Life in Totality

I was pondering the preciousness of the moment as it was, the simple abundant moment of now. There is nothing I can do to change the past. The future cannot be held. All I have is this one moment. To meet it fully alive and aware. Looking up, there she was. The grace of the moon mid afternoon beautifully haunting against the blue sky. The illumination of dark sharing the illumination of day. With a smile and chuckle, what better image of meeting life in its totality, this moment, now.

Goggle'd Mind

The morning meditation burst into laughter. I realized my mind had gone Google on me and was returning 10,000+ thoughts and memories in 3.7 seconds. In my laughter I heard a sound. With a smile I shut the mind's browser down and listened to the birds.

Opening Christmas #1 - The Gift of Tilt

As one with no family or nearby friends to celebrate Christmas, a whisper to begin a reflection series and opening of gifts. To begin to reflect upon this season, the last before the calendar notes that I have now reached 60.
        The image is the moon dancing with clouds and the morning. Oh her illumination so grand in the night, a portal of light beaming through the darkness. And yet here she is, dancing in the day. Her presenceis  always there,. She is now seen simply because of the tilt of the earth and nature's season.
        In this time of bargain deals, frantic mailings, crowds, lines, and lists, I open the gift of tilting. Tis one thing to have a faith that shines a light in the darkest of hours. Tis another to behold and see the light that shines and dances during the day. To pause and feel the buffeting winds of preparations as but a reminder to look, see, breathe, and yes, tilt.

Throne of Now

I confess, it did beckon me to come and sit. To do so would have disturbed the image. I took my seat and sat both where I was and upon its warm seat gathered in the sunlight. Much like all experiences, sorrowful or glad, we don't have to dig them out, nor do we have to pass by unaware. Simply to be present, this moment, now. Ahhhhh no king or queen has known a greater throne.

Smallness Transformed

I sat on my cushion releasing my heart's prayers. For a six year old boy undergoing brain surgery. A mother whose adult child simply did not wake up and no reason is known. For others facing grief, sadness, uncertainty, and lacking the basic water, food and shelter of life. I am but one and sometimes feel so old, frail, and inadequate. My simple little prayers but they are so so earnest and felt. Then to open my eyes and see such a gift. The sun and morning had gathered my little simple prayers and were streaming them into the universe. Never doubt. Never stop praying. Life truly hears and responds.

Audacious Reverie

I am the wounded animal sound of the howling winds. I am the silence of sheltered walls. I am the window's view shrouded in a white out. I am the presence of the sun's crystal illumination. I am the candle's thin dance of smoke. I am the wax, wick, and flame melted as one. I am the prayer of love, joy, and freedom for all. This day for all life the stillness of a feather surrounded by storms.

Winged Balance

Company has arrived. Human and dogs. My normal quiet sacred morning rituals upended. Woven into my body, mind, and heart's fabric I feel unbalanced. Oh, I will politely excuse myself later today, when appropriate, for meditation. But for now, my heart smiles and balanced is restored. Meditation has no ruler, judge, time clock or report card.  A reminder itself that nothing in life is fixed, change is constant and not to become attached to things, doing, or how's. I sit in meditation because I walk in this world of change. I am one among all, moving upon wings of love. I opened my eyes this morning with breath and heart filled with love. That is the meditation. That is the sacred ritual. What greater ritual than to simply breathe "Life. Love. Alive."

Hands of Curiosity

If only there had not been exams and grades. The dreaded red pencil upon the papers turned in. For some reason I have wondered just what the world looks like through a microscope. To imagine the galaxies and worlds that exists right now that I cannot see. The opportunity was lost in school as the dreaded red pen of judgment transformed curiosity, openness and seeing into an object lesson of trying to please. 

I have no microscope so the worlds remain unseen. But before me now a cricket hops and suddenly looks like a moth as it flies from here to there. Three evergreen sentinels stand firm and still while an elm tree is dancing softly like a lace curtain behind an open window. A few yellow leaves are the scouts of fall. A roofer’s hammer mimics a woodpecker. I wonder if he hums while he works. A single leaf looks like two. And beneath all I see are the galaxies and universes streaming that I cannot see but this morning to feel. No dreaded red pen today! There is no right or wrong way to look and see! The only question on today’s test and journal is “Look little one! Look! Tell me, do you see the wonder, the awe the absolute abundance about you!” Curiosity is the hands that opens the gifts.

