Repost: Taste of Strawberry

I am reposting this one, since we are all in it these day aren’t we? Originally posted January 2025.

Today I have been thinking about the Buddhist wisdom story which tells us about a man who is running from a tiger who hopes to eat him. The man runs straight toward a cliff and as he drops over the edge, he is able to grab hold of a vine. As he dangles over a huge drop he looks up to see a mouse beginning to nibble away at the vine he is holding. Tiger above, fraying vine in hand, fatal drop below, he sees growing out of the cliffside a strawberry plant with one ripe strawberry. What is he to do?, the story asks. He reaches out and picks the strawberry and eats it with full embodied conscious pleasure.

The idea is that we are all hurtling toward our doom, death or loss or a leap into a frightening unknown. We all have fewer choices than we would like. It is all tenuous. But we can choose the present moment. We can focus our attention and engage in the glory of the world and the gifts it continues to offer us, no matter the peril of the next moment.

Since first hearing this story, decades ago now, I have meditated on that strawberry many times. I hold it in my mind’s eye, arms length away, unfurling green leaves nestling the ripe berry. I imagine it as a wild strawberry, as small as a raspberry we get in the store, it’s red fullness drawing my full attention. I imagine how it would taste if I gave it my full attention.

Today much Los Angeles is engulfed in fire, entire neighborhoods destroyed. The scope of need and repair seems impossible. I have been sitting with people in my EcoSpiritual Guidance practice today who provide spiritual guidance or care to others who are seeking support today in how to help in the face of such overwhelming devastation. Loving, kind, wise people who feel helpless in the face of this most recent climate catastrophe and in those surely still to come.

I know I keep being oriented by the Sacred Wild back to the audacious beauty and sweetness right outside my door. Like that strawberry dangling just within reach, the world offers its gifts freely and responding generously with our attention and gratitude is not a denial of the realities of this life, but it is a honoring that alongside the horror and loss, there is also beauty and sweetness. We do not have to deny one to honor the other. In fact, the awareness of fragility strengthens the joy - if we let it.

More than any other element, Fire evokes our sense of panic and overwhelm. We easily tap into our fragility in the face of it. The devastation it leaves is unmitigated. Fire is a wisdom teacher for our fear.

Always when reminded of destructive fires, my memory goes to the people I knew who died in the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland in 2016. A tragedy made of different factors than these fires now, but I still linked for me in those loops that even vicarious intense experiences leave within us. It seems I cannot help imagining those final horrible moments when all the exit points were blocked by fire and there was no stopping it.

I find myself hoping that they turned toward each other, sheltered one another’s faces, pressed bodies together, clasped hands. Not because I think that would lessen any pain or fear. But because it would mean in the last possibility to give and receive kindness they were able to do that.

I wouldn’t even say this gives me comfort. I would say it gives me agency.

That to me is tasting that strawberry, the choice we humans have in the face of doom – to look around for the sweetness we can give and receive, even as we dangle fully conscious of our helplessness.

There is still plenty we can do. I am not suggesting we give up and eat bonbons in singularly focused escapist bliss. I am suggesting, imploring even, that we remember the sweetness and keep choosing it every second we have the chance.

And for all of you engaged in the work of being helpers, you may need this practice of focus the most. Create what paths you can to be of help. Stretch your heart wide to keep witnessing and grieving. But know that if we are asking, How can I take my neighbors’ pain away?, we are going to feel like we are failing. Instead as my teacher Ram Dass would suggest when people asked what to do with their overwhelm at the state of the world, can we ask - what is the kindness right in front of me that I can do now?

Friends it is terrifying, this time of dangling over cliff edge, of fires burning and tides rising and so much we cannot outrun. But right in front of you is a way to be kind, a sweet taste of connection, an offering you can make. It may feel small, too simple to be important. But this moment, the gesture you choose to make, can be love. At the very least it is a choice you can make in the midst of what is mostly out of your control.

And friends, please, please receive the sweetness that is present for you right now. Let your eyes linger on what is fluttering in the trees or sprouting up out of the ground. Listen to the song that swells your heart. Drink your tea with full attention. Tell your friend you love them and see how it lights their eyes up. Whatever simple gifts you can notice, take them in. Savor them. There need not be any survivor’s guilt for more days or more time or more love. Let the Sacred Wild freely give to you.

This evening walking home through an old grove of eucalyptus trees that probably shouldn’t be here and have been crashing down across trails and roofs, I heard an owl’s resonate hoot. Its sound circled my heart like an OM at the end of yoga practice and as I stopped in gratitude just to take it in. Then I saw its dark wings in motion, a swoop through the tall trees and gone. I felt I had been gifted. Not a balm for the sadness, certainly not a promise of relief, but an equally real and present aspect of this life freely given– wonder, beauty, sweetness calling out in the dusk.

Are you feeling called to connect more deeply with the Earth while also struggling with heartbreak in the face of these times? Are you a healer or spiritual leader who would like support as you support others? Are you interested in a Non-Duality Earth-Focused spiritual path? I currently have openings in my EcoSpiritual Guidance practice. Sessions are on zoom - or outdoors in Santa Cruz, CA if you are in the area! I would love to meet you in sacred conversation. Contact link here