Tag: faith and trust

Father’s Day

Erika Ginnis

I wanted to share from something I wrote a few years ago. It is from my walking journal that I kept when I was living in Tacoma Washington.

I had just returned from Hawaii once more. This was a year and a half before I moved. I was keeping my dream alive just with my energy. I had no idea of how I was going to get where I wanted to go; looking back it is still amazing to me (I’ll write about that story another time). My answer to not knowing was to walk and take in everything around me and appreciate it so that I would not be leaving something but moving into the next place I wanted to appreciate.

There were at least three interesting parts to this specific walk, since it is Father’s Day today I will share the part that eventually touches on that. My father made his transition back in 1988 but reading these things brings the feeling of him to me again.

It was a day of being in the midst of milestones.

The tide was out; farther than it has been so far on my walks. I wondered where the water goes when it goes away. I felt the water was farther away than I wanted it to be; I walked nearer to the edge to get it closer to my senses.

I saw the pilings that are normally hidden and the places under the buildings which are built over the water, that don’t all meet the ground. I wondered about how long they will all stand there.

Since the water was out I saw a stream flowing into the bay that is also normally hidden and I also was able to see the Canadian geese who were gathering at that meeting point of fresh and salt water.

-Hawaiian chants in the headphones giving me chills, as I felt my own movement toward fulfilling a dream; and the feeling of looking at it as an expansion not a leaving behind.

-Feeling the air in its shift into fall. Smelling the August leaves and the blackberries within them. Knowing I would come back here if only just for that smell and feeling.

–a family at the park, the father helping his young daughter learn to ride a bike without training wheels, watching him show her and then holding the seat as she rode. It felt like the last moment before she would be riding on her own; that sweet poignant time.

Sensing her frustration I wanted to help to somehow tell her that she would be riding soon; and I was reminded of my own father helping me and how it felt at that moment when I had started to ride on my own, without even knowing it. And then that moment when I realized I was doing it all myself.

That moment that changed everything.

I found myself thinking of my dad and loving him and remembering again, that right where I was walking; that manicured strip by the bay; was once just a long patch of gravel along side the water. It was where he taught me to drive a clutch. I got another new sense of the things he taught me in my life. It brought tears to my eyes in a good way.

And then seeing the girl on the way back by. I could see that in the time it took me to take my walk she had already gotten stronger on her bike and that her dad only had to hold on from the back of the seat. I sent the girl some good balance and grounding energy and imagined that she thanked me (all non-verbal) and I knew she was so close.

Now as I write this I had yet another perspective, this time from the Dad’s point of view. Seeing that moment from the other side where there is the caring and love in the instruction and then the joy in the success and then also that moment where the success marks a rite of passage and so some moment of transition from one state to another. The act of letting go of that bike the sweetness and the tinge of sadness in it because of the inevitability of the child moving forward and into a new future of their very own.

It had never occurred to me that this might have also been the perspective of my father in any of the things he was teaching me. It was (as is right) just my job to want to move forward. His was to hold the seat and know when to let go.

Aloha and Blessings,

Erika

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‘Belief’ as according to Death (from Hogfather 2006)

Erika Ginnis

Beautiful scene, from the 2006 movie “The Hogfather” based on the Terry Pratchett book. This scene got to me in particular, felt it was worth sharing.

The difference between my cat and plants.

Erika Ginnis

These thoughts occurred to me at different times, and I put them together for a talk I gave last November.

The difference between my cat and plants.

This morning, thoughts about the cats: that every morning they are so cute and very concerned (esp Simba) about the food; like I am not going to feed them breakfast even though I am right there with the food and am putting it into the bowls; and that I or my partner or someone has done this every morning for years for them; and that regardless it is still like they don’t necessarily believe it’s going to happen this time.

I was laughing at them, and then I had to laugh at myself. I thought… how exactly like that am I, with Spirit. It doesn’t matter how many 100’s of times Spirit/The Universe has taken care of me and given me what I needed/asked for; I am still running around afraid that it will have forgotten me this time. I am just like Simba looking for the cat food thinking that somehow this morning it might not be there OMG.

Now on to plants (first some background)

As I read this I see that at the end of it I was just going out to look at houses with a Realtor. So that means that it was written more than 3 and ½ years ago, meaning at least 2 and 1/2 years before I bought the house I am now living in, in Hawaii. The Universe totally had my back and was already putting up the “trellis” that I would eventually grow toward on this Island. This is so good for me to remember…

Wed july 19th 2006 (Seattle WA)

I did put in some more flowers into my yard, and my Clematis has made it around the side of garage and onto the trellis I have had waiting for it (small pleasures). I even had a moment yesterday (here I go waxing philosophical) where I had this thought about the Universe…how when I set out to train the Clematis to come around the corner to the trellis, I set up some stuff for it to climb on. As it got around the corner one of the things I did (yesterday in fact) was decide to create additional structures (out of twine and nails) for it to climb on, as I could see that it would be really good for the plant if I did that…

OK so I move faster than the Clematis and I know where it is generally heading and where I want it to grow, plus I want it to flourish, so hence the extra trellis…

Now here’s the deal… I got this momentary sense of the Universe, in that “Ohhhh I see, here is another life analogy” kind of way.

If I were the Clematis and I had looked anytime before yesterday I wouldn’t have seen how I was going to make it to the metal trellis since there was this big gap between me and it.

I could have decided I would never make it, I could have worried, I might have questioned my growth, I could have seen the definite LACK of trellis or string…Luckily the Clematis is just growing and figuring it will climb on whatever it can and doesn’t stress (to my knowledge) the lack of visible support for it’s growth.

Which as it turns out is smart because what was actually true is that there was no trellis there until the plant had grown far enough to need it.

Me as the “quick” moving human could sting up the additional trellis in moments and have more than enough time for the plant to grow into it. Now the string is all set up and waiting for little leaves and branches to twine around them.

Anyway I had this moment of seeing me stringing the framework as analogous to the Universe creating the structure that I want to rest on and grow onto as I need it, and that looking ahead and not seeing a visible means of support for where I want to go, doesn’t mean a thing.

Ah to have the faith of the plants.