May 2021 WATERmeditation
“Arrange whatever pieces come your way”
with Virginia Day
Monday, May 10, 2021 at 7.30 pm ET
An audio recording of this meditation is available here. A video recording is available here.
Mary E. Hunt, introduction
Thank you for joining the circle tonight to focus with Virginia Day on a quote from Virginia Woolf, “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”
The WATERmeditation format is as follows: Virginia’s brief remarks, then a period of 22 minutes of silence, tonight started with a livestream of osprey, and then discussion for the rest of the hour.
Virginia is a longtime meditation participant. She is a nurse as well as a hospital chaplain, a wonderful background for the comfort I am sure she provides for those with whom she ministers. She comes from a Catholic background but appreciates the many spiritualities abroad in the universe. I always look forward to your meditations, Virginia, because I know they will be well thought out and rich in content. Thank you.
Virginia Day’s meditation
For me, the Connecticut Audubon Society offered me the inspiration I was seeking for this meditation, live from the Milford Point Coastal Center located in Milford, Connecticut, 15 minutes from my home. This year I took out a membership with the Connecticut Audubon Society to do my part for nature. And in turn, they gave me the gift of informing me of the osprey nest platform.
The platform is located on an island marsh about 400 feet from shore, and it was destroyed during a coastal storm this February 2021, and a faithful, generous group of volunteers erected a replacement and installed a camera to transmit live video footage. Last Sunday, I visited the site, and while I couldn’t go out to the nest, I spotted the small canoe the workers used to get out to the platform.
Tonight, we, too, shall enjoy a view of the osprey, who are totally unaware of their being on camera! In this era of informed consent, they do not have not a clue of their being observed!
So, you may ask, what’s the connection between these osprey and Virginia Woolf’s quote, “Arrange whatever pieces come your way,” found in Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary. The quote was a gift to me in the volume of inspiring quotes entitled A Woman’s Book of Inspiration (edited by Carol Kelly, Gangi Fall River Press, 2017).
Perhaps Virginia Woolf’s quote predated a more modern version on a notecard I recently received: “When life gives you lemons, make lemon pie” or, the more familiar one, lemonade!
Nonetheless, I make the assumption, that each of us gathered here, as well as our osprey friends, are quite adept at “arranging whatever pieces come [our] way.” This is especially true in this year of Covid; it’s especially true of the unrest in our cities; it’s especially true with each of us in the daily uncertainty in our personal lives. Perhaps, some of those pieces will appear this evening in your quiet time for arranging. Whether or not you can arrange them tonight is unimportant. Maybe just letting the pieces be for a while is what you are being asked.
We now welcome silence and the Wisdom that our osprey friends may offer as they, too “arrange the pieces that come their way.”
Link to the live osprey Cam: https://www.ctaudubon.org/osprey-nation-osprey-cam/
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Special thanks to the Virginias and to the osprey.
