Scattering Seeds

It seems I named this Substack aptly - "seeds of possibility." I'm beginning to understand the writing of these lists that keep coming through as collections of seeds. Here are some more...

Freya during morning cuddles - aka, “you’re trying to write? Please allow me to sit on your journal or your laptop instead.” :)

1. I often remind myself to beware of being a fundamentalist. About anything. To never assume that what’s right for me right now is right for anyone, let alone everyone else. I also remind myself to steer clear of fundamentalists of all kinds, whether their beliefs are about religion, eating habits, politics, justice, life habits, spirituality, or any other well-intended subjects. To keep returning to this wisdom from Mary:

“Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.”

2. Water offerings as love. Water in the cat’s special bowl on the stool in the kitchen because she only likes special water, not the regular water in the bowl by her food. Water for the birds in the birdbath out front, the birdbath out back, and the two fountains the birds and bees and wasps like to drink from. Water for the gecko. Water for the snake and her humidifier. Water for the flower pots, the houseplants, the gardens. One of my favorite verses from the Tao Te Ching says,“Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.” Remembering how, when we met Jane Goodall ten years ago, I kept thinking, wow, she is like that! I’m still in awe. Singing this water song again and again. Thank you, water.

3. The tender glimpses Joanna Macy’s daughter and close ones are sharing from the sacred liminal space of her bedroom during this hospice time. I’m thinking of the ripples of her amazing life that touched and will continue to touch so many lives. She is a true modern-day bodhisattva. While some people in their aging may focus on how to stay wrinkle-free, small-waisted, and chase youth, others, like Joanna, live to inspire, encourage, and bless others, all dedicated to the healing of the Earth and Life itself. There is grief, of course, at her impending departure from her physical form, along with ginormous gratitude for the generous legacy she leaves.

4. I’m remembering that 30 years ago this September, I was blessed to be at Nagyi Gompa in Nepal at Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche’s retreat hermitage and nunnery in the mountains outside of Kathmandu, receiving, among other initiations and empowerments, the Bodhisattva Vow. I remember him chuckling as he agreed to offer this ceremony and vow to the small group of us. “Sure, I can give you the vow, but it’s going to be your problem to keep it!” It’s a beautiful problem. :)

The 5 Vows of The Great Turning, as articulated by dear Joanna and others, are one place I turn again and again for support and orientation during these vdts (very difficult times.) (Thank you to Erin at @journalasaltar for sharing that apt moniker.) I hold these vows not as a set of agreements one should keep perfectly, but rather as a stance one can take in the world.

The original vows are here.

And here’s me and my dear friend Leilani talking about our love of these 5 vows. I’m so grateful for these elaborations of the Bodhisattva Vow.

Here’s a favorite video talk from Joanna, who begins speaking 6 minutes in. It moves me so deeply every time.

5. I’ve loved savoring David Whyte’s Consolations II since it came out. The two chapters I find myself reading and rereading are titled “Crazy” and “Freedom.” Here are two little excerpts.

From Crazy:

“Craziness, unmediated by good rituals, good disciplines, good routines, or a good social life, always just stays in the realm of the crazy. We call it crazy because it is discombobulating, discomforting, and subversive to our surface plans, but crazy is always asking us to transform it into brilliant. What seems eccentric and off-kilter inside us is simply looking for good disciplines, good art, and good new forms of expression to find its place in the world….(from page 80)

Our particular inner form of originality and craziness is always, every day, asking us to make a channel, a road, a way into the world that can take the form of a recognized brilliance: a brilliance that enlivens both our own life in practicing it, and others’ lives by witnessing it. (From page 83)

From Freedom:

Our sense of freedom is always magnified by mutual allowing: a continual and surprising meeting of others and a release of all the ways we hold the world or our loved ones to ransom; freedom arises from a true meeting: the meeting that occurs when what is between what I think is me and what I think is other than me come together in conversation, an intimacy, a joining, intellectually, physically, and imaginatively. Freedom can be felt in the body like new love. In our great mythologies, the freeing of another is always the ultimate demonstration of love. (from page 114)

Freedom is always under threat: freedom calls for alertness, to my own or others’ manipulations, from those who wish to assign names to me and rule me by assigning me a label that diminishes me and gives others an excuse to hold power over me.

