I haven't been here in awhile and I return today to learn there is a "new post editor". I start to try it and then go back to the old. I am sometimes slow to change ( Read more... )

I've been here at Live Journal since October, 2005. I started it to keep in touch with family and friends as I went through cancer treatment. Caringbridge didn't exist at the time. The word "blog" was completely new to me. The concept was puzzling. I don't pay because I'm giving content. Hmmmm! I don't know how many times my son explained it ( Read more... )

Where I live the sun is shining and the buds have popped out so the plum trees are waving white. We've had months of rain, record breaking rain and nobody complained because we are so grateful to be out of drought but yesterday I walked outside, and the kitties lay in the sun, and we all reveled in the feel of sunlight on skin and psyche. The ( Read more... )

Last night the word of the day in my Toastmasters club was Ataraxia, which means “a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety”. Ataraxia is tranquility. It sounds so exotic, that word, and I read on Wikipedia the word is a Greek term and was used to describe the ideal mental state for sending troops into battle. Hmmm! I’m making ( Read more... )

Yesterday I participated in a sensory awareness workshop at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Though I wanted to arrive calm, I came agitated with the political news. What I noticed first was that my breathing was shallow, cautious, held. Then, I saw how limited my vision. My eyes weren’t drawn outside to look at the waves in the bay and the Golden ( Read more... )

Yesterday my son and I enjoyed Hakone Gardens in Saratoga. I find the serenity of Japanese gardens soothing. Right now, the maple trees are bare, their slender outlines drawing patterns on the sky. The camellias are blooming; the waterfall is flowing. What a treat it is to sit on a bench in a quiet garden, well, not completely quiet as the gift ( Read more... )

There is much to consider these days. I see those for whom I care connecting in a new awareness of being awake, of wanting to walk for and proclaim their support of true values, values of love, compassion, connection and care. Today I am with this poem by Hafiz. Does it make a difference how we weave and wave the light that comes from and enters ( Read more... )

It's the last day of 2016, a day of retreat for me, a day of renewal as dark becomes light, and light becomes dark.

I am with this poem by Charles Simic written in 1938. I plan this year to more clearly reveal the star charts written on my inner walls.

Stone ( Read more... )

This comes from Writer’s Almanac today: It was on this day in 1890 that federal troops killed almost 300 Lakota men, women, and children in the massacre at Wounded Knee. One of the survivors was Black Elk, the famous medicine man, who was 27 years old at the time of the massacre. He wrote: “I can see that something else died there in the bloody ( Read more... )

Time seems to have slowed. It passes very slowly in the hospital and maybe I’ve changed pace. We woke early this morning and rose and I read a bit and picked up and still I have all the time in the world.

I’m with these words from Thich Nhat Hanh from his book At Home in the World.

The chapter is called Lotus Tea ( Read more... )