Monday, December 29, 2014

Lessons I’m Learning from my Sit Spot

The Messenger
Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium. T
he sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth
and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all,
over and over, how it is that we live forever.

In our digital age, this epoch in which we glorify multi-tasking and busy-ness, where sensory-mental stimulation seems to ooze from omnipresent electronic gadgetry, I am ever questing for silence, solitude, solace from the torrent of hyprmessaging and hyperactivity. Like H.D. Thoreau and Mary Oliver after him, I go to my version of the woods to recover my senses. Each morning, I situate myself on the bank of Richardson Bay on a bench fortuitously positioned between two healthy sheltering oak trees. I try to hold my perch for 20 minutes, opening myself to whatever traffic comes and goes in my immediate environment, allowing my senses to keep their inventory. Here are a few lessons that I'm learning:



1.    We’re all flowing to and from the same Source. Gaze at any open body of natural water for just a few moments and it’s impossible not to feel the stirring of the fluids within your own skin. After all, we’re just a couple hundred gallons of water, blood, and other flowing substances enclosed within a human skin. Taking time to sit beside a tidal bay each day reminds me that we all flow from and to the same divine source, that the same molecules that unite to form the bay also join together within me to give me form and substance. Can I allow this knowledge to help me draw from a deeper well of wisdom, understanding, desire for connection, soul quenching, and healing?

2.    You may look or feel drab or small, but – WOW – can you sing a beautiful song! The small brown birds – nuthatches, chickadees, oak titmouses - that inhabit the oak tree beside my sit spot delight me with their chorus. Their appearance is deceptive. Fist-sized and cardboard-colored, they appear rather generic when held beside the pure white great egret or the stately blue heron. But one full-throated lungful of song advises me that beauty lies within.

3.    Stop, sit still, survey the scene, and take a rest from time to time. Hummingbirds provide a bird species metaphor to our modern day lives:  flitting from one enticing treat or activity to the next, hovering a wee while, and then moving on to the next greatest thing. But observe the hummingbird a while longer. See how she pauses, stock still, balanced gingerly on a bare branch. Looking. Resting. Allowing the fruits of her activity to be integrated within. Readying herself for another period of activity. Then, from this place of profound stillness, she takes flight.

4.    Even something as mundane, unremarkable, or uninspiring as a playing field can serve an essential purpose and hold abundant nourishment. Vibrant emerald green turf holds a special place in the hearts of my neighborhood’s gulls and geese. They spread themselves by the dozens over the soft surface, drawing into themselves for shelter from the elements or carefully plying the turf for nourishing morsels. The mundane surface of the playing field becomes a communion of beings, a source of safety and respite, a cafeteria. The gulls and geese ask me, “What comfort and nourishment can you find in the ordinary, the everyday, the collective?”

5.    It’s not necessarily how high you go, but how you get there. The flight of the turkey vulture provides eloquent commentary on artful journeying. Launching from bare earth or jagged edge of hill, its wings spread impressively and – oh! – catch an updraft and propel its oversized body a bit higher. From a meaningful vantage point, the hulking yet graceful form turns in wide gyres as if blessing all beneath. Eagle or vulture? Only the studied eye can discern, as the gorgeous spirals of flight mask all perceived ugliness. Make your journey artful.

6.    Circling a destination or a course of action a few (or many!) times before your settle on it can be a useful, prudent practice. I watch innumerable gulls convene in seeming disarray and chaos in the steam rising from the wastewater treatment plant. A moment unfolds in which they place themselves head to tail with their kin until the whole twisted knot of gray-white feathers has become a gently revolving circle that mirrors the shape of the holding tank beneath. For dozens of seconds they rotate, with each rotation a few more birds setting off in their own directions or, dropping to cement surface, settling to rest, just so. There’s a certain wisdom in going ‘round and ‘round a few times before landing at your decision or destination.

7.    Let the sun find you and catch your colors, dry out your feathers. The shiny ebony cormorant’s telltale gesture for drying its wings serves as a sort of sun salute. Chest lifts, wingtips thrust skyward, head gently inclines, arches backward in a graceful curve. Heart exposed to sun, wings full spread, wind gently caressing the full surface of its body. Ah, how important to routinely allow nature to soothe and heal the cold, soggy parts of yourself that could potentially bog you down.