Small Bigness

I sat in meditation for the world to know peace and the earth to heal. A truck's sputtering and clanking shattered the silence and then created its own. Opening my eyes I watched an old man get out of the rusted truck body, open the hood and stand. In that moment, suspended in time, the world at large was transformed. A gifted moment of grace and smile. I sat in meditation for a rusted old truck to start for the peace of its path. My mala beads shook with laughter as it began to purr down the hill. 

Heart Pod

And would my heart, when touched by an ill or benevolent wind, be like nature's pod, and release her seeds of compassion and joy to the earth, life, and others.

Forward Gathering Backwards

There are two points on my mountain trail walk where I stop and walk backwards with my hand to my heart. To gather in all that I have seen and whisper thank you. Though it appears to be walking backwards, I am, in truth, walking forward...the body moves forward and the eyes and heart like the tide drawing the wave, gather all and carry it with me. Much like the touch of a lover's hand upon their beloved's...a gentle, soft whisper.

“What would happen if the wonder of existence was experienced as the primary capability of a species. Well we are what happened. And that is what it means to be human. …. The unity of the world rests on the pursuit of passion” ~ Brian Swimme

Yes

Sometimes so many questions. Just have to lay them down like a child, tuck them in and give them a gentle kiss. Then one day, struggling along a mountain lake path, the answer comes, and you whisper "Good morning."

"Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”  ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

This Moment...I Am

Holding the mala beads in my hands I begin to chant Aham Prema – I am love. It occurs to me that my awareness is only on the mala bead of the current chant. I am not aware of the beads that have already been chanted and moved. I am unaware of the beads yet to be touched. My awareness is focused only on that one bead. My fingers rise with its shape. My fingers fall gently in between that bead and the next. The bead is moved and my attention now is on the bead I am chanting.

I can think of probably more than 108 reasons why I do not think of myself as being love. But for this one moment, this one chant, this present breath with no others guaranteed, this single bead, I am love. And for this day, Aham Prema, one breath, one bead, only this breath, only this bead.

Why I Sit

               I walk. I walk a lot. Walking, especially within nature, is my sanctuary. I also sit. Sitting, unlike my walking, is simply that, I sit.

               I often think of life as the metaphor of a river effortlessly flowing. Fact is, I have seen not so beautiful and effortless rivers. I have seen muddy rivers, polluted and dying rivers. I have seen rivers overflowing their banks drenching and rotting crops. I have seen the power of rivers racing towards a mountain’s edge with the roar of an ocean hurricane. Yet, each one is a river at a different time, a different place and still a river.

               I sit because the metaphor of a river reminds me that life is not always a verb. Life is also a noun. Rivers, like a noun, can take on so many different adjectives and become verbs, but they remain a noun, a state of being. A state of being that is in time, space, colors, power, seen and unseen. Sitting is a noun. Sitting is my OAR with which I can navigate the rivers. The O is for openness. Sitting is simply a noun- a state of an open heart and Love. Nowhere to go, no verb to become, simply sitting open and loved. The A is for alignment. My body finds the posture that breathes and sits grounded upon the earth as an extension. The R is resilience. My body, 237 seasons old, learned too early to bend, slouch, and become small and unseen. The resilience of sitting reminds me of my essence which is long, extended, seen, and weighted with presence and life alive. I have withstood and now it sits forsaking the smallness.

               I sit because the rivers and the day do not. They move. They flow. I cannot sit all day. I must be about tending to life, love, light and being. I sit because I have to rise and leave the earth, floor or mat. I sit because the noun must become a verb and yet the root of the verb remains forever a noun. I sit because I must stand and walk. And when I arise, when I stand, I do so holding my OAR as my walking stick. I sit so that no matter the river and its verb, I stand open, aligned and resilient. I sit to hear the whispers of the oars of Love gliding through the rivers.

               May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings everywhere be free. May all beings sit. And may all beings rise and stand holding their oar.

