Peace in my heart

we are one-sky, ocean, shore

I am peace. I rise from my peaceful community.

I vow to understand, to listen, to be a light, and if I can't transform my anger, fear, disappointment, I will choose not to speak. I vow to work for peace from the heart of love and understanding, not from anger. I am a peaceful humanitarian activist.

My warm hands hold yours.

My loving gaze holds yours. 

My outstretched arms hold you.

My peaceful heart heals yours.

I am peace. I am love. I am inclusion. Be peace. Be love. 

Be understanding.

I am peace personified, embracing all relations. 

Healing walk at sunset

"My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand." -Thich Nhat Hanh

My Father's Legacy ~ Fragrant Fruit, Fertile Earth

My dad would have celebrated his 100th birthday this month. For you, dad.

My neighbors tree this week!

Nimble, young fingers, with keen instinct, survey the branches for the perfect peach. Delicate hands feel the fuzzy and firm surface. Bursts of yellow, orange and crimson tempt me, sweetness permeates the air.  

Peaches I can barely wrap my fingers around weigh heavily on branches. I spy the perfect treat and gently twist and turn the orb until it gives from the branch in our backyard orchard of fruit trees. A quick rinse with the hose and the first bite releases fragrant, sweet summer juice down my chin. Pure, summer love. I devour it to the pit, every sense, fully satiated.

Each season in my childhood backyard there is a similar scene. In autumn, Fuyu persimmons, bright and spare, adorn the dormant landscape and epitomize fall color. Sometimes I was asked to find the best one to make an offering to our family altar, other times they were sliced on the counter for us to nibble on throughout the day. In winter, enormous juicy dimpled navel oranges overflowed boxes, buckets, and grocery bags.   Meyer lemons, evoke sunshine and brightness, fresh lemonade, tangy and sweet lemon meringue pies, transport me home.  

Lemon meringue tarte made with love and Meyer lemons

I have a tug of growing something from the earth. To feed, nourish and share what was grown and prepared with my hands. A belated embrace and true appreciation of the heart of my father, his father, and all my ancestors and our agrarian roots.  My father's connection to the land, to soil, to the earth's rotation, to botany, biology, ecology-the pulse of his being. 

When I was younger, family friends lived on a farm and used an outhouse.  I remember having to go outside into the darkness whenever I needed to use the bathroom, so scary and strange it felt. We were taught that "modern" things were de rigeur-air conditioning, a clothes dryer, color television, and an indoor bathroom.

I think I turned my back on my family's agrarian history because it was not considered progressive to stay and live on or near a farm, we were encouraged to get a better education, to be out in the world, with modern conveniences, to live a different way.

 My dad was connected to the earth, my hands are connected to his.  His hands were at home tilling, planting, watering, pruning, grafting.

Our backyard was not a typical scrubbed and tidy suburban one. Although we lived in the suburbs, on a quiet tree lined street, our backyard had the tools of an orchard at hand. An enormously tall and spindly ladder was a part of the landscape. Wooden crates always seemed to overflow with fruit waiting to be canned, shared, and enjoyed. With the tools and materials of an orchard, there were always ample props of wood and boxes for my brother and me to build forts of every size for hours and days of free, imagninative play.

Garnet hued plums. Ruby red tomatoes. Aubergine Japanese eggplant. We knew winter had arrived when my mom made Kimpira Gobo (burdock root,slivered and sautéed with sesame oil, soy sauce and a few pinches of cayenne). This festive dish adorned our holiday table for Oshogatsu/Japanese New Year to symbolize a long, healthy, fertile new year. 

Gobo/Burdock root

Kimpira Gobo-Yum!

Today, farming is cool.  Many young adults yearn to master farming, home brewing, canning, preserving, fermenting. WWOOFing (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), a growing volunteer network offers hands-on work/live opportunities from farmers around the world. My dad would love to witness the passion and appreciation for growing our own food. He was concocting and using organic fertilizers decades ago.

 Why do some cycles repeat? Do we just wake up now and then and understand how we are tied to the fragrant earth and fertile soil? 

I can see, feel and smell his connection to the earth, to the cycles of seasons and realize that although his talent and expertise lie dormant in me, they are seedlings of potential waiting for the right conditions, the right moment to germinate. 

My son has a small veggie garden in his backyard and carrot seedlings he's starting in his bedroom under a grow light. 

He's built a compost pile and ferments, pickles and cooks from the garden.

Veggie garden in Portland

My daughter enjoys picking fresh kale from our garden and makes some mean homemade kale chips!

kale chips evoo,sriracha and shoyu

My husband, inspired in part from my dad, has slowly converted our once ambling lawn into a fruit orchard; Meyer lemon, tangerine, lime, apricot, pluot, fig, and pomegranate. My brother and nephew are directly practicing our lineage in landscape construction, design, and maintenance.  


