8.30.22

To be touched.

Like most folks these days, my days are spent hunched over a computer, typing away to create a world that frequently feels much more real than the cup of warm tea waiting patiently next to the keyboard. In this online realm of cursors and data, it’s easy for me to center my thoughts over the physical world. So I’m grateful as I type to periodically catch sight of waving grasses in the yard or a darting bird skating past the window, calling me, reminding me it’s time for a study break, a walk down the street to freshen my senses and come back to my body.

As I walk through the front door, I am almost never present to what my body is doing. Rather, my mind is still on the screen, assembling ideas and deep in thought. Every walk down the stone path crossing the front yard is the same: walking, thinking, but not really here. Most days I’m down the long driveway and out past the street before my pace slows and I notice - for the first time - that I’m surrounded by green leaves and sunshine.

This moment is always a surprise and always a chuckle. Really, again? I laugh and then breathe, then breathe again, more deeply this time, and begin to arrive.

As I walk, I feel myself walking into presence.

Slowly at first, just beginning to notice the leaves and the shapes of the trees, and then more so, as the details of branches and colors of flowers begin to come forward. But soon the subtle details emerge - the furry texture of silky mullen stalks bobbing in the breeze, the clicking of ruby-throated hummingbirds feeding on the purple salvias massed at the end of block - and I realize that I am in a body, that I am inhabiting a body, that this body is sensing, that what this body is sensing is delightful, and suddenly the flows of sights and scents and sounds come alive and pour forth in a cascade of experience and it feels wonderful, feels wonderful to feel.

I allow myself to be touched by the presence of each precious thing.

Become intimate with each precious thing.

I remember my self, and head home.

For the Senses

May the touch of your skin
Register the beauty
Of the otherness
That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned
to the deeper silence
where sound is honed
to bring distance home.

May the fragrance
of a breathing meadow
refresh your heart
and remind you you are
a child of the earth.

And when you partake
of food and drink,
may your taste quicken
to the gift and sweetness
that flows from the earth.

May your inner eye
see through the surfaces
and glean the real presence
of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify
the desire of your eyes
that you might glimpse
the infinity that hides
in the simple sights
that seem worn
to your usual eyes.

~ John O’Donohue

7.12.22

Morning Song.

I woke early today, listening with gladness to the dawn chorus of robins and towhees chattering amongst the redwoods and oaks.  This is my favorite time of day, when the breeze is cool and fresh, and the moisture in the air carries the sharp scent of the bay trees, and the quiet of the morning makes the act of simply sitting and listening to bird calls feel like sacred prayer.

I’m grateful for the inner silence this time of morning brings, and how the mind stays quiet to what is present rather than racing ahead to plans.  And I notice how sometimes - as the bird calls multiply and echo - I can feel the pull to try to name each one, to let my thinking mind make sense of the morning rather than let my heart and body rest in simply taking in the goodness.  Some days I choose that path, the close listening and the making sense of the calls back and forth, naming the deep and sharp caws of the bluejays and the booming hoots of the barn owl that lives in the redwoods.  Some days I resist that pull, and simply stay in the peaceful listening. 

Every day, though, is the same—a morning symphony is what greets me each day, and my first moments of awareness are of moments of beauty and delight, and I rest deeply in the grace of that.

Welcome Morning

Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

7.7.22

Sunshine in my body.

The sun returned this week, literally and metaphorically.

After a week of fog and gray and seriously? - rain, in the summer, in the bay area! - the day dawned blue and sunny, and the clattering and joyful birdsong began to make sense again. It’s days like now that I feel alive with the delight and the aliveness of summertime, and my long and peaceful walks at the end of the day are simply a way of moving into deeper connection with all that’s alive around me.

I’m grateful for the way my steady footsteps feel like an intentional act, a moment of heightened self-awareness, as if I am propelling myself forward into time, a way of becoming. This felt sense of dynamism gives deeper meaning to my walks and brings me to a sense of agency and vitality, and in times of difficulty, I can feel the tightness in my heart soften with each step.

In these sunshine walks, I sense the warmth of the sun bathing my face and I lift my face to welcome it with gladness and and an open heart. I sense my belonging in and among and to all that surrounds me, and feel free.

