Full Moon

It’s a beautiful night. One of the greatest. It’s a full moon night.

One of the things I love most about where we live is the incredible view of the moon we have. I love the fact that, almost any day of the month, I know the phase of the moon.

Even more incredible than the view of the full moon are the extreme tides that come as a result of it being here. During low tide, when I am rowing with the crew team, the water has almost disappeared. When rowing in the sea-fed creek, my oar almost always comes up, at some point or another, covered in mud. During high tide, when I am sitting at home, water is lapping under the building where I sleep. As the bay ebbs and flows, I find a quiet place of equilibrium within my soul.

Miniature miracles are all around me, beautiful sights waiting to be enjoyed. The sky is clear. The moon is full. The water shimmers as the light reflects off of it, like a giant nightlight guiding our way and reminding us that the world is a much more peaceful, safer, beautiful place than we are often told.

Sweet dreams, everyone. God bless the moon!

Winds of Change

The fog is closing in. It’s difficult to see even a few hundred feet in front of our home. The sea lions are back, popping their heads out of the water. The pelicans are too, and the hummingbirds. The cycles of nature have returned to the way I remember them—the way they were last summer when we moved to the San Francisco Bay.

It’s funny, when we first arrived here, I thought the way things were was the way things would always be. I believed the sea lions, pelicans and hummingbirds would be constant, forgetting that like humans, animals of the earth need to get certain things done at certain times. Unlike humans (or at least this one!), however, they seem to know exactly what to do when, as if being directed by a flow of energy bigger than they.

Sometimes I envy this simplicity. I would love it if simply by the currents of the sea, the fog or direction of the breeze, I would know what to do, or where to go. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were no pondering, wondering, planning or rational thought necessary to make the decisions related to life?

My life can seem so insular compared to theirs, so tucked away from powerful, guiding life forces. Tucked here inside, sheltered from the cold breeze and fog, I often feel left to my own isolated resources to figure it all out.

But am I, really? Or is the energy of the earth guiding me, just as it is them? Maybe all I need to do is stick my head out of the water, and like the sea lions, watch, feel and listen, and move.

The Wayward Whales

I waited for them by the open window. I was sure they would pass. All the television reporters said they would. The only trouble was, as the night grew dark, I couldn’t see what was above water, let alone beneath it.

Finally, I gave into a few hours of sleep, waking up at 3 a.m. to take up, again, my watchful vigil. The wayward whales, as they called them, who found their way from the Bay to the Sacramento River were never seen again. The whole world had been tuned into their journey, helping them as best they could with antibiotics and banging pipes, trying desperately to get them to turn around and go back to their saltwater home of the sea.

Finally, it had worked. They were on their way back out to the ocean, stopping as night fell, as they often did (or so the reporters said) to play and eat, before starting up their journey back to the sea again. I like all the others tuned in hoping for a final glimpse before they went home. But, in spite of my commitment and willingness to buck sleep for the event, I wasn’t successful. Somehow, the experts predicted, the mother and baby Humpback whale slipped under the Golden Gate Bridge and went home unseen by humans.

What struck me most about the sequence of events was how deeply people cared about the fate of these two creatures. People came out in droves—people who might not have called themselves environmentalists or even animal lovers. We were all tuned in, especially those of us in the San Francisco Bay area where this was all happening. We all wanted a happy ending, a good news story. We all wanted to spread the sunshine of their recovery to each other.

It wasn’t the first time I had kept watch for a wayward whale. A few years before, actually the spring I began my blog, while living on the Delaware River in New Jersey, another whale—this one a beluga—had made its way from saltwater to freshwater. (See April 13th 2005 blog entry on http://www.soulwisdom.blogspot.com/)

What leads creatures like whales and humans to venture away from the pack, to explore new territories, to intersect their lives stories with those of a different species? Is it to receive help? To ask for healing? To give help? To impart messages of hope and joy—like that seen in the eyes of those, like I, glued to the water, praying for their recovery? Or is it simply an unplanned accident of getting off course?

After just having returned from an extended trip back to New Jersey, the home my husband, son and I left just one year ago to “go west” to California, I’ve been thinking a lot of the concept of home lately. I think we each need many things from our homes—comfort, caring from loved ones, a sense of community, safety, security, and also nurturance of our inner yearnings—yearnings for something more, yearning to explore our own potential, yearning for growth.

Sometimes the familiar, the safe, the saltwater we were born into is all we need to fulfill our yearnings for a true sense of home. Other times, we need to venture into unfamiliar waters, however different or uncomfortable they feel at times, to test our own inner boundaries and truly discover who we are and what we deem most sacred.

Experts say, when we stop looking “out there” to feed our soul and realize that we have a home within that is as real of a place as any we have been, true comfort sets in. I have to admit, my internal home is a place I don’t visit as often as I’d like. More often, I am wandering, seeking, reaching out—hopeful, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad. During those brief moments of true happiness when I do visit the home within, however, all my seeking ends.

Safe travels, whales (and anyone else who, like me, is searching for an inward sense of home). I hope you find it. I hope you are well.