Mindfulness: 100 Days (80)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 80:

Twenty more days to go! I managed two squares today. Granny squares take longer than hearts and flowers. I saw more horned larks up at at High Point today.

This is Play Week at school, so often students are called out to practice during class time. Today, I was left with one student for about an hour. What a great opportunity to just listen to what is important to this about-to-graduate brilliant human. I am going to miss this class.

I am taking an online mindfulness course these days, with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. That, and the mindfulness practices in the wellness app I get through my health insurance, are helping me to inhabit time more thoughtfully and mindfully. The last couple sessions have been like Rumi’s “Guesthouse,” looking at emotions as they arise, naming them, bowing to them as guests, and being present with them.

I think of myself as a fairly grounded and mindful person, pretty self-regulated in general, and still, I have so much to learn about living in the moment; perhaps my sense that I am already comfortably mindful means that I have lots of learning ahead. Interestingly, Rob Brezsny’s post this week was about not getting dogmatic about the mindfulness of the moment, but doing that work in the context of recognizing one’s history of pain and trauma. Both. And. I love when synchronicity brings me messages about the thing I am working on at the moment.

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Love: 100 Days (79)

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Day 79:

More granny squares and a walk up High Point. Great Horned Owl is calling in the woods as I type.

I’ve been saying the rosary most mornings since the summer of ‘22. I created my own versions of the prayers, but I like the structure which, according to Perdita Finn and Clark Strand, likely goes back to prayer and devotional traditions of goddess worship in Europe before the Christians arrived.

Here is my Prayer to Love. While definitely not a fan of old King James I/IV, I am a fan of the Elizabethan turn of phrase:
Oh Love which imbues this garden of a cosmos,
Holy is thy Holy name.
May thy cloak of kinship fall upon us,
May thy reign of compassion rain down on us,
May thy bright bird of heaven sing in our souls,
May thy will be done among us here on the earth as it is in the heavens and within the
sacred wheels of life and beauty.

Give us this day our daily bread and roses, insight and intuition,
imagination, integration, adventure, and peregrination,
magic, marvel, miracle, memory, medicine, and mystery.

Draw us ever in the sacred spiral of the dance,
into the radiant circle of thy loving arms,
and protect us from those who would seek or wish or will or do us harm.

Keep us from walking in paths of destruction,
and set our feet upon the road to transformation,
and deliver us ever from evil,
for thine is the wisdom, the vision, and the virtue,
the promise, the protection, the presence, and the peace,
the hope of healing and justice and restoration,
the glory and the story and the song,
both now and forever.

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Tired: 100 Days (78)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 78: 

Hearts and flowers today and part of a granny square. The bins are where we collect them at church—hundreds of hearts and flowers contributed by people of many generations. We’ve filled one bin and are on to a second.

I pondered trying to write a version of Julia Ward Howe’s “Arise then Women of this Day!” about releasing the Epstein files and destroying the patriarchy, but I am tired. I don’t need to write it. Let’s just do it.

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Tending the Web: 100 days (77)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 77: 

Five more squares today.
Tending to the web.
Visiting the waters.

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Water: 100 Days (76)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 76: 

Yesterday was brimful, and while I did get some squares done, I did not post. One thing that I have done over the years when I learn of the pain of someone I love, is to make everything a prayer, a meditation, a strand that sends my heart to them. So yesterday’s squares were about sending healing and comfort to one of my beloveds who is in the first stages of an enormous grief.

This web that we make between us, in joyful times and in grieving times, in the horror of the present days, and the magic of the moment–this web is what we have.  In some ways, every stitch, every shuttle, every round, all the handwork we do, is emblematic of that web we build between us.

I’m so grateful for so many beloveds on my web.

These are the first five of my last batch of 25 for the granny square cardigan, watched over by Mary of the Streets, and a stone from the Ganges River resting in Susquehanna River water. The same water flows through all of us.


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Opening: 100 Days (75)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 75: 

The other day, I was driving, just letting my mind flow, and I found myself saying out loud, “Because I love, I will not quieten my heart. I will expand it. I will send out ribbons of joy, of shine, of daring to whoever will join this dance.”

Open, open, open. I got into an internet shouting match the other day with the friend of a friend. I haven’t done that for a long time; I’ve been doing better at not letting myself get triggered, but slurs and misogyny get me hissing and clawing, especially lately. I have no more patience for men throwing their weight around. And sometimes there is a place for clear confrontation. And also, I want to send out those strands of love. Both/and.

Here is a little square I made today before I met a friend at a coffee shop. I had a chai—I hope I can sleep tonight.
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More to Do: 100 Days (74)

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Day 74:

I thought I’d counted everything up very carefully, and that I had more squares than I needed for the cardigan. It looks like I still need 20 or so more. Oh well, I love crocheting granny squares, so no complaints. I’m impatient to finish this project, but I just said a few days ago that I need to learn patience, so here it is. Sachs is happy with my progress.



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Skylark: 100 Days (73)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 73:

To a Skylark
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
(stanzas 1-2 of 21)

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

This evening I walked to the top of High Point, where I met a twittering horned lark. We regarded each other for a bit, and then it took off and climbed the sky, higher and higher. And then it sang. Just like the lark in the fields outside Bolanderhof so many years ago.

You might want to go read all of Shelley’s poem. You might want to walk up High Point just before dusk and watch for larks, smelling the green of the meadows, and greeting a carpenter bee buzzing around your car like a tiny flying puppy. There is joy to be found.

I steamed two more stacks of squares today. One more stack to go tomorrow, and them I’ll lay them out to see if I am ready to construct the sweater.

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Blocking: 100 Days (72)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 72: 

Focusing on completing these projects has definitely matured me as a crocheter and knitter. I have a new willingness to unravel something I’m not satisfied with, as I did with the Covid sweater. I have discovered that I need to keep re-making and prototyping pieces until I am satisfied, as I did with the eyes. And, impatient as I am for final results, I am blocking my squares.

I seriously resist buying stuff for blocking however (my house needs less stuff, not more), so I looked up some ideas online, and found this plan for using knitting needles stuck through cardboard to make a blocking frame. I have plenty of knitting needles for the project, and I found this lovely little box in the garage that stabilizes the base really nicely. Jon was saving the box, as you do, because it’s a REALLY nice box, but he was gracious about letting me have it.

You can see the difference in the blocked (left) and unblocked (right) squares, so I suppose I am a convert, especially since it’s so easy to make my own little blocking rack, and I can steam them in batches of 15 or so. Patience, Beth, patience.

I’m ready to take your suggestions, crocheter friends, for what method you prefer for putting the squares together. I am inclined to crochet rather than whip stitch them, and I don’t think I want to do anything too fancy. I guess I’ll research that while my blocked squares are drying.

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Seeds: 100 Days (71)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 71: 

Five eyes today. I don’t need a lot for the sweater, so this may be it. Now I have to decide how I am going to put it together, and commit to that plan this time.

I love the swelling buds on the sage plant, and that empty seed pods (is that the right word?) of the winter aconite. 

Life is a beautiful cycle. Seed and bud and harvest. A new baby born and growing, and the celebration of the life of a wise and treasured elder who died at 100 years. Life can be hard and holy at the same time, joyful and treacherous, anxious and abundant. May wonder and delight, beauty and awe, pleasure and possibility, bring balance to your days.

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