Archive for the ‘nature’ Category

Will we?

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

When I read this poem I am reminded of the responsibility we each bear. To ourselves, each other, the children.

Earth Day is next week. It’s kind of like Christmas or Easter at church — people show up. Because they’re supposed to.

What about the rest of the time? What about the trash I walk by every day on my way to the studio? What about the plastic bags used for Allie’s lunches?

Earth Day is important. It is a reminder, lest we forget that this planet is precious and perishable.

And so is every other day.

This poem reminds me.

Shoulders
by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow
this man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world if we are not willing to do what he’s doing with
one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop raining.

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Spring

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Ah… Spring.

Unpredictable, enchanting, maddening. There are new buds. There are things that have died off and need to be removed. In some ways it encompasses the full cycle of life.

More so than usual this year, I find myself fighting with the weather:

I wish it was warmer. I wish it wasn’t windy.
I wish it was some other way…

This is not a very productive conversation.

Stephen Levine, in his book, A Gradual Awakening, makes these comments: “…Perhaps the clearest definition we could have of mental suffering: wishing we were elsewhere. Wanting things to be otherwise is the very essence of suffering. We almost never directly experience what pain is, because our reaction to it is so immediate that most of what we call pain is actually our experience of resistance to that phenomenon. And the resistance is usually a good deal more painful than the original sensation.”

I am creating more suffering by wishing the weather otherwise than the weather would actually cause alone.

At the same time, it’s helpful to notice my wishing and recognize it as a disconnection from the perfection of the present moment.

To let the language alert me of the way in which I have closed down and cut myself off from possibility.

And to let the noticing instantly change the pattern — just noticing creates more space, loosens the grip on wanting things to be a certain way.

**********

How do create more suffering for yourself? What clues do you use to bring you back? What does spring mean to you?

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White Wings

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

The doves have returned to the “breeding tree” in our backyard.

Every year they remodel the inadequate nest, sit patiently, feed dependably, protect, demonstrate, and watch as the babies take flight. It’s like a nursery—one baby after another all spring through summer.

The first baby left the nest last week. I watched as he tested his wings, teetering on a branch, mom nearby. He looked naive and confident. The next day he was gone.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we all take this risk—leaving the safety of what is comfortable and known to explore and more fully participate in life… in the world.

At times it seems like just sharing ourselves in relationship, exposing our dreams and fears is the same kind of jump. Will we be held? Will we fall?

This is the poem from tonight’s practice, for the little dove, for all of us leaving the nest:

How to Regain Your Soul

Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer
afternoon
that one place where the valley floor opens out.
You will see
the white butterflies. Because of the way
shadows
come off those vertical rocks in the west, there
are
shafts of sunlight hitting the river and a deep
long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down your
pack.

Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way
when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being
built,
when campfires lighted caves. The white
butterflies dance
by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly
anything
could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the
canyon
and then shines back through the white wings to
be you again.

~William Stafford

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Days of light

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Nature is amazing. The warm golden daylight of the sun is comforting, as the sharp brightness of the moon pierces through the vastness of the black night sky.

Many of my friends are experiencing the greatest joys (births, marriages, celebrations) and others are in the depths of dark, dark pain (deaths, divorce, illness).

And this is the nature of life… light, dark, joy, sadness.

My friend, Kira, recently posted the following:

Most of us were made in the dark, and so too most of nature. Cuz while it doesn’t look like it, the peaches are growing now.

New growth requires protective space and quiet. And in the tender new beginnings of a spiritual practice, we need a refuge.

And it reminded me that the dark times, the hurt times gently hold rays of light and hope as well. There is no such thing as a completely useless or painful experience (nor a completely joyful one). All things, if we are willing to look and see, contain the full cycle of existence.

Where ever you are in the pattern, let the studio, let the practice be your sanctuary. Be patient with that you cannot yet see. This too shall pass.

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Pruning

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Spring Cleaning has nothing on Fall Pruning. It can feel so good to look around (yard, closets, life) and see what has shriveled, overgrown, or made itself unnecessary. This also means taking the shears to a perhaps very full summer schedule that is still hanging on, yet no longer realistic.

Susan, a student with a very smart biology-major daughter, reported back that it’s the tree that lets go of the leaf. Well, to be more accurate, due to the decrease in available light, the tree builds a barrier wall of cells which cuts the leaf off from nutrients. Eventually, the leaf is completely separated from the tree and falls.

Sometimes we have to be discriminate. Are the people and activities in my life nourishing me? Am I sacrificing my health to meet someone else’s (or my own) expectations? As the days shorten and autumn calls us inside, we may have some decisions to make: do I have enough time and energy (light) to devote wholeheartedly to each person or thing? And if not, I may have to create a boundary and let that thing go.