8.    Be utterly, irrepressibly you. Yesterday morning, I searched and searched with my ears and eyes ‘til I found the source of the happiest, most sincere and exuberant upwelling of song. They came to rest on a tiny bird feathered in shades of brown, beak turned to the heavens, belting out its own original aria. He seemed to counsel me, “Hey – all you can do is be utterly, irrepressibly you!” So get on with it. Sing your song!”

9.    Be resourceful and also patient; work diligently, but also wait and watch. Every type of feathered creature has shown me the significance of resourcefulness:  from berry harvesting to collecting puffs of fur and wads of thread for nest lining, they’re wise users of resources. Their unique vantage points often give them a window onto opportunity to which busy upright creatures may only rarely, if ever, be privy. For many species, this resourcefulness comes coupled with an embedded capacity for patience. Simply watch a great egret or blue heron searching for breakfast and you’ll embrace a new understanding of patience. I’m learning that there’s both a need to apply oneself diligently to one’s daily labor, and also to take things slowly, to survey the broader scene before plunging deeply into activity.

10.Even a minor miracle such as landing gracefully on water can come to be second nature with practice, which helps to transform self-doubt, fear, skepticism, and lassitude into polished performance. I watch the skinny-legged rail come to a skidding but graceful landing in a shallow pool beside the bike path. Grace triumphs over physical form, as its small football-shaped body, gangly neck, large almond-shaped head, and overly long orange beak do not advertise, “Look at graceful me!” Clearly, practice has enabled the adult rail to alight and land with an artful polish that seems the result of committed practice (coupled with some wonderful assistance in the genetic realm from Mother Nature).

11. Bloom where you are planted. I tend to wait until the conditions are “just right” before beginning something, especially a new endeavor. From the proliferation of all types of rather marvelous fungi, I’m taking the counsel to bloom in whatever soil or leaf litter or tree bark you find yourself, as you may just be able to nourish others from the nutrients you draw from whatever medium in which you find yourself.




Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Winter Gardening

We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all.     ~ Dorothy Day

The winter rains have found us. After three years of enduring dryness that seemed to turn every stem and leaf a sickly sort of brown, that sucked all semblance of moisture from the soil, that caused many a farmer and gardener sleepless nights and wrought furrows in brows deeper than those in fields, we are gurgling in winter wetness. Sodden sandbags stand guard at entryways, bracing for the next downpour. Water eddies and pools amidst the obstacles posed by leaf matter and soil runoff. And Mother Nature sports a hundred shades of green  - tiny blades of grass appear where before was barren earth. New growth gleams brightly on meadows and hillsides. The deer and coyotes are abandoning survival backyard picnicking for their preferred wild foraging. Even winged creatures seem to have a new lightness to their flight, relieved by the languor of dry, desolate days that had turned meals to tasteless morsels, cozy bedding to prickly, poking furniture unfit for even the grumpiest of visitors.

Abundance is a word befitting harvest time or, in this precious Mediterranean climate, the height of summer rather than the dead of winter. Yet Mother Nature laughingly shrugs at the calendar. “Now!” she seems to say, with glinted eye, “Abundance cannot be hemmed in by season or custom. Always is the time for new growth and rich harvest.”

Her wisdom is legendary. I’m trying to take it to heart.  

Dorothy Day’s words guide my heart’s musings and my heart’s homework, especially in these weeks when shameful acts of injustice, violence, unfathomable cruelty, and mind-numbing irresponsibility grab headlines. Rather than dwell on what inevitably springs from these – “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence . . .”, MLK observed – I prefer to invest in sowing the seeds of nonviolent speech, considerate and compassionate action, words  and actions that repair and renew so that they may be fed by these winter rains and multiply a thousand-fold.

Dr. King went on to counsel, “We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.” Nature has shown me how rainwater has the capacity to re-new – to make new again – and to re-generate – to join tiny seeds and lifeless and struggling plants and animals to the life force that so essentially nourishes them so that they might experience vitality and abundance.

It’s hardly the season for sowing, though I know many a diligent farmer who is nonetheless meticulously tending upstarts. After all, Nature sometimes laughs at the calendar, and wise farmers take their lead from Her. If we can’t all be sowing, why not make time for weeding, for tending the soil? During this season of honoring darkness, perhaps each of us could look into the darkness in our own hearts, identify any weeds rooted there that might be ripe for removal, and set about the difficult but satisfying work of weeding? Perhaps we can participate in cultivating our healthy crops by tenderly yet decisively uprooting the seeds and shoots of malice, violence, judgment, pettiness, and fear so that these don’t proliferate in our gardens?