Freedom always calls because freedom always lies, almost by definition, just beyond the frontier of my previous understanding. Freedom is an open relationship with what lies over the horizon of my understanding. Through silence and deeper states of attention that silence allows, I see over and beyond myself to something that invites me into a greater world, a greater maturity. (from page 115)

So good, right?

Oh, calendula, how I love you. Yesterday’s harvest. The more I pick, the more she gives. Speaking of bodhisattvas…

6. I keep coming back to this line: “What seems eccentric and off-kilter inside us is simply looking for good disciplines, good art, and good new forms of expression to find its place in the world.” I’m on day 8 of 12 days of alone time. I have no appointments until Monday, and for me, this spaciousness is absolute bliss. I will be courting good disciplines, good rituals, and good new forms of expression. I will start with the ritual of these water offerings. Where will the mind wander as the water flows? What emergent rituals might facilitate the alchemy of letting crazy turn into brilliant?

7. What is the deeper truth underneath entropy? There is a grief that arises from noticing the tendency of things to come apart. They just keep coming apart, don’t they? From clothing to relationships to a clean kitchen to democracy. Today, I wonder, what is the deeper intelligence that lives underneath entropy? What is it up to? Could I tap into that?

8. The river of sensation, always fresh and shimmering, underneath whatever I’m thinking, whatever stories I’m telling myself about how it is. Oh, to root myself there, in a richly felt life, in this bottomless present moment, this breath, these chilly toes, this soft chair behind my back and under my pelvis, the sound of the birds singing in this moment. To let my thinking have its roots deeply embedded in this ground of sensory life, roots drinking in the river of this intimate present moment. So grateful there is this ground to return to, again and again.

9. Yesterday afternoon, a soft gray ring-necked dove landed in the front yard. Yesterday evening, a robin was on the back fence, along with the usual neighborhood crew of goldfinches (I refuse to call them “lesser”), house finches, house sparrows, and chickadees. Lately, they are not only hanging out at the feeders in the front yard, they love to flit around the chicken run out back, gathering straw for nesting materials, pecking at the chicken food. It’s so cute to see the large hens and the tiny songbirds hanging out next to each other. And then there are the squeaks and felt vibrations of the hummingbirds passing through. Fresh nectar is cooling on the countertop – I will wash and refill the hummingbird feeders this morning. Praise the birds! Can you imagine life without the birds? May it never be so. This makes me think of the insects that feed the birds, which makes me think of the great loss of insects during our lifetime, which makes me think of this line from brilliant writer Jay Griffiths: “I wish everyone who said they believed in angels actually believed in insects.”

10. The squash plants are blossoming with those charming yellow flowers. The fuzzy chamomile plants are starting to send up their first blossoms. The pink and purple bee balm blossoms are shaggy and glorious and taller than my 3-year-old nephew. The gaura are offering up their white blooms on their long stems that bounce when the bees land. The bees are so abundant that they are hanging all over the front of the hive. I’m so happy they’re thriving. The comfrey is on its second round of flowering, offering up those tiny purple bells the bees love. The clusters of grapes are getting bigger, though still entirely green for now. The new echinacea plants in the front yard are showing their first blossoms on their tender stems, only 6 inches tall, while the established echinacea out back is 3 feet tall and in full bloom. The mullein gets taller every day at a seemingly impossible rate. And the mugwort, which I already harvested once, is getting bushy and starting to develop seeds. Today I’ll harvest more nettles and raspberry leaves for tea. The sunflowers are showing their cheerful faces, and as I look at one sunflower down by the driveway, I picture Carl when, just over a week ago, he stood there and pointed at that golden shining blossom and said to me where I sat on the porch, “First one!” with a big smile. I’m so glad my guys are having fun camping on Mt. Shasta, and I miss them. The hollyhock blossoms are looking spent, but are developing an abundance of seeds to share. And oh, my affection for that one blue flax plant in the front garden – its particular blue-purple color, those elegant, long stems, and the tiny delicate flowers. A few days ago, I hung a posy of yarrow on the front door – felt like a protection spell. The raspberries are more abundant than I can eat.

