Cold Last Night

Last night, the temperature here dropped to 21 degrees, so yesterday afternoon, i brought many of my potted tulips indoors. Now, i'm waiting for them to bloom in another week or two.

My sweetie and i are also waiting to see if the virus "blooms" in us. We flew home a week ago. Yes? Or no? The answer is "Don't know."

Consider how many thousands of things we don't know.
What am i eating for lunch? Don't know.
When will i take a nap? Don't know.
Where will i take a walk today? Don't know.

Those little don't-knows don't bother my mind. But then the mind latches on to one don't-know and keeps touching it like worry beads.

I open to not knowing.

Can you say that and feel it?

I am not willing to open to not knowing, because....

List whatever comes to mind. No judgment. Just listen to your list.

Infinite Not Knowing.

How does that feel?

Even the tulips do not know when they will bloom.

Draininge Ditch

It's been a rainy spring and summer, and already it's a rainy fall. Rainwater has drained into my garage and puddled in the basement. My sweetie has been waiting, waiting, for the road maintenance guys to put a crown on our private dirt road, a crown on our dirt driveway, and to do something about the drainage. When he flew to Portland, Oregon to meet me after my retreat, one of the first things he talked about was his exasperation with the process. "There's a great big ditch between your gardens. I can't possibly drive the truck over it. Call them and tell them to do something about it. They took away your beautiful garden soil. Now what are they going to do?!!"

Since the father of the road guys carved my driveway out of the woods 38 years ago, and his then-teenage boys were his crew, i have the utmost confidence in their artistry with a backhoe. Bill was the one who was bothered. "You call them," i said. "I can't quite picture it being as bad as you say."

When we returned home from our vacation, we found the ditch filled with crushed rock--all the better to drain the driveway. Hooray!

Worry is believing that something bad is going to happen in the future. Curiosity waits and wonders, "I wonder what's going to happen."

This ditch full of rocks is a better solution than i could have imagined.

Peter Rabbit in the Lettuce Patch

The retreat center has a large organic garden, thanks to the housekeeper Dawn, who is making sure that retreatants have probiotic kim chi and pickles, fresh lettuce salads, and, soon, fresh tomatoes from 100 heirloom tomato plants.

I saw Peter Rabbit in the lettuce patch yesterday. In a place like this, which deeply practices "doing no harm to any sentient being," the next challenge may be putting in a fence. The current fence is beautiful, hand-made from branches of pine and birch trees.

When we begin our meditation practice, we may take the 5 precepts sort of half-heartedly.

I intend to 

• do no harm to anyone
• take nothing that is not freely giving
• speak truthfully and helpfully
• use my sensual energy wisely, and
• keep my mind clear.

 We might interpret the precepts loosely, and, of course, we cheat a little, here and there. We keep the big no-nos out, but there are those cute little rascals--a little gossip, a third glass of wine, flirting with someone else's partner. Those things are fun. And they do bother our mind.

Eventually, we renounce those rascally behaviors, and keep the rabbits out of the lettuce patch with stronger determination.

A Flock of Ladybugs

Ladybugs are flocking in the air this warm autumn day. One alights on my body every minute or two, stays a few seconds, and then takes off again. Open the door to go outdoors and a ladybug or two fly into the house.

Ladybugs are beneficial insects because they eat aphids and scale, which seem to show up on my houseplants about mid-winter.

What if we developed our own beneficial qualities? Which ones would you choose? My top 3 are patience, kindness, and skillful speech.  Generosity, compassion, voluntary simplicity, calmness, tolerance, gratitude, joy are other possibilities.

Let's develop a beneficial quality and watch it "eat up" frustration, annoyance, bother, anticipation, or desire--whatever the "pest" in your mind might be.

Today, the air is thick with ladybugs.

Amaryllis Blooms

I received a distress call/email in late January from Stella who said her amaryllis were not blooming. What should she do?

Even though we give and receive amaryllis at Christmas, and often those bulbs bloom shortly thereafter, i find that the amaryllis that i keep from year to year bloom in late March and in April. Right now i have 4 amaryllis in bloom or bud.

Stella thinks her house wasn't warm enough; she gave the amaryllis to her mother, and it bloomed immediately. My passive-solar house has been baking every sunny day for more than a month, and the amaryllis are coming on like gangbusters now.

Life--and amaryllis--don't unfold as we think it should. We want it one way (a blooming amaryllis, for instance), but something else is happening (nothing, for instance). These aggravations, bothers, and harrumphs are called stress.

We can pile a lot of additional stress by creating a story about what a bad gardener i am or what a bad plant amaryllis is. Stop.

Look at your amaryllis bulb. The one with the strappy green leaves. Non-judgementally. Not wishing for anything different than what is.

Look at the aggravating person in your life right now. No story. Let your heart simply look at that person for one second. The story will quickly return. Notice where, somewhere in your body, something tenses up. Is the stress worth it?

Feel your own heart. Tenderly. And take good care of it. Your heart will bloom too.