Just maybe, when the rains have run their course and sunlight’s again heaped generously upon us, we will glean mended relationships, softened hearts, mutual understanding, forgiveness, tenderness, and the peace that comes from having engaged wholeheartedly in good, hard work. What abundance that would be . . . 

Monday, December 8, 2014

Enthralled by Tinier Beings

In recent weeks, I've found myself enthralled by tiny beings:  infinitesimally small spiders; avocado-sized baby coots; perfectly etched miniature Japanese maple leaves; thumbnail-big sand dollars; spritely evening grosbeaks, with their inspiring yellow throats. Perhaps it's the waning of light that's prompted me to ponder the beauty and gifts of smallness, or perhaps my earnest search for ways to assert more bravery in the face of big emotions and big questions about how to deal with the violence, ignorance, divisiveness, and destruction in our world, or maybe just my subconscious acknowledgement that bigger is not always better, that mass and volume are not the only markers of greatness . . .

I sat for 20 minutes in a rain-soaked meadow on Sunday morning following the aerial choreography of a microscopic ebony spider. She effortlessly glided through the air, eschewing contact with saturated stalks of meadow grass, avoiding the byways offered by thistle stems and countless green blades of new growth. Suspended by an invisible filament, she propelled herself, the air itself her highway. An intrepid explorer, she evidently delighted in free floating. Then, as if the second hand of some great Nature clock lagged, I observed her slow, elegant collision with a sodden golden stalk. Contact - matter beneath feet - seemed profoundly disorienting. Sprite-like meandering through open air turned to effortful trudging, the ascent of the 10-inch stalk requiring minutes rather than milliseconds. Would that I could find such grace and surety in the face of wide open possibility, of no ground beneath my feet.

This morning, I beheld the bundle of exuberant curiosity that is the tiny black coot. Boldly ranging beyond the concentric circles cast by her Momma's progress, she purposefully seeks the deepest water. Mid-way between shores, where the chasm is greatest and the predators most likely to eyeball her delicious backside, she dips and dives and dives and dives. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven seconds I count, the water now bearing no trace of her watery pike. My peripheral vision finds her next, restoring herself to surface, continuing her fearless exploration. The prehistoric form of brother Pelican looms overhead, dangerously near and frighteningly large. She appears unperturbed, happily making her watery sojourn in search of novelty and nourishment, no need for sign of Mother or shore.

Now I am delighting in the yellow-throated grosbeaks conferencing outside my window. Oblivious to the cacophony of city noises - table saw and siren, jackhammer and pick axe, hammer and horn - they share their secrets as they savor bright orange berries. "The world's a crazy, bountiful place," they seem to chatter, and "Aren't you glad we have each other?"

As I muddle through my days, these little creatures help me to see the merits of curiosity and community. They encourage me to abandon fear for fearlessness, chide me to trust that spaciousness and possibility can harbor more opportunities for freedom and creativity than stability and security. In their own way, to paraphrase Brene Brown, they show me that vulnerability is the clearest way we have of measuring courage.

Friday, December 5, 2014

Learning from Nature

My soft early morning eyes follow the chubby tuxedoed bodies of Buffleheads plying the jade surface of Richardson Bay. I watch. A poofy cottonball head and small gray beak tilt forward, puncturing the water’s skin; fat black and white rump slip noiselessly after. The water ripples out in concentric circles that give way to glassy stillness. In my somewhat unfocused line of sight, all is momentarily unmoving, silent. Submerged, the bird works his underwater duties, gleaning nourishment for the day, counsel for others about where real treasure lies.

She stands at the shoreline, elliptical body balanced on pencil-thin ebony legs, graceful neck folded neatly at its midpoint, watchful eyes observing, thoughtfully consuming. Motionless, long schooled in moving at nature’s pace. Her wedge-shaped beak begins a descent, lowers millimeters at a time, almost imperceptibly. Neck slowly unfurls, trailing golden beak. A momentary hovering, stillness gathered and held. At lightening’s speed, mouth drops to water, jaws open, shut. Gullet takes over, efficiently processing the morning’s latest morsel. Thirty seconds pass, gullet and figure working in seamless harmony. Gradually, she again assumes regal stance, presiding over the green Bay, the Mallards and Grebes, the Snowy Egrets. Pale eyes resume encompassing gaze.