This is summer! Here I am, right in the middle of these 6 months of the bright half of the year, when the garden is so central in my life. Come Samhain and first frost in late October, and we’ll enter the dark half of the year where the garden, all these beings, and all these tasks are dormant, and my days will be so very different. Wild. I love this cycle, the wheel of the year turning and turning.

11. Finally, I’m out of the excruciating muscular pain that comes to me with low estrogen. The pain went away after a week with an adjustment in my hrt levels. I had a nice talk with my doc and shared about my fear of living with this pain if/when supply chains are disrupted or collapse, if I can’t get the hormones that help. Having never been on prescription meds before, it feels quite vulnerable. I grow so many herbs that can help with so many things; however, estrogen seems challenging to dial on my own. I would like to have helpful estrogen-rich plantitas just in case. She suggested I could grow black cohosh and wild yam. I’ll be looking into it today. This morning, I made a huge jar of raspberry leaf, red clover, and lemon balm infusion. I am forever grateful to the generosity of the plant kindom. (And yes, I left that “g” out on purpose.)

12. This morning, after meditation, as I blew out the candles on 4 of my altars in the meditation room, I paused to really take in my altars. I especially lingered at my wall of teacher photos, just looking at these faces I’ve been so blessed by. All powerfully impactful, beautiful, dedicated, imperfect humans whom I’ve been so grateful to know and learn from. Some of these teachers are still alive, blessed be, though many are now ancestors. What a wealth to have teachers. When I came downstairs after, I lit a stick of incense on the porch and sent some prayers up on the smoke. It takes time every day for me to get reconnected. I offered a hot cup of coffee at the ancestors’ shrine. I poured a little water in the bowl on my grief altar, aspiring to keep it fluid and soft. It’s so easy to get distracted, isn’t it? I’m grateful for the many small gestures that help me to remember, remember, remember. I seem to need a lot of remembering.

13. Today, kindness is giving myself more time to respond to two difficult conversations. No rush. Today, kindness is wearing comfortable clothes and following my body’s lead in movement practice that simply feels good. Today, kindness is surrendering ambition and resting when I’m tired, and putting fresh sheets on the bed, and snipping a few sunflowers from the garden, and placing them in a vase on the porch table. What a gift to be able to do this. Today kindness is a shower, and taking the time to savor the gift of it, the clean running water, the tingle of minty shampoo on my scalp, the scent of my citrusy soap, and applying lotion to my summer skin without hurrying. Today, kindness is making time for writing. Today, kindness is knowing that though horrible things are happening in the world, and though beings are suffering, and my heart aches with that, there is also room for these simple joys. Knowing that while there are countless expressions of beauty and joy happening around the world, rarely reported in the news, kindness is knowing there is room for grief and outrage here, too. Today, kindness is remembering there is room for it all, again and again and again. Room for it all. Today, kindness is filling the bird feeders with sunflower hearts and filling the birdbath with fresh water. Kindness is saving seeds to share with others: chard, calendula, California poppy, hollyhocks. Kindness is relistening to that message from a dear friend who knows me, sees me, and gets me. Kindness is savoring those relationships in which we grant each other vast freedom. Kindness is writing snail mail to dear ones, and harvesting calendula blossoms, and steeping the dried ones in sunflower oil to make a salve to share with others later in the summer. Today, kindness is taking a day off from the news, knowing it will be there tomorrow. Today, kindness is knowing what is mine to do and doing that, and removing the pressure to do all the other things. Kindness is reaching out to my people to say hi over there, how are you? I love you.

Hi over there. How are you??

I care about what’s happening for you. I hope you are savoring beauty and tiny joys in the midst of everything else. I hope you feel both held and free.

Thank you for being here.

xo

Erin