30 minutes

Good morning Sweet Life. Thank you for eyes that opened this morning. Thank you for eyes that could see dark turn into light. Thank you for awakening in a warm bed within a house protected from the weather. Thank you for a home with an address. Thank you for a body that arose out of bed without assistance. Thank you for legs that could slide off the bed and touch the floor. Thank you for legs that supported my body to walk. Thank you for a kitchen that I can enter and be fed. Thank you for coffee and hot drink. Thank you for hands and arms that can reach for these gifts of abundance. Thank you for the computer that connects me with the world. Thank you for the electricity that turns lights, computers and coffee pots on. Thank you for a couch to sit upon. Thank you for the earth which gifted all the materials for this home, bed, food, and drink. Thank you for music. Thank you for the sense of touch and ears that can hear. Thank you for all the hands that touched, worked, and created all the things I have already touched, I see and hear. Thank you for clean clothes to put on and all the gifts of the threads from the earth. Thank you for each beat of my heart already passed unnoticed and for each breath that sustained me through the night and continued to beat when my eyes opened.

Thank you sweet life that at this moment, this very moment as I write, 7 billion people are waking to their day or gathered in the sleep I have awakened from. We each are in this moment right now held in your sweet hands. Thank you for the earth that is holding each 7 billion of us and all of nature, plant and animal life maintained by the air, sun and moon. Thank you sweet life for the 30 minutes of arising as one with all of life. Thank you sweet life. Thank you sweet life.

Thank you sweet life for the miracles of these 30 minutes. Thank you for the gifts of this day and all minutes filled with abundance and joy no different than these 30 minutes recorded that I have called mine. Thank you sweet life that each minute that follows will be as sacred and mine to choose how, what, where, of all I will see, feed, smell, touch, hear, and move towards or from. Sometimes it amazes me all the minutes that can occur in such a short span of life. How these 30 minutes become 24 hours and flow one after another. How will they flow? Once I put this pen down how will I move? What will I see? What will I feel? What will my heart record as “happening” to me? What will I record as gifts? What will I record as grace? What will I ….will?

Shadowed Pondering

Today I am on 24 hour call with the volunteer group for domestic violence. Today two feedings for the birds and squirrels the blizzard snow has not completely melted and they had a frigid night and early morning. Today, during meditation, I asked the sweet Hands of Life, that the calls would be silent, not because I do not want to respond, but that the need would not be there. Today I longed to walk but will wait for warmth and better paths and have to remain within a cell phone range.

               Today I wanted to honor last night’s longing to sit and write. So many threads waiting the loom’s weaving. Little sprouts from seeds planted in clay pots, pushing their way through the soil. I have been like a new parent, counting stems and leaves instead of fingers and toes. Some have emerged through the earth’s seams. Another, I call Atlas Shrugged, pushed up only to be weighted by a clod of earth. I watched as the tiny stem lifted the clod on top of its clumped fist of two leaves. The next morning, the clod was tossed to the side creating a lean-too, beneath which was another tiny sprout ready to emerge. Courtesy of Atlas, it would do so free of the clod. Do I write of the metaphors and threads from such tiny growths? Do I write of these little miracles that make me laugh and my heart sigh?

               Do I write of the wonder of how snow and ice melt when the temperature is 27 degrees but the sun is shining? Below freezing… water freezes at 32 degrees… so why is the blizzard’s snow and ice melting? If I fill the ice trays with water and put them in the freezer the ice becomes water. Even colder outside and the ice and snow are melting… beneath the presence of the sun.

               Do I write of the image that remains embedded in my mind, longing to be developed, to push through the earthen mind and sprout? The image of becoming the chalice, no longer the cup bearer. To see the transformation that I AM a chalice. I hold the light of communion with the All That Is…the sweet Hands of Life. My body is the chalice containing the light, love, joy and energy of Life, swirling and spilling, rolling like waves as I move and experience each moment. No longer do I see myself as simply the bearer of the cup, the sacred cup that must be handed to another who is worthy. No longer am I simply the servant who bears the cup. I AM the chalice. In truth, no one can carry the experiences of my life, the lessons, the scars, the joys, the love learned, parted, renounced and yet never absent that make up my chalice. No one can carry the gratitude nor laugh the way I do.  No one will see the world or experience nature the way of this chalice. Only I AM worthy of carrying this chalice. In carrying the chalice I become the chalice. That union, that union alone creates the unique experience of Life expressed through me. Servant and holder. Human and sacred. Bearer and embraced. The liturgy complete only in the union of cupbearer and chalice, as me.