 I feel dad's heart is warmed to know his family continues his love and connection to the earth, following the cycles of nature. 
We are a continuation.

As a child, I remember my dad was stressed and unhappy when he was in the outside world, in an office and felt the pressure to produce. He suffered a heart attack in his early 50s. But when he was in our backyard, he would hum and whistle, he would lose track of time, his hands and shoes often caked with soil; he was content. Caring for his crops, picking and delivering homegrown produce to relatives and friends, and his cardiologist. He shared the fruits of his labor, a part of himself, his patience, effort, and diligence. He spread love through his actions. In those moments, he was a part of the flow with the trees, plants, earth and sky.

Grapes and tomatoes from our garden.

When I look at my once young and nimble fingers, I see my father's hands. Tanned, slender fingers, showing signs of age, and a wonderful continuation of my father's and mother's ancestors who worked the California landscape as fruit farmers, as merchants in a floral business and in the villages of Hiroshima and Fukuoka, Japan so many generations ago.

Scabiosa columbaria near our herb garden.

With my father's legacy, I can pick ripe fruit off a tree or use my ancestor's discerning eyes to choose the most flavorful tomatoes at the farmer's market. I see my dad's smile and hear his hum and happy whistle. He is standing next to me with his SF Giants baseball hat askew, smiling or humming; happy that I've woken up to our shared appreciation and connection to Mother Earth.

As I celebrate my dad's 100th year and remember the seeds planted in me, I make this offering:

May you to find the place that is fragrant and fertile, that  enriches, teaches and feeds you.
May you uncover the sweet spot that brings you peace and heals your heart. 
May you touch what makes you whistle and ignites your inner hum. 
May it benefit all beings. 

On Kindness and Sorrow; A Shadow and a Friend

Lotus flower buds

Kindness

"Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things and feel the future dissolve in a moment…" Naomi Shihab Nye

 As I read the lines to this poem, the words struck a deep chord of the kinship I'm feeling with sorrow and kindness. One early winter morning I recited the entire poem (see below), our Christmas tree spare and simple, modest and humble, warmed the room with it's soft and festive luminance. The raw and naked truth rang true: 

Everyone and everything I love, I will lose. 

I am adjusting to the sudden death of a beloved family member.

Through this tugging loss, I noticed I am tethered to kindness~enveloped by a supportive and protective layer of kindheartedness from my community. A warm embrace of kindness and gentleness; so essential in how I care for my sorrow now. With delicate and gentle awareness, it permeates and ripples out to how I care for my loved ones, too. Life can change in an instant. 

Nothing is permanent. Things are always changing, right?

San Juan Island apples-Skoog Family

... but we always think, believe... there's more time. As a hospice volunteer, I understand. Lying next to my dad ten years ago in his hospice bed, I understand.  Dad would have relished having one more day. On one of his last days, he made a great effort to walk into the garden and teach me how to graft fruit trees, wanting to transmit more of his knowledge, more of himself. Yet, the way to grasp the tender and naked truth for me is to value our moments together, to bring a sense of the sacred, to savor the in-between moments. 


So, I can choose to silence my devices and remember I don't need to fill space in-between work, obligations, and feed my habit patterns. The space around and between life, negative space, is what alights my gaze to fully imbibe the sunset in the winter sky, to appreciate  the vast openness of the desert sky in Baja. To me, they symbolize freedom, peace, equanimity. 

Sunset from Leucadia with the Norman Family 2015

View from the car en route to Baja Sur 2016

I can choose to be aware and grateful to witness another sunrise when I open my eyes to the magic of a brand new day. 

I can choose to begin to feel more hopeful, supported, and inspired by the kindness of community, my community. 
I feel a deeper well of love and connection growing out of the sad shock of losing kindhearted, vibrant, and sensitive Emylee way-too-soon. 

 I am happy and heartened to have stumbled upon the writings of Frances Weller, a psychologist and author. His honest reflection of how we live with unresolved grief and sorrow captivated me.  I suggest checking out his book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow and interview in The Sun Magazine, entitled: The Geography of Sorrow (http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/478/the_geography_of_sorrow)

     Some things that resonate: 
 How creating a container and ritual can bring about an opportunity to heal for you and your community. 

How we have much to learn and offer by sitting with sorrow and giving ourselves time and loving attention.  

He seems to extend an outstretched hand through pathways that “lead us to understand the many ways loss touches our hearts and souls in this life.”

Finally, he poses a contemplative question; “What if we, instead of avoiding grief, took the energy to be more joyful and understand we can’t avoid losses, wounds and failures?” If we meet them with “compassion, kindness, affection,” we can have a deeper understanding and become grateful for our connection with loved ones. The message is clear, thoughtful and very beautiful. 

