May this Holyday season bring time to cherish all that is good and true and beautiful.
May its dark days invite rest for reflection and renewal.
May nature welcome you to its beauty, magic and wisdom.
May good health be your companion, relationships enliven and encourage,
work and pastimes fulfill and affirm.
May strength in body, mind and spirit allow you to embrace life’s uncertainties.
May patience, love and kindness – given and received – be yours in abundance.
(Inspired by John O’Donohue)
Seven star sisters, each a Venus shining in the eastern morning sky.
Skin glows like moonbeams in the cloistered light of the hammam
Soft flesh – thighs, breasts and bellies
Hair loosened, free across forehead, neck and shoulder
Eyes half closed
Surrender.
Soaking in the warm and cool
pools of sensuous, history and story, ancient rituals
Tender dreams swirl up and through like the sandalwood incense wafting, scenting, sensing.
Exotic music out of time and place
Echoes of flamenco before it came to be
Imagining the route taken before making home in these Andalucian hills.
Hot honeyed tea, fresh with mint
a balm of generosity
Dates picked fresh
soft and warm and sweet as this moment.
Seven sister stars mindlessly float from hot to cool to hot again
Submerged in an elemental expanse of sky, of water
Footsteps languid on smooth clay floors
Two by two, give ourselves over to firm fingers, strong hands, primal stones.
Body aches and heart hurts
Monkey mind of spinning thought and worry
Give way to spacious possibility and healing hope
Up the spine. Down the leg.
Tracing steps.
Following routes.
Coming home.
It’s a statement I typed in an email to a friend last week. Unbidden. True.
I relish the sudden spontaneous emergence of such pithy truths.
Like the time when I asked another friend for the gift of her skillful deep listening as I weighed a hefty matter needing decisive action. “Winnowing to essence,” came my reply, as I described the simplicity I was after.
Since then, those words have become a mantra for the gradual process of letting go of a lot of my life’s trappings, and committing to exchange things for experiences.
“Quite a bit of not a lot.”
I like the roll of this in my mouth, piqued by a bit of paradox. Like a lemon lime lollipop, sweet and tangy. Evoking, or perhaps subliminally inspired by, this recent Facebook “share.”
It makes deep and abiding sense.
It feels good and right in my body, the reservoir of wordless wisdom.
And it comes. Remarkably quite easily. Ceasing blind urgency and habitual headlong over-ride and over-drive. Giving over to long moments gazing out the window into the now fully green trees. Pausing between paragraphs and pages of the latest book to wonder into white clouds suspended in signature azure skies. Going to bed earlier and sleeping later, serenaded by robins.
Winnowing to essence. Quite a bit of not a lot.
Mirroring for each other an innate way of being, born of aging.
Considering Haiku…
I
Predawn April.
Snows have melted.
Darker now than winter even as the sun rises early.
II
Muted edges of night time dreams give way to morning musings.
Which are more real?
Which are more helpful?
III
Candle in the corner illuminates an altar of elements.
A resting place of beauty.
A pause for morning prayer.
Yesterday
blue sky puffed with cotton clouds
sandy beach glistening
palms rustle lush and verdant in the northern wind
ocean striped in patches and pockets of aquamarine, navy, slate
with ribbons of white waves breaking across
tropical birds sing a new day while the clan of seven pelicans soundlessly make their daily glide south,
off to work somewhere, I suppose
return home at the day’s end
Today
flat white sky imperceptibly veined with silvery blue, holds the promise of sunshine
snowy landscape glistening
the same northern wind blows slant chimney smoke and garden grasses, while bare tree branches and spruce boughs stiffly jostle a staccato response
too cold for bird song or flight
soundless except for the furnace reassuringly blowing its warmth up from the floor,
and grandmother’s clock tick-tocking in our home held timeless for ten days
stark, cold reality of real winter
I am revived, in peace, home.
Top Notes
Cool water fragrant with thin slices of near translucent cucumber.
Tender pink of a wild rose petal.
Tiny teaspoon of lemon ice, softened for a moment by the rising sun.
Middle – Heart – Notes
One hour later, brighter, deeper into the dawn
Herbaceous green of freshly cut grass.
Spicy geranium and day lily, subtly turning their sleepy fuchsia and saffron heads to the east.
Bottom – Base – Notes
Earth damp from the sudden thunderstorm.
Dew drops warming, trailing behind an iridescent veil.
Robin, sparrow, chickadee, even crow and magpie song and call, waft across the barely-there breeze, awakening sense and presence.
Close your eyes and breathe.
Open your eyes and see.
A week or so ago, during an early morning meditation,
I sat
hearing the furnace blow its warmth
as the robin sang his heartsong,
watching snow flakes float and whiten
the new greening grass and purple and saffron crocus,
smelling the pungent perfume of lilies
now wilt and faded with days since gracing Easter’s joy.
Today, Friday, the echoing day of my birth,
when on another Friday, six decades past,
a Good Friday,
new life broke through like Cohen’s crack.
Sun and Moon dictate Easter’s arrival: the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox
a Christian’s most celebrated day
but always foreshadowed by that Friday’s
death and darkness.
Regardless of the day on which my birthday falls,
I always feel the pull of my first birth day
primal as the ocean’s tide in response to the Moon
archetypal in symbol, suffering, surrender,
the promise of celebration.
