No more basket

1. At some point this summer, I began to use the garden basket, brief early summer home to lettuce, broccoli, herbs, to carry my sewing things to and from the zendo. But the sewing is done, at least the rakusu sewing. The scissors are back in the home sewing kit. The reading glasses return to my night stand. The basket at its post by the front door awaits the ripening tomatoes and string beans. And I am strangely bereft.

2. At five yesterday afternoon, seven of us trooped from Francis and Sondra's West 11th Street loft across West Side Highway to one of the newly finished piers that juts out from the West Village stretch of that roadway into the Hudson: Sondra in glamorous sunglasses and pink Converse All-Stars, aide Marva-the-Marvelous driver of Sondra's wheelchair, Francis and look-alike son Jonathan, Sondra's brother Joel visiting from California, me and our friend Darryl, also visiting from California. Over that while of walking and looking out at the river and visiting with a jolly 8 month old baby, all kicks and giggles, we kept reconfiguring ourselves into pairs, then individuals drifting off to walk alone or in trios, always someone with a hand on Sondra's wheelchair. The kicking, giggling baby was one of a pair of twins. A nanny pushed the other twin and a third child in the twins' stroller. A man in a bikini sat on a poured concrete wall talking on a cell phone, rising to stretch, showing off his tan to no one in particular. Then it was time to head back to the loft. The family and Marva were looking at a take-out menu from a local Chinese dive as Darryl and I said our goodbyes, and went on to meet Joy at the apartment, then on to Ben & Jack's where Elyse joined us. Drinks, dinner, good stories, a wonderful Croatian waiter named Miro, laughter. We put Elyse in a cab, a dog at Joy's apartment and a long drive ahead for him and me, good nights.

Day and night, we were all liquid, melted by the heat and the love among us.

3. Joko Beck talks about building an ABC, a bigger container--for conflict, for judgment, widening the reach of the heart of compassion, an endlessly useful tool. Susan Postal told the story about her resistance, decades ago, to Buddhist practice because of all the rituals and trappings, the bells and whistles of ceremony. The man who became her teacher explained that it was as if he had an egg which he wanted to give to her. But without a shell, he could not put it in her hand.

There are days when it feels like there is only ritual, and days when the ritual feels full of intention, vibrant with the Dharma. And there are days when the ritual falls away and the big empty sky sings.