the center

Thoughts and feelings and sensations, 

beliefs and hopes and dreams - 

like dapples of sunlight on the rim of the wheel.

A centered awareness.

  

The book, The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts, opened my awareness to "living in the Now."  I've discovered that it is not just a good idea; it's the only time there is - the only time we have.  But of course, I still live in the past a lot - remembering good times, chewing on regrets.   Much of the rest of my mind looks forward to things in the future and makes plans. Consequently, and often, when I arrive in the future, I'm mostly not there!  Wow!

into the fire

"What you most want to avoid
can be a window into what is most important."

A way out of the fire is through it...

There is a new book out by Geneen Roth called Women, Food and God.  It is an interesting title because the book is not just for women, it is not only about food, and ...there is no God.  I have scanned most of it and read some parts carefully.  Anyone who is "stuck" anywhere may benefit from her ideas.  Oprah Winfrey has struggled mightily over the years to control her weight, and she thinks this is the ultimate answer for herself and others.  Paradoxically, the book urges people to give up dieting altogether.

A core idea in Roth's book reminds me very much of Alan Watts and insecurity:  What one most wants to avoid (overeating, insecurity) can be used as a window into what is most important.  For example, knowing fear, we come to know what bravery is.  There are others who talk about using life's difficulties for self exploration and self illumination (see The Places That Scare You, by Pema Chodron).  When we experience ourselves, the key is to be kind to and make friends with what we find. 

where am I?

If I told you this is me, would you believe it? That little girl is hardly me.  I am an old woman! Perhaps there is a bone cell or two...


There are some who would say that even the I that I think I am now is an illusion.  No doubt I am fleeting.  But beyond my ever-changing "me" it's also true that I really can not be separated from my environment as simply as it would be to cut this little girl from hers with the tools of Photoshop.  As John Muir said, "Everything is hitched to everything else."  The organisms and the patterns and the elements.  The air that I breathe is me, the things I see and eat, the sounds I am hearing, the energies I am sharing. So it seems I am nowhere and everywhere at the same time? 

name calling

Way back in 1988 I discovered a little book called The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts (Vintage Books, 1951).  My blog takes its name from it.  Why I am calling my blog Insecurity, I'll never really know, but I was desperate for a name at the time of night, and I remember that this jewel lifted my spirits, relaxed the muscles in my forehead, and left me with a feeling of spaciousness.  Why Mr. Watts titled his book thus also still remains a mystery to me, but that does not prevent playing with some ideas about insecurity.  The quotes below are his.

"To understand insecurity, you must be it."

"There is no safety or security.  Seeking it is painful, finding it, we don't like it."

 "There is no safety in the cosmos.  You just have to give up!"

make friends with the wind

From the prairies and endless rolling hills in Kansas to a savanna hillside in Wisconsin, the wind has forcefully reintroduced itself to me this past week.  Can there be anything more insubstantial (other than perhaps a thought) that substantially moves and prohibits, topples and lifts, warms and cools, gives life and takes it?  It makes waves, spreads seeds, fans flames, moves turbines.  What a friend to have!  Nothing to grasp.  When I try to hang on and resist and make a barrier, it blows me over.  When I let go and become porous and accepting, it blows through me and lifts.

listen

Time to get our heads out of the newspapers and oriented to the sounds of birds coming and going and preparing to breed.  The House Wrens we saw in Kansas on Saturday have arrived in Madison today, along with the Tree Swallows and the Warbling Vireos.  Their songs and twitters and enthusiasms entertained me this morning during my wanderings in the neighborhood and the U.W. Preserve.  It's impossible not to listen.  Boaz used the head-in-the-newspapers trick to escape the sounds of fireworks.  It didn't work.  

fleeting

What is more fleeting than a cloud, or a reflection of a cloud - or a color at daybreak? Can I run fast and catch up to it? Can I hold on tight and keep it?  If I wait, will it stay?  Do I change even as it changes? If I remember, will it be as it was? If I forget, will it never have been? 

a sharp line

A line is sometimes sharply drawn between:

science and art, 

thoughts and emotions, 

nature and nurture,

animal and environment,

me and not me.

Here, the plow and the prairie are becoming one.

be change

How much of me then
is still me now?
If  all is change, be changeable.
Life is movement.
Take a step.
Make friends with insecurity.

"Move
 and the way will open."

-Zen proverb  

I am

"I am a unique expression of the magnificent unfolding of the universe.  ...When I think about the Earth community, I am the Earth thinking about itself..."  

from Charlene Spretnack's States of Grace, page 228

When I spend my time taking care of the Earth's plant and animal communities, I feel myself to be a character in  their story - a prairie animal integral to the ongoing story of prairie.  

"it's what she does"

I am here throwing fire into a woods to clear the leaf litter. I like doing this very much. Yesterday a friend sent me a video of a mother dog fostering, feeding, nurturing a litter of kittens. They said that scientists will one day figure out why the dog was doing this. But the wise woman at the shelter simply said, "It's what she does." And so we are: it's what we do.

beginning

Burning prairies at night is a gloriously beautiful activity. Surely, there can be no fire in hell, for the flames and smoke are much too pleasing in all respects. We burned this section on Sunday night at Wildland, which is just outside of Wyocena, Wisconsin. I now understand why humans have always burned grasslands. It has very little to do with reasons.