....from the mouth of babes

Yogis,
I have returned from my 37^th June week at the Jersey shore. Days spent on arguably one of the most beautiful beaches and evenings hosting casual dinners for 15 to 25 family members. One of those family members is my grandson Johnny and at five years old he is quite wise……

Don’t Help

One morning he and I were watching a show on both the magnificence and challenges of our planet. It began with some disheartening descriptions and videos of vanishing lakes and melting glaciers. Dwindling species and a rising thermometer. But…..they announced…..we can save this earth! It isn’t too late to help her.

Like you I keep hearing those phrases but this time a little switch went off. I sarcastically responded to the tv that we didn’t need to help her, we needed to stop hurting her.

Johnny looked up at me and I could see the thinking behind his eyes. He broke into a giggle. “Right!” he said. “When we are helping her, we are actually hurting her.” He gets it.

We imagine ourselves as the big brave hero flying in to save the day but that is foolish. The earth doesn’t need our help. She was here before us and will last way beyond us if necessary. Her ability to heal herself only requires us to stop pouring gasoline on her fire. Can we do that?

The town we stay in is lined with beautiful homes surrounded by lush landscaped gardens. The next morning on my run I’m admiring thick green lawns, hydrangeas and shasta daisies, perfectly manicured and all watered automatically each morning via irrigation systems to please our eye. Then I ran back to the road along the marsh and nature’s garden caught my eye. Without our money, landscapers or fertilizers…or our help, she had created the perfect garden. Imagine that.

Let’s shift our focus from helping…..to not hurting.

Distracted
I’m out on the deck on my yoga mat in a lunge while Johnny discusses what we are going to do that day. Questions, comments and observations while I breathe. He runs back inside.

A few minutes later he is back, plopping himself down on my bolster. We jump back into conversation. It’s then he realizes that he had gone inside to use the bathroom but his favorite monster truck (Gravedigger of course!) was on tv so he sat and watched. Then he came back out without using the restroom. He laughed at himself. He could see what had happened.

I asked if he knew what that was called. Distracted, I told him. When you have an intention but something in the outer world pulls you away.

That afternoon I go into my room to send an email. My phone on the dresser is flashing that I have texts. Sitting on the floor I read them, respond, look things up…..and head back out to the living room. No email. Distracted.

I watched myself. I watched my friend come upstairs to get something, talk to me and walk back down without it. Family members walking into the kitchen and then wondering why they are there. Distracted.

Are you?

Notice…….
SARAH

.....lucky clover

Yogis,
My five-year-old grandson and I were walking through the yard. He suddenly drops to his knees exclaiming, ‘Nana, I think I found a four-leaf clover!’ Did you know that on average there is only 1 four leaf clover per 10,000 clovers? It must be his lucky day…..

As children most of us established a bond with clover, along with many of the other so-called ‘weeds’. Seeing them as friends.  I still remember kneeling in the grass patiently searching on summer days. One pointed concentration. A type of meditation before I knew what meditation was. Even to this day, if you find yourself surrounded by clover, don’t you find your eyes scanning?

There are over 300 varieties of clover. From the genus Trifolieae, they are a flowering plant in the legume family. The most common type found in our lawns is the small white flowered clover, though not exceptionally medicinal for us, they are a bounty for the earth!

Have you ever really looked at her…….

Allowing clover in makes the grass around it more draught and dog urine tolerant. Clover adds nutrients to the soil, fights pests and keeps the lawn greener longer. Clover also aerates the soil and the honeybees, butterflies and rabbits will thank you. Prior to the 1950’s clover was even a welcome addition to grass seed, but then herbicide companies convinced us otherwise. We are so easily swayed……

Then there is her taller cousin red clover, with her bright purple-pink blossoms who heals both earth and us! Her flowers are a top anti-cancer herb when used dried in infusions. As an ally for women, red clover supports us through all of our life cycle phases.  For the maiden she is a cherished fertility herb when preparing to start a family. For the mother, she reduces PMS and supports breast health, while at the other end of the cycle, as a crone I know I am personally grateful for her help in taming my hot flashes.  

A powerful, yet gentle medicine, red clover is considered by many herbalists to be a ‘God-given remedy.’ And she in turn gives herself freely.  

