Early Spring...

"To be aware with the heart is to look at a flower not just with awareness
but with feeling."

Adyashanti

Sunday Gospel!

Remember, love the ones you're with...

More Swami Sweetness

At her birthday celebration the other day I said to Ann, my Swami: "Sooooooo, you feelin' 19?!!"
She replied with a sweet smile and said: "I never left!"

Feline Reflection

It has been a common experience in the last number of months for me to wake up around 4 a.m. with my heart beating very fast, my mind racing and a shortness of breath. I have been trying both new and old tools to support myself and yet the pattern has continued. That is until this morning. Something shifted and it was an unusual and pleasant experience. And what fascinated me the most was one of my cats. She has been so, so loud and insistent in her communications...literally getting in my face and talking AT me and being very itchy and agitated. This morning after she returned from her usual morning patrols, she climbed up on the bed, parked herself directly on top of my chest and sat very quietly, reflecting my own quietness back to me. I am embarrassed to say that I genuinely had not interpreted her previous behavior as having anything to do with me (OMG, really!!!) even though that is the work i do with others and would have been able to identify it in one quick heartbeat...
Anyways, it was so restorative and nourishing to spend that time together...in that particular way.
I feel so lucky to share worlds with my animal friends. A blessing in the deepest sense.

Morgan

Happy death day.

Happy birth day.

Phone Om!!!

The other day one of my best friends and I were texting each other about how we were doing. We decided that we wanted to be on the phone together while chanting OM. So we did. Somewheres into it I just started cracking up. We have known each other 25 plus years and when we met, I never, ever in a skabillion years could have imagined we would find ourselves chanting into a cell phone. No way, no how! But there we were and it was beauty-full.

2.19.1919

Today is the 94th birth-day of my very favorite swami!!!
Whenever the topic of birthdays came up in conversation, she would always enthusiastically ask the other person if they knew when her birthday was and then share that info. with a big smile, almost as if it were a song.
Every single time the number 19 was called when we were playing bingo she'd say: "that's my number!"

           HAPPY BIRTH-DAY, ANN POUNDING WARNER!!!

Whose Land?

The property i have lived on for the last 19 years is for sale now. Those of  us who live here have been talking about the effect it is having on us...how we each feel a vivid sense of uncertainty...which can sometimes feel very enlivening, sometimes very scarey and everything inbetween!
I wondered this morning how the land experiences this shift...as it has been "owned" by the same family for a very long time. As the "owners" begin letting go, what effect does that have on the land and its non-human inhabitants?

For Freedom

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself
Of the expectation of land,
approaching only
In the form of waves
That fill and pleat and fall
With such gradual elegance
As to make of the limit
A sonorous threshold
Whose music echoes back along
The give and strain of memory,
Thus may your heart know the patience
That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The tight solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form

And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.

John O'Donohue
To Bless The Space Between Us

One Billion Rising

All over the planet today...
ALL OVER THE PLANET there are people connected to one another through song and dance and a common intention.
How absolutely beauty-full is that?

Another Poem

There is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things.

Carl Jung

New Word

 ambivert

know what it means?
someone who can be both introverted and extroverted. It's a particular condition. Come to think of it, I have that condition!!!

Poem

My friend, Stephanie had this poem on her blog and I liked it so much I decided to post it here. Is this considered plagiarism?! Or just outright poetry stealing? Nevertheless, here it is, a poem by David Whyte (The House of Belonging)

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

what you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

what you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?
What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

She's Real Pretty!

Moral Pondering

Some folks called me up to inquire about sending energy to protect the coyotes up in Modoc County (northern CA) because there is going to be basically a bloodbath. In order to "cull" the numbers (ranchers are upset by the number of livestock killed by coyotes) Fish and Game create a sporting event where hunters are encouraged to kill as many coyotes as possible in one day. Now, as a person who knows nothing about the area or the dynamics at play, I don't feel comfortable involving myself in that situation. However, that does NOT mean I think it's acceptable to mass slaughter the coyotes. Sadly, I think it reflects our inadequate and harmful attempt to address and deal with "other." In this case the "other" is the coyote. And it's easy to make the hunters the other or the Dept. of Fish and Game. But the truth is that very often we/I perceive an "other" and somehow demonize/harm them at the worst or just simply hold them as somehow separate from me in the least. I do it daily. Depending on the situation, it can be VERY hard to reign myself in and find compassion.
So, how does one effect change in Modoc county? How do we protect wild critters who are simply adapting to man made situations? I recognize that there is not only one answer...and that folks have to do what they have to do. In this case, one of the people is going up to modoc and taking videos of the piles of dead coyotes and getting that to media outlets. Part of the problem is that the event is quasi underground. If you didn't live in modoc you wouldn't know it's happening. So, they are hoping that the exposure will bring change.
But the conversation left me thinking about it all and wondering...

Someone Once Asked:

How much love can you put into one day?

Big Ol Bear

                                          So long, buddy

The Big Move

I woke up this morning thinking about my parents and the somewhat recent move they made from their home of 40 years to a senior living campus with graduated care. My original thought was about the fact that they knew only one neighbor after living in their home a lifetime...and they only knew that family by default because their mother had owned the house previously and my folks were friends with her. But aside from those neighbors, they had no immediate community. It just got me to thinking about how sooooo many people in our culture share that same experience of isolation. Which set me to feel extra grateful for all the relations i have in my immediate hood be they two legged, four legged, winged or with roots. I am surrounded by relationships and as a result, feel a sense of connection (and responsibility) to them.
The good news for my folks is now that they're moved into this new world, they have begun a whole new chapter of relationships and community. I think for the most part they both are really enjoying it.
Prior to the move my dad sat at home and watched tv or slept most of the time. He rarely ventured out and about. When I spoke with him on the phone the other day he was describing their social life. I said: "dad, you sound pretty busy." He laughed and said: "yea, sometimes I'm too busy!"

I Stand Corrected!

I got a lecture from my Daphne friends yesterday...
They felt a little slighted after I carried on so much about it being "yellow month"...how beautiful all the various shades of yellow are, etc
They reminded me that, yes, this is a yellow time AND THE DAPHNE'S ARE BLOOMING...and just how outrageously sweet they smell especially in the middle of winter. True enough. I apologized because the truth is I LOVE daphne's very much and always smile when they begin to bloom.

It's Here, Again!

Happy yellow month to one and all! In northern California, the daffodils, acacias, and the mustard all bloom their own resplendent shades of yellow right about now. They, along with the return of the western bluebirds and the red winged blackbirds, signal the coming of spring. I heard my first red winged black bird of the season the other day and my heart smiled as it did today when I saw that my bluebird friends were back in the hood. It won't be long before they are busily preparing their nests for the first brood of the season. One of my favorite spring time activities is to watch that process which, in the end, culminates with their funny looking babies fledging the nest!

(the theme song from the Mary Tyler Moore show softly plays in the backround: we're gonna make it after all...)

God and Such!

In a previous blog post I carried on a bit about living in Northern CA. and the various and sundry "spiritual paths" that people are "on."
It's been bothering me again lately and I was going to write another blog post but refrained so as not to offend anyone! Plus, I couldn't figure out exactly what was rubbing my fur the wrong way.
As I was watching an interview with a Jesuit priest tonight I understood a bit more about the bothersome aspects to a so called devotional/spiritual life, California style! What I absolutely loved and appreciated about this priest was the application of his spiritual and religious principles in everyday life. There was no separation between his faith and his life. And to me, that is one of THE most beauty-full things in the world.