               Or do I write, as I sit and look out at melting snow and ice that should be frozen, and the birds flocking to feed, of the shadowed Canadian Goose feather that fell behind the white Pelican feather both from the lake which I would love to walk this day? A squirrel hops across the snow that is melting, reaches with his tiny little hands to place a peanut in his mouth. Now he scampers, with the peanut dangling like an oversized cigar. Visually, he stops just above the white Pelican feather at a mound of snow with slivers of grass fingers sticking up, and begins to bury the peanut rather than eating.  I do not know about the writing part, but of all the threads, I shall sit with my hands wrapped around a hot cup of coffee and ponder shadow feathers of black and white. I shall ponder a peanut buried into snow that should be frozen but is giving drink to the earth, and see what little sprout will emerge in the earthen chalice of my heart.

Namaste sweet Life…. I bow to you.

Surrender to the Tension

What is it about a blank page that can intimidate us? What is it about sitting in meditation, silence, or shutting the world out that makes us edgy, antsy and our minds jump into warp speed trying to fill the void? Oh, yes, a day of "nothing" is often ever so welcomed. String those days together and we suddenly find ourselves asking "what shall I do?" as if we had to have a target or goal, a purpose.

This morning I sat and looked at the blank page. I could feel the tension to write, to say something, to "release."  Instead, I surrendered and looked at the page and let my heart write as the pen remained capped. I could see the script, the words and some that had no alphabet squiggle simply feelings. The page was filled.

Sitting there in the stillness I noticed my heart went silent. Puzzled at first, my brain started to engage. The brain quieted and the heart began to sing.... as the page began to write back to me.

May I see this day before me like the blank page. To surrender to the tension of Love and Life...knowing when to write with my hands, when to write with my heart, and always to read the handwriting of Life writing back to me.

Absorbing Absorption and Reflection

As I stood and gazed upon the street light beaming down upon the fresh snow fall, I was struck by the difference of the earth. Were not the snow there, only the stream of light would be seen and the earth would be shadowed in contours of black.  But with the snow, the earth reflected back the light and shadows now were hues of blue not black.  Absorption and reflection and yet one light, one earth.

And from such reverie I thought of my breath. The inhale as the earth, drawing in, absorbing, growing inward with the nourishment like the roots of trees.  The exhale, reflecting the light drawn in, extending outward and upward like the trees that are visible to our eyes.  My exhale moves upward through the earth, reaching outward, creating and changing space and time. It is presence. 

Absorption and reflection.  Sweet mercy, may the trees I exhale, the reflection I gift, be wide spanned branches of love.

One Song

The word "universe" can be divided into "uni" which means "one" and "verse" which means "song."  We look around the universe and 'see' what our eyes have been trained and conditioned to see, attaching labels and perceptions.  In truth, the universe is but One Song... Love.  If you think of the ripples a stone cast into a lake creates, rippling outward are circles from the center, such is the universe. One song emanating from the center...Love.  To begin there with the eyes of the Heart and behold the essence of creation, the only 'label' that in truth exists, is to sing the song of creation, to know our breath as the Breath of Life. Love.  

As simple as that.

Vacant Fullness

Perhaps to enter a house empty of life, presence, filled with dust and memories, vacated of all who created the memories is the same as entering one's heart in meditation.  Your thoughts ramble, dart and zoom, some quiet, others making your heart race and then you find your breath, your stillness, your centering peace.  To look around at what was created and to know in your centering thoughts the key is that all was created.  What is not, however, created, but existed even before creation is Love, compassion, the desire and yearning to be known, dwell and abide in communion.  To see the unseen. To touch the invisible. And in doing so, to be wrapped in the very tapestry that created all.  To meditate and return to the heart absent of all "things" created knowing only the source....Love.  I wanted to go somewhere with this thought but yet another bookmark, a thread for the Loom.  Til then.... Keeper of my Heart and Breath.... for the Love you gifted and taught, thank you, still.