All is well

What a wonderful week in Washington DC. The conventions are over, hence there are fewer toxic postings on FB, fewer news stories about the campaign. Thank you Jesus!

The lush landscape of DC is still quite green, yet we're enjoying a week of Colorado weather. During the day it's just warm enough that we don't need jackets, but it cools down at night so it's actually fun to pull the covers up to our chins. Brother Sun is sparkling and splendid, like a great raconteur at a dinner party, radiating good vibes.

I walked a labyrinth yesterday, one of my favorite pastimes (though it was backwards ... weird), and took a walk. This morning I'm going to walk down to the Willard Hotel for a massage, then meet a dear one for lunch at the Old Ebbitts Grill. Tonight I'll be sipping wine on a rooftop dear Dupont Circle with yet another beloved.

What, I ask you, is NOT to love about fall? I mean really. Life is good and I am grateful. Shalom.

Meandering path through the looking glass

Back in the day, in San Francisco, when visiting Grace Cathedral was part of my regular routine, conversations often began this way: While I was walking the labyrinth ...

It wasn't just me, of course. Almost immediately after they installed the carpet labyrinth inside the church, I and my whole community seized every opportunity to walk the ancient pattern. I went two or three times every week, with colleagues and cohorts, alone, with friends visiting from elsewhere. I remember the truly spectacular parking karma I somehow achieved around the cathedral which is really crazy since it sits on top of Nob Hill. If you know San Francisco, you understand there is no parking there. None. Zero. Zed. But I always found a spot. A miracle!

With visitors it was fun to go take that meditative walk at the end of a day, since afterwards we could retire to the Tonga Room in the Fairmont Hotel for rum based drinks and fake thunderstorms every half hour. But I went at all times of the day when the church was open.

When they constructed the outdoor labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, one of my teachers and I snuck into the construction site, put our fingernail clippings and small crystals into the ground so we would forever be part of that structure. That's a day I won't forget, Rose and I slipping under the construction ribbons while a Chinese couple stood staring at us, looking puzzled. Rose said, They think we're ghosts. She often said things like that, with an aura of authority. I bet she was correct.

We took a weekend workshop with Lauren Artress, the woman who brought the walking labyrinth into the mainstream of American spiritual practice. Basically we spent the entire weekend walking the labyrinth, then writing in our journals.

Here in DC I've walked countless versions of the Chartres style labyrinth, of course. One year we taught a whole witchcamp based on the labyrinth.

Needless to say, I've clocked some miles on the labyrinth. Oh yeah. So today when I went to check out the beautifully painted labyrinth in the Church of the Epiphany in downtown DC, imagine my surprise to see that whoever painted it, flipped the pattern. It's backwards!

The walk was completely disorienting. In fact I feel I'm still struggling to get my equilibrium back, hours later. It was like trying to drive around Britain. Whoa. Or should I say wow?

But that's me, a creature of habit. For most people who walk the backwards pattern, it will likely have the same kind of gentle, subtle, powerful impact that calms and brings insight. I wonder why they flipped the image. Such an interesting decision.

Even backwards, it is still exquisite to gaze upon. I enjoyed the stained glass windows as well. To learn more about the Grace Cathedral labyrinths, Lauren Artress, or to check out the Tonga Room, click the links. Those were the good old days!

I love life's surprises, I truly do. Shalom.

Remembering

I was talking to a friend who lives in NYC. We were talking about the Civil War, about what it takes to be a soldier, about what kind of courage, valour or insanity it takes to actually walk into a battlefield, ready to kill or be killed. At some point in the conversation, my friend said, "Oh dear. It looks like a plane crashed into the WTC." His TV was on; the breaking news caught his eye.

We talked for a few more minutes. A little while later there was a huge boom-crash. All the car alarms in the neighborhood went off, Jake wedged himself under my bed in fear. I had no TV and didn't really try to figure it out. I extracted Jake from under the bed and went to work, annoyed at the heavy traffic, wondering what was going on. That's when I found out what was happening.

I don't know what it was like in other parts of the U.S. Living in one of the cities that was directly affected was surreal. Nothing has ever been the same since that day.

I've been watching Foyle's War on netflix. It is a superb series, well written and beautifully acted, about a police detective living on the south coast of England during WWII. The show portrays WWII from a completely new perspective. It was such a huge war in so many ways. Of course I've read extensively about the Third Reich and the Holocaust (oh that - again!), also Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I've read about what life was like in the U.S. - the rations, victory gardens, women getting into the workforce in huge numbers. It was bad here but good lord it was much worse in England.

In one episode set in 1941, there is a raffle held in the town in which the series is set. The prize is an onion. Yeah. It's incredible to think about the regular people in that war, dashing into cellars during the bombing raids, receiving telegrams informing them their loved ones had been killed. They lived with the threat of invasion for years, they sacrificed everything. The female lead in the series stains her lips with beet root because there is no lipstick. And yet they carry on, not that every citizen was as upstanding as they could have been, of course.

I've been thinking about how, when the war was finally over, people married and had kids - lots of kids - in a celebration of life. Those kids grew up to listen to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who. They came of age and flipped off the older generation. Yeah, I'm talking about my generation, The Boomers.

A classic line in A Hard Day's Night, in the opening train sequence, has to do with the Beatles making fun of a middle aged man. He is disgusted with their antics. He says, "We fought the war for you!" He appears to be a fuddy duddy, but watching Foyle's War gives me insight into what that meant. People suffered terribly, even those who didn't pick up guns or drop bombs.

