On life and death - consider this

 A video with things to consider...

The Egg Story by Andy Weir Animated by Kurzgesagt A Big Thanks to Andy Weir for allowing us to use his story. The original was released here: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/thee... Visit his website here: http://www.andyweirauthor.com/

Celebrating Joanna Macy

 

WATCH • READ • LISTEN • ENGAGE Photo by Adam Loften Honoring Joanna Macy “You are not a separate being. You belong to the living body of Earth. You are the Earth, looking up at the stars. You are the Earth, becoming conscious of itself.” –Joanna Macy On Saturday, July 19th, eco-philosopher, Buddhist scholar, and dear friend Joanna Macy passed away at the age of ninety-six. Undoubtedly one of the most influential leaders of deep ecology, she dedicated her long life to the Work That Reconnects—a body of practices fostering a remembrance of the interconnectedness between people and the greater web of life; and frameworks for alchemizing despair, anger, and apathy towards loss and harm into constructive change and action. Of our current cultural and ecological polycrises, Joanna said, “The darker the circumstance, the more brilliant the invitation.” Joanna’s voice was one of the first we sought in our early publishing days, and she repeatedly offered insight and wisdom over the years through her writing, and as a teacher for our Seeds of Radical Renewal leadership program. In her interview with us, she traced the ways a life-long heart connection with the living world cultivated a resounding ecological awareness within her work, alongside a recognition of what she called “the Great Turning”—the possibilities of societal transformation that exist at the core of our unfolding destruction. “I have a lot of grief for what we’re doing to our world and to the future,” she said, “but I know at the same time that whatever happens, there’s nothing that can happen that will ever separate me from the living body of Earth.” Her exploration of how we might return to this “ecological self” as a way to be of service amid the climate catastrophe was central to many of her books, including World as Lover, World as Self, Coming Back to Life, and Active Hope. Joanna was also a seminal translator of Rainer Maria Rilke’s work. Moved by his contemplations on the entwinement of grief, beauty, and spiritual life, she often quoted a particular stanza from Book of Hours:   I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may never complete this last one, but I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? Through her work and life, Joanna imparted a way of being that does not shy away from collapse, but listens for what is emergent within it. She reminds us that grief is not a failing, and that to feel sorrow for the burning world is to be awake to its beauty: “In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our noblest calling.”

Thanks Emergence Magazine. Other touching obituaries have been shared by many others who's lives she impacted.

Here's a Substack article which just popped up in my In-Box.

https://drewdellinger.substack.com/p/bodhisattva-of-the-biosphere-a-tribute?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

Mindfulness meditation class

 Topic was anxiety and pain.

I went and joined 4 others as well as a licensed teacher, where we had 2 episodes of meditation. A bit of discussion of pain and anxiety, and treatments of same.

It was a good hour for just $5.

I will try it again. 

Did I get an answer to a question I posed?

Not really. The anxious awakening in the night and not being able to go back to sleep.

One woman said 4 cups of sleepy time tea. (and didn't mention how my bladder would respond to that).

I do like the idea of doing some mindful breath focus, just to get my mind away from worrying about the state of something that I did, or am about to do. I'll see how that works before the next class.

Channeling

 When a word catches your attention, it's meaning says "this should be considered more deeply, more fully," there's a wonderful thing that starts to happen. It reappears in other contexts. It seems to be like a gnat that comes by and then disappears, but only to reappear later. Bothersome. But perhaps that's just because you really need to do something about it. Built a gnat catching hotel for it. (whisper that a bowl of old fruit skins with a piece of plastic wrap stretched across and a few holes punched will entice your tiny friends into their own happy capture.) For the word "channeling" I just sit and wait.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others”― Martha Graham

Another quote goes with helping us through traumas, like floods, accidents, fires, political destructions. 

Opening to that which is most naturally myself, then healing the structures which have been damaged.

That's where my thoughts this foggy morning are.

