Speaking of Pema Chodron, whose quote is in yesterday’s gift, I received a reply from a reader about an earlier Pema Chodron posting of mine. The concept and his story sound interesting:
“You should never have expectations for other people. Just be kind to them.”
Pema Chodron, from her book, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living.
“Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.”
Today is my birthday and my gift to all is yesterday’s reading from my meditation book, God Calling:
Wipe The Slate
“But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark…” Phillipians 3:13-14
Forget the past. Remember only its glad days. Wipe the slate of your remembrance with Love, which will erase all that is not confirmed in Love. You must forget your failures, your failures and those of others. Wipe them out of the book of your remembrance.
I did not die upon the Cross for man to bear the burdens of his sins himself…..If you forget not the sins of others, and I bear them, then you add to My sorrows.
“I have all the qualities I need to live a happy life and successful life.”
Jessica Callahan, Love Is Patient, Love Is Kind: The Book of Devotion
I’ve been remiss in my gifts, a casualty of just exhaustion, illness, and recovery. I’m preparing a teaching on the mind training slogans of Atisha, an 11th century Buddhist master, for my meditation group. The slogans are also known as Lojong, and teach emptiness and compassion, and reinfornce the ideal of sending and taking – you send what you’d prefer to cling to….your compassion, love and equanimity, and you take what you’d rather reject….the things that scare you. In this way, you share your humanity with all mankind.
Pema Chodron works heavily in this area. In searching for things to add to my own teachings I came across this quote of hers on another blog, My Inner Edge, and it is my gift to all today. Namaste.
Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion; to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance.
I know a lot of people hate Canada geese. I don’t disagree about the mess. But the geese themselves, they are such gentle gifts from the Universe, at least to me.
Several years ago at Christmas time we were waiting to hear if my husband would still have a job. It was agony, sitting and waiting , wondering what would happen, would we lose our house ….and all you could do was sit…and wait. So many times in those few weeks, I’d go outside in the cold and just stand there looking out toward the pond, praying. Asking for God to bring a quick answer to end the agony, for strength to hold on until He did. And…it was Christmas time.
In answer to my prayers, no, I didn’t get an answer to ‘would we be destitute?’ I got ….Canada geese. Almost as soon as the crisis had started, they had arrived. Whenever I went outside to pray, to let the cold sift through me and try to quell my fear, the geese would walk up the hill, silent, slow, peaceful, and stand by me. They never made a sound. Never hissed at me or poked at me for food. They just walked up to me, gathered around me, and stood there, keeping vigil in the cold with me. Every time. Though they didn’t solve what we were going through, I felt strangely safe…comforted…protected. I wasn’t alone. So I found myself going out there more, to be with what I called our geese angels.
Just before Christmas we finally got word that my husband’s job was safe and no we wouldn’t be out on the street. I went outside, and this time stood together with my geese angels in silent celebration and prayer. The next day, they were gone. It was as if they had come in answer to my prayer for strength, and they remained, silent guardians until the crisis was over. Then I guess they moved on, no doubt to comfort the next person who needed them.
Today I was working in the garage and had my back to the open doors. I heard a sound behind me and turned. Slowly walking into my garage, step by silent step, almost like slow motion, three geese approached. They were part of the two families on the pond, one family with three kids and one with five.
The rest of the families followed these three, all of them moving into the garage without hesitation or fear. They looked a little odd standing where you’d expect car parts to be, and they certainly are bigger in appearance in the enclosed space of the garage versus in the wide open back yard. But still, they moved with grace and majesty and serenity. Of course, the “kids” who by now look almost like adults, still made their quiet “gosling peeps,” but those were almost inaudible and something I find a joy to listen to.
I said hi and they stepped forward again, watching me, bobbing their heads. They wanted food. It is the strangest thing to see such large creatures, and so many of them, walk right up to you in your garage, as if geese do that all the time. They stood there and watched me, totally calm. When I told them I’d bring food, they didn’t even jump back as I stood up. They just stepped back a foot or so and waited for me to get the little bucket of corn. Then we strolled to the backyard together, where they waited for me to load the ground feeder.
Their presence today reminded me of that time several years ago. Standing next to me, unafraid, serenely quiet company, I felt loved, protected, graced by the presence of the Universe. I deeply appreciated it.
Like I said, I know people can sometimes dislike geese and I know their mess can be a nuisance. But I really have to say that I love them, and willingly hose down the driveway when they come up to visit, because they give me a gift, a sense of God’s love when they stand there in my garage, watching me with their beautiful dark eyes. So to me, they are Guardian angels.
“Become the one you dream you can be.”
Unknown….but appropo.
I have not dropped off the face of the earth, but have taken a few weeks off. A much needed break to recover health, do a couple jobs, take a break from writing projects to explore some art possibilities, and also, time to consider where to go now with this blog, what things to focus on, etc. A sabbatical of sorts. I have some ideas that I will be sharing soon.
