In my meditation these days, I keep seeing and feeling the daily growth of my two Amaryllis plants. Each has its own rhythm, and reach. One is now two feet tall, and the other has settled gently in at one. I’m struggling with the photo of five year old Liam Conejo Ramos in a blue knit hat with white bunny ears and pompoms. I can’t believe I live in a country where this is happening.
I’m also with a poem by Ilya Kaminsky, “Psalm For the Slightly Tilted”.
I live in a county with a high percentage of seniors, and I’m struck by this last stanza of the poem as it feels so true of the protests I’ve attended.
You can watch Governor Walz speak on YouTube as he defends what this country is about and what Trump and his cronies are working to destroy. Go to YouTube and watch “Governor Walz addresses ongoing federal presence in Minnesota”. Tragic!
The aftermath of the funeral march on Sunday at the Marin Civic Center is still with me. Over 1500 people gathered the to protest the deaths by ICE.
Robert Hubbell today: Since the first day of his second term, Donald Trump has refused to follow the Constitution. This month, Trump is asking Congress to continue his lawless reign by passing a “continuing resolution” that will fund the government at its current levels—including its current levels of lawlessness.
Congress should refuse to do so. Instead, Congress should:Defund Trump, Defund and abolish ICE, Defund and abolish the Department of Homeland Security, Defund Trump’s ability to invade sovereign nations and NATO allies, andDefund the corrupt DOJ that investigates the victims of crime and protects the out-of-control thugs wearing facemasks and flak jackets.
Is it “radical” to suggest “defunding” major agencies in the federal government? Hmm. . . let’s see. What did Donald Trump threaten to do today? He threatened to “defund” every state that has a “sanctuary city” —which means Trump will “cut off” federal funds to states representing 37% of the American population.
To be clear, Trump. has no authority to “cut off” funding to any state or city. Congress controls appropriations and the president is obligated by law to carry out those appropriations. But Trump has been violating his obligation to “faithfully execute the laws” by refusing to spend money as directed by Congress.
I just read James Rebanks book, The Place of Tides. Rebanks writes of a summer he spent on a remote Norwegian Island where he learned from 70 year old Anna Masoy, known as the Norwegian “duck woman”, about the ancient tradition of collecting eiderdown from eider ducks. Her dedication has brought the ducks back to these islands, ducks threatened by the introduction of minks and other predators. It shows the power of one woman, and right now, we have thousands of people across the country demonstrating against the policies of Trump.
Today in Heather Cox Richardson: On Sunday, David Marcus of Fox News warned that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.” He claimed that those people organizing to protect their neighborhoods from ICE may be “criminal conspiracies.” He complained of “self-important White women” protesting “with a weird and disturbing glee.” He seemed to threaten them by warning: “if we simply allow these cosplaying would-be revolutionaries to do whatever they want…, Renee Good will not be the last to needlessly die.”
“Organized groups of wine moms”. Wow! I do love my glass of wine, but I can tell you there was no “weird and disturbing glee” on Sunday. It was a funeral procession, and my heart is still heavy with the weight and sorrow of the experience.
A stump the ocean carried in on which to sit at Rodeo BeachThe Amaryllis now has three flowers and continues to delight!
Yesterday I attended a protest/vigil in Marin County. We gathered at the Veteran’s Auditorium, and walked in a long and winding line around and through the Civic Center leaving flowers in front of the sheriff’s office and next to photos and names of the 33 people killed by ICE. Our sheriff’s office cooperates with ICE and we want ICE out of Marin. We were told to wear black, and bring a flower and did, so it was a sober line that stretched before and behind me. Six coffins had been made of cardboard and painted black and covered with flowers were carried along the route. It was a sober and quiet group. The event began with twelve minutes of speeches, most of that a prayer, so we began walking after saying Amen. Volunteers carried recorders repeating the names of the 33 people killed. Tears come enough now as I feel the immensity of the event, the power of people gathering to silently speak for empathy, morality, and Truth.
I’m awake now, up in the night. I’ve been sitting outside with the stars and a sky streaked with light wondering, receiving, embracing what might be as we come to Peace and walk with others in quiet and love.
Six coffins were carried along the winding and quiet route.And so we walkWinding up and around with police stopping traffic as the line crosses streets and passes the Farmer’s Market, a huge gathering on Sunday morning.Signs handed out to carryMy Amaryllis opens and blooms
Like so many of us, I am sobered, stunned, shocked, and suffering with the continuing onslaught of horrific political news. And yet this morning I experienced the gift of coming together with a group of 72 people from around the world led by Russell Delman to celebrate our personal embodiment as well as to be part of a field of people who unite in the cultivation and sharing of Love and Compassion.
Today we grieve the murder of Renee Nicole Good, murder by ICE agents as she attempted to comply with their orders. She was a legal observer volunteering to help protect vulnerable immigrants, a mother of three children and an award-winning poet. Her youngest child, 6 years old, is now orphaned.
Both Pam Bondi and Donald Trump defamed her immediately following her death, labeling her a domestic terrorist and making gross misstatements about what actually took place. The facts are available for all to see. Their lies are exposed.