Sunrise on the Ganges 2015

I find solace as I allow myself to live with loss of love. Little is gained by pushing feelings away to "get over it." I'm prepared to let grief be my companion for now.  In my tradition, we practice  touching the earth-a ritual connecting me to my ancestors and teachers. It's comforting to return to the earth, to mark a sacred moment, a passing, a transition with gratitude and reverence.  And to honor the earth, sky, water, all elements, that make my life possible. What if we met grief with "kindness, compassion, and affection" and it supported us "like a shadow or a friend"?

I understand there is healing when I can speak and listen from my heart.  

Nothing to fix, nothing to do, no advice to give. 

Just a touching gesture-to be here together hearts interconnected-standing on sacred ground, with kindness.

Kindness Before you know what kindness really is  you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and      purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.   by Naomi Shihab Nye

s c a r s

a painful memory surfacing...

I've ruminated and worried about posting this piece about race for months. It's interesting because it's part of theme of this entry; that race keeps coming up. It's a scar that reminds me of pain when I was a young girl and the scar that heats up today. I'm reluctant to share it, am concerned about how my friends will respond.  So it leads me to believe and feel it's an important thing to share. I'm uncomfortable.  I feel like I have not made the strides I thought I had. I feel like I need to work harder,  just as our society and our culture have more work to do when it comes to talking about race. 

Race keeps coming up.

 Deaths in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Charleston, - bringing up memories of feeling different and other.









When did I first notice it?

 In kindergarten. "What's the word to describe this?",  asked my teacher, holding up a a wet sponge gesturing  "squeeze".  My hand shoots up with pride, "shiboru" I wanted to say. Wrong, not Japanese, English! Embarrassed, I think I went and hid in the dark bathroom for a little while.

Another memory, lunch in the cafeteria, wanting desperately to fit in with my new friends and have the "right" things in my lunch box. No rice balls, white bread sandwiches.  No rice crackers, pre-packaged cookies. No fresh, homegrown fruit, please.Why can't we buy Ho-Ho's? 

What is a nip, a Jap?
Oh, it's me. The words sting and punch a deep place inside. But I smile and find my convincing laugh and false grin that hides tears,  sadness and embarrassment for feeling different; not white, not blond, not blue-eyed. Even my good friends, my best friends, made those slurs common and made me feel less. Why didn't I stand up for myself? Why didn't my other Chinese, Filipino, Japanese friends stand up? Instead, we smiled, laughed and nervously hoped the topic would change. My parents told my siblings and me there was a covenant on the the deed to our house we owned in Sacramento that prohibited selling or renting to racial or ethnic minorities.  The developers wanted the neighborhoods segregated, protected from the Other.

The struggles, brutality and violence against black men and women don't begin to compare with my childhood pain but it's brought race up again. The feelings have surfaced that I thought had healed to a degree.

I've learned to blend, not to feel like I'm on the other side watching kids play tennis and swim through the chain-link fence from Park Terrace Swim and Tennis Club. As a young girl, the fence that separated me seemed like miles away.

And even though today I play in a tennis league team as captain and have lived in a super, open, beach community for over 30 years; racial injustice has exposed a sensitive scar.

I've grown accustomed to being the only person of color in the room; at work, at a tennis club, in restaurants, in stores. I still sometimes feel the "look" from the salesperson, either indifference or a feeling of being watched. So I'm not really a customer who deserves to be acknowledged when I walk in the door, sometimes ignored, or I've been made to feel, as an adult, a potential shoplifter, who doesn't really "belong" in the store. In the 90s, while grocery shopping with my biracial son, curious people would ask if I was his nanny. I've become keen on picking up on subtle, non-verbal body language and I've forgotten what that felt like until recently.  

I'm one of the "model minority"
I've never felt comfortable with the label but it really is amazing what I've learned to do, how I've become a chameleon, can conform, blend into my environment. I recognize how hard it has been to do well, be good, work hard, and blend in more and more and erase little by little the things that make me, me.

Today, I long to share my experience and the courage it takes to meet and marry a partner outside of your ethnicity. I do find it takes inner strength to hold on to your culture, your traditions with reverence. It takes fortitude to continue embracing my culture while appreciating and loving my husband and  his Hungarian, Polish, Russian heritage. I learned to hide a part of myself to survive, to conform, to blend and to compartmentalize my Japanese roots to fit in. It's taken a long time for me to progress and transform hurtful experiences into sharing more.

I've realized so many opportunities these past 56 years and have healed emotional pains but as we continue to hear, see and read about race,  memories of hateful racial slurs, language that makes me feel small and other and question my heritage cause the scars to surface.  It makes me question again, for a moment,  when I walk into a room, a bar, a boutique, any public place, do I need to continue to "prove" myself by fitting the mold, being unique but not too outside of the acceptable realm of exotic, ethnic, different?