Getting clarity. Letting go. But still doing householder's tasks. I threw out the pretty nectarine which suddenly bloomed with a big patch of mold on one side, the side I hadn't been looking at. Fuzzy greenish grey says "danger, beware, do not breathe the spores which emanate from me."

Meditate on what is most healthy. I am just part of the whole that is.

A Kimmerer tale

 Robin Wall Kimmerer is such a great author. "Braiding Sweetgrass" was my first joyfully owned reading of hers. 

She is published often by Emergence Magazine, who has Sunday sharings on their newsletters. Here's one from last Sunday, the trees and life, and microbiology! Such images!

Becoming Earth: An Experimental Theology

The Trickster

 A podcast…about the trickster. The Emerald with Joshua Sherei.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emerald/id1465445746?i=1000701811853

I took my time listening to this podcast…and about 3/4 way through I was struck by the metaphor of the body and culture. So I’m going to go back and listen to that again…it seemed to go very quickly, while talking about looking for slowness.

Summer Solstice

I may do a ritual for Summer Solstice this year...which I don't believe I ever have. Let's see, just have a circle to represent the elements and directions (N,S,E and W.) Earth, air, fire, water. Easy to find in all my collections. I can set this up as an altar, a place to meditate upon as the longest day of the year offers all that sun-time! Music helps set the mood of reverence, probably some sunshine songs.

"Sunshine on My Shoulders" by John Denver (from the Wildlife Concert)

It's up to God

 Commodification of everything is the biggest problem of how things are run these days, in my humble opinion! 

For (Heraclitus), reality is not a constellation of things at all, but one of processes. The fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world is not material substance but volatile flux, namely 'fire,’ and all things are versions thereof (puros tropai). 

Process is fundamental: the river is not an object, but a continuing flow; the sun is not a thing, but an enduring fire. 

Everything is a matter of process, of activity, of change (panta rhei). Not stable things but fundamental forces and the varied and fluctuating activities they manifest constitute the world. 

We must at all costs avoid the fallacy of materializing nature.

—Nicholas Rescher

Thanks to Love is a Place blog.

-----------------

For me I've been considering how scientifically thinking people approach problems so differently than religiously thinking people.

My maintenance man put a new part in to replace the crumbling one in my air conditioner. I said but what about the cause of the problem? Can you fix the thing that made it crumble in the first place into rust particles?

He mentioned we live in a rain forest. He apologized for saying he was going to be religious (a nice touch.) And then he said it's up to God. 

I said it needed to be born again!

This is what it's like to live in a red community...a right wing Christian neighborhood, while many of my friends are Democratic liberals. I never realized it would extend to the approach to repairing things!

----------

So while looking at machines which fall apart and those who fix them just pray about it, I'm considering the process rather than the thing itself.

This process for me is cause and effects. Try this or that, if it works, then the way has been found. A process.

For my maintenance man, he only goes to the thing that works...just replace the broken part, and don't even think about what caused it. All causes in his mind are to a great force beyond all understanding, to which he prays, I'd imagine, regularly.

Which brings me to climate change.

Many neighbors have experienced some drastic events here in western North Carolina, with the hurricane last September changing the faces of many valleys and mountain-sides. Some of them just cope with what needs to be done (food, water, shelter) and say it's God's will. 

They actually find comfort when someone dies, has unfortunate circumstances, or even does something illegal...to say God is the answer to your questions...He wants this to happen this way.

I can't approach any of this in this manner, excuse me very much. I have too much faith in a scientific process, to figure out what things might be done by us to change the results of what's happening in nature, so we can still survive and maybe thrive, a few generations coming along. This also requires my owning responsibility for much of climate change...and looking at men (generic I mean) who have caused it.

So we're responsible. We're able. We can change our behaviors. We can support ideas that might offer solutions to problems. OK, I've gotten off on a tangent here.

But my concept of a divine force isn't that I can just let it do it's thing, and I don't have to do anything.