As we grieve, we unite and fight, with “effortless effort” as Dogen, the founder of the Soto School of Zen in Japan, put it, with the ease with which a bud rises, emerges, and graces the world.
My Amaryllis this morning as it continues its rise to emerge
The news of our country is staggering, and it is December, a time of gatheringand celebrating what connects us with nature and the seasons, the nature in each of us.On Tuesday, I was at Cavallo Point and yesterday took the ferry to San Francisco for our yearly book club gathering at The Waterfront.One half of the restaurant was closed because the ever-increasing winter tides came flooding in.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration said it will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions.One reason is that their research shows climate change. The other is that the Colorado governor won’t obey Trump in pardoning former Colorado election official Tina Peters, convicted by a jury for state crimes in facilitating a data breach in her quest to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Trump has granted her a “full pardon”, of course, but it needs to be Governor Polis who pardons her since it is a state crime.
And so we approach the Solstice, a time in the northern hemisphereto honor the richness in the dark and return to the evolving expansiveness of light.
My eye is caught by the beauty and dignity of a Great Blue HeronHunkering before take-off and flightA Kingfisher
I rise at four, meditate and open Arthur Sze’s poetry book, The Glass Constellation, to these lines in the poem “The Flower Path”.
You must learn to see a pond in the shape of the character mind,
Walk through a garden and see it from your ankles;
Wondering what the shape of the character mind is I ask AI who responds:
The primary Chinese character for “mind” is 心 (xīn), which looks like a stylized, simple drawing of a physical heart, with a central vertical line, two curved strokes on the sides, and a dot at the bottom, representing the ancient belief that the heart is the seat of thought and emotion, often translated as “heart-mind”.
And then I wonder if AI is a who, which brings me to Dr. Seuss’s book Horton Hears a Who!, and the words “a person’s a person no matter how small”, and as the mind curves in the shape of a heart, I think of how tragic it is that we have people leading our country who’ve never read Dr. Seuss.
Heather Cox Richardson: Today is Human Rights Day, celebrated internationally in honor of the day seventy-seven years ago, December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Heather goes on and adds this –
Last year, under President Joe Biden, the White House celebrated Human Rights Day by recommitting to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” The State Department bestowed the Human Rights Defender Award on eight individuals who have defended migrant workers, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and democracy. The recipients came from Kuwait, Bolivia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Burma, Eswatini, Ghana, Colombia, and Azerbaijan.
The U.S. government did not recognize Human Rights Day this year.
Instead, Humeyra Pamuk of Reuters reported, administration officials are threatening to place sanctions on the International Criminal Court to guarantee it will not investigate Trump and his top officials. “There is growing concern…that in 2029 the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them,” a Trump administration official told Pamuk. “That is unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.”
They will not allow it to happen. Hmmm! The world conscience against a few. We’ll see.
Aging Mountain lLon near our house decorated for the Holidays!
These days I’m with the magic of candlelight even as I read the news.
I was on a Zoom Call on Monday and AI gave a beautiful summary of the experience and journey.
We can thank Chat GPT for this as posted by Heather Cox Richardson.
When G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbersasked ChatGPT to fact-check an article for him yesterday, the chatbot couldn’t get its head around modern America. It told him there were “multiple factual impossibilities” in his article, including his statements that “[t]he current Secretary of Defense is a former talk show host for Fox News,” “[t]he Deputy Director of the FBI used to guest-host Sean Hannity’s show,” and “Jeanine Pirro is the U.S. District Attorney for DC.”
“Since none of these statements are true,” it told Morris, “they undermine credibility unless signposted as hyperbole, fiction, or satire.”
But of course, Morris’s statements were not “factual impossibilities.” In the United States of America under President Donald J. Trump, they are true.
May that change as people wake and vote for democracy, support, unity, and humanity.
A burning candle shows the many ways to give and offer Light!
I’ve been trying to understand Trump’s boat attacks. Why, especially when he pardons a man at the top of drug trafficking?
This guest essay by Phil Klay in the NY Times today allows me to understand.
Klay begins with this:
When Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers or of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison, I often think of a story St. Augustine told in his “Confessions.”
In the fourth century A.D., a young man named Alypius arrived in Rome to study law. He was a decent sort. He knew the people at the center of the empire delighted in cruel gladiatorial games, and he promised himself he would not go. Eventually, though, his fellow students dragged him to a match. At first, the crowd appalled Alypius. “The entire place seethed with the most monstrous delight in the cruelty,” Augustine wrote, and Alypius kept his eyes shut, refusing to look at the evil around him.
But then a man fell in combat, a great roar came from the crowd and curiosity forced open Alypius’s eyes. He was “struck in the soul by a wound graver than the gladiator in his body.” He saw the blood, and he drank in savagery. Riveted, “he imbibed madness.” Soon, Augustine said, he became “a fit companion for those who had brought him.”
We must continue to stay on top of what’s happening, and not allow what happened to Alypius, to happen to us. It’s a horrific manipulation to destroy humanity and the continuing development and evolution of peace, communion, fairness and democracy.
St. FrancisHarmony at Tennessee ValleySerenity at Muir Beach
