not native fruit

christmas revisited

This is a Christmas photo of my dear friend who is 87 and has received a dire prognosis in recent weeks.  Such a pure, clear spirit!  It will be so hard for all of us to lose her.   I'm sure she'll always live in our hearts, but there will be a major space for us in the consensual reality-world without her.

We've had such a sweet christmas this year.  no hoopla, no fanfare.  we've just allowed the spirit of the season to seep into our vessels and suffuse us with warmth, love, and paradoxically a sort of cool clear vision that is peculiar to the winter solstice season imo.  A lovely paradox, that. 

With friends who live around the corner, I went to a lovely candle-light service at our local Episcopal church on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas Day Gary and I joined this same couple, along with our friends' mother/in-law, for a quiet Christmas dinner around an old wooden table - again, candle-lit, with a bare-branch tree and paper-decorations, delicious gourmet food and gluten-free desserts.  We also had the company of their dog, and if you've seen 'Dogs Decoded' you'll know why that is important!

Anyway, what a great holiday it turned out to be!  So quiet, so unostentatious, so sensitive and deep and thoughtful. 

My own family's lineages would have been pleased by its style.

When I was younger I labored long and hard to re-create the Christmases of my youth, fondly-remembered.  I was never quite successful at it, and that is most likely at least partly because their magic was so hyper-fueled by hormones, hopes and expectations.  Great Expectations.  Well, things have not turned out as I planned, but they've taken some amazingly wonderful and unexpected turns to bring us to this place and this moment in time.

happy holidays!

 
 

 
Me, with our friend Leo, waiting for the shuttle bus and trying to keep warm on our way to one of Amma's programs in San Ramon in November.  One of the things I like about Amma's programs is that there's always a certain element of 'roughing it' - it's never an experience of pure comfort and luxury!  The November visit this year was exceptionally cold, so if it were to be put to a vote, I would vote to hold the November retreat and Devi Bhava in a hotel - thus eliminating the 'roughing it' element perhaps, but we would still have that during her summer visits.

In this photo, I can most definitely see how I'm aging.  It's okay, it's a natural part of life.  I don't take any hormone replacement because I am sensitive to estrogen - so it would not be a good idea.  I'm feeling healthy and that's the main thing, right?  Isn't our friend Leo a positive soul?  He is visiting from Mexico, and was great fun to host in our home.

mother nature in berkeley

 

vedanta

I haven't been on the website for the past month because we've been really busy. We had a wonderful friend staying with us from two weeks from San Miguel d'Allende in Mexico.  He lived up here in the Bay Area for about twenty years but decided to go home a few years ago.  Home happens to be a very beautiful, magical place, and we're glad for him, and also glad that he can come here to visit from time to time.  He plays guitar beautifully and gave me a lovely recording on CD that someone spontaneously did during a cafe gig in San Miguel, so while the recording is not perfect, it is indeed very spontaneous like everything else about Leo.

We also had a visit from our spiritual Beacon, Amma, which was enchanting and intense at the same time.  After her visit, I recalled that a number of years ago Amma told me that if I wanted to study something I should study Vedanta.  At the time I felt a lot of resistance to that suggestion and persuaded myself that I didn't really want to study anything.  (My original question to her had had to do with going for a Ph.D., mostly because I didn't know what else to do with myself, frankly.)  Well, long story short, I've managed to enroll myself in a Vedanta class, and getting back to the study - yes, I've 'studied' before, but in a desultory sort of way - so I'm making the real effort now.  The only trouble with the study of Vedanta is that it makes me feel so peaceful and content that I have little motivation to contribute to the blog.

In other news, a number of close friends of mine are seriously ill.  One elderly friend was diagnosed two weeks before Thanksgiving with end-stage metastasized bone cancer.  They're still trying to find the source, which will determine treatment and prognosis. She is just as 'live' and chipper as ever - this woman is a phenomenon!  And much loved by many, a sort of 'spiritual teacher' in her own right.  So, I've been involved in trying to make her life more comfortable, procuring a wheelchair and walker, (although these have since been replaced by her health-plan), and making arrangements to get help for her with shopping, meal prep, driving, etcetera. 

I think I mentioned that my friend in Idaho is on hospice, although she seems to be in what they call 'a plateau,' which means nothing seems to be progressing at the present time.  She enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday, which makes me feel happy, and I'm hoping she'll have a good Christmas too. 

Then on Monday night of this week, another friend phoned to tell me the doctors think she has breast cancer, and so she is going to be undergoing further tests.  At the very least she has been also diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease, so one way or another she is not well.  You'd never know it to look at her, she's a little beauty and has a delightful personality.  Another one everyone loves. 

Another friend and co-worker of mine has been going through the end-stage with her father who died on Thanksgiving.  He had a brain injury and the treatment did not work to restore him, so they had a very intense month which ended with his death.  I substituted with her client for that month, so I was very busy with so much extra work. 

Then there are my various clients, two of whom are also in straits at the moment.  So, all in all, it's been a very busy time with many needs to be met.