Category Archives: hike

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Summer sunset

I still don’t stay up much past nine most nights, but my young adult offspring talked me into a beach walk the other evening. We went down to Fort Worden and the Point Wilson Lighthouse. The sunset was glorious. I went back to the car for a jacket right away because the water temperature is around 51 degrees. It cools down quickly. The tide was coming in, so we only walked about half a mile, but it was gorgeous. This is looking north from Point Wilson towards Vancouver Island and the San Juan Islands…. over the kelp beds.

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The legs go last

This if for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #56…. his photograph is shadow and angles and stairs and pattern. This is my legs, on a run on Saturday, and yes, that is Princess Leia helping me to be brave about rebuilding my muscles…. the feet are not a horribly deformed rash but a pair of toe shoes for running. I like going barefoot, but my feet aren’t toughened enough and it’s cold in the mornings! Not real icy cold, but 50 and wet.

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S is for sloth

S is for sloth, the sixth of our seventh sins.

I took the photograph of my daughter a few weeks ago. She can’t be accused of sloth, though, because that was the day after a 12 mile mountain bike race. She came in first in the women’s 18-26 division. She also came in last, because she was the only one….

Dictionary.com at present:
1. habitual disinclination to exertion; indolence; laziness.
2. any of several slow-moving, arboreal, tropical American edentates of the family Bradypodidae, having a long, coarse, grayish-brown coat often of a greenish cast caused by algae, and long, hooklike claws used in gripping tree branches while hanging or moving along in a habitual upside-down position.
3. a pack or group of bears.

Webster 1913:
1. Slowness; tardiness.
These cardinals trifle with me; I abhor This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome. Shak.
2. Disinclination to action or labor; sluggishness; laziness; idleness.
[They] change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth. Milton.
Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears. Franklin.
3. Zool. Any one of several species of arboreal edentates constituting the family Bradypodidae, and the suborder Tardigrada. They have long exserted limbs and long prehensile claws. Both jaws are furnished with teeth (see Illust. of Edentata), and the ears and tail are rudimentary. They inhabit South and Central America and Mexico.

Just think of meeting a sloth of bears, eating blueberries, in the summer… I would not feel slothful then. And looking at the examples from Webster 1913, are we more slothful and sloppy with language than Franklin and Milton?

S

Sloth is a sin… but my daughter earned her rest…. and we all need to relax and rest sometimes and change our course to pleasure, ease and sloth…..

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O is for open

O for open.

What does feeling open mean to you?

Dictionary.com lists 42 adjective meanings, including:
34. not constipated, as the bowels.

That one made me giggle, but I am thinking of open as in open to other people and open to discussion and open to change. Walking outside and seeing birds and deer and the spring here exploding in flowers and small new leaves opens me. I get tired in clinic and by the end I am grumpy and think: no more people. Ick, people. But I love clinic and miss it when I have been off and sick. I missed hugs from my patients!

With 42 different adjective meanings, think about how amazing it is that we think we know what someone means when they use the word open…..

 

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With all of the discussion generated by the US presidential election, I am also thinking about an open society. A friend said that we have to be open to discussion but we also have to listen to each other. And listen to feelings.

I think of Sweet Honey in the Rock singing “Would you harbor me?”

Would you harbor me?
Would I harbor you?
Would you harbor a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew
a heretic, convict or spy?
Would you harbor a run away woman, or child,
a poet, a prophet, a king?

The lyrics are here.

I took the photograph yesterday. I was trying to focus on my neighbor in the background, but I am open to seeing the grasses instead….

 

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J is for joy

J is for joy.

Do you feel joy sometimes? Are you joyous? Joyful?

From Webster 1913: The passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good; pleasurable feelings or emotions caused by success, good fortune, and the like, or by a rational prospect of possessing what we love or desire; gladness; exhilaration of spirits; delight.

From dictionary.com: the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation.

I took the photograph two weekends ago. My daughter was racing, category 2 mountain bike race, three laps, four miles each. I was walking the course backwards with a friend. We had to be alert and step off the path every time a rider was coming. There were around 100 riders in category 2, all ages, men and women. We stopped to take photographs and cheer for everyone and especially our team!

A rider on the first lap had an asthma attack from all the pollen, and we walked him back out. I walked the bike while he concentrated on breathing. We stopped again to take pictures and then he could ride out. I walked on, listening for bikes, and there were trillium along the path….

I don’t think I can feel joy unless I also admit grief and all of the other feelings. It’s like weather, emotions come and go and may or may not feel like they make sense. If we refuse a feeling, it just seems to get stronger and rather panicky and keep bothering us…. until we treat it like the guest in Rumi’s poem.

Grief comes, and can be sweeping our mind clean for a new joy.

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I is for introverted

I is for introverted…. welcome to 7 sins and friends where we are welcoming and admitting all feelings, even those we don’t approve of, as human and as ours.

From dictionary.com
noun
1.a shy person.
2.Psychology. a person characterized by concern primarily with his or her own thoughts and feelings (opposed to extrovert).
3.Zoology. a part that is or can be introverted.