Add delicious color to your salads by throwing in raw blossoms or cook them with grains for a protein boost. While white clover blooms daintily dot the lawn in spring, red clover continues to brighten fields, sunny trails and roadsides well into the brisk days of fall.

Take the time to notice her next time you walk by. Three leaves or four, clover brings good fortune wherever she goes!

I feel lucky to know her,
SARAH

....the Babesia Boogies

Yogis,

It all began innocently enough. Well, at least as innocent as it could be with my dad going to his weekly Saturday morning Hash House Harriers run. A more than forty-year tradition where a group of grown men who dub themselves ‘a drinking club with a running problem’ run on trails marked with flour through the woods, marshes and streams and then head to the closest dive bar.

Although my father at 86 is no longer running, he meets the guys and meanders through the woods and joins in the revelry at the end. So, it was no wonder that after returning home and taking the much needed nap, he discovered ticks on himself. Twenty-six of them, but whose counting. My mom patiently pulling each one off….. along with some skin.

Four days later he is ill.

Back and forth to the hospital. Many tests and scratching of heads until finally an infectious disease doctor tested him for Babesiosis. Bingo. A less common tick-borne illness with parasites that attack the red blood cells, literally taking him to his knees.

Eight days in the hospital followed by two weeks in rehab.

I want to share a daily habit my dad created several years ago to give you a sense of ‘him’ before the hospital. Each morning he comes down, goes to his porch (his place) turns on his speaker and tells it what to play. Think Rolling Stones. He then proceeds to dance with abandon for one or two songs. Before this incident he had videoed himself on one of those mornings.  

I went up to NJ twice for several days as this all was transpiring. With covid the hospital still only allowed one visitor per day so I spent two afternoons quietly watching him sleep and hoping to get a few bites of food into him. On the second day the PT person showed up (he had sent her away day 1). My father pulled himself as best he could to sitting and told her he wouldn’t begin until she watched something. Pulls out his phone and loads the video. He had her watch the whole thing.

‘That’s who I am’ he told her.

Spending time in the hospital reminded me how critical it is to advocate for yourself. Best if you have someone to do it for you, but powerful when you can also speak up for yourself. He knew what all of the doctors, nurses and aides saw when they walked in. Gray haired old man lying listless in hospital bed. Perceptions influence care. It isn’t their fault. They are understaffed and overworked. But my dad wasn’t standing for it.

The day before discharge he was lying in bed when an aide came in, quietly singing to herself as she cleaned. ‘What song is that?’ he asked. She mentioned the name and while she continued her work he found it on Spotify and cranked his portable speaker up. She broke into a smile and began to dance. A nurse down the hall heard the commotion and joined in.

Now, that’s my dad.

I left for home once he had been home a few days. No dancing yet…….a yardstick in his recovery. A week later I receive the new video below with the note ‘I am back!’  

Yes you are…..

Happy Father’s Day Dad,
SARAH

.....friends

Yogis,
I love this time of year in the garden! The combination of the rains, abundant heat and long hours of sunshine, have plants bursting from the ground. I grow mostly perennials, and where a few weeks ago I could stand on the edge and see everything in its place, now it appears as a sea of green.

“Hello mugwort!” as I snip off a leafy top to place in my pillowcase, ensuring deep vivid dreaming. She is a plant that loves to gather real estate, so I spend some time pulling out the already running roots. I know her well. “There you are blue spice basil! I would recognize those leaves anywhere.” She will soon be standing upright along the edges of the garden, releasing her sweet sensual scent each time my leg brushes against her. Mmmmmm…….

For me this is a time of welcoming back old friends…..not unlike our collective lives as we begin to once again gather. Some will seem as if nothing has changed, while in others we will feel the differences carved by the unique experience we have all traveled.

“My my Motherwort, you are awfully tall this year!” similar to my friend’s teenage son who appears to have gained more than a foot in the year since I last saw him. Tall and lanky. Black Eyed Susan on the other hand is steady and dependable. As always, growing to about a foot and then getting a stark overnight haircut from the grazing deer. But now that I have known her for years, I realize she likes that, as each cut stem grows two shoots for two flowers. She is unafraid of obstacles, knowing they are the root of transformation. I can learn from her.

