Memorial Day 2022 Meditation

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

(Jimi Hendrix 1942-1970)

R had been drafted and was in Newport News, Virginia, training to be an Army helicopter mechanic in August 1969.  We were 19 years old.  He and a few of his army buddies considered going to Woodstock for the weekend.

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On Saturday of this Memorial Day weekend, I was talking with a friend on my cell phone while looking out my windows toward Scudder Pond. I noticed a small flock of birds in one of the rapidly increasing number of alder saplings that are growing up amidst the cattails in Scudder Pond. I'm glad the flock lingered for a while because gradually I realized that they weren't the usual birds I see from my window. While listening to my friend, I found my binoculars and was rewarded with an intimate view of Cedar waxwings. Soon after that, they all flew away. I haven't seen them since. I know that R would have loved seeing them. So many times in the years before and after he died, I have seen something that I know he would love to see. It's been years since I've seen a Cedar waxwing from my porch, much less a flock.

Is it a coincidence that the flock appeared on the first day of Memorial Day weekend? I don't think so.

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Sending love to Everyone today.  Fragment of a letter from R while he was in Vietnam in 1970:

Reclaim / Searching for a way to channel the pure energy of my own anger and despair toward something more powerful

 

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(May 2022 calendar page by Nikki McClure)

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Toward something powerful that all human beings are born with.

Seeking refuge when there is no comfort / George Floyd May 25, 2020

Refuge is not the same as comfort.

“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel, weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, because they were no more.”

Jeremiah 31:15

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ref·uge

/ˈrefˌyo͞oj,ˈrefˌyo͞oZH/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. a condition of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger, or trouble.

   "he was forced to take refuge in the French embassy"

   • something providing shelter.

     plural noun: refuges

     "the family came to be seen as a refuge from a harsh world"

     Similar:

     shelter

     protection

     safety

     security

     asylum

     sanctuary

     preservation

     safe keeping

     place of shelter

     place of safety

     haven

     safe haven

     sanctum

     safe house

     harbor

     port in a storm

     ark

     retreat

     bolthole

     foxhole

     hiding place

     hideaway

     hideout

     fastness

     querencia
   • an institution providing safe accommodations for women who have suffered violence from a spouse or partner.
2. 
   
3. *   Music, poetry, art, books, the natural world, community.
4. 
   

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I remember being a child and weeping with other children when we learned by way of a classroom loudspeaker that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Texas.

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We're not alone.  Never will be.  

It's been two years since George Floyd was murdered.  Just realized that.

"Una de las canciones mas sinceras y tristes que escribió John Lennon"

"Una de las canciones mas sinceras y tristes que escribió John Lennon."

From the YouTube channel of Gibran Leal.

Inspired by Joared's post today.

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Yesterday I stopped by the public library to pick up the audio book for Last Chance Texaco, read by the author, Rickie Lee Jones. I read the book last week and wanted to hear it in Rickie Lee Jones' voice. I put the CD in my car player before I drove away from the library. When I was almost home, I decided to keep driving for at least the duration of the first of the thirteen CDs. I drove east along the south shore of Lake Whatcom and 35 minutes later stopped at Twin Sisters Viewpoint on Highway 9 where I took these photos:

Thirty minutes later I was in the town of Nooksack, as far north as I would go that day, just a few miles from the U.S / British Columbia border. Twenty-five minutes later I was home, having listened to all of the first CD and then listening to the first part of the book a second time. This is a view from the parking lot of my condominium, looking into the sky to the north, when I arrived home.

If you look closely at the middle of this photo from my porch you can see the tip of one of the Twin Sisters peeking over the hills to the east:

It was an emotional journey through the past and the present, listening to the stories from the life of Rickie Lee Jones along some of her songs, on an extraordinarily beautiful May afternoon in a spring that has been frequently cold and overcast but not often raining,

Polly and I went to the circus

Polly got hit with a rolling pin
We got even with the circus
We bought tickets but we didn't go in...

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On my way home, I stopped at Big Rock Garden for an hour walk.  I walked through the garden and then up to the top of the hill where there is a bench and a view of the snow-covered Canadian Cascades: 

Look for the snowy peaks in the distance, near the middle of the photo: 

An eventful day.

What woke me up today

 

Witness

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.

by Denise Levertov

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Awake Awhile

It does not have to be Forever,

Right Now.

One Step upon the Sky's soft skirt

Would be enough.

by Hafiz

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Awake

Waking today

just before winter

when I try to name the color of grasses,

how I feel of their beauty,

there is no word.

I think of the time before there were 

words

when you would know morning mist 

by the feel

of your loved one's skin and hair,

and when someone came from the forest 

of dry leaves

you would know by their scent

even if they carried no wood.

Or the heat of their body skin in summer.

Or if they came the winding way

down from the mountains

they would be covered in cloud

returning to the fold

or if they had gone farther, to the ocean,

you'd know them by their far-seeing eyes,

and when some travelers return

and are shining with light

you know, without saying, that they

have been

in touch with other worlds.

I have no wealth to speak of

other than this,

all this, just to praise the dry grasses

and their color that can't be spoken

in words.

by Linda Hogan

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