Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. I sink into the darkness, the touch of candlelight and the scent of pine and cedar. Two squirrels chase around and up and down the redwood tree.
The tilt of the earth’s axis gives us the seasons. It’s a time to honor and reflect. What comes to me now, and how open am I to receive?
Peace – dark – light – change –
This morning I’m with the beauty and wisdom in this Carol video, O Holy Darkness.
I remember taking a course in Child Psychology at UCLA when I was 18. In 1968, we were propagandized that the “Communists” were programming their children. We had to fight back against that threat. Of course, our own propaganda was that we were the good guys and our children were allowed and given complete freedom and possibility in this “land of the free”.
Angela Davis, an avowed Communist, came to teach and there was turmoil and concern. In order to work as a tour guide on campus, I had to sign that I was not a Communist. I doubt I knew what that meant at the time. I knew my father believed in the Domino Theory and not wanting another World War II, he thought we were right to be in Vietnam. He didn’t live long enough to learn the truth of that.
Now, we are trying to teach our children a more whole history. Watch this beautiful movement into the embrace, the holy embrace, of wholeness.
Joseph Brodsky wrote: An object makes infinity private.
Is that what I’m doing with my treasures? Making infinity private?
I bounce in the play.
It’s a beautiful fall morning. My father, born in 1921, would have been 100 today. He died in an accident in 1969. He was 47, the age my oldest son is now. Time. Trust. Today I’m with James Wright’s beautiful poem “A Blessing”. There are so many ways to step out of our bodies and into blossom.
A Blessing
Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
~ James Wright ~
In Sensory Awareness we often speak of Unfolding.
Jonathan Swift said that “No wise man ever wished to be younger”. I take that to mean we keep unfolding the beauty of the years.
Of course, today, we would expand that word “man” to include women and then we’d unfold outside of gender and humans to embrace this whole universe that is expanding and unfolding.
Yesterday it was suggested that I sit with a dish towel and fold and unfold it, and then, put something precious inside, maybe my own heart-felt and full beliefs, and fold and unfold with the deepest reverence and care. I do this in my imagination first, a delight of play.
Then I bring forth a dish towel, one now converted to fall so that harvest colors capture the autumn light. I gather abundance and wrap it up like a gift, and then open it out to share.
Steve and I spent two nights in Liege, Belgium four years ago. It was pure delight as we ate our meals outside in outdoor cafes.
When Steve wanted to find a laundry on a Saturday, he asked a policeman who then led us to the police station where he gathered a crew of police women and men interested in helping us fulfill this task. We all walked around together until we learned it wasn’t meant to be but meanwhile we’d made new friends.
When I look at the photos of the flooding in Liege, I’m shocked. Each moment of our lives, a moment preserved.
I know that climate change is bringing excessive heat to many areas of the country, but here, this morning, very softly, on her cat feed, the fog comes gently rolling in.
More and more I come to understand these words of Alan Watts:
The only Zen you’ll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you.
I’m also understanding these words of George Washington Carver as the years unroll in me.
| How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. |
It’s the first day of the second half of this year.
I’ve been perusing the book, The Boy, the mole, the fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy.
“To be honest, I often feel I have nothing interesting to say,” said the fox. “Being honest is always interesting” said the horse.
“Is your glass half-empty or half-full?” asked the mole.
“I think I’m grateful to have a glass.” said the boy.
“What’s your best discovery?” asked the mole.
“That I’m enough as I am,” said the boy.
And with that I pause, raise my sails, and slip inside my dreams.
This morning I’m with these words from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi on“Breathing”.
What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.
Perhaps that’s why I relate so to watching the tides move in and out, and the individual waves moving as a group. No “I” – just a swinging door.
Yesterday I was at the park with Grandchild – Grand Child.
Sunday morning, we rose early to a moist wrap of fog and flotilla after flotilla of pelicans flying by our deck by the bay. We counted fifty pelicans in some of the groups, and there were also individuals, couples, and smaller gatherings of flight.
We didn’t know if it was a wider circle than we saw coming from the sunrise and heading west so we were seeing the same ones more than once, or whether each one was unique to us, but I was reminded of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring where she pointed out that DDT was destroying our wildlife. Rachel’s book saved the pelicans, osprey, and other creatures and birds, and now we watched groups of as many as fifty birds swoop by, some high and some low just skimming the water. It was as exhilarating as a fireworks display, and quieter though we did hear the swoosh of wings.
One seal bobbed in front of our deck, also entranced.
It’s a different rhythm in Sausalito than West Marin and yet again there’s the rhythm, motion, and comfort of the waves and changing tides. We took this week to reflect back on over fifty years of knowing each other and what that means. We honored how we each contain both young and old. As Steve’s doctor reminds him, we’re not in the “young sapling stage of life”, and yet, there is a resilience, a reception as of the waves reaching and changing the shore.
It’s been a beautiful week as the planet shifts now in its reception of light. I feel refreshed and invigorated, calm and motivated, both young and old, as my individual wave connects with other waves and this whole planet we share.
A friend proposes we give ourselves time with photos and texts of and about Black people, note what comes up and how we feel. How do we embody the experience of another? How do we cultivate presence in ourselves while we take in and empathize with the experience of another? How do we reap kindness and root?
The fog is in this Monday morning where I live, and I’m grateful for the wrap as I give my heart space to open and feel a little more of the gift of each breath and the gratitude that nourishes each life as we pause to open and receive. I believe I need to give myself time for reception and absorption, and so I do.
These are complex times as we navigate opening to lives other than our own. May we be kind.
And then I stopped taking photos, and seeped in simplicity absorbing what’s written and taking place in and on my inner and outer walls. Gratitude and grace – two pillars anchoring unity and diversity in ourselves as shown in rocks.
Peace!
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