Mint is one of those friends who is always there for whatever you need. A cup of uplifting tea on a dreary morning, iced herb water after a sweaty afternoon of gardening, or simply making me smile with her gentle scent as I rub her between by fingers. And this spring the rhododendrons and hydrangeas are unusually abundant. The year has treated them well and like some friends, caused them to now want to give…and give…and give.

St Johns Wort showed up right on time, spreading low on the ground in the east quadrant of my medicine wheel. But then she began to brown. Unable to help her, one by one the stems of leaves shriveled, leaving a hole in the garden. An empty space. I have friends who too have lost loves of their lives in these past months, coming back to the fold with their own empty spaces. Then there are those plants who simply don’t come back.

Yet each morning I religiously water the ground where I delicately placed my pea seeds one inch deep. Nurturing. Knowing new life is silently forming, hidden from view, and like my women friends who too are carrying a germinating seed within their own fertile soil, new life will emerge when the time is right.

Friends. There are those that are colorful (zinnia), those that quietly do their sacred work (lavender), and those that love to cling (wisteria). Each one unique. Would we have it any other way?

Hanging out with my hippy friend Mullein,
SARAH

......immersed in cicadas

Yogis,
As I sit here on the floor in my home, windows shut, I am being serenaded. Not by my wireless speaker but by the mating call of the seventeen year cicadas. A steady hum that can’t be blocked out by going inside…..not that I would want to.

They are early risers, joining the robins and cardinals as soon as dawn brightens the sky, which happened to be 5:00 am this morning. I only know that because my eyes flew open, unsure what had woken me, until I remembered. Ah yes, another day of cicada calls. I watched at the other end and realized they slowly begin to taper off, surely exhausted, around dinner time. Like us, their day begins to wind down as the sun begins her journey down .

When they first arrived my ears heard the hum. But over time I was reminded of the first time I went to the symphony as a young girl. As the curtain rose and the conductor guided those first notes I was literally brought to tears by the overwhelming beauty created by the union of the instruments. Slowly though, I could lean into the sound and begin to hear the violins. I set my eyes on the first violin to see if I could hear only her.  At the time I was a student of the violin and I was being shown how the seemingly small sound I created each day in my living room, when joined with others, could cause emotion. Create change.

Sounds are vibrations, and although we equate them with our ears, they enter our bodies from many points and affect our vibration. Our internal note.

My maternal grandmother was deaf from childhood. I remember one time being with her and there was a band playing. At one point it became quite loud and she turned and told us she could feel it! Even without our sense of hearing we are moved by sound. Which is why I know the cicadas are affecting us.

I decided this week to immerse myself in the cicada symphony. I meditated in the morning with the window open and used their song as my focal point. I quietly mulched and weeded and relaxed into their buzz. I took time to sit on my sitting tree, lean back, close my eyes and open myself to receive their gift. No resistance.

It’s like one of those moments when you turn your radio all the way up and let a song take you over!

Like the symphony I began to hear the different tones. The waves of intensity, like the summer heat, roll toward me and then slowly recede. The changes in volume as I walked beneath the trees. I could tell if one was close by and even observed a mating dance and heard three different notes they can produce. Beginning to feel my inner vibration match theirs.

Surrounded by the hum twelve hours a day, day in and day out for an entire month, clearly affects us whether we are aware or not. I am choosing to be aware……

It will seem so quiet when they leave.

Vibrating,
SARAH

Cicada Dance

.....the party that wasn't

Yogis,
The hype began weeks ago. Everyone itching to shed their masks, restrictions being lifted daily, rentals booked and cars gassed up. This Memorial Day was going to be the party to end all parties! Expectations ran high. Both record crowds and record celebrations of covid freedom were forecast.

Mother Nature had a different forecast. Rain.

See this picture. The welcome to town sign. This is what a typical Memorial Day weekend looks like on the beach. Shoulder to shoulder and impossible not to step on someone’s else’s blanket trying to find a path to the boardwalk for that midday slice of pizza. Now note the temperature.

The temperatures all weekend were record breaking in the wrong direction, but they were only one aspect. Steady heavy rain and of course, wind. The trifecta to dampen any outdoor event. And dampen it did…..literally. What we all wouldn’t give for some dry shoes.