 Link to the following: 

Supracellular: A Meditation by Sophie Strand

“I want to think and feel and weep and grieve with my whole multispecies, polynucleated mind.”

Letting her consciousness slip from the confines of her brain into the long tubes of hyphae that make up the mycelial network beneath her feet, author Sophie Strand wonders how much better we might think if we involved the wide web of more-than-human beings around us. She challenges the idea that our minds are individual—like siloed cells resisting exchange with the outside world—and offers a practice of opening up to a “supracellular state” in which thinking is less bound to an organ and more a relational process that moves through the fungal, geological, microbial, vegetal, ancestral threads that connect us with our ecosystem. This exercise in embodied empathy enables Sophie to enter the minds of rivers, black bears, and chanterelles; and as the borders between physical matter dissolve, her self flows into a wider space of multiplicity. She feels in the extended web of her cognition both the wonder of the land’s otherness and the pain of its increasing disruption. This essay is the first in a series of four we are sharing over the next month in partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature.

Emergent divine feminine

 “The Goddess doesn't enter us from outside; she emerges from deep within. She is not held back by what happened in the past. She is conceived in consciousness, born in love, and nurtured by higher thinking. She is integrity and value, created and sustained by the hard work of personal growth and the discipline of a life lived actively in hope.”

~ Marianne Williamson

Stained glass, artist unknown

On thinking

 Evan Thompson describes:

Part of the problem, however, comes from thinking of the mind or meaning as being generated in the head. That’s like thinking that flight is inside the wings of a bird. A bird needs wings to fly, but flight isn’t in the wings, and the wings don’t generate flight; they generate lift, which facilitates flight. Flying is an action of the whole animal in its environment. Analogously, you need a brain to think, but thinking isn’t in the brain, and the brain doesn’t generate it; it facilitates it. The brain generates many things—neurons and their synaptic connections, ongoing rhythmic activity patterns, the constant dynamic coordination of sensory and motor activity—but none of these should be identified with thinking, though all of them crucially facilitate it. Thinking is an action of the whole person in its environment.

Evan Thompson, “Spring Forward or Fall Back: Changing Times for Neuroscience,”
Psychology Today, May 13, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wakingdreaming-
being/201505/spring-forward-or-fall-back.

I quoted this from an article which I'll link tomorrow!

Meryl Streep - excellent philosophy

From  Midwives of the Soul, Facebook

 Meryl Streep once said: Let things fall apart — stop exhausting yourself trying to hold them together. Not everything is meant to last forever, and forcing what is already breaking will only drain you. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is let go.

Let people be upset. Let them misunderstand you. Let them criticize and judge. Their opinions are reflections of their own perceptions, not a measure of your worth. You do not need to explain yourself to those who are committed to misunderstanding you. You are not responsible for how others choose to see you or how they react to your truth.

Stop fearing the unknown. Stop asking, Where will I go? What will I do? as if the universe has not already carved a path for you. Loss can feel unbearable, but sometimes, it is simply clearing the way for something better. What is meant to leave will leave, no matter how desperately you try to hold on. What is meant to stay will find a way, no matter how uncertain things seem. Life always finds a way to balance itself, even when we can’t see how.

There is a rhythm to life, a natural order of endings and beginnings. When we resist that flow, we create suffering. We cling to what is breaking, fearing that nothing good will replace it. But this is an illusion. The universe is abundant, constantly unfolding new opportunities, new love, and new purpose. The only thing keeping you from it is your attachment to what no longer belongs to you.

And never, for a second, believe that the best is behind you. Life does not stop offering beauty just because you have endured hardship. The good has not run out. There is still more joy to experience, more love to receive, more peace to be found. But you must be willing to make room for it.

So, ask yourself—What am I holding onto that is holding me back? And when you find the answer, trust yourself enough to let it go. Something better is already on its way.

Image | Meryl Streep by Kurt Markus

Not so much inner life as just notes about life

 Got my COVID booster yesterday. Sort of rushed in between all kinds of other things. Picked up my box lunch and took it home to eat. Good rice, fish (maybe with parmesan on it - couldn't taste it.) Jello (orange!)

