I can’t step into the debacle that Trump created to celebrate this country. It seems Mother Nature agrees with me since so many of his plans aren’t working or are cancelled.
Today I watched pieces of the Obama Presidential Center Grand Opening Ceremony. I watched and listened to Jennifer Hudson sing The Star-Spangled Banner, and To Dream the Impossible Dream. I watched and listened to Christina Aguilera sing What a Wonderful World, and Bruce Springsteen Land of Hope and Dreams. Four former presidents gathered there with their wives, Barack Obama and Michelle, of course, and Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden. Unification. Celebration. Offering. Gifts.
Tomorrow I’ll celebrate the Fourth of July with one son, his wife and friends. We’ll walk to watch fireworks from all over the Bay area from a hill near their home, and it will be a gathering to honor, refresh, and inspire not tear down, steal, and destroy. It’s a weekend to feaston what’s been built, and what can be.
A feasting, buzzing bee.Deer feast contentedly in a friend’s yard.
Last night I opened my book Breast Strokes to a day when I was walking with 3 year old Zach who informed me he was an airplane. His arms spread, he flew over a speed bump, and said, “Look at that cloud.”
I sit with that now, knowing we can be or do anything.
A friend sent me the website of an amazing photographer Jay Tamang who is from Nepal and works at the Mill Valley Whole Foods as a shining light.
I’m struck by his words accompanying a photo from the Merced River, Yosemite.
The moment I arrive in Yosemite, something shifts inside me. It is not just the sight of it — it is the feeling. Like the valley itself reaches out and says: you are home. I don’t rush here. I settle quietly by the bank of the Merced River, where the water runs cold and clear and ancient, and I let the stillness take over.
My mind begins to travel — not forward, but back. Back through centuries, back through the very story of this earth.
I look at the granite walls rising around me and I wonder: what did this place look like when the first Native Americans walked this valley? They were not here by accident. They were called here — the way all seekers are called to places greater than themselves. They understood what took me years of photography to learn: that nature does not belong to us. We belong to it.
I go back further still. I imagine this valley buried beneath a mile of glacial ice, the great granite domes pressing upward with unstoppable force. El Capitan. Half Dome. The Cathedral Rocks. They were not built. They were revealed. The mountain always knew what it was. It only needed time to show the world.
Sitting by the Merced, I feel the smallness of my own life — and I am grateful for it. Here, I feel more alive than anywhere else on earth. More at peace. More certain that everything is unfolding exactly as it should.
We are all, like the granite, still being revealed.
This is our stay at home weekend as we honor those who gave their lives for freedom. As a child, we often drove from Iowa to Indiana, and put flowers on family graves. My uncle put flags on the graves of those who served.
This is from Heather Cox Richardson today:
President Donald J. Trump’s proposed triumphal arch would sit at a rotary on the Virginia side of the Arlington Memorial Bridge between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The proposed arch obscures the Lincoln Memorial, built to honor the president who steered the country safely through the Civil War, but perfectly frames Arlington House, the mansion built by enslaved Americans and once owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The arch does not frame the nation’s honored dead, but frames instead the home of the man who led the armies of the Confederacy that killed them.
How do we stay sane amidst the cruelty, tragedy, theft, greed, and lies of the Trump administration?
My grandson has been staying with us, so I’m with the beauty of this world. Together, he and I watch the light change in the sky as we observe the squirrels, birds, and trees.
Walking briskly to the Presidio playgroundDowntown San Francisco from the Presidio Tunnel TopsJacket as a parachuteFlowers everywhereJoy in the flight of a paper airplane, one of many made in the last few days.
In the Beginner’s Mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.
Today as I was folding sheets, I remembered going through radiation treatment in 2006. The man who handed us our robe always made sure it was warm and said a prayer for each of us. I think of how we do anything, is how we do everything.
In that, is fulfillment and completeness, wholeness.
Nisargadatta Maharaj:
Don’t hold on, that is all. The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours. Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you.
At the Hiller Aviation Museum, even bears can fly!!Grandson’s new puppy – Life!
Today I read Wislawa Szymborska’s poem “Miracle Fair”.
The poem begins with:
The commonplace miracle:
that so many common miracles take place.
And she begins a list, a way for each of us to view, expand, and embrace what comes to us as we meander through night and day.
A miracle that’s lost on us:
the hand actually has fewer than six fingers
but still it’s got more than four.
A miracle, just take a look around:
the inescapableearth.
An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:
the unthinkable
can be thought.
~ Wislawa Szymborska ~
I balance that with the Israel attack on a Gaza hospital killing 20, including journalists and medics. One needs fingers and toes to count the number of dead. One needs a see-saw to balance joy and sorrow, gratitude and grief, as we center in the heart that holds it all.
My son sends me photos of his friend, a red-shouldered hawk, he sees on his morning walks.
Today in my meditation, I saw and felt the day turn to light as the earth turns on its axis and we move around the sun. Yesterday, I got my hair cut and asked my hairdresser why one side flips up and the other side curls under. I learned that our hair spirals in a circle around our head, each of us with a swirl as individual as our fingerprint.
I’m swirling in movement today, anchored in the cord of impermanence, change.
Growth on the trunk of a treeContemplation on a SlantReflecting the turn to fall
At the park, I saw a little boy, perhaps two or three, laughing and waving, but I couldn’t see anyone there. Then I realized he was playing with his shadow, waving, laughing and dancing with his own image. If only we could greet all aspects of ourselves with such joy and glee, no hiding, only reception and awareness of all that’s right here for us to see, receive, and be.
Light and DarkDancing our heart like a kite at the end of our armsReceiving and being with sun and shade
A friend tells me of a friend who with no hope and severe continuing deterioration of the brain drinks from a doctor-prescribed bottle of death. I don’t know him, and yet he is the age of my son, and I feel the grief of those who love him, and a deep carving inside.
It is said sorrow carves deeply into us like a log carved out to make a boat and so we float on the love grief brings when we let ourselves feel this boundary between the preciousness of life here and what comes when we let go to a wider float as the boat dissolves.
Ice plant growing on rockDriftwood gathered on the beachFlight
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