Abiding and Communing

REMINDER from Mano:

When you feel the fresh air as you step outside, Mother Nature is blessing you with her love. Take a deep breath and say thank you.

REMARKS from Barbara:

The June Blog #75, “Am I Making This Up?” was about believing and trusting your own experience.

Now the invitation is to create a relationship to experience Mother Nature in a specific location and specific way.

REMEMBERING Mary Jane:

She created her own daily routine for connection with Mother Earth and to be open to the elemental kingdom.
All of her words are written in italics.

Blog #76

Mano surprised me by inviting each of us to make consistent connection with one place in nature for one month. This offers us the opportunity for our human nature to emerge and unite with one aspect of Mother Nature. The spirit of the particular place that has attracted you is waiting to connect in consciousness and love of presence.

Aaron Fisher, in his book, The Way of Tea, says, “presence means that we stay in the moment, here and now. This helps calm the mind and center it on the moment at hand without slipping into the past or worrying about the future.”

The invitation is to build a loving relationship with Mother Nature, setting intention and being present on a daily basis. The suggestion is to set a minimum time, choose a place that is easy to get to: a tree, a flower, your yard, vegetable garden, even a house plant if you have no other place easy to get to.

Spring is here
Summer is coming
Time for vacation
To learn something new
Spring is leaving
Summer Journey is coming,
Take time apart
To refresh and renew
Choose a place in nature
Travel to her each day
Sit in the presence of her presence
Write what she has to say
A personal message
A contact of heart
Each day to be present
Each day a new start

From the first day, in 1987, when we moved to our little cottage in the heart of a redwood forest I made a conscious trip to a special grove on our land called The Amphitheater. This beautiful opening surrounded by mature Madrone and Redwood trees is filled with a sense of presence that quiets my mind and opens my heart.

Over the 31 years I have lived on the mountain I have visited the Amphitheater over 7000 times. And yet, it was not until 2014 that I made the commitment to go to the Amitheater daily and spend time there as if I was going on a vacation. I thought about it as taking a Summer Journey. It was by taking this trip from my front door to the Amphitheater daily for two months that I moved into a deep transforming experience. I was going to ‘be with’ the Amphitheater, to be with Mother Nature, to stay with her, to abide with her. It was more than a visit. It was an abiding, communing, lying on the earth, recording my awareness, my imaginations, the fleeting thoughts, whatever I noticed, creating dialogue in my computer, daily recording my experience.

By the end of the two months I was a different woman, I could feel it, my friends could see it. I was in love with nature, and her love filled me and transformed me.

That was such a wonderful experience, I have eagerly returned these past five yearsand I will go again this year.

The invitation Mano just presented is different. The invitation is to build a loving relationship with Mother Nature, setting intention and being present on a regular basis. The suggestion is to set a minimum time, choose a place that is easy to get to, talk to her, build a relationship with her, think of her as your friend. This is a new idea. I will join you in this experiment by going to a redwood tree in my front yard.

I share a small part of Mary Jane’s introduction to Blog #50 “Summer Journeying to the Amphitheater,” first presented in November 2016:

This month I thought of prefacing Barbara’s sacred daily pilgrimages with some of my notes from David Abrams at the Lama Foundation workshop I mentioned in last month’s blog. David is full of ecstasy and the longing to preserve diversity, in nature and in humanity. The ecstasy, the “being in love” comes through “tending the boundary between the human world and the more-than-human world.” If I become too preoccupied, too busy, and cut off communication, or fall out of relationship with a “more-than-human field”, all of my human relationships can become brittle. For after all, those close to me cannot possibly fulfill all of my mighty needs and longings. So I must remember that I can go out and consult with the trees.