Today Buddhism, Zen,  and meditation are part of popular culture.
 I have a wonderful lineage that ties me to Japan for generations. As I get older, I'm embracing the nuances of what it means to have this rich heritage (Buddhist, Shin, Zen) that I was once paralyzed to share. I knew there was deep meaning and beauty but was uncertain how to describe, defend or share it.

 Today, I try to engage with honesty while feeling a little vulnerable. There are times when putting my true self out there feels like the little girl who first raised her hand in kindergarten;  innately confident, straddling two cultures, excited to be an equal participant. The scars make up who I am and my thoughts and intentions are based upon all experiences.  I strive to live with understanding to cultivate an open heart. I was misguided to think I'd escape the deep hurt of racism, bigotry and racial slurs. It's a scar that still heats up now and then.  I don't want to erase it, run away or remove it any longer. I'm choosing to stand tall with my heart forward. I am learning to accept all the memories/experiences  of what makes me, me. The scars are still sensitive spots that cause pain but they have also revealed a way for me to practice being more tolerant, empathic, compassionate and more courageous with myself and to all sentient beings.

"Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you were STRONGER than whatever tried to hurt you."
-shared by a friend on FB

The Perfect Gift

Looking inward, when we can bring our full attention to another, to listen to and share our joys and happiness, sorrows and ah-ha moments, we give each other the bounty and fullness of love and affection. When we listen with our whole body, all of our senses, without interruption from our devices, we are sharing our life force energy and luminous hearts with one another.

As I age, the glory and drudgery of holiday shopping is more superficial, stressful, less personal. Once in awhile, I do enjoy finding the perfect gift I think a loved one will appreciate but not on a timetable and in an arena that bombards the senses and unnecessarily separates me from the true essence of thoughtful giving. 

This life we have is short and sacred and the best gift won't be found under a tree in a beautiful box adorned with pinecones and juniper.  It will be the precious time we have together, sharing our life stories and our experiences. It will be wrapped in the warm and soft embrace of listening, touching, hugging, laughing, and crying.

Perhaps we can spend time together savoring a winter sunset or sit in the living room sipping hot cups of tea. We can nourish each other in a way that is everlasting and create a memory that can penetrate deep into our hearts. 

I'm carving out more time, instead of igniting the well traveled path of consumption,  to arrange more dates with friends to enjoy each other's breath, company, and radiance. 


I think this is the ultimate way to show how much you mean to me.

b i g

It was just after sunrise when I began to contemplate the term continuation. A little realization woke me up that grew to be quite b i g.  It came down to breath, impermanence, and gratitude.

 Thich Nhat Hanh says "we are a lovely continuation of our parents, our ancestors, our lineage, our teachers, and loved ones. If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people."

 I understand continuation when it comes to birthdays, births, and weddings; happy occasions. But when someone I love, someone our family loves, dies suddenly, leaves her body-I’ve been learning to practice how to pivot from a well worn pattern of the life/death paradigm to that of no birth, no death.

We’ve accepted this dualistic way of thinking that creates a great divide with a host of feelings around loss.  Here in body, physically, not here physically. Alive, not alive. -as if everything was only real when our loved ones were here in the physical manifestation and that they somehow cease and disappear when they leave their body. That’s not how I feel deep inside about life and death.   

And I found that Thay (translation teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh) says something similar...

… to die means from someone you suddenly became no one. From something, you suddenly became nothing”.  But nothing is like that. 

A cloud, a forest, a volcano doesn’t become nothing. I am with my father, who left his body ten years ago, when I am in the produce aisle sniffing out the perfect peach or slicing vine ripened tomatoes from the garden, or cradling my head, fingers clasped at the nape of my skull to relax.

  I am walking and chatting with Emylee in the forest in Oregon, gathering fiddle leaf ferns for dinner, savoring with delight our strong pot of Hojicha tea and a homemade sweet in the afternoon. There is only continuation. 

Walking in the forest in Oregon

The view near our cabin in March 

When I can transcend the notion of birth and death, there is freedom, there is abundance of love and warmth because I am not separate just as there is no separation between life and death.These moments are welcomed with tears and sometimes sadness but also great happiness to understand the impermanence of life. I embrace this moment much more. I value this moment.

Experiences in daily life like a tragic event, a strong emotion, a personal loss can be overwhelming but if I can remember three big things: breath, impermanence, gratitude. To breathe deeply, slowly, expansively I can gain a wider perspective and awareness. To remember, I am impermanent, we are impermanent and when I remember I am immediately grateful for this moment because this moment will never happen again and we are all a lovely continuation. 

Breathing in to impermanence with gratitude.