Chewed Up Gourds

The little gourds that decorated my front step have frozen, and somebody is eating them. Or trying to eat them. I find them scattered five feet away from the places i put them, so i suppose a squirrel is trying to carry them off. But are they worth it? Is there any nourishment in a gourd? From the amount of crumbs lying around, it looks like they're not interested in the meat of the gourd.

What do we chew on that provides us no nourishment? Old wrongs? Old grudges? Resentments?

As Pema Chodron says, "Anger is like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die."

Grudges and resentments are useless. Really useless. All that (mental) energy to what end?

Take a lesson from the squirrels and forget those grudges. Forget those gourds.

I'm throwing the chewed up gourds into the compost.

The Finger of Death

Just in time for Halloween, orange fingers of the stinkhorn fungus are poking out of the ground as if some rotten body is trying to escape its grave.

Since we ourselves know that we are walking toward our own graves, where do we find escape?

Some religions have beautiful stories about spending eternity with your loved ones. Or perhaps we might imagine sitting on a cloud, playing a harp, and strumming "for ten thousand years," as the beautiful song Amazing Grace suggests.

Those of us with a more materialistic view may lift an eyebrow when we hear these happy-ever-after "stories".

Pema Chodron has a book entitled The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness. If we recognize that we have no escape from the ups and downs of life, and no escape from the grave, then our only recourse is the Golden Rule: Being as kind to others as we want them to be to us.

The orange finger fungus poking out of the ground points upward.

Relax into the space that is all around you.