CURRENT THOUGHTS...ABOUT THE PRESENT!

Just a few days till Easter, and I’m prompted to remember the importance  and the significance it holds for many.  I must confess that I'm probably more Spiritual than Religious, and yet I honor the beliefs of all people.  Too often there seems to be an over emphasis on the difference between "I and you..Me and them...Our Country and yours!"  I prefer to look at other people and see the likeness and kinship we share..not our differences!  I believe that all the Worlds People are closely interconnected with one another by our collective humanity...we all belong to the Human Race!    

At this time of year, I also like to call to mind all the things I am grateful for on this April 2nd..Good Friday.  Like all years, it has had its up and downs…. happy and not so happy times, disappointments and triumphs, abundance and loss, laughter and tears, great health and physical challenges, and peace and conflicts in the World.

But through it all, I recognize that each new day is magnificent, miraculous, unique, and awe-inspiring, because I am alive and privileged to experience another day of Life!  

My Personal List of gratitude is short..but sweet.

I’m grateful that I am blessed with a wonderful wife!

I’m grateful that my overall state of health is good!

I’m grateful for my happy relationships with family and friends!

I’m grateful that we live an abundant & balanced life!

I’m grateful that each day I am experiencing Spiritual Peace!

This “short list” only hits the main categories of my personal gratitude. Everyday I experience and value unique moments of happiness: Waking up in a warm bed and hearing the sound of the wind and rain; seeing the sunrise; hearing the tinkle of the wind chimes; the aroma of my first cup of green tea; looking out on a backyard alive with birds and their sounds; breathing in the morning chill; having a conversation with my wife; an early walk in the neighborhood; the smell of oatmeal cooking; sitting in the back patio viewing a nearby mountain; writing and researching in my office; and 

day dreaming in the Now!

My "little world" is relatively simple and peaceful....and for that I am eternally grateful! Our nation and the world is a different story. Both continue to have some significant challenges, and it will take some time and personal effort before we see any improvement. Here in the United States we are still experiencing the worst recession in decades; economic instability continues throughout the world; our political parties can't work together; we are mired in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; there's no resolution in sight for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict; and the world can't agree on what to do about climate change...just to mention a few!

So....what's to be grateful for? At first "blush" the answer seems to be "not much!" But if you will consider the meaning of the word attitude....frame of mind, outlook, point of view, perspective,etc....it may help you to see another answer.

While the current recession is severe, we have recovered in the past and moved on to periods of prosperity! World economies are always in flux, and yet world trade continues to improve. The Democrats and Republicans have worked for good in a bipartisan way in the past. Wars end, usually without a clear winner, because there are none! The Mideast conflict will end when new, young regional leaders assume leadership. Climate change will only begin to be resolved when citizens of the world take a stand for their own survival!

So...what am I grateful for Now?  I'm grateful that I live in a country that has faced greater challenges in the past (World War II, Communism, The Great Depression), and triumphed over all of them! I'm thankful that I'm a citizen of the United States. Our politics are often messy and corrupt, but I hold the "trump card"....I can vote!  And, unlike a lot of places on this planet, I can damn well say what I want.  It's call the First Amendment!  

Public pressure has curtailed wars in the past, and that type of citizen action can prevail again!   I'm proud to be a "card-carrying" Progressive/Liberal who definitely prefers Peace over war.  (I'm a lover not a fighter!)  I'm hopeful that "new" national and world leaders will listen to our demands, and act to end wars! When even the dullest of men understand that their survival is threatened by climate change, they will wake up and take action!

Therefore, depending on your point of view....which is hopefully positive....you and I have a great deal to be thankful for as 2010 moves along. The best way I know to insure that the "good" continues, is to take a "moment of thanks" and verbally express gratitude every day for all the wonderful things you and I experience in our lives!

AT THE BEACH...AND MOVING INLAND (February 4, 2000)

Seated atop a wind-worn cliff, on a flat sandstone rock...much like the sea birds perched nearby...I faced into a cool, westerly wind, surveying the green ocean and the cerulean sky before me.  Mid afternoon on a cool February day, the sun shown brightly  above me.  The darkened lens of my sunglasses intensified the contrast of sea and sky, and brought into sharp relief the whole of the scene.  


The wind was kicking up the waves, and a flowing swell pushed the tidal surge forward as water, wind and beach exploded in a cacophonous symphony of sounds, smells and sights.  Lime-green water churned beneath a mantel of white foam and bubbles suspended atop the curling waves.  
Wave after wave surged up the sandy beach incline gathering strength as they joined together to extend their reach up amongst  the seaweed entwined rocks.  At its highest upward extent, each wave slowed and weakened and stopped suspended, before falling back into the next series of surging waves.   


Seagulls glided along the length of the beach suspended by the invisible current of the wind.  Occasionally, they would suddenly veer toward the ocean...dropping like rocks...and dive into the waters chasing  fish.  Brown pelicans...in pairs and groups...majestically skimmed over the tops of waves, peering down into the sea, ready to grab an unlucky fish swimming too near to the surface.  


The sound of wave and wind against the beach was unceasing, only pausing for a moment or two as the Universe took a breath, and then continued its song...its unending chant...in praise to the wonder of Nature.  That chorus still reverberates in my ears, and the sounds are still with me in memory... that  Beach I viewed on that February day in the year 2000!

We left the Beach and moved inland, away from the California coast.  We left the sounds of the waves, the scent of salt-sprayed rocks, and the sight of sea birds outlined against the horizon, and moved away from that shore of blue-green breakers beating upon the coastline, and approached the hills and mountains, and felt the increasing heat as we escaped the coolness of the sea. 