Hey yesterday was Gun Violence Awareness day, wear orange - I didn't have anything orange. Wore red (which used to be the color to wear.)

Definitely true...!

After tossing the lunch foam box into the bear-proof garbage bin outside, drove to CVS and as I arrived they sent a text canceling my COVID appointment. I asked the pharmacist if it was because I was 2 minutes late. No, he said, it was that a my insurance wouldn't cover it...did I have my Medicare card? I gave it to him, and the shot was covered that way. It was a Pfizer shot this time. I had had my last booster last fall, so was due for one. I just hope the one this fall will be including the latest strain.

I did as a nurse had shown me (being in line before me one time for a booster) and swung my arm around a bunch, hoping it would disperse the drug more. It was still sore that night and the next morning. Oh well. I didn't have to take a pain reliever at least.

I had a $4 coupon, and received another $2 coupon when I got there. So I had to find something to buy (that I might use!) I started with a folding camp chair (priced at $29.) By the time I paid for it somehow it was $14...less than half price with tax! I like to go up on the Blue Ridge Parkway and sit at one of the overlooks and just absorb the beauty - when they are open again, and when weather is ok too. Some of Parkway will be closed for a year I've heard.

Pain now is in my right hip, running on the outside of my hip down my leg. So walking activities have been canceled for today. I continue to do my early stretch each morning. After all, if cats do it... Some back stretches and some hamstring stretches. Yesterday I was proud of myself for doing 8 minutes of Qigong breathing exercises. Didn't help that much. Lots of coughing by evening, and even woke me up a few times.

I skipped the evening nebulizer treatment, just huffed a couple of times on the albuterol inhaler.

 Do Not Skip Nebulizer, Barb!

That's not my inner mother talking (I hope) but maybe the cheerleader or coach who wants me (really wants me) to win. Another day, another night.

So today add that 20 minutes before doing anything, and again before going to bed. My inner child really rebels at discipline. I do have a good book to read, so will give myself that reward.

My friends don't use behavioral modification to give themselves incentives.

I do, but don't know if it really works. But it's fun to look at chores and figure out a reward.

I didn't like the last person who cleaned for me. She would be a good "organizer" and take everything apart and put it together the way she likes, if I would let her.

So now when I mop the kitchen floor (which I did, seriously, all by myself) I call myself her name. And do I pay myself? You betcha! That's how I got the new book to read. I maybe mentioned it on another blog, 

Visual Learning by Temple Grandin. I am pretty sure I learn with visual cues - by my age I should know what works and  what doesn't. But I'm not sure I think with pictures. I  process a lot about verbalization but not by listening (particularly by writing so many thoughts down.) So I definitely do have a verbalization methodology. But I have an innate sense of my place in the world...in relation to where I'm standing, which way is north, how close I am to other people, and how noisy it is before I'm really uncomfortable.

I have an inner map, and can usually find my way back to where I started on most new trips...give me visual cues - not turn left, right 3 blocks etc. directions. These are visual thinker's methods.

It's playing with raining outside today. Perhaps some severe wind. We shall see. It rained quite a bit last night, waking me up a couple of times with it hitting against the window. I've finally dried out the air inside so I'm able to move about comfortably.

Off I go to nebulize saline solution and then inhale more albuterol! 

I hope whoever reads this can add their own opinions. Thanks to one person who does comment! I wonder if anyone else even reads here.

How many more years, months, days?

  I am quite busy looking back usually. Fifty years ago was probably my prime. Twenty years ago seems like yesterday. I investigate the lives of ancestors who lived hundreds of years ago!

But then I realize I don't have twenty more years ahead. That would make me 102...a count which I don't see is realistic.

Shock!

Do I have 10 more? At least 5 more? Geese, maybe just one? I'd better get busy!!

Thus I'm pushed back into today.

Those Zen folks knew what they were talking about.

