.......vertical living

Yogis,
While listening to an interview with Eckhart Tolle, a contemporary German born spiritual teacher, there was one image he used to describe time, and really life itself, that struck a chord. It has me viewing life from a different perspective. The image is of a cross.

Here was the basic tenet. The cross is made up of two pieces that exist on different planes. First there is the horizontal plane symbolizing how we view our time here as a human.  One end is our birth and the opposite end death. And everything in between is what we define as ‘our ‘life’. Education, experiences, marriage, children, careers, travel, material possessions, joys, sorrows……all happening on this straight line that runs from side to side.

We spend most of our time on this horizontal plane. Everything we do is ‘on the way’ to the next thing that we are going to do. I will get good grades in high school, in order to get high test scores, to be accepted into a competitive college, so I can get a good job allowing me to buy the house that I will fill with possessions. And there is nothing wrong with this way of life.

Yet there exists another plane. A vertical one and it is where it intersects the horizontal line that we discover this moment. The now. The here. The present (which by the way, is all that exists……)

The horizontal line, while long, is the surface. With our eyes trained straight ahead into what we believe to be the future, what lies above and below is blurry. It’s as if on a hot day we are walking along the banks of the lake and commenting on how pretty it looks when we finally decide to dive in. Only then do we realize the depths that this moment holds. The experience of feeling, tasting and smelling the water. Soaring downward before being lifted up toward the sun. Every sense organ awakened. Aliveness! Vertical living.

This moment, no matter when you become quiet and still enough to notice it, is always that deep. It is a full body immersion. Both up and down.

I find it helpful to create an image of this to use when I want to land here. One I am using is that as I stand tall, I am the vertical plane. Therefore, every time I stop I can open awareness to what is here. Two steps forward on the horizontal…..stop…..stand and be. Noticing what is happening over my head, around my body and below my feet. Standing inside the moment. The other is the diving into this moment. The actual image of diving in. Another option might be immersing yourself, like lowering yourself into a deep warm tub.

Yesterday I went down to the river and sat on a rock. It always takes five or ten minutes for my mind to slow down enough to find and greet the body. That’s when I fully arrive.

I noticed them. Six merganser baby birds being taught how to swim upstream.  They gathered in a group while the parents gave instructions. Bunched together they kicked as mightily as they could and had much to say about it all, until they were given the nod to relax and float downstream. This was followed by diving lessons. Some cue was silently given sending them all underwater one by one. Gone from sight. Below the surface. Quiet…..until each little head popped up with much exuberance.

Witnessing this with the breeze at my back, the warmth of the sun on my face and surrounded by the sounds, smells and beauty of the river, I had dived into the moment. It was magical.

Going deep,
SARAH

......rhododendron time

Yogis,
I expected the rhododendron to be blooming when I arrived last Friday, but the buds remained tightly closed. This bush was already here when we bought the beach house twenty years ago, sitting quietly to the left of the front steps. I don’t think I even noticed her to be honest. Fairly nondescript as it sat short of three feet tall. Fast forward and it now holds a prominent position in the front yard. She is my first and only rhododendron…so far.

I didn’t give it much thought until Monday morning while standing out front watering my newest plantings when something caught my eye. A small flash of fuchsia. Drawing closer I saw that indeed she was beginning her unfurling. Exposing her beauty for the rest of us to witness. When I drove home that afternoon, indeed my neighbor’s bush was blooming as well.

It’s rhododendron time!

I like to create and listen to playlists. Perhaps a throw back to growing up with albums where you knew the order of the songs by heart. As the last refrain of a song faded away you were already anticipating the beginning notes of the upcoming song in your head. There is something comforting in knowing exactly what is coming next. Spring to me is like a four-month long playlist.

The opening song is always my Lenten rose who dares to bloom in February. A late winter preview of what’s to come. The waltz of the early spring wildflowers follows with forsythia hymns and the ringing of bluebells close behind. Then the melody of dandelions and violets begin to dot the lawn leading into a crescendo of cherry blossoms.

Year after year the progression of songs doesn’t change. I listen for the first notes of the azaleas as April draws to her close and know the buzz of the bees that swoon over the early comfrey flowers is next on the list.

‘This is my favorite song!’ I think as the tulips open wide, but then I see the buds forming on the peonies and exclaim, ‘no this is my favorite song!’ not unlike what happens as I dance to my well listened to playlists. And we still have the summer and autumn playlists lined up ahead of us.

I learned something this year while being attentive. Rhododendrons and peonies bloom at the same time. Both old fashioned beauties. Together they weave a romantic melody that I will now hear in the years ahead.

Nature never disappoints…….

Rolling down the windows and turning up the music,
SARAH

.....horseshoe crabs

Yogis,
Did you know that horseshoe crabs are the oldest living animal? They have inhabited this earth for over 400 million years. Think about that for a moment. 400 million years. That means they were here even before dinosaurs and have changed very little in that time. That is some incredible staying power.

Although we call them crabs, they are an arthropod, more closely related to the spider and scorpion than the blue crabs we annually hit with mallets on a newspaper covered table at summer dinners under the stars. They can live to be twenty and find their nourishment in small creatures on the floor of the ocean and bays. They use their claws to crush the food and place it in their mouth which is found in the center of their ten legs.

I learned all this while participating in the annual Delaware Bay horseshoe crab survey……

When we signed up we had heard about the hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs that arrive in the Delaware bay and congregate at the edges of the water to spawn under the new and full moons of May and June. Arriving at 9:30 at night to a dark parking lot at the back of the state park we looked for the group and instead found only Rob, a science teacher who would be our leader. It took us a moment to realize that this was it, so with headlamps on, off we went.

Walking a kilometer along the shoreline to get to the starting point the full moon shone bright, lighting our path and making the water shimmer. The Chuck Will’s Widows, a relative of the whippoorwill bird, sang their songs loudly in the night marsh. No one else as far as the eye could see. As high tide arrived we began our counting.  Rob would walk six paces and we would all stop to look in the water. ‘Zero-zero’ was what he would announce most often. No females. No males.

Wait! There is a cluster. Two males holding onto a female, who is always much larger, with front claws shaped like boxing gloves. She, working hard to bury her bottom half in the sand to lay nearly 20,000 eggs, which the guys will then fertilize. These eggs then become a critical food source for the migrating birds who use the mid-Atlantic as a rest stop. Many other creatures, like slipper snails, depend on her shell to attach for shelter and egg laying. She is essential in the web of life.

Who is their main predator? Us, of course.

Fishermen cut them up as bait and their unique blue blood is widely used in our medical industry. Beach development is also shrinking their natural habitat. Now listed as ‘vulnerable’ on the endangered species list, work is underway to help protect these living fossils. Therefore…. the survey and bay events.

This weekend for me was all about horseshoe crabs but I realized it could be almost anything. As we spread ourselves wider and deeper we interrupt these natural cycles that in some cases have been going on for millions of years. We are seeing the evidence.

Diving in though can be a good first step. Taking the time to learn, understand and even hold each of the individual things which make this incredible universe work can make us want to protect them. Opening awareness. Building relationships. Seeing our interconnectedness.

We don’t want to be the ones who end a 400 million year streak……

We didn’t see thousands but saw enough to care,
SARAH