This can be difficult, and humor always help. So, taking from Gabrielle Roth’s fabulous book, Connections:

Release yourself from old attachments and baggage. Cross off the people on your Christmas card list that you don’t even like or speak to. Give away clothes from your skinny days, your fat days, your punk phase or one shopping craze or another. And then there are those tchotchkes. Your beer stein collection, the stolen shot glasses, Aunt Tilly’s figurines. Empty the drawer of business cards with god-knows-whose phone numbers scrawled on the back. Throw out unfinished projects or journals, recipes you’ll never try, back issues of magazines you’ll never read. Set up shop on eBay. Someone out there is dying to pay for your karma. Once you’ve stripped your environment of all those reminders of past selves, you’ll find their hold on you decreases. Your surroundings should reflect who you are now.

Ahhh. I can feel the lightness already.

Your surroundings should reflect who you are now. Right now.

Let’s commit to supporting each other in our pruning this year. If we can help you in your practice in any way, please let us know.

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Song Bird

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

For the past several mornings our backyard has sounded like the jungle. There’s a new bird in town and his song is wild and beautiful.

“The Change” to fall felt clear a couple of weeks ago, and with the recent storm, abrupt. This change is apparent not only in the weather; also in the air, in the leaves, and… in the body. It’s as though there’s a wise, old part of us that knows that the hoeing, planting, and working of summer is past. Now it’s time to harvest and feast and rest.

This kind of shift is a type of Aparigraha or non-grasping, letting go–one of the Yamas, or restraints, of the yoga practice. Letting things be. Not reaching out for, not holding on to. Everything in its own time, its own way.

Nature is forever our teacher. The sky holds all conditions with ease, kindness, and without preference. Look at any garden and you can sense that it’s preparing for a long nap. Already there are decorations of brittle leaves on the ground. (I wonder, does the tree let go of the leaf, or does the leaf let go of the tree?) It’s a perfect process. It’s Aparigraha.

And today, my new friend, the wild song bird, is gone.

Yoga,
I open my body.
As if it were a cloak
woven of fear
and joy.
In my imagination
a breath of wind
blows through me
and a million wild birds
burst into uniquity.

–Walter Brown

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Spaciousness

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

I once heard a Buddhist definition of spaciousness as “allowing it to be.” It was one of those sentences that the heart instantly recognizes as truth and the whole body responds by softening.

It’s that breathing room around something, freedom of movement, seeing beyond limitations (even though they are so compelling).

It’s the opposite of grasping. Holding. Contracting.

Recently, one of the teacher trainees was standing knee-deep in a challenging situation. Her auto-response was, “It’s fine, no big deal, I’m not upset,” when really, she was pissed. She was hurt and mad and confused. She later wrote in her blog (soon to be shared, I promise!):

There is great vulnerability in feeling. It takes so much courage to be honest, honest in this moment, honest with this anger/sadness/frustration.

To allow the feelings to be. To make room and give them space to be experienced.

Fall can be a profound time of change and letting go. Nature gently guides us as leaves get brittle and let go of the branch, flowers fade and turn back in toward the root, and the sun appears later and leaves sooner… reminding us that the dark and quite of winter is coming.

So many in our yogi family are experiencing intense transitions as well–births, deaths, loss of job, change of job, surgeries, diagnoses.

It would be easy, a natural response perhaps, to contract around any of these circumstances. But the heart knows, nature knows, that nothing is fixed or forever. May we all “allow it to be.”

A poem (thanks, Cecile) from Robert Bly:

The nimble Ovenbird, the dignity of pears, the simplicity of oars,

The imperishable engines inside slim Fir seeds.

All of these hint at how much we long

For the impermanent to be permanent.

We want the Hermit Wren to keep her eggs,

Even in the storm. We want eternal oceans.

But we are perishable friends. We are

Salty impermanent kingdoms.

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Vacation

Monday, July 27th, 2009

The husband and I took an overnight trip to gorgeous Sausalito this weekend–close enough for easy travel, far enough away to feel like you went somewhere else.

We explored the town and took in the views of the bay with the fresh perspective of the typical tourist – noticing all the small things about a new place. Everything is interesting, there’s more smiling, a greater sense of adventure. Otherwise “ordinary” sights and experiences have exciting newness.

Rock art, seagulls, a sail boat.

As a homebody, there’s no place like my own bed, predictable food and the routine of my day. I sit at my desk this morning, however, with clear and bright eyes. Perhaps I’ll go for a walk and let my vacation-gaze wander or snap a picture of a random and beautiful thing I happen to see everyday.

As Mary Oliver suggests, we acknowledge the sacred just by noticing:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

IMG_0742

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The Web

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

There’s a huge spider web outside our kitchen window. Bigger than the pancakes at Pancake Circus. Huge.

I love spider webs. There’s something about that big feathery discus, those delicate sparkling floorboards, and the way Spider Man rides smack dab in the center of it all. Infinitely patient.

Spider Man

Spider Man

Recently I read that patience is “not waiting for something to happen.” This is complete paradigm shift from the “I’ll patiently wait until…” mentality. There’s an expectation with my current experience of patience. If I’m patient, I’ll get something.

I think dogs, babies and spiders are all more enlightened than we are. Not stressing about work or next Tuesday, not begrudging the neighbor or the weather, just completely in the moment.

Digging, crying, or weaving outside my kitchen window.

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