University of Toronto

Thanksgiving Day. 2016 – a post from Canadian friend, Allan O’Mara:

I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is to walk on earth . . . a miracle we don’t even recognize. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Responding: Absolutely wondrous!!! One can't help but personalize this, and I'm reminded of how much "walking alone on country paths" (and often with others) has been part of my life. Yes, the real miracle is to walk on earth. This is celebrated at the beginning of the memoir, "Yet Still a Child" from "Stories Never Told." This is the most beautiful and inspiring post yet read this Thanksgiving Day. Reminding one how much we have to be thankful for – the miracle of being born as a human being, to discover the miracle of walking on earth, one with the great flow of life . . .

From “Stories Never Told” / “Yet still a child”

  Yet still a child, on his way to school through soggy cow pastures inhaling after-rain breezes full of sweet earth’s labor, lettuce farms nurtured by Japanese farmers; anticipating his first day in the last half of the seventh grade with Mrs. Sandusky. He’ll be twelve in April; he should be in the first half of the seventh grade but in Hawthorne it’s not offered in spring.

  Mrs. Sandusky, sitting large, matronly behind a cluttered desk, mutinously tossed reddish blonde hair, left arm bandaged in a sling from recent car accident, rasping voice, It simply happened, that’s all, no gory details, so now, class, let’s get on with it! and advise your parents to drive carefully. Prevailing hospital smells emanating from healing salves, overwhelming more favored smells—chalk and sharpened pencils.

  So he’ll skip half a grade, hoping next September to start B8 at Luther Burbank Junior High School in Highland Park, once more playing on hillsides, boys storming up slopes of vacant lots after winter rains calling him to pull up jade green clumps of grass, dark wet earth clinging to roots, tossing them at gophers to frighten them back into their shadowy holes. For now he must endure Hawthorne (flat country, his mother calls it), and cow pastures. . .

  March winds blow, heavy rains soak cow pastures—no, not cow pastures! Marshlands, fens of Scotland, pirate coves along the coast of Cornwall. Watching dark, scudding clouds in the sky, sun low in the west, he’s John Masefield’s “Martin Hyde, the Duke’s Messenger,” and “Jim Davis” found among treasured romantic tales in the public library—exploring among musty smell of books in his hands, on library shelves. And the never-to-be-forgotten song from a time long before adolescent desires cluttered his life:  Leagues of sky, silent lie, blue and free, calling me . . .

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! Once more to celebrate life and the miracle of existence

– November 24, 2016.