We moved inland and upward among the coastal mountains and valleys, East of the towns and cities that clung to the land overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  We climbed up into those wheat-colored meadows, dotted here and there with evergreen live oak trees that sprung from the Earth like giant bushes, and as we climbed the scent of the land took us over.  The salty aroma of the ocean was replaced by the pungent odor of topsoil, decayed leaves, animal remains, and grass.  The Pacific Ocean could still be seen off in the distance, looking like a giant pond of mercury shimmering on the horizon.


Further to the East, we were enveloped by the approaching darkness of an ending day.  Bright stars and a rising moon helped to guide our way along winding roads which plunged into valleys and ascended hills...and eventually came up on the open range, laid out in a tapestry of browns and dark forest greens.  We stopped and we stayed in the area...and eventually called it home.


My memories of California will always include this panoramic vision of ocean, coastal hills, and a warm sun shinning down from a blue sky.

WRITINGS AT CIBBETS FLAT IN THE EAST COUNTY (San Diego) 4-1-2000

Out on a car trip in the East county mountains of San Diego.   I turned off of Interstate 8 East at Buckman Springs, and then took a left onto Old Highway 8.  Drove a few miles, and then took a left at Cameron and drove North up to Kitchen Creek Road.  A few miles up the dirt road is Cibbets Flat...a very nice and quiet camp grounds.


After parking my car, I walked up the trail to the right which lead to a beautiful stream running amid large boulders and live oak trees.  I sat down in the shade and began to write in my Journal.  It was a warm weekday afternoon with no campers in the area.  The only sounds were wind slipping through the trees, water splashing over the stream- bed rocks, and a couple of Jays rustling in the bushes.


The Earth and nearby oak trees gave off a strong woodland fragrance on this late Spring day.  The pungent smell of sage was all around.  A distant scent of pine came down from the surrounding higher elevations.  Off in a nest of boulders one could just make out the odor of a small animal's remains.  Death and life intermingled amongst all this beauty.  Nature's on- going cycle of birth, life, and death.  Every Spring brings a new beginning of sprouting, blooming, growth, maturity, and finally decay.  And, then the miracle starts again!


Back in my car, and I'm driving North on a narrow road which winds up to Mt. Laguna.
This is High Country among the pine trees at about 4500 feet in altitude.  Down from the summit a mile or so is the "lookout" spot that provides you with a panoramic view of the Borrego Desert below.  Serene and warm this afternoon, with an occasional breeze lifting up from the tan and brown desert floor.  Here I sit on a rock just trying to fully comprehend the wonder of Nature.  It's almost too overwhelming in its grandeur.  Makes one feel somewhat insignificant in the grand scheme of the Universe.  God has done some good work! 


Looking back on my life in San Diego, I knew even then that the only way I could "renew" my spirit was to get out in Nature.  It was the "cosmic tonic" that kept me going all those years.  

TORREY PINES BEACH WALK (Oct 4, 1999)

I'm doing my walk from Del Mar and South to Torrey Pines park and back.  Low tide, slight breeze out the Northwest, and mostly blue skies with a slight haze off on the horizon.


Ocean sounds fill my ears with a continuous song of waves and sand colliding with one another.  The undercurrent of wind, waves and seagull sounds drone on, accented by the slap of a large wave as it hits the shore.    


Long-billed seabirds move quickly from me as I approach.  They are busy "harvesting" sand crabs by thrusting their beaks into the wet sand, spearing and then inhaling them, along with any other unlucky species.  There's a beautiful symmetry to the flock as they move in unison laterally along the shoreline, chased by the rise and fall of the waves.  Running on spindly legs, they just miss being swallowed up by the blue-green tide. 


The curling waves looking like rolling masses of silver mercury, catch the sunlight as they flip over toward the shore, then smooth out into white bubbly lines of water.  The ebb and flow... never ceasing... draws away from the shoreline again and glides out to the sea.


It is late afternoon, and as I walk back North toward Del Mar, a descending sun warms the left side of my face and body.  I quicken my stride and pace not wanting to be burned by the last rays of Indian Summer before getting back to my car.  The sound of my shoes crunching in hard-packed sand, is all of hear as I move forward in nature's peace.

WRITINGS AT LAKE MORENA, CA (Sept 9, 1999)

The wind speaks through the live oak trees...humming and whistling among the limbs and branches, rubbing the stiff green oak petals against one another...and that is the only sound you can hear among these trees.
The sound of the wind reaches my ear from a distant point, adding to this ever changing chorus of mixed "voices" spoken, shouted, and sometimes whispered by Mother Nature.


Seated under an especially majestic live oak tree, with its trunk pushing up out of the Earth, it appears like a petrified concrete appendage of some underground being.  It's impressive as it supports the limbs and branches above it.  They reach skyward spreading their many arms and fingers  ending in dark green leafed pedals, stiff and partially curled inward, like the fingernails of the being below.


As if to make certain this being below can't burst up through the Earth, large slabs of granite have been laid down among these trees.  Grey, moss-spackled mounds of rock appear to literally grow out of the surrounding hot, brown dirt. Embedded in their granite skins are thousands of fine sparkling flecks of quartz, which flash like so many points of light.


Through the branches before me, I see  the blue shimmering lake laying off to the North...and the dark distant shoreline.  From somewhere out of my view, small lake fowl call to one another, announcing  where their part of the water begins and ends.  The sound of a fish, momentarily escaping its watery home, echoes across the surface of the lake.  As it reenters the waters, it sends out small rings of waves which silently sweep out and toward the shoreline.


Lying flat upon these warm partially shaded boulders, I can feel the Earth's energy field below, throbbing and pulsing its healing rays of Love.  I am at Peace!