different people perceive Olive with all her imperfections. In her writing, she just records life with its imperfections. She wrote the second book on Olive after seeing a woman in Oslo who reminded her of an older Olive. She knew Olive was back.
I was also introduced to Dorothy Hunt yesterday. This brings me peace.
When I see it’s November 20, I feel the holidays begin, that slide into celebration which will be more quiet this year. I’ve never been the raucous sort, but Thanksgiving day will be Steve and me cooking our favorite turkey delights. We’ll see other gatherings on computers and other devices.
I’m not quite sure why this day, November 20, strokes and strikes me so, but it does. The light is soft, and trees are radiant with red and gold. Leaves fall like snowflakes and birds twitter with joy.
Trump is holding on, and he will go. He and his daughter will be indicted for state crimes. He has to face reality or destroy a nation that affects the world. I saw a Star Trek episode where a petulant alien with the emotional capacity of an un-nurtured child was threatening to destroy the world, and we see that now. For many of us, Trump’s behavior is alien to how we were raised.
I trust we will survive this, as we become even more aware of the preciousness of shared breath.
A neighbor of my grandson re-arranges hundreds of rubber duckies each day to deliver a message. Wednesday was “Believe”. This is only a portion of the display.
Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen – that stillness becomes a radiance.
— Morgan Freeman
This morning I was tucked cozily in bed, one cat at my feet. It was silent and then the wind blew in bringing the rain we welcome and need.
I contemplated why I was so content just lying there. Wasn’t it enough? What would motivate me to rise from bed while it was still dark?
What is it with this list of “shoulds” most of us carry, especially now, in this world of complexity and need for change.
I remembered back to my Rosen training. In one class with Marion Rosen, Hans Axelson, founder of Axelson Institute in Sweden, and Frank Ottiwell from Alexander Technique, each of us walked individually across the floor between two groups of people who analyzed our walk. What did it say about how we meet, greet, and move through the world?
I was self-conscious at first, and walking very carefully and studiously, and then, Marion said, “Walk as though you’re meeting your lover”, and everything changed. I lifted and floated easily and quickly across the floor.
We also worked with activating and using our “Marilyn Monroe” muscles, muscles located in the back close to the sacrum. Again, I was self-conscious to swing so loosely but I played with dancing with my shadow and it was fun.
I rose with all of this in mind, seemingly floating out of bed when the words of Charlotte Selver came to me. “Does it interest you?”
I realize that’s how we navigate our list of shoulds. Life is short and precious. With interest as guidance, we know our path.
Mark Twain said it well: “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
It’s true of all we do. It’s how to meet the world, with soft, open chest and face and back of neck and back of knees. So light life can be.
I’m floating now secure in knowing I’m pulled forth with ease by what interests me, and I offer this to you. Meet the world as though you’re meeting your lover because you are.
Cathy's Blog! 