If I had just one more day to live...what would it look like?

Well, I'm eating yogurt with blueberries. A bite must have both in it...the sudden squirt of blueberry juice between my teeth just is so grand. Then a bit of chewing in the soft yogurt through out my mouth kind of sticky since it's the thick kind. One berry has a stem on it too, do I eat it? Well why not...it disappears into becoming me. Just a bit more fiber there!

Oh wow, a bite with two berries in it.

OK, enough of breakfast, which includes a bit of bark in my coffee. Osho bark packed in honey, which is good for throat and lungs, I've been told. The coffee is French Roast, practically an espresso. what a medly of flavors, with French Vanilla creamer to take down the acidity.

I wondered if I were to lose my senses as I age (like it's still somewhere distant), which would be the easiest to live without. Smell. It's gradually gone. Taste comes and goes, with sweet remaining ever constant. I'm so grateful my eyes and ears work still. And touch - except for the shaky fingers. That is hard when I'm trying to center the cursor on something with the mouse. So far I can wiggle them up and down and type on the keyboard.

OK, enough about the physical beingness of myself.

Entertainment has been a free week of Brit Box. I'm also trying to live without YouTube TV...which affords me streaming live channels including seeing local news. I can finish binging Hawaii Five-0 soon. Do I want to switch to Brit Box (much cheaper per month actually!) Oh the movies they have! And old Agatha Christi...and new Brit murder mysteries! But I have to read the captions usually, which is a strain on the eyes.

Why not out in the woods you ask? Because the air has been full of Canadian wildfire smoke...but it rained most of yesterday, so it's only moderate this morning. Maybe later when the weather guys say it's good.

Off I go to write a birthday card to my daught-in-law, and get it in the mailbox going out to her!

Last days of a president

 

Today I'm dealing with my own dreams that look pretty cloudy, as well as current physical problems that give me those clouds.

A few days ago we learned of President Joe Biden's prostate cancer level 4 which has metastasized. 

He has a limited number of days of life left to him. That's a fact.

I never think that way about my own life...or maybe I do when I'm feeling really low. I imagine my own death, and have personified it as a crow who sits on my shoulder, slightly behind where I can see. It can talk with me, if I need to. 

On my other shoulder (also invisible) is the angel who gives me complete grace for everything I do. She's dressed in white, as she should be. But I wasn't raised with guardian angels as part of my reality, so I kind of only half believe in her. Death, well, you know, everyone has one, and I chose to talk with mine.

Anyway back to President Biden. It makes me wonder what a famous man, who has said many astute things, thinks of to say still in these last days of his life. Is there something profound that he's wanted to say and would like to have done while he can?

Somehow I think he's surrounding himself with those he loves, and just going through daily life in a casual way. If he could know that I'm writing this, I'd wish him to have sunny days and feel the love of those who he most cares about, and have a peaceful transition from this busy, demanding, fulfilling and enchanting life. (He wouldn't say enchanting probably, but successful, or maybe eventful.)

Real life vs. blogging

 What am I doing all this blogging for, anyway?

Perhaps a coping mechanism to avoid a). current events, b). my chores that always need doing or c). my problems which have no solutions, like medical problems that might also be mental. I still am waiting for a neurological consult to see if I'm exhibiting signs of dementia....as well as my shaky finger problem.

I think at one point, how about I  copy my blogs all into one volume (of course digital) and there are these different chapters, like each of my blogs.

Then save it on one of those nice thumb drives that have at least 50 g of memory. That should be enough for the 20 or so years of multiple blogs.

Maybe I'll save the family tree on a separate one.

So I need to be considering my descendants...who might someday be interested in these daily quips.

Imagine if an ancestor could have left all kinds of information for me to find. A very great library book, I think.

Currently I have enjoyed looking on line to find information about affordable housing in Colorado so I could move and live near my son and his wife. I forget the limitations I am currently dealing with. Today I didn't do any more research, but did the laundry. Now it is waiting to be folded and hung up. Lots of clothes over three weeks worth, plus the bed needs to be made with clean sheets.

