I am with you

Dear Ones

Part 1/

I was in meditation this morning with the cat on my lap.

She was deeply asleep, draped over one of my knees.

A loud sound from the corridor caused her to jolt awake, it was the clatter of a box being thrown hurriedly into the recycling room. And I tried to tell her this, I reached out to her, I cooed and coaxed but she had bolted into the closet and wouldn’t be reassured.

I knew what the sound was.
I knew it wouldn’t harm her.
I knew that it was safe for her and that she could come back to the cozy lap with me.
I knew and I could protect her if needed, but it wasn’t needed. It was ok.

It was suddenly clear to me, how often I must seem to be doing exactly the same thing. Loud, unfamiliar things happen in my life and I bolt for the closet.Forces larger, wiser, kinder than I have a perspective that is more than I can imagine. And still, I think I need to protect myself. I think I am the only one who understands the full ramifications and I am the only one with a plan that can save me.

And what if there was Grace, as large as I am to the cat, cooing, coaxing me back out to her lap to sit again in her safety? What if her safety was larger and more comprehensive than anything I could conjure for myself? And what if I could unravel the story that I must protect myself from the unknown, the unplanned, the seeming disaster? What if I could practice daily to allow a connection to such Grace and trust in a care around me that can barely be named?

I am with you.

These words materialized in my mind.

I am with you rang through my silent seated self as I softened my perimeter, the space around me. 

I am with you. 

Part 2/

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letters from Love are a practice of what is called 2-way prayer.

1-way prayer is the supplicant calling out for help or in praise, thanks, or awe. It’s prayer moving from me to you. But 2-way prayer is the permission to open ourselves, to write a letter to ourselves through the energy of Love as we could imagine or feel Love would correspond with us. I can write the question, “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?” And, remarkably, I can reply in the voice of Love. (Try it. Let me know. What comes to me has always been a surprise.)

And here, in this morning’s meditation, in this phrase, as soon as it came to mind, it doubled back and found another dimension.

I am with you.

A whisper. A reminder. I am not alone.

And in that, a dissolving. I, Martha, can join in. I am with you, was my reply as I listened to the tumble of the river outside. the clattering of the October wind through the drying leaves. I am with you, I say to this season, this morning, this sound and light. I am with you, is the answer but I don’t know anymore whose voice it is. 

Part 3/

This comes, I think from the readings and reflections of my choose nurture death doula course, and our current Kundalini practice of Awakening the 10 Bodies where day after day we are moving through out energies and cleaning house. I feel that for 20 days I’ve been opening windows and doors that had closed through past experience and conditioning. I am ready to pass through them, pass out of the limits I’ve known and into something quite different.

To sit deeply with the considerations of death, to let this form dissolve daily, to know that as it does I am not lost but instead part of larger, different things - these are big thoughts. And just for a moment this morning, after trying to console the cat who couldn’t see that the unknown was not annihilation, for a moment, I could feel that I was in everything.

I am with you.

All love, Martha

…

Yesterday was Indigenous People’s Day. The more disaster I feel us bring upon ourselves, the more respect I have for ways of thinking in which humans can keep company with the living world with respect and over time. 

I highly recommend an amazing documentary entitled The Last of the Sea Women. It is about the Haenyeo of South Korea, incredible women who dive for seafood without oxygen tanks.  Everything about these women is worth celebrating and learning from but I will focus on one statement: “As Haenyeos, the ocean feeds us, and feels like our mother's arms.”

I pass on this note from Chris Knapp of Maine Local Living School:

“I am learning to feel the embrace of the earth. We feel strongly that this is a right of all humans and an experience that informs responsibility and creativity in caring for the one who hugs us. This is not a claim of indigeneity but an exploration of the capacity of all humans to experience profound connection to land and place. To echo the words of the Haenyeo, this is hard work but the joy of living in reciprocity feels like a hug.

On this day and every other let us join our hearts and heads in recognition of the knowledge keepers, the elders, the stories, and the modeling of mutually nurturing human-earth relationships held by the world's Indigenous peoples.”

...
I am reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and rewriting the cultural mythology I stand on.

I am listening to Tim Ferris talk with Liz Gilbert and taking notes.

I am learning from choose nature's end of life course which concludes next week. It has changed everything. Next session starts Jan 22 - April 16, 2025