Vaccine Cold

It’s vaccine cold outdoors. Single digits. 

A local hospital's refrigerator was 9 degrees instead of the recommended 2-8*. Would they have to throw the 860 doses of vaccine away? 

Feel your heart cringe as you read that sentence. Oh no! They have to throw it away? That’s 860 people.

Feel your resistance to what is. Notice that suffering or discontent co-arises with resistance. Acceptance = Peace.

Feel the resistance to the intense cold outdoors.

Rest.

Moderna said the hospital could use the 860 doses after all.

* This turns out to be Celsius, not Fahrenheit as i originally thought.

Floating Hope

This morning, i looked out the kitchen window and saw the word HOPE floating in the trees on the other side of the lawn.

Usually, hope is a desire for something different--wanting this moment to be different or wanting an outcome to be different. The Buddhist path cultivates the equanimity of accepting this moment just as it is. We may not like it. We may not like the news, for instance, but accepting what is, as it is, is clear-eyed seeing.

The Buddha teaches us about the path. Desire, wanting, craving are the sources of the problem. When we stop wanting, when we stop resisting this moment, as unpleasant as it may be, our minds and hearts come to rest.

Then we proceed with our heart leading the way.

Sweet Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I came home to a pile of cherry tomatoes, and, yesterday, i finally got around to drying them. I particularly like grape tomatoes for their meatiness. They are okay in salads, though i prefer the sweetness of sungolds. But the grape tomatoes make very flavorful sun-dried tomatoes.

Some of us are sweet when young; some of us learn to be even sweeter when we are old and wrinkled and dried out.

Sweetness happens when we stop resisting the flow of Life.

Broken Sunflowers

Someone has been rummaging around in my sunflower patch, resulting in several broken stems.The breaks in the stems seem high for deer. Do squirrels run up to the stalks and.... Do what? The flowers are just now blooming; they haven't gone to seed.

I'm cutting the broken stems and now have several lovely sunflower bouquets sitting in the kitchen.

Sometimes, even though we are growing lovely qualities of thoughtfulness, generosity, and kindness, we are met with resistance, hurt, irritation, even anger.

It's hard not to "catch" the other person's frustration or blame. Our challenge is to have an appropriate response--of kindness, despite feeling at odds. Responding with kindness alongside the broken beauty that we had intended.

After the hurt, we can still gather a bouquet and offer it--to ourselves, to the other person, or any other person, in generosity.

Multi-use Herb Garden

Running over the chocolate mint.

Every November, my sweetie and i disagree about my herb garden. Since it's at the back door, he wants to back up the truck full of firewood right to the back door. "But it's a garden," i plead to no avail. In truth, it's a multi-use area. For 5 days in November, my herb garden is a driveway for our truck.

Can you see how i get myself into this feeling of ill-will?

1) i resist what is happening: a truck with firewood.
2) i believe the word "herb garden." In true truth, it's an ever-changing patch of dirt. As soon as i give it a label, i create a concept, which i can then believe. The world becomes dualistic--this? or that? If it's an herb garden, then it can't or shouldn't be a driveway. But, in fact, both are happening.

Our woodshed is filled to the brim with firewood for the winter. The chocolate mint, the onions, the thyme have survived.

The kale stays out of the way of those tires.

Rats!

Rats have arrived in my neck of the woods. My neighbor, who has chickens, saw a rat yesterday in her chicken coop, followed quickly by a mink who chased the rat across the lawn, caught it by the neck, and took it home to the baby minks for breakfast.

Living in the woods, i expect a certain seclusion--no traffic goes past my house--and i enjoy the wildlife. Now i expand my definition of wildlife to include rats.

This new "neighbor" with its unsavory reputation has moved in. If i resist and cry "Not in my back yard!" my mind suffers the conflict of I-don't-want with but-I-have. What we resist, persists.

After all, i'm also neighbor to a mink.

Resistance: Another Name for Stress

A friend said she bought an amaryllis bulb for Christmas. Its leaves grew, but no flower appeared. So she threw it out.

I cringe when i hear a story like that. I offer her some covert advice. "Last year, my amaryllis all bloomed in March and early April." In other words, Don't give up on the non-blooming amaryllis.

But she has already given up; she's already thrown it away. If the amaryllis doesn't bloom at Christmas, like it's "supposed to," then what's the use of keeping it?

A lot of us don't bloom like we're "supposed to." One friend is still single at 38; her 14-year-old niece has had a boyfriend for longer than the 38-year-old has ever had a boyfriend. We can fight against reality. (And then we lose. But only 100% of the time.) We can want something we don't have.

Fighting against reality is called stress. Or some people call it "control" (another disguise of stress).

My friend was solving her stress (of no blooms) by getting rid of the offender.
I was trying to solve my stress (But, but, but....... Things could be different.) by offering advice.

Stress has a million difference disguises, but we can trace them all back to resisting the present moment.  Resistance: another name for stress.

It's Raining!

It's raining! Finally!

We had only a sprinkle or two of April showers, so the May flowers have been beautiful, but dry.

I much prefer that the sky waters the garden than that i drag a hose around in one hand when i have a trowel in the other.

All during April, the class i was teaching on Embracing Change had the assignment of noticing raindrops. But no rain. The class ended Tuesday night, and then it began to rain.

May is a beautiful month to "embrace change." A new flower blooms every day. An old flower dies every day. Yet the change is exhilarating. How can that be?

Today, notice openness to change and resistance to change. How does openness/resistance show up in your life?

Photo from dedidesign.wordpress.com

Christmas Wreath

While i was away from home yesterday, my sweetie took the Christmas wreath off the front door. He very kindly picked off the pine cones and shiny pink balls so that i can re-use them again in December. When i arrived home, the bare wreath was in the compost pile.

I know your eyebrows are raised or you're shaking your head. Well, duh.

But you'd be surprised how long we keep old, unskillful habits of mind (or just plain clutter around the house) with the rationale That's just who i am.

Peek under the corner of such a thought to find resistance to change. We like our particular brand of stress, maybe because it's so familiar--anxiety, complaining, irritation, unfairness, desire for beauty.

So keep your particular brand, even though it's outdated. Just watch the mind go around and around.
Then, one day, when you've had enough, it will just disappear.

Welcome Spring

It didn't freeze last night.

• Sugaring season is finally over.
• And mud season has very nearly dried up.
• The small patches of snow on north-facing slopes will melt today.

Dare i say it? Spring is here!



Change is happening fast, and we welcome every single one. A load of manu-mix mulch was delivered Friday. The gardener begins working today. I've started transplanting herbs out of their holding bed and back into the new garden that  was a construction site last spring.

Welcome Change!

How often do we dig in our heels and resist change? Relationships, job, friends, community, deaths of loved one.

The cold is dying. Welcome Spring.