And a few pieces aren't quite dry, so I should hang them on the shower rod. So now to enjoy real life. I also baked a frozen Dutch apple pie, so had a slice when it was still warm...and it kind of fell apart. But it still tasted great. My favorite desert.

Now on to the tending of fabrics in my life...

Goddess Remembered

 

This YouTube video has many of the second wave feminists (not Susan B. Anthony era, but the 1970s) sharing their insights. The trio of videos originally was broadcast by Canadian Broadcasting, directed by Donna Read. I shared these with some of the women who were interested in my teaching about goddesses over 30 years.

The original people featured:

Where does negative energy come from!

 

Dawn from the Blue Ridge Parkway August 2024

There is darkness. There is light. The YinYang symbol has equal parts of each, with it's opposite as a small dot in the center of each.

So my thoughts continue to go toward knowing more about the negative, the darkness, the force of evil. I don't want to think much about it, nor talk about it really. Somehow that's giving it more power in my life.

I get a kick out of entertainment which focuses on dire straights, many characters or situations where fabricated negative forces almost win the day...but you know each horror film will have some kind of good ending. I don't watch them, but I'm pretty sure those who do would concur.

I like murder mysteries, and adventurous books and films and even TV. The good always wins against the evil. May the Force be With You...a few days ago from the Star Wars films, is not talking about the Dark Side.

Shakespeare's plays are tragedies or comedies.

I seriously want to know.

Where does the negative force come from? Is it equal to the positive force as Yin Yang would have me believe? 

Darkness as opposed to light in my life is understandable.

But evil is not.

The devil, Satan, I don't believe in. I think the Christian church kind of invented them.

But error was what I learned about in Christian Science as a child. 

And that phrase kind of puts in mind a psychology of "it's all mental". Yet people don't wish upon themselves all the bad that happens to them without their intention. That way of thinking ends up blaming the victim for accidents and being thrown into horrible situations.

Now I know many folks believe its their destiny. But I don't believe in an outside force running my life. I've too much belief that I am in charge of my life by my own choices. 

See my conundrum? Bad things happen to good people.  Accidents happen. Our lives now are impacted by huge climate events. 

Is there a force of evil, and if so, where does it come from?

My feelings exactly

 Sometimes Facebook provides some intelligent posts.

 life became less exhausting once I stopped trying to be the smartest person in the room

now I just try being

the most human person

its not slwsys easy - yet,

I’ve found that nobody

really ever misses

my shallow insights on

geopolitics or economics

the biggest thing people need

from me is the space to

tell some of their story

and then after a bit

~ I tell a little of mine

and then after some

more storytelling

turn taking

~ we see the soul light

in each other peeking

out the corners of our eyes

dear ego,

less of my mouth

~ more of my ears

less of my mouth

~ more of my ears

less of my mouth

~ more of my ears

it’s not about impressing

people in the room

it’s about giving room

for people to be heard

less of my mouth

~ more of my ears

less of my mouth

~ more of my ears

less of my mouth

~ more of my ears

(john roedel)

The Crone

 “The crone is the irrational power of nature that causes all things to decay and be changed. The experience of change is terrifying to both men and women who have lived their lives believing that material reality is all there is and that reason is the ultimate means by which all our problems will be solved. Whatever else she may be, the crone is most certainly not reasonable. No more reasonable than the forces that cause leaves to decay when they fall in autumn, transforming them into leaf mold that will eventually bring new life to the forest. No more reasonable than the hurricane which, irrespective of man’s wishes or longings, blows its course through city and countryside. No more reasonable than the earth herself as she ques and trembles with the shifts taking place in the continental plates of her body.

It is little wonder that male-centered religions have diabolized the crone, for the crone is the ultimate destroyer, the emasculator of male reason.”

-Leslie Kenton, Passage to Power

Crone by Barbara Rogers 2014