Month: May 2021

The past few weeks at Full Moon Cottage have seemed markedly different from those of the past year, primarily in the flow and direction of energy.

Like most humans, we were part of a rather tight clustered community in 2020: staying home, sharing online, guarding our health, and focused on making it through one day and then the next. Now, the circle has broken wide and beloveds are radiating out into the world, reuniting with lives and loves from whom they’d been too-long sequestered. Participating in activities outside of their home. Traveling. Meeting. Moving among strangers in faraway places.

A friend is flying to Greece in a few days to meet and hold her new granddaughter. They’ve had weekly online “visits” for over a year, but her excitement to physically connect with her darling granddaughter and children after all these long months of waiting is understandably palpable. I think I’m almost as excited as she is: I can’t wait to hear her updates, and can only imagine the overflow of joy rocketing through our world when all such meetings are realized. There is no substitute for embracing those we love.

Three friends have made arrangements to visit with us this summer as well; how wonderful to know the old well-worn paths have not grown over in these times of long absence, and how surprisingly merry my heart feels anticipating the arrivals of our guests. I think some part of me doubted these visits would happen so soon and safely. Plagues and pandemics have not historically been so swiftly contained. I am deeply grateful for every person’s gifts that contributed to the vaccines’ development and availability, and continue to hope everyone on the planet will have access to them as well. We have to accomplish this justly; we have to love better.

Other beloveds’ stories have also deviated from the main theme of Covid-19 confinement these past weeks, but in sadder ways. My dear cousin endured the death of her husband and has only just begun the huge transformation of traveling through grief and the possible healing that such a parting invites. Their marriage of 48 years certainly speaks to a profound entwining of lives…Oh, the ache of such a loss.

Another precious friend, an extraordinarily talented composer, is adjusting to the cruelty of ALS and the determined devastation it’s wreaking on his body, but his spirit remains incandescent. It’s as though, as his physical abilities are diminishing, his always-stunning light and great heart are shining more brightly and fiercely than any disease could ever dim. All the gifts he has given to so many lives, all the ways he has blessed the world–that holy energy has regathered and multiplied, immense in its power to remind us of truths we’d forgotten, and to teach us new lessons that are deepening and changing us as much and more than the unrealized compositions we’ll never hear. In a way, this final composition is the rarest and most beautiful gift he could offer and we could receive: his love distilled, concentrated and offered freely, a music he has chosen to compose during this time, his active response to this crucial (crucial: cross-shaped; at a crossroads) moment in his life: Creating a music that sings in his choices to live through his dying. A song we can hear, and see, and feel: Take and eat music. There is only Love music. Always with you music. In our sorrow, he lifts us, astonished. Can you tell I love him? Many do, because his life’s work has been to show us how we’re lovable and how that Love grows when we feed it to the world. As he always has and is doing. I ask you to hold him and his family in your hearts and in how you pray.

And here at Full Moon? Writing, gardening, hiking, playing, routine body tune-up’s with doctors and dentists we’d not seen in a year and a half, going on adventures together…cautiously edging out and away from the shore of home.

We’ve had a time of it with the gardens: weeding, mulching, transplanting and filling holes and re-mulching…covering for frost and watering during drought. This week, we received some glorious rain. The river is still very low, but the gardens are refreshed. We both love our time with our green and growing beloveds…one day, I expect we’ll grow roots and leaves of our own. Go out to the gardens and stay forever. I’ll be the plant holding a pen and notebook.

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Blooms have begun erupting a few weeks ahead of old schedules. The houseplants traveled out for a week, but tonight’s frost warnings have led us to bring them in again…I think they’re a bit disappointed. I’d told them they were on vacation in Bimini, and now, I imagine, they’re wise to me. But they’re safe and cozy, and can return to the deck next week.

Yesterday, the windows closed and the heat was turned on again: life in the time of climate change. So a few days’ break from the gardens means time to get going on the kitchen and dining room painting, now that the living room is (finally) finished. We ordered a new sofa and were told it “might” arrive in seven months. We’ll probably forget all about it and then have a lovely surprise just when we need one. Becoming a bit forgetful as we age has benefits.

Our 4-leggeds are sweet and well, and we are blessed, and know it. With Phillip, it’s always the best of times.

Life sails on. And–if we choose–we take what we learn and allow it to radiate outward, wheels of light spinning Love, feeding the world.

Sail on, dear ones, in gentle peace.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Late in August, after the poppy petals have faded and dropped,
and the stalks have dried, I cut them, timed just before their
tiny round ground-pepper seeds spill upon the fertile earth.
I am the poppies’ servant, gently upturning their slender stems
and rattling pods into small brown paper bags, biding quietly
through all the dark winter for the gradual break of brittle husks,
the hushed eased release of ten thousand miracles, handfuls
of treasure to scatter on pale February’s diminishing mounds
of dispirited snow. The seeds stay or drift, eventually coming
to rooted rest, and it’s not I, the earnest gardener, who will say
which will bloom or where; this is the secret magic of poppies.

