Category Archives: Gratitude

Welcomed (41)

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I am away from home for a week over Christmas. I send good wishes from afar. May the birds have plenty of seeds. May their water bowls be refilled each day. May all the crickets and daddy long legs and lizards and birds and the trees and plants be safe in my absence. I come back to Palm Springs on Amtrak, take the city bus, walk three blocks with the big rolling suitcase I took with me when I left to carry my presents to my mother’s. I see my bougainvillea, my wooden fence. Doves scatter as I approach. I glimpse a hawk gliding after them across the courtyard. I stop in the middle of the road. The hawk comes, settles on the gate before me. I don’t breathe. Maybe I can’t. The timing is too precise not to feel greeted, welcomed, awed, grateful. I stand still long moments while he watches me. When he flies off, I open the gate. I breathe again. I’m home.

Christmas Eve, Morning (40)

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Big waning daylight moon

Full heart greeting

my mother’s tree glistens in the window.

Winter Solstice Eve (38)

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I sit at the train station beside my bags

cold metal bench at sunset, purple Christmas gloves

the almost full moon watching over my shoulder as I type.

Desert Winter (37)

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Warm under blankets in the early twilight

cold air on my face

sparrows sing outside the open window.

Endorsement (34)

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I turn toward hope, and then

the half moon and I watch three silent ravens

wing across the daylight sky.

Among the Rest (33)

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The morning after the election The Los Angeles Times ran a banner headline: Democrats Take Back the House. I grinned reading it, standing in the gateway of my courtyard. Something flickered in me, seeing the words spread across the page, a taste of older headlines, bigger news, maybe, not always good (Milk and Moscone?). Whatever it was, the headline caught me in the chest. I never got a chance to read the front page story, but it sat on the floor of my living room for days, proclaiming our good news each time I walked by. I listened to KPFA the morning after the election and learned in the act of taking back the house our country elected a twenty-nine-year-old woman, two Native American women and two Muslim women. It was just before the new moon, and I remember standing in my living room during the Cazimi window talking to the universe about how I want to be more in touch with magic in my life. And the news about these five women we elected to the house made me cry big happy grateful tears. It reached deep in me, this reassurance from the world that we are going to move in the right direction, despite all evidence to the contrary. And it felt like we were sending a message, too. We don’t want to do things your way. Yesterday there seems to have been a surprising level of civility between Governor Brown and Governor-Elect Newsom and President Trump on his visit to California in the wake of the fires. President Trump didn’t threaten again to deny us federal funds but instead promised 100% support. Reading that, I softened toward him for a moment. But I still get all shiny inside when I think of those five women we elected to the house and the message it sends. I still dream of the day when I’ll get a glimpse of the house or the senate on TV, and there will be all these young people in the mix, and black and brown faces everywhere, graceful hijabs, women of all colors, white men scattered about among the rest.

[The Cazimi window, as I understand it, is 30 minutes before and after the exact moment of the new moon when we can take action both practically and symbolically for things we want to manifest in this lunar cycle. I’ve come across it here.]

May You Never Hunger (32)

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I feel my faith in humankind wobble for the first time in my sixty years. It’s a smaller thought that sparks it. Not the massacre of eleven Jewish people in their temple. Not the white supremacist in Kentucky who’s unable to force open the doors of a largely black church so he goes to Kroger and shoots two black people there. Not the caravan of mostly Hondurans heading to our border, fleeing violence and poverty the U.S. has a hand in making, our president bringing in the military, treating the Hondurans like terrorists instead of finding a way to simply process their requests for asylum. Not the 15 pipe bombs mailed to people who visibly oppose him. I know these things and more—the 189 who died in the plane near Jakarta—have layered themselves inside me, have brought me to this moment, this possible tipping point, sitting in my courtyard in the morning warmth. But it’s two disparate things I hear on NPR that come together in my head. Some crazy high number of children in Europe with respiratory ailments linked to air pollution, and our president’s intention to drill for oil in Alaska (and everywhere he can). Compared to the endless string of recent horrors, these two seem almost mild. But what if we get past the fear and hate, and it’s too late to save our planet? I sip my tea, fenugreek with coconut milk and honey, third day without caffeine. I’ve always believed we can turn this around. I hold the warm cup in the bowl of my hands, savor the bitter and the sweet on my tongue. And I feel my belief in us wobble for the first time in my life. I don’t land there, don’t let doubt all the way in. But the wobbling alone scares me, and I cry. I make anxious circles with my fingers, purse my lips, swallow the last of my tea. I take a breath, grateful I didn’t topple. I refuse to believe it’s too late for us to restore our planet, too late to turn this around. Not just global warming, not only the condors and the wolves, but finding our way all the way clear, to a world where everyone can thrive, be safe, have dignity, know peace. Que nunca tengas hambre. Que nunca tengas sed. May you never hunger. May you never thirst.