There will be a return to Under the Pier book posts. That needed a break so my editor’s eye could emerge enough to start on book revisions. However I have been at work on Under the Pier, in the art department. I have started some pen and ink drawings of the creatures in the story, to form an artists glossary of characters for the readers. I just did an experiment, doing the same scene with little goby fish on the sea bottom twice, one in oil paints and once in pen & ink with watercolor wash. I like both for different reasons and am now trying to decide which medium to proceed with. I have pics of both pieces that I’ll post the end of this week.
Also, on the “nature friend” front – there are thousands of little tadpoles hatched in the shallow waters of the pond – got pics of those coming too! And the front porch bird house DOES have a resident. Now if I could just get some night vision goggles to sit out all night with and see who is leaving large hoof marks in my gravel….
Anyway, no one is forgotten, just needed a rest and some time to think. 🙂
“I don’t want to worry about what I look like…I’ve watched, my whole life, people age and become buffoons…When you crest in your thirties or forties and don’t pull out of the public eye, you become a caricature. You have to have grace, dignity and gratitude, and walk away kind of slowly, like you’re walking away from a bear.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, from the article “Jamie Lee Curtis Embraces the F-Word (No, Not That One), in the July/August 2008 issue of More magazine.
Well I started off yesterday to write about the animals I love watching in my yard and ended up down a totally different path. So today, backyard animal update, with a shade of Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s vicious bunny even!! At least to a squirrel.
My husband looked out the window the other morning and watched this scene unfold between a cute little brown bunny and a fairly young squirrel:
“The bunny came down the driveway and hopped over to the front bird feeder. While he poked around under the feeder looking for stray seeds, an fairly young squirrel came along. The squirrel stopped at the sight of the animal. It was clear the squirrel was confused by the rabbit. His facial expression was one of ‘what kind of a squirrel is that?’ The young squirrel hopped closer, stopped, and looked. Still confused he moved closer and closer, always stopping to stare at the strange squirrel under the feeder. Finally the squirrel was almost next to the rabbit.
The rabbit, meanwhile, observed the approaching squirrel, none too pleased. The rabbit inched away, then inched away, then glared at the squirrel as if to say ‘Dude. You’re in my space.’
The squirrel, still confused, inched toward the rabbit one last time. The vicious bunny suddenly leaped into the air, landing square on the squirrel and stomping him flat. Then the cute little bunny leaped back and resumed eating seeds as if nothing had happened. The young squirrel, slightly dazed, staggered back and resumed eating seeds a few feet away this time.”
So while these two usually furry, snuggly supposedly unvicious creatures duked it out in the front yard, the backyard had the two brutes best avoided, snapping turtles, sound asleep on logs in the pond. These guys can have a shell up to 20 inches in size and average about 40 lbs. though some can go up to 75 lbs. They have thick necks and a large hooked mouth with jaws that can crush:
“The snapping turtle is an exceedingly voracious brute, and is not particular as to its dinner. Young waterfowl are stalked from beneath the surface, seized by a dart of the jaws and pulled below to drown and be quickly torn to pieces. The turtle is carnivorous. It never feeds unless underwater, but it will sometimes seize prey on the bank of a stream and then retreat to the water to dine.” (From the entry on snapping turtles on the website Critter Zone; great pictures too)
Yet…these two brutes are sound asleep almost side by side, while the bunny brute in the front yard tromps the defenseless juvenile squirrel….
Standing on the front porch waiting for my son to let me in the house (forgot those house keys!), I turned toward the small House Wren feeder hanging on one of the porch posts and thought I saw something in it. I though it was an abundance of nest material some bird had stuffed in there and abandoned, and was about to reach for it to take it down to clean it, when I noticed the nest material looked like a bird head. My son confirmed my thoughts and after we went inside, we saw the “pile of nest material” move. So we have house wrens nesting on the front porch…or at least in a nest box. House wrens have been known to create a few “false nests” so you can’t find their actual nest….but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the “for real one” as I don’t think the mom stays in the “fake nests.”
The 9 goslings are as big as ducks now, but still make the child-like squeak sounds. I was sitting on the patio last night and they, knowing me as the “Corn God” as I sometimes will put out a cup or two of corn for them in the back ground feeder, quietly gathered around me as I read on the patio. Even the babies came up to me and just stood there, making their baby chirps, staring at me like “where’s the food???”
Inside the house, Admiral Byrd decided to try hanging out on top of the water filter. He finally got up there. Usually it’s the domain of the ladies when they’re pregnant. Since I doubt that’s his issue, and since they were hiding in caves, not sure why he was up there. I have some pictures of him up there I’ll share in a day or two.
And yesterday, Admiral Byrd and one of the ladies was keeping company in his bachelor pad. So….all kinds of goings on in the animal kingdoms inside and outside of our house.
Soul Mosaic 
October 8, 2008 at 10:42 am editYour quote resonated with me.
If you like that quote, you’ll like this book:
Step Back from the Baggage Claim:
Change the World, Start at the Airport
You’ll welcome the spirit of this book/movement. It brings powerful stories to life about stepping back to gain perspective, slowing down, sharing compassion, living gratefully, embracing creativity, and traveling gracefully through the moments of our lives.
Give it a try and spread the spirit!
http://www.stepbackfromthebaggageclaim.com