Blessings of the Morning

I walked today in the light of what feels like an early fall morning. My walk wasn’t long because I have not been feeling good of late.  Still, the cool morning air and the growing light dancing among the pines cheered me.  The air seemed clean and it was dry.  It was a moment of peace without expectation.  My footsteps were a prayer of thanks for a wonderful start to the day and a plea that what follows will be as positive.

Summer is at an End, almost.

August in Michigan, especially after about the 20th, hints strongly of the coming fall. Days while still warm and sometimes even quite hot give way to nights where covers are comforting. School lives just beyond the upcoming holiday weekend.
My kids are off this day to go to the high school and to get ID pictures taken. Hopefully they will both be able to pick up class schedules. My oldest, Primus, missed his picture and schedule day in that we were on holiday. However he is a senior and the expectation is that he will go to a professional photographer for his senior yearbook shots. He is there in the hope, perhaps vain that he can get his schedule.
Michigan and its educational rituals are weird or our high school is weird. When and where I grew up in South Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia the difference relative to a senior picture versus any other picture was that you wore a jacket and bought a bigger package that you did as a sophomore, junior, etc. You also bought engraved name cards. Together they were shoved into envelopes and sent to relatives in the hope money would return. Now the senior picture is a whole photo shoot. $$$$ out the pocket. Ugh. And instead of mailed monetary solicitations you hold an open house and invite tons of people in the hope they will come and eat catered food and bring tribute. Double Ugh.
I guess why I am writing this is to note the warm season is coming to an end. It has been a dry and hot summer. I will miss it. The signs are here. Football at the university is coming up soon. Sigh. I really will miss summer this time.

And Then You Turn and the Hallway Behind You is Quite Long

Reflection comes when you least seem inclined to do it. For me it comes when a space opens between one moment of rushing necessity and another moment of long ritualized routine. Something usually acts as a catalyst. The inward gaze is a fire that can be fanned by a comment about what you were back when made over coffee by a friend not seen for many years. The inward voice says “What I was back then, aren’t I still that day? What happened?”
Deliberate retrospective reflection can be tricky. I for one do not want to find a mass of negatives that outweigh all the positives I have done, I believe do and I hope I embody. Really does anyone want to go to that place? Nobody wants to realize their Hitler or Pol Pot. Still, we don’t want to find out either that we are simply a nobody, a person without a center, or a person without values who will not be missed because we stood for nothing.
It isn’t the not being missed part that worries me. In 80 years unless you have conquered kingdoms or destroyed (or touched) millions of lives you will be forgotten. What worries me is the shoulder shrug at the funeral of those weighing what you meant to them, to your family, to the world.
Over several days or maybe weeks I think I will take some time to look at who I am in the moment. As Aldous Huxley said in Island, “Be here, be now!” I will try and balance one good attribute with one that needs attention or that troubles me. Right now I have to do some work and as the day goes on I will try and put together some thoughts on a bit of the issues I am working through right now. Stay tuned.

Nature Abhors Artifice

As I walked in this morning I passed a vacant lot where a large college bar used to be. The building is gone but the entrance ways, small pieces macadam surface remain. It is funny to me my office is that not more than 100 yards from where I sat and watched T Rex performed bang a gong in 1974.

T-Rex is gone. The brewery is gone. The little entrance ways into what used to be the parking lot remain. Human experience and human history are fleeting things. As these flowers demonstrate nature will win out in the end.

Water and Growth

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Michigan summer day is coming on with all its heat and humidity. Rain passed by yesterday with just pounding torrents. The soil around my tomatoes had gotten hard packed from the recent and continuing lack of rain. My youngest is charged with watering the plants regularly. He forgets.
When I headed out to the hybrid this morning to come to the office I did a walk around our plants. Following that hard rain they seemed to have perked up. I guess the trade off between heat and humidity and home grown tomatoes is a very good one.
Today’s Buddhist quote from Tricycle’s Daily Dharma is one that caught my mind as I was thinking about tomatoes and work and how old my car is and why I didn’t sleep well last night.
Feathers in the Wind
Instead of focusing on some thoughts and feelings and pushing away others, just look at them as feathers flying in the wind. The wind is your awareness, your inborn openness and clarity.
- Tsoknyi Rinpoche, "Feathers are Harmless"

Judge Not

Thomas Merton in his daily musings for today found in my little book of his journal entries talks about Ecclesiastes.  Paraphrasing the scripture he says, “Don’t argue about matters that don’t concern you, and when sinners judge, do not sit in counsel with them.” Carefully perhaps mindfully engaging the matters of my daily life as opposed to the quarrels of others seems to be a very good thought to start off the week.  Keep focused on those issues of ours like putting bread on the table, offering love to those who need it and doing the just and right thing this is what we need to do. When the world makes decisions that are guided by ill purpose don’t sign on. I know I won’t live up to this in the coming week, but if I come back to it from time to time maybe I will do better than I would have otherwise.  

Memorial Day

Monday, May 28, 2012

Since Saturday at about 8 a.m. I have been mulching, mowing, weeding, planting and doing the basics of summer gardening.  When I was a kid I hated gardening.  Hated may not be as strong a word as the feeling I had really was. Now it is part of the rhythms of my life.  

For years now I have planted tomatoes and basil.  I have some other herbs out there like rosemary and tarragon.  I think I may have planted a bell pepper.  I have given up on melons, at least the ones that grow in the ground.  Of all the vegetables I think tomatoes are the best.  I have a variety of heirlooms that I plant.  I cannot tell you the joy I feel eating real tomatoes and not the rubber balls colored red that fill the supermarket shelves.  

I did a couple of other odd jobs.  I got the back yard fountain working.  I had to disassemble the little pump motor but I did get it clean.  Now it is just gurgling away. I can’t fix much.  Still, being able to take care of a little job feels quite good.