Odd. Introverted sounds much more selfish than I think of it! I think of introverted as people who get energy from being alone and who like to play in their own minds! I tested as more introverted than extroverted on a Myers Briggs test at the start of medical school, in the 1990s. I thought then that I was an introvert. But the test merely expresses people’s preferences, so everyone can act in an introverted or extroverted way, depending on their mood and how they are feeling at that moment. And part of continuing to grow is to learn to use the parts of ourselves that we avoid or that are poorly developed. I tested as an introverted thinker and what did I avoid? Exactly what I am writing about: feelings. I had to do a lot of work over the years to develop that part of me and I avoided it until my mother died. Then I had to do the work and it is well worth doing. Not that anyone is ever done….

adjective
4.Psychology. marked by introversion.

I

verb (used with object)
5.to turn inward:
to introvert one’s anger.
6.Psychology. to direct (the mind, one’s interest, etc.) partly to things within the self.
7.Anatomy, Zoology. to turn (a hollow, cylindrical structure) in on itself; invaginate.

I took the photograph behind a church in town, walking around on Sunday. I had not been behind it and didn’t know that there was a labyrinth. A labyrinth makes me think of introversion, all the turns and walking a path in a small space, focused and yet open to whatever thoughts arrive.

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H is for heal

H for heal, healing, healed.

Heal is not used as a feeling as much as healing or healed in conversation. Unless you are a healer and you hope to heal someone. But we use healing frequently or say, “I need to heal from that.” What do you want to heal from? A physical, a mental, a spiritual or an emotional healing? They are all tied together and we need them all. I am working with a massage therapist, once every two weeks. I chose massage for healing because my sister and father had died 14 months apart and about ten months later I thought, I need some help. And the thought of discussing my family was horrifying. I thought, I don’t want talk therapy. Let’s go at it from another angle: heal and help the body and the mind will follow. I feel much better now….

verb (used with object)
1. to make healthy, whole, or sound; restore to health; free from ailment.
2. to bring to an end or conclusion, as conflicts between people or groups, usually with the strong implication of restoring former amity; settle; reconcile:
They tried to heal the rift between them but were unsuccessful.
3. to free from evil; cleanse; purify: to heal the soul.

verb (used without object)
4. to effect a cure.
5. (of a wound, broken bone, etc.) to become whole or sound; mend; get well (often followed by up or over).

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I am a family doctor and one area of healing that we should use more is going outside, going for a walk and going in the woods. Why? I was feeling gloomy yesterday am and walked down the wooded paths in my neighborhood. The birds are celebrating spring. A deer stood watching me on the path, immobile in hopes that I wouldn’t see her. A sapsucker was up in the top of a dead madrona tree. I only walked ten blocks, but the new information from being outside and watching and listening, blew the gloom right out of my mind. The brain is geared for new neurological information using all the senses. We do NOT use them for computer and especially not for television. So go outside and blow the cobwebs away! And if you have a feeling you are not comfortable with, take it for a walk and show it birds and squirrels and just let it be present. Be kind to it and yourself. Heal.

I took the photograph Saturday. I walked into my lower yard and the deer and a yearling were startled. I stopped and the deer did too. She kept looking at an evergreen to her right, and at last the cat walked out from the lower branches…. If a cat may look at a king, then a deer can look at a cat….

 

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E for Envy

E for envy. Envy is the second of the 7 sins. Perhaps a sin, but we are all human. I think that we all have the full spectrum of feelings. It is not a matter of refusing to feel something: that does not work well. My minister speaks of when we feel very virtuous and raised up, that is when we are most in danger of treating others badly, and he quotes Luke.

Luke 11:43 “Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. 44″Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. 45″Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.”

Is the unclean spirit a feeling that we think is a sin or a feeling we interpret as bad or evil? That could be one interpretation.

In contrast, Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi in The guesthouse says:

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!

And why welcome and entertain them all?

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

—–translation by Coleman Barks

So: envy

noun, plural envies.
1. a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another’s advantages, success, possessions, etc.
2. an object of such feeling:
Her intelligence made her the envy of her classmates.
3. Obsolete. ill will.
verb (used with object), envied, envying.
4. to regard (a person or thing) with envy: She envies you for your success. I envy your writing ability.
He envies her the position she has achieved in her profession.

E

I did Gallery Walk in our downtown on Saturday. We are blessed with artists and there were many pieces that I liked. I did not buy any. I ended up in a small shop with singing bowls. The owner sells them but he also has a set that he keeps. He started to play the bowls, each on it’s small cushion. I have three bowls, smaller ones, that I have bought over the years. I love the ring and the resonance and the held note. But I learned something new: he used the felted end of the mallet and could make the bowl sing another way. I have never seen this before. Some bowls sing a different note with the felt. I covet the large deep bowls: I bought the largest one I could afford five years ago. But his are gorgeous in sound. I looked at a price tag. Ten times the cost of the one I bought.

He also explained that different notes are used for healing and for the different chakras. The size and the thickness of the bowl affects the note, whether it is high or low, whether it rings. The metal affects it as well and he has a bowl with meteorite. A full set would be seven, though many people use sets of three that sing together.

I bought mine separately, so I came home to try whether any would sing with felt and whether they are tuned to each other. They are tuned, but I cannot make them sing with the felt yet. I will take them to him for a lesson…. I am envious of his bowls….

And the photo is my daughter, at the end of a twelve mile mountain bike race Sunday. She does not even look tired! I am envious of how in shape she is: she swims three to five miles six days a week during swim season and exercises most days. I am just starting to build back up, but I am unlikely to catch up with her! Envy… I am hoping that it will motivate me to exercise more….