The side streets were still lined with cars, but they never moved. Everyone hunkered down inside playing games and watching sports. Almost as if it were six months ago. Even route 1 which typically would be a bumper to bumper mob scene on a rainy day with vacationers flocking to the outlets, was quiet. Everyone had quickly discovered it was actually physically challenging to be outside, even for a dash from the car.

This morning I ran with Phoebe, raincoat and hood zippered tight. Rain coming in sideways. The only other brave souls were runners. No line for breakfast sandwiches on the boardwalk. No dads on the beach setting up camp early to reserve a prime spot. No families pedaling around on rented bikes. A ghost town.

  

I realized that no late night party goers talking too loudly had passed under our bedroom window on their way home last night. There had been no strolls into town after dinner for an ice cream cone. The sidewalks littered, not with red solo cups or Thrashers fries containers, but inside out umbrellas that simply couldn’t withstand that unexpected 30 mph gust. Even dogs had to adjust.

It all reminded me of one of those New Year’s parties where the hype is so high and you want to be that ‘wild’ but deep down you sort of know it is going to be a bust. It felt like the Universe looked down on all of us ready to burst out and like a parent, suggested we slow down a bit.

Yes, get together with friends and family. Yes, be mask-less with others and hug away. Yes, eat out in a restaurant for the first time. But do you really need to go from 0 to 100 in one weekend?

It would have been nice to sit out on the back deck with a beer in the evening after a long day on the beach. To wash sand out of my ears in the shower or to open an umbrella designed for sun protection instead of rain. But it was what it was and we quickly adjusted our expectations and ended up having a really good time!

It all seemed fitting for the ‘so long’ to covid…… Don’t you agree?

Heated by the furnace, not the sun,
SARAH

......animacy

Yogis,
“Good morning robin! What are you up to today?” My morning greeting to the robin that keeps hopping a few feet forward every time I take a step with the hose as I water the garden. Not flying away but not quite ready to have me in her personal space. She makes eye contact. “It’s ok,” I say.

Its then that I remember the workman from the gas company quietly working a few feet away behind the lattice. Hmmmm….. He probably thinks I’m nuts. Oh well.

You all know that I talk to nature. Trees, squirrels, bugs and the wind have all been acknowledged many times over. The moon feels like a best friend and I recognize individual rocks.  At this point it feels so natural I can’t imagine not letting them know that I see them. Disrespectful. It would be as uncomfortable as the person who passes two feet from me but won’t make eye contact.

So imagine how excited I was to read an essay that gives this not only a name, but an entire world view!

I am still pouring through ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, a collection of essays by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist of Native American heritage who weaves together the practicality of science with the mystery of spirit in words that read like poetry. It was in her essay ‘Learning the Grammar of Animacy’ that my heart skipped a beat. She says what I feel.

By diving into learning the language of her tribe, of which there are only 9 native speakers left in the world, she discovers that learning nouns, while challenging, is doable. Memorization. Replace our word with their word. But when it came to verbs, a new world cracked open.

She came upon a verb and read the definition. ‘To be a bay’ it said. To be a bay??? Isn’t that a person, place or thing, in that way that we love to neatly categorize everything? A bay, not being human is therefore a thing in English. An it.  She sat there frustrated but the image of a bay suddenly flowed through her. The smell of the water. The rhythm of it lapping against the rocky shore. The breeze. This alive water could have become a river, creek or stream, but it decided to ‘be a bay’.

In her Native American culture, the worldview is that everything is either animate or inanimate, and the inanimate is reserved primarily for manmade items. Those without life force. Language then takes that view and gives it voice.

What we call things influences how we think about them.

I am now finding myself imagining the feeling of ‘to be a’ with whatever passes my way. To be a peony…… To be the sky……. To be fire…….. To be a rainbow……

I decide to set my alarm even earlier on Monday to head to the beach and experience the sunrise. There was a slight nip in the air and the sky was clear. Phoebe and I walked and watched. Reds, oranges and pinks streaked the sky to announce her impending arrival. She was stunning. 

To be a sunrise……. Clearly not a noun.

Words are powerful,
SARAH