The Beatles are listening to the radio
Man on Train: And we'll have that thing off as well, thank you.
Ringo: But...
Man on Train: An elementary knowledge of the Railway Acts would tell you that I'm perfectly within my rights.
Paul: Yeah, but we want to hear it, and there's more of us than you. We're a community, like, a majority vote. Up the workers and all that stuff!
Man on Train: Then I suggest you take that damned thing to the corridor or some other part of the train where you obviously belong.
John: [Leaning over to the man] Give us a kiss.
Man on train: Don't take that tone with me, young man. I fought the war for your sort.
Ringo: I bet you're sorry you won.

Wars aren't like that now, at least here in the U.S. We've been fighting in Afghanistan for how long? Yes, the wars suck the lifeblood out of the U.S. economy, but we're insulated from that reality now. We're numb to what's happening. No one in the U.S. ever worries about the availability of onions no matter how many wars we are fighting.

I'm thinking about all the souls who left their bodies on that day eleven years ago in NYC, and here, too, at the Pentagon, about the total shock those of us who weren't killed experienced. No one would have believed, on September 10, 2001, that anything like it could ever happen on American soil. But it could, and it did.

I find the memory harrowing - still. May all those souls who burned or fell from the towers, or were killed in the Pentagon, rest in peace. May the souls of the greatest generation rest in peace. May we remember and become more peaceful. May it be so!

Shalom.

Brotherly Love

When Isaac Newton discovered that light could be broken into its component colors, that was a heretical notion. Sunlight was God's light back in Europe in the 17th century. Of course people saw rainbows but it was believed that the rainbows were not connected to sunlight. Prisms were thought to be the source of the rainbow colors rather than something that refracted light. It was believed that sunlight, because it was the light of God, was absolutely pure and could not be broken. Oh that Isaac Newton was such a radical thinker! Bless his heart.

Of course it wasn't only in western Europe that people worshipped Brother Sun. I just googled "Sun+god+worship." Good lord, it's almost impossible to find a culture that didn't worship the Sun! In fact, if we humans dismissed Brother Sun as just some mediocre star out there, unworthy of our attention and love, that would point to a serious flaw in our thinking. Yes? I say yes.

Sunset after the huge storm Saturday, a dragon of a storm that blew out the humidity and heat.

I worship Brother Sun, definitely. On a sparkling clear day like yesterday in Washington DC, Brother Sun inspires me to be at my best. He leads by example, showing me that being as shiny, noble, and generous as I can be is a worthy benchmark to strive towards. What's not to love about the gold light of an early autumnal sun? I mean really.

Can you tell how happy I am that the weather has shifted? I am one with the weather. Right now, the weather is spectacular, hence I'm feeling mighty fine.

C'mon in and make yourself at home, Autumn. You are so very very welcome! Amen.

The gate at the Summerhouse on the Capitol grounds. The puddle is a leftover from the storm.

The last hot day

Of course today is definitely not the last hot day. Here in the midatlantic, it will be many weeks before we see the last hot day. But today is the last hot day for awhile.

There's a gusty wind blowing around, the cloud people are gathering. The wind has a hint of coolness, a hint of dryness within it. When the wind stops, it's hot and humid again. I find this kind of crazy disparity very exciting. It's a signal that the stagnation of late summer is being stirred, rattled and rolled and can not last forever.

The air has been a solid brick of dampness. But all that stuckness and heaviness is about to change! Oh yeah. Change of any kind brings chaos, something that puts some people on their last nerve. At Eastern Market, babies are crying, kids are pitching fits, parents snarling. I also heard shouting from car windows and lots of horn honking, something that is actually kind of unusual on Capitol Hill.

Everyone feels the incoming weather and the change that follows. Some are unnerved, I am giddy.

Tonight the low temperature will be in the 60s. We haven't seen that in a long time. For three glorious days, Brother Sun will shine - not too passionately - and at night the air will be cool and dry. Ahhh! I will throw open the windows, air out the hermetically sealed chateau and enjoy the fresh air.

I just realized that because I threw away all my old summer clothes, I no longer have the oversized baggy teeshirts I used to sleep in during the winter. Time to shop for some serious flannel jammies! How exciting.

I was taking pics of people on the street last night, zooming in to capture as many people as possible. I love what happened when this car drove by just as I pressed the shutter. Very cool.

Late summer stagnation

According to Chinese medicine, there are five seasons: fall, winter, spring, summer and late summer. Late summer begins in mid-August and continues until autumn equinox. It is a time of thick humidity and stagnation and I do not like it.

Hence I complain. I bitch. I carry on.

Someone who reads my blog came by for a massage the other day. She said, "How are you?" I responded, perhaps a bit more sharply than I intended, "I can't wait for fall." She said, "Uh. I KNOW."

Oops. Busted. Oh well.

Because I dance in shamanic alignment with the weather, right now I'm as stagnant as this swamp in which I live. There is no point in trying to post anything fresh or interesting here until the weather shifts, which might be awhile. It's supposed to be close to 100 F. tomorrow. Bloody hell.

This too shall pass? I hope so.

Timing is everything

Go Forward With Courage

When you are in doubt, be still, and wait;
when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage.
So long as mists envelop you, be still;

be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists
-- as it surely will.

Then act with courage.

--Ponca Chief White Eagle