I tend and plant my gardens just so: tall in the back and
short in the front, all seasons’ colors carefully arranged,
organized surprises, designed to delight in texture, color,
and patterns that gracefully rise and fall, suggesting elegant,
unplanned perfection. But I am only the poppies’ apprentice,
humbly and forever learning from their wisdom, the one who
witnesses and yearns to master the wiser magic of scattered
poppy seeds, erupting in random joy, fully themselves, birthing
incomparable rainbows among my detailed and reasoned rows.

Here in the United States, we celebrate Mother’s Day this Sunday and Father’s Day in June. While I am certainly grateful for my parents and for all those who parent their children with love and grace, I use these days to honor all those who faithfully nurture what they have created and are creating in the world, and to examine my own nurturing responsibilities and efforts as well.

My male friends have often taught me much about using my feminine energy with greater compassion, and my women friends have often helped me deepen my masculine energy: it’s all gift, and we’re each a unique blend of these energies, trying to integrate as fully as we can to bless the world with our magic. I am grateful for all my teachers and the opportunities to become a better parent to myself and the world.

Some of the questions I consider on these days include: How am I doing with self-care? Our actions are constant examples: do I actually demonstrate the self-care I preach (and preach, and preach)? How well am I tending my gifts and using them for the good of others? How faithfully am I nourishing my relationships with my loved ones and reaching out to strangers?

Do each of our 4-leggeds feel loved and safe? Are we embracing their unique spirits and feeding them as attentively as we do our own spirits?

And, oh, the land and gardens of Full Moon Cottage and all the visitors passing through…how faithfully and mindfully are we parenting, befriending, and assisting them in this time of uneven and sudden climate shifts? Do we have enough feeders and watering stations? Do we need to transition to more native plants? Are we providing for the healthy insects as we should?

Most importantly, are Phillip and I nurturing our own relationship with creativity and love? I know unequivocally that he is the most precious being in my life while I also know I don’t always see him before me or hear what his heart is saying. Hasn’t this past year emphasized how quickly time passes and how present we must be to our blessings?

The gardens need all of our attention at this time of year. They are rising and growing ahead of the schedule we’re accustomed to, and tonight, we’re facing another frost warning, so we’ll have to cover the infants and tender-leaved plants again before nightfall.

And all of the gardens need spring weeding, edging, and mulching, an enormous, all-at-once job for a few weeks before our gardening lives settle into much more manageable routines. We have the added blessing and bane of living beside a state bike trail/park that, for years now, has not been tended as it once was, and so is overrun with invasives like garlic mustard and jewelweed, as well as Japanese beetles. We try to maintain a “line” with the invasives, but it’s ongoing and frustrating. The beetles go into traps or cups of vinegar and soap. I loathe killing anything, so it’s a dispiriting job, but necessary to protect our trees, shrubs, flowers, fruit and veggies without using chemicals that would harm anything.

How does one nurture the Earth justly and compassionately? I think it’s a fair and eternal question, but certainly, this weekend is one when I ponder it and examine my choices.

Last year, because of the extraordinary circumstances of having a poem go viral, and all the invitations that ensued, I was glued to my computer for the entire spring and into the summer, leaving Phillip to complete all of these early tasks and the subsequent watering during the long torrid drought days that now seem an annual occurrence.

This year, I want to be a better partner to my dear one and a more-present mother to the gardens, so I’ll be taking a couple weeks off from blogging and other pursuits to get the gardens prepped and squared away for their summer thriving…provided we get through tonight’s frost.

I know we’re all stepping out of lockdowns as we feel called and safe enough to do so, and into re-engagement with more varied social activities and the many invitations warmer weather sets before us. I hope when I return to blogging, you’ll have time to check in and offer a comment or two. Please be well and safe. Tend your spirits, minds, and bodies as a good parent would, and so tend the world.

Gentle Peace.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

They’ll let you down, people,
the small people acting
from pain and from sadness,
and fears they can’t name.
Broken, they break you,
and hurting, they hurt you,
and turn from the damages,
smiling, relieved.
But you, golden one, you
will rise and leave baskets
of love at their windows,
and seek what you need.
The welcoming world
is waiting to teach you
to travel the circle,
to plant and become.
So rest, deeply nourished
by all the world’s beauty
and breathe in her infinite
joy, golden one.
One day you’ll be flying
and healing the broken
with baskets of love,
you will rise; you will soar.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.