Paying Attention

 

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

+ Mary Oliver

What stood out to you from that poem?

How do we pay attention out here at Point Reyes? What are some ways we can pay attention?

How can we document what we see and find without disrupting the park or damaging it?

Baby, this is the world

 Baby subway story. Nov. 6, 2019

What I Dream Of For Me

 HURRICANE

Mary Oliver

It didn’t behave

Like anything you

Ever imagined. The wind

Tore at the the trees, the rain

Fell for days slant and hard. 

The back of the hand

To everything. I watched

The trees bow and their leaves fall

And crawl back into the earth. 

As though, that was that. 

This was one hurricane

I lived through, the other one

Was of a different sort, and

Lasted longer. Then 

I felt my own leaves giving up and

Falling. The back the hand to 

Everything. But listen now to what happened

To the actual trees

Toward the end of that summer they

Pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs. 

It was the wrong season, yes, 

But they couldn't stop. They 

Looked like telephone poles and didn't 

Care. and after the leaves came

Blossoms. For some things

There are no wrong seasons. 

Which is what I dream of for me.

In March the Earth Remembers it's own name

Worm Moon

 

by Mary Oliver

I.
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.

And the name of every place
is joyful.

II.
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities

III.
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping -
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
   over the surface of earth;
who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.

IV.
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?

V.
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,

VI.
and probably
everything
is possible.

 

Jenny Holzer

 

Sunrise

Moab sunriseMarch 15, 2015
I can't explain the joy of the morning sun. There is nothing like the feeling of being suddenly and profoundly wrapped in it after walking around and waiting in darkness and coldness. Everything feels possible and I want to live so good and so hard and so purposefully. And I am happy to accept the challenges of my life: they no longer feel like foreign, imposed obstacles, but beautifully handcrafted tokens that I get to feel and be a part of and somehow becoming is made in them. It's a gold light. And unlike the sunset, it is here to stay for hours upon hours and that brings a different hope. It's ushering in day: movement, reasoning, searching, seeking, striving, feeling, facing; whereas the sunset bridges us to dark: settling, withdrawing, stillness, safekeeping, dormant, cocooned in dreams not of earth or mortality. 

-Timpanogos Hike 2009
-Vancouver Trip 2010
-November Weekends post 2011
-Cannon Beach 2017

I want to make the Ferry

 

One night, Allie and I almost missed this ferry. There was a storm. There was a fight. We kept missing turns. Our gas light came on. We went 90 mph in a 50 mph zone in front of a highway patrol. The officer didn't chase us down. We saw the lights of the open garage at 8:28 pm. It was leaving at 8:30. They usually close gates at 8:15. The gate keeper let us through. We pulled into the ferry garage and I put my face in my hands and sobbed. Sobbed. We made the ferry.

I just want to make the ferry. Don't we all? We just want it to be as good as we believe it can or should or is meant to be. We all want to cross over the darkness we feel is insurmountable in our lives. We all want to cross over and change and become and see the other side and feel loved and known and not lost and we don't want to come up short or mess it up or be left behind. We are all scarce. We are all scared. We are all racing and wondering if we are screwing it all up with every mile we speed through the highways of our lives. Are we going to make it? Are we going to get it? Are we deserving of what we actually want in this life? On this night, March 12, 2018, the Universe answered with an unequivocal

YES

&

YES

&

YES

We will cross over. 

Dream Big

LDS newsroom released this article this week and it is right in line with my hopes and dreams for this world, and at the heart of the Work I need to do while I am alive: 

Stability relies on the wellbeing of women. Foreign policy scholar Valerie Hudson asserts “there is a strong and highly significant link between state security and women’s security. In fact, the very best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not its level of wealth, its level of democracy, or its ethno-religious identity; the best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is how well its women are treated.”[9]

A world where women are empowered to follow their conscience is a world of greater peace and possibility.

Life's Purpose

MaryB died this week and I am a crying mess today and the sun is out but I am not and I feel like i just want to wake up and stop being a sad little baby about everything in my life. I want to be free and whole and full and awake and I want to be Light.  I want to give something to this world instead of taking all it's sadness and loss. I want to be something in this world other than selfishness and laziness and lack of action. I want to run and not be weary, walk and not faint, I want my bones to carry me to places I need to be. I believe there are places and specific people I have yet to meet, faces that I have to see and love and listen to. I want to be Pilate from Morrison's mind and a bit of Emily Madsen's confidence and Ashley Longshore's dancing pump up videos and Clark Goldsberry's enthusiasm energy and ability to ASK, and Brene Brown's storytelling and opening global conversations about shame, vulnerability, and connection, Lin Miranda's songs and hand gestures when he talks about things he cares about, and Sufjan's Red Rock Concert in 2016 when he decided to LIVE. These people GIVE the world something it didn't even know it needed. They give something to the World that the World doesn't even deserve or ask for. They give us and the world something elevated, transcending, and above the norm and smog and hatred and traffic and selfish billboards and advertisements. They give something of God to this super broken, bleeding, unfixable world of ours. Nothing can fix this evil place, but these people show me that we can become more than what the World says we can. They show me beauty and hope and I hear my own symphonies, sounds, images, and dreams call to me and I know I must give the same. I must give something of myself or I am not fully living. My purpose is to give something of God that can only come out of me. I have to give it. I have to find it. Or I will be sad.

Feeling Small

Crater Lake, Oregon, June 2014

Why is important to feel small?

Dallas Clayton

  
Dallas Clayton - Carson Daly from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.


What inspires you about his story?

Maryn McCombie

 

Why are we scared to dream?
 