Born of star dust
from ocean waters
the full moon face of the new born,
then and now.
It’s morning. I’m quietly sipping coffee, reading a novel that features an ensemble of Victorian era ghosts who hover helplessly perplexed, lovingly hoping the protagonist solves a mystery that left her broken, and from which they seek ephemeral redemption and release.
Prompted by the passage describing a dissembled old long clock, I pause to listen to the tick-tock of my grandmother’s cuckoo clock.
A minute’s reverie back and forth in time, memory and grief, now broken by the call of wild geese just returned, a harbinger of spring.
I remember today is the anniversary of my dear dog’s passing.
I remember I don’t have to walk a hundred miles on my knees to know my place in the family of things. (Thank you, Mary Oliver.)
Prairie Bound Peggy at 15 years
Not every day, not every week, but enough mornings to know that rising early, before dawn, grounds me in the new day.
Golden light on the emerald leaves of the laurel willow and last standing mayday.
Birds singing for a new day – less now but in spring and early summer, the only sound that fills the still starry sky.
Bob’s quiet voice, spoken word and song selections echo The Road Home.
Morning breeze gently kissing awake the backyard trees, inviting them into the new day dance.
Sister Moon’s sliver of shine gives way to the light of her Brother Sun.
Still mind metta meditation for friends and family challenged by illness and travails.
Full hearted prayer of thanksgiving for this Life, my Life, this new day.
January takes her parting bow today. After a respite that melted most of the snow and foolishly tempted both plant and birds into thinking spring was soon to be, I awoke to a once again cold, white winter. Curious, too, my start to this year as it’s taken the month to imagine and begin to see glimmers of the returning light.
Right now, I’m in the third, middle week of the U.Lab: Transforming Business, Society, Self, a MOOC (massive open online classes) hosted by MIT, featuring Otto Scharmer and his team. Together with 25,000 people from over 190 countries around the world, we’re participating in a novel, highly experiential process to “learn how to create profound innovation in a time of disruptive change by leading from the emerging future,” by introducing the consciousness – that quality of awareness and attention – as the variable affecting the quality of the results we create in any social system.
“The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.” — Bill O’Brien
I’ve written about Theory U before, described other times when I’ve journeyed down the U, shared how I knew in my heart and bones the quintessence of this work when I first heard Otto present his ideas in 2003 at Shambhala-Alia – even before he called it “Theory U. “ Last year several of us held a study of this course’s featured book, Leading from the Emerging Future, and twice now, I’ve co-hosted a 2-day learning lab, Leading in Emergence, designed as an abbreviated journey though the U.
So given this “more than passing” familiarity, I was bowled over when last week, for the first time I actually heard that the emerging future needs me, needs us, to be born and to have life. While perhaps pretty obvious to many, I was deeply moved by this. It’s not that I’m a passive, or even active participant. I am, we are, midwife to that future that comes from Self, or Source, or God, or pure creativity, whatever you call the embodiment and enactment of love.
I just realized above that I wrote, “I’m in the middle of the U.Lab,” a perfect description for where I really am, both literally in the course, and metaphorically in my life – at the bottom of the U. Work has been slow to start this year, and at the moment, I don’t see much on the horizon for the next few months. Perhaps for one of the first times, I’m not too anxious about this.
I spend many dark dawn morning hours sitting with my Peggy dog, imagining we’re both filling up on each other before she takes her parting bow. I remind myself, this is where I need to be now. Every time a vacation bargain crosses my screen, my Magpie-Crow-Raven cousins get seduced by the “shiny,” but by day’s end I delete what I know down deep is only a distraction. I remind myself, this is where I need to be now. I feel the uncertainty, unfamiliarity and void with letting go of a life-long honed identity that once served well…with cancelling long held dreams that no longer matter …with releasing relationships that use me up. I remind myself, this is where I need to be now. This year, The Scientist officially became a senior, and I celebrate a new decade, and face the reality that yes, while only a number, 60 is NOT the new 50; that I, he, we are entering into new and unfamiliar territory that we know will be marked by more letting go. I remind myself, this is where I am right now. I see how my Peggy dog has become the symbol for all that is letting go, dying, as was so starkly, heartbreakingly, blessedly revealed to me in a dream last week, a dream that when I recall, resounds deep in my gut.
So now I have time to ponder and play with something a dear friend wrote in response to my blog wherein I wrote about having been struck with Bell’s Palsy, an illness that cracked me open, whose effects continue to reverberate, and is, I now know, one of the boons from the threshold I crossed when I took leave from work and traveled to Europe in 2010-11.
“I went along for the ride (in a virtual world) when you went to Europe and I smiled and laughed and remembered my own trip many years ago. I wondered if maybe I was becoming stagnant as I don’t go too far these days and seem to be so very comfortable just being in my home. Then it occurred to me that what better way to live your truth than by getting up everyday and simply living your life? Not as a teacher or mentor or guide, but just living each day with the spontaneity that comes with a brand new day.
I am not saying we shouldn’t give back and share our knowledge, but sometimes life makes us sit back and just be, while we look at the balance or imbalance that currently is our reality.”
Perhaps this is the future that is asking to be born through me now.
For now, letting come winter’s pause to attend.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” — Arundhati Roy
Katharine Weinmann, MSW 