The Lights in the Sky are Stars

for Mary*

HALLEY’S COMET
When in your middle years
The great comet comes again
Remember me, a child,
Awake in the summer night,
Standing in my crib and
Watching that long-haired star
So many years ago.
Go out in the dark and see
Its plume over water
Dribbling on the liquid night,
And think that life and glory
Flickered on the rushing
Bloodstream for me once, and for
All who have gone before me,
Vessels of the billion-year-long
River that now flows in your veins.

~ Kenneth Rexroth

6.29.22

Mirror me.

Poetry can be a remarkable mirror of the soul. In times of joy and ease, it’s delightful to share a poem of the moment, like a bumper sticker for the heart—life is good, share it with me! Good times are easy to pass along. But in the times of great difficulty, what is normally a passing delight becomes an anchor for the solemnity of what’s happening. A powerful poem can transform the initial shock of tragedy into something we can cradle in our hands and hold tenderly, turning it over to really see, and begin to understand. In this way, a poem becomes a path for finding and making meaning, especially in the early days when we struggle to understand what’s happening, and what it means for our lives.

I often find myself moving towards the bookcase and taking down an armful of books to page through, pausing now and then at a phrase or image that pulls my heart, until I land on one or a few poems that capture what it is that aches today. I love how the coming into moments of recognition help me pause and find ground, remember the long view, and move into that most precious place — taking the high watch, becoming the sacred observer of our own lives.

Today is a beautiful day for finding and making meaning of what’s happening now.

Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking
Rosemay Wahtola Trommer

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including inseets. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.

6.27.22

In times like now.

My companions this past week have been a large grove of redwoods a few hours north of San Francisco. Situated at the end of a long drive and far from anything but more trees and a 4-season creek, this grove has been shelter, shade, and playmate for me, and much needed. With gladness I’ve spent hours on the hardpacked and spacious forest floor, enjoying yoga while shaded by the towering branches, leaning against the trunks in conversation with friends, and best of all, simply gazing for hours at the treetops as the sun sets and rises while I’m tucked into a cozy sleeping bag.

The gift of time away, especially from devices and task-bound thinking, has been delicious and nourishing. As I returned late on Sunday and sat down at the computer to prepare for a week of morning meditation teaching, I was shocked to discover that the Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs—overturning Roe v. Wade—had been released, and that I had returned to a radically diffferent world than the one I had left only a few days before.

I chose to begin teaching meditation as a way to deepen my own practice. To share a teaching means that I’ve done the work to study texts and practice meditation, then reflect, reframe, experience, sense, synthesize, and understand; in a way, my preparation and my teaching have become so intimately entwined as to become my practice. Normally, it feels nourishing and good. In times like now, it feels necessary and important.

And what I’ve discovered along the way, in these recent years of unprecedented times and continual series of unfolding events, is that it’s difficult to make sense of history as it’s happening. It’s confusing and traumatizing to live through these times right now. Now is just hard, and people are struggling, and some days, teaching is simply holding grief space long enough to allow folks to find their next breath. Making sense of what’s happening—finding and making meaning—takes time, takes distance, takes reflection and turning over. And so in the beginning times of difficulty, we’re left to simply be in the experience and do the best we can to stay regulated, stay resourced, stay connected, stay sane.

Finding ground in the teachings of nature helps so much. Finding wisdom in the work of those who have come before helps even more. This week I’ve found solace in Lincoln’s 2nd inaugural address, which speaks to a divided nation: “let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…and to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” From John Lewis, the clarity that “too many of us still believe our differences define us.” And in the words from Martin Luther King Jr., a reminder of the real path we are on: “the arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice.”

The poem I shared with our sangha the morning after I returned, the morning I struggled to find a voice to speak the pain and loss I feel, is a small payment towards what must be voiced and made real in the coming months and years. In the words of the minority opinion of Dobbs, we have now “consigned women to second-class citizenship.” The journey begins.

How to Climb a Mountain
Maya Stein

Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you're lucky, a hawk will
coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you're lucky,
a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
perforating your calves. This is called work, what you will come to know,
eventually and simply, as movement, as all the evidence you need to make
your way. Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
Level your gaze to the trail you're on, and even the dark won't stop you.