You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘just stuff’ category.
quite a few years ago i planted three highbush blueberry plants in the side yard. at the time, it was a good location for them though these days the elm towers over them and the pines are pressed up to their sides. within a couple of years of planting one of them failed to thrive or, rather, i failed to help it thrive. this spring i put in two more.
four bushes for berries.
these bushes have been recipients of my benign neglect. they have never been tended though they have been gazed upon lovingly, checked on regularly, talked to with tenderness. most years i pay them homage by gathering a small palmful of the ripened berries so i might enjoy their fresh tartiness as i wander the yard. i delight in gently squeezing them between my teeth, imperceptibly increasing the pressure until there is that satisfying pop, their skin splitting open and the magnificence within revealed. devoured.
most of the berries i leave on the bushes for the flying, creeping, and crawling folks.
this year’s weather has been a sweet tonic for most growing things and the two older bushes are almost my height and are bountiful with the purpleblues of ripening fruit. as i strolled today i noticed a, perhaps coincidental, bluejay enjoying a few and i was struck by the exuberance of clusters dangling from the limbs.
i picked a cup of the berries, leaving plenty ripe ones still on and many times more yet to reach fruition, and thought i’d make a wee blueberry crumble for my daughter as a delicious dish of gratitude for all that she does in the world, a good deal of which happens within our home.
forget who you are and why you’re here-all that foolishness. in the woods the bushes are full of blueberries; go and pick some. ~ marty rubin
my body requested a slow, easy, short run today. i honoured the wisdom of my bones and sinews and moved unhurriedly across the landscape of the morning. attentive, at first, to the sensations in my feet and ankles, my knees and hips and shoulders, the pattern with which my feet landed and lifted. then shifting my awareness to my breath, bringing a sweet steady rhythm to the exchange between what is inside my body and what is outside.
the morning was cloud-filled; breathtaking formations sweeping across my heart and the sky. a magick of cooling water vapour gathering on salt and dust in the air. beauty in the basic.
the earth, the fields, the sky, the trees, me. all smelling so loudly beneath the cloudy cloche. loamy, terpenic, grassy, grainy, astringent, sweet, petrichoric. corn stalks pushed up to waist height and green wheat serenely stationary in the early air, potato fields densely green and awaiting blossoms. black flies a baby’s breath halo around my head.
immersed and indistinguishable from all that exists, at once vital and insignificant to all that is. my self simply an energy, a vibration, in a sea of energy. prana. chi. life force. however you tend to think of it. all energies needed to make the whole work, all vibrational frequencies of equal importance and necessary parts to the whole. the whole of it all. the one.
you and i are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean. ~ a
this morning a friend posted this quote on her facebook wall:
jesus never asked anyone to form a church, ordain priests, develop elaborate rituals and institutional cultures, and splinter into denominations. his two great requests were that we ‘love one another as i have loved you’ and that we share bread and wine together as an open channel of that interabiding love.
cynthia bourgeault
first off, i googled ‘interabiding’ as it was not a word with which i was familiar. i do love the creation of words and phrases which more accurately express a concept for which we do not currently have language.
then i googled the author of the quote, curious about the context in which it was first said. and there began a wee journey to basic goodness.
i came upon an article about social distancing and julian of norwich by justin coutts on his blog in search of a new eden and was captivated by the opening paragraphs.
i was totally ignorant of anchorism and any knowledge of those who practiced it. a form of spiritual mysticism, the consecration of an anchorite (also referred to as anchoress or anchoret) involved a sort of living death ritual, reminding me of buddhist meditation practice of maranasati used to experience the nature of death. the anchorite then lived a life of extreme in a small cell-like room, referred to as an ‘anchorhold, on the side of the church/cathedral. here the anchorite lived as if dead to the world.
death. so fascinating. so relevant to each of us from the moment of our first breath. each of us unable to sustain ourselves on this earth without causing death. the nature of living is the nature of death. oh, but this is simply a digression.
today, i was more caught in julian of norwich’s thoughts around goodness and was swept up by the words coutts used to encapsulate the clarity of julian’s self-inquiry:
…she was able to see the cosmic truth that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things of shall be well”.
by turning inward julian found god’s goodness, god’s love for all of humanity, and all of creation. out of the midst of suffering she was able to see the truth that god is in all things and loves all things and that goodness is the foundation even of those things which seem evil to us
personally, i have always had a problem with the notion of evil, with the existence of evil. we can stray — easily, deeply, horrifically — away from our basic goodness, we can bury it almost to the point of obliteration by some of our human proclivities, through our untended traumas, by way of thought and action lacking skillfulness. but are we not, always and forever, existing from a bedrock of basic goodness?
and i loved that as i read and scrolled through to the bottom of coutts’ thoughts, he had shared a youtube video of mirabai starr talking with michael petrow about julian of norwich and the current pandemic within which we now live. i had recently begun reading starr’s memoir caravan of no despair, where she bravely and openly shares the spiritual journey that began for her the day her daughter died in a car accident.
today, my day is filled with the feminine divine. julian of norwich who shared her revelation that god is feminine. green tara, the feminine buddha, watching me type from her place on my home shrine, mirabai starr sharing so much goodness.
my thoughts here today, cursory and not very well formed or chased. just a day where they can drift across my self, the synchronicities opening me. so welcome.
as an endnote: when i mentioned to my partner some of this trip down the rabbit hole he told me one of his colleagues’ scholarly research was on anchorites. catherine innes-parker, who i did not know well, passed unexpectedly last fall, but i shall know her better when i read anchoritism in the middle ages: texts and traditions.
the whole way 