Why are we scared to break away from what others (society, friends, family, etc.) expect of us even when we know they may be wrong?
 
Think of someone who's presence or attitude liberates you. What does that feel like? What is that person like?

Open Your Windows

In a recent concert I attended, the Singer/Songwriter performing paused to talk about despair and suffering. He said that often we are our own worst enemy. This is his wisdom:

[Despair] is an unnecessary thing, I believe it's self-perpetuating. And I know that in my darkest hour, a lot of times I am chewing the cud of my own sorrow. And that's dangerous, because there is Light all around you, you just have to lift up your head and look in the periphery. We put blankets over our heads, and blinders; we close all the windows, pull all the blinds. It's very dangerous to do that.

Open Your Windows. -Sufjan Stevens, Portland, OR, 6/2015

When The Mountain Defeats You

Holocene, Bon Iver
Beginning and ending choruses:

And at once I knew I was not magnificent
Strayed above the highway aisle
Jagged vacance, thick with ice
And I could see for miles, miles, miles


And at once I knew I was not magnificent
High above the highway aisle
Jagged vacance, thick with ice
But I could see for miles, miles, miles 

Have you ever had a time when you realized you weren't as strong as you hoped? What do you when your mountains defeat you? Why is it important at times, to feel small, to see weakness? How do you forgive yourself? How do you heal? How do you move forward?

on being lost

Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh:

What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way?

Does this same question every weigh on your mind?
What are you good for? How will you be of service to your world?

Answer this honestly. Lift the mask of self-hatred we all seem to wear and answer. Ask people you trust. But really ask yourself and find the good for yourself. No one else's answers will matter as much as the one you supply. Go on a walk and think about it. If you listen and love yourself, you will hear it. 

Van Gogh was so lost, and yet he was so beautiful. He couldn't always see it, but we can. Believe you have as much to offer this world as he did. For a man that believed he was of no worth to this world, we sure love and needed him. Maybe you are as wrong as he was. 

Consider hating yourself just a little less for not having all the answers in this moment, for not knowing exactly who you are, for not knowing exactly what you want, and for feeling or being a little or a lot lost. Lost doesn't mean we are worthless. You have a place. 

Run if you want to: Bobbi Gibb

When she applied to run in the Boston Marathon in 1966 they rejected her saying: “Women are not physiologically able to run a marathon, and we can’t take the liability.”

Then exactly 50 years ago today, on the day of the marathon, Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes and waited for the race to begin. When about half of the runners had gone past she jumped in.

She wore her brother’s Bermuda shorts, a pair of boy’s sneakers, a bathing suit, and a sweatshirt. As she took off into the swarm of runners, Gibb started to feel overheated, but she didn’t remove her hoodie. “I knew if they saw me, they were going to try to stop me,” she said. “I even thought I might be arrested.”

It didn’t take long for male runners in Gibb’s vicinity to realize that she was not another man. Gibb expected them to shoulder her off the road, or call out to the police. Instead, the other runners told her that if anyone tried to interfere with her race, they would put a stop to it. Finally feeling secure and assured, Gibb took off her sweatshirt.

As soon as it became clear that there was a woman running in the marathon, the crowd erupted—not with anger or righteousness, but with pure joy, she recalled. Men cheered. Women cried.

By the time she reached Wellesley College, the news of her run had spread, and the female students were waiting for her, jumping and screaming. The governor of Massachusetts met her at the finish line and shook her hand. The first woman to ever run the marathon had finished in the top third.

Thank you, Bobbi Gibb.

Regrets: ERASURE

DANg.

being alone

Do you think it is important to have alone time? Why?

How do you spend yours?

What is comfortable about being alone? 

What is uncomfortable about it?
Why are we afraid of being alone?

“Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Assignment: Spend time alone. For a set amount of time. For 7 days (they don't need to be consecutive.)

Alone= 

1. No phone (take it with you for safety, but do not get on social media or text unless it's your mother). 
2. No other humans. 
3. No pets (ok, maybe pets). 
4. No TV. 
5. No video games/computers. 
6. No music for at least half of your "alone time." 
7. Sleeping doesn't count. 
8. You can walk, or run, or hike. 
9. You can just sit. 
10. Yoga or jump rope or climbing trees are good ideas. 
11. Take public transportation such as buses or Front-runner. 
12. Ride a bike, scooter, or skateboard.
13.  Take yourself on a drive. 
14. Take yourself to dinner. 
15. Slow your mind down and stop distracting yourself for a little bit. 
16. Just listen: to the wind, to your heartbeat, to the universe.
17. It's ok to just be. Allow yourself to just "be."

"I wonder if I'm allowed ever to see
I wonder if I'm allowed to ever be free

I wonder if I'm allowed just ever to be" 

-Jonsi, "Tornado" 

 

It may be when we no longer

know what to do,

that we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer

know which way to go,

that we have begun our real journey.

-Wendell Berry

Find Your ilene

You must find someone who inspires you, who believes in all your wild ideas, who isn't afraid of dreaming and does a good deal of it themselves. Beware those who give advice out of fear and/or anger. Check their words (and yours--we are our own worst critic ofttimes). These are some of my "Ilenes":

Biking through the poppy and wheat fields of Normandie, France.

Catching the Bus on the Isle of Wight

Paris, bridge over the Seine.

Lost and Losing our minds in France!

Scotland

 

St. Andrews, Scotland

Glamis Castle in Scotland

Bebe Ms. Walker, 2012, student teaching

student teaching, AFHS

Beeson is my Guru

 

The Brewers

Sue

 

Sufjan Stevens, "It's not so impossible"