Round and round she travels, rhythmically, purposefully, gossamer strand trailing then artfully catching a cross-thread, lending the work its telltale shape. Her squat gold and black body pushes along her eight deft weaving tools, forelegs gingerly guiding the thread’s placement – just so – before engineering a change in direction, a coupling of the new strand with a cross-thread to sturdy up the new home. Her path spirals inward, each revolution tighter, more focused. A silver dollar-sized eight-sided ring culminates the masterful weaver’s work. Noiselessly, with practiced efficiency, she crosses to the two o’clock corner of the web and settles in rest. Almost motionless, I can see-hear-feel her breathing. The sun finally rounds the girth of the eucalyptus grove and, warmth unfurling, casts its autumn morning light on the weaver, the web, and the witness.

Earlier this month, I spent three days and two nights camping in a meadow edging the Pacific. The meadow rests among the 17 acres that comprise The Regenerative Design Institute’s patch of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The Design Institute is a 2-acre permaculture garden and varied patch of wild lands within the park’s marvelous expanse. While the prospect of three days of camping in such a scenic refuge sounds idyllic, the weekend entailed more than lounging under my tent’s safe nylon canopy lulled by the waves’ music.  Rather, it involved more than 30 hours of solitary and group exercises, reflection, journaling, and activities otherwise aimed to facilitate a stock-taking of my life. The days marked the opening session of a six-month program called The Ecology of Leadership, or EOL. Per its website description, EOL aims to “awaken our unique gifts and [support us] to more fully participate in the extraordinary cultural and planetary transformation of our time.” For those familiar with the activist ecologist and philosopher Joanna Macy, the program responds to the opportunities inherent in what Macy describes as “The GreatTurning” – the turning away from an industrial growth society toward a life-sustaining civilization. For me, the program appeared as if by Grace, another step stone on this path to align my work and the daily pattern of my life to be synchronous with my belief in the interconnectedness of all beings and my desire to be a more active and effective healing resource. In truth, the program also provides me with a way to direct my energy from the despair and isolation of mid-career unemployment and uncertainty to pursuit of my vision of a wholehearted life of integrity and meaningful contribution. It enables me to commune with other seekers trying to discern their proper place on this Earth, yearning to discover and take up their particular and significant work in the world.

I count my new practice of sitting quietly in nature among the gifts already gleaned from EOL. In addition to nurturing a daily meditation practice, I have added the daily discipline of sitting quietly for 20 minutes in the same “sit spot” bordering Richardson Bay. There, I am instructed by my guides from EOL to simply observe. From this practice and my summer of farming, I am slowly learning that soundly immersing myself in our natural world helps me to re-member my place within the unfolding fabric, to claim my membership in the family of things. Observing the Great Blue Heron and the Bufflehead, I am re-learning the significance of standing still and diving deep. From the Great Egret, I am discovering that open and watchful waiting yields rich desserts, that I need not muscle and strive to earn my daily bread, that there is always enough – and often abundance. From the Robins outside my kitchen window, I take the lesson that small morsels consumed thoughtfully accrete to sufficient food for the journey, and that companionship and community are as important – if not more so – than a ready supply of bright red berries.

As in the practice of meditation, my sit spot practice also invokes the most basic onboard tool – the breath – as a means of restoring my attention and emotions to the here and now. Now, I’m finding it helpful to envision myself breathing alongside the regal Egrets and Herons, humming through my activities propelled by the self-same breath imbibed by Buffleheads and Mallards, respiring with the formidable stillness of Redwoods and Cypresses. These visualizations readily guide me into my Heart’s center, to its beating, which mirrors that of the Creator that sustains every living being. By consciously settling into silence, resting in breath and mantra, I hope that I am gradually becoming more adept at listening and responding to the way life continuously evokes us forward on a path with Heart. If it’s good enough for Mary Oliver, it’s good enough for me.

And so I try, moment by moment and day by day, to keep moving forward. I invoke the company of my breath and of faithful companions on this journey toward awareness, non-violence, and service in healing the earth. I sometimes falter. I sometimes check out. I've been known, too, to stumble and lose heart. It’s then that I close my eyes, find my breath, conjure the faces of those who encourage and inspire me. It’s then that I take myself to the edge of the Bay and regard the Buffleheads and the Blue Heron. I am learning to join them on their path, to rest and trust in abundance, in revelation, in nourishment enough for the unfolding journey.

And when I need further cajoling to re-join the path, to re-engage in the practice of slowing down and opening up, I turn to poetry - what poet David Whyte describes as, "Language against which we have no defenses." These words of Denise Levertov recently undid me . . .

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension -- though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal--then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
-- but we have changed, a little.

~ Denise Levertov ~


(Sands of the Well)