July 21, 2018 Urban Coyotes

🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕
Coyotes calls out
As they run through the city.
Owning the grey dawn.
🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕

As the coyotes return to the land and enter our city, a Santa Barbara neighborhood post site called ‘NextDoor’ has noted many are concerned with coyote management. Some who post on the neighborhood site recognize that coyote is family and it is best if we learn to get along. Some just want to get rid of all coyote from their neighborhood. I am of the thought, it is best to find ways to co-exist as the four-leggeds belong here as much as the two-leggeds.
Isn’t this how humans are with other humans also. We run the gamut as to how we seek to ‘manage’ choices, wherein we feel we are rubbing one another the wrong way.
Seeking to understand how to best live with my four-legged neighbors, the coyote, I found a video which was most helpful. Interesting, how many of the management options could be applied to our world today and how the two-leggeds can better get along with other two-leggeds also.
Here as some of the take-aways I gleaned from the video juxtaposed to concepts of humans getting along with other humans:
🐕 Coyotes were here first- we don’t know if this is true - - and this may not even be the key issue / question. Reality is, we are all here now so let us figure out how to peacefully co-exist. Humans and coyotes have always traveled the earth when their home becomes unsafe or unable to sustain them. This is what humans do. This is what coyote does. This is what you would do too, if your home was no longer a good environment for you or your family and you were unable to figure out how to remedy the situation.
🐕 When a coyote is in our neighborhood and we are nonresponsive it teaches the coyote, it is ok to be with you and to do whatever they want as you are not letting them know if something is not ok, so do yell and raise and wave your arms to scare them away from places with small children playing etc. - - another way to say this is ‘It is okay to bark – you don’t have to bite.’ Respectfully, I feel that those in the USA today who are separating parents and children (families who have run here for safety!) is 'biting' and as such is unacceptable and lacking in human decency. This is the anti-thesis of friendly co-existence.
🐕 When you see the coyote in the wild and he is just ‘being a coyote’ and not so close as to be a danger to you leave him be - - this transposed human to human, I can agree with so long as other humans are in their own country and not causing harm we need to just let them be. Humanitarian and environmental issues may need the good human being to step in and up just as we would step in if the coyote were unbalancing his natural world also.
🐕 You cannot just get rid of a coyote. They are territorial, and another will just come in and take the spot vacated. - - When we see seek to make change, wisdom would dictate that it be more than just a knee jerk reaction. Consider choices and ramifications of choices. Then when considered, act with focused and loving determination.
🐕 If you have a well-behaved coyote in an urban environment, leave it there, otherwise it will just be replaced by another who may not be such a good neighbor. - - don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Consider consequences of choices
🐕 The coyotes natural time to be out on the land is at dawn and again at dusk. Humans and human companions (dogs, cats, etc.) get the day light hours - - Sometimes, humans getting along is just a matter of separate but equal. As an example, one may choose to be atheist, one a Christian, one a Hindu, etc. - each one gets his/her time and place and we respect and honor the other’s cultural and religious morays. Easy peasy.

With respect for coyote and all who share this earth walk with me: four-legged, two-legged, creepy crawlies, winged ones, standing tall and tiny green ones, slithering through the grass ones, moving through the water ones and winged ones who take to the air.

With respect for races, cultures and spiritual paths of the humans. 

🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕

"...Peace is not something that you and I or a few great souls can create at once, by command. Even a million Christs or Krishnas could not do it. Try as he would, Lord Krishna could not prevent the great war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, which is described in the Mahabharata. All humanity has to become Christlike to bring peace on earth. When each one of us shapes his life according to the wisdom and example of a Christ, a Krishna, a Buddha, we can have peace here; not before. We must start now, with ourselves. We should try to be like the divine ones who have come on earth again and again to show us the way. By our loving each other and keeping our understanding clear, as they taught and exemplified, peace can come..."
"...I believe that if every citizen in the world is taught to commune with God (not merely to know Him intellectually), then peace can reign; not before..."
Paramahansa Yogananda
The Divine Romance / A World Without Borders

🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕

Here is the video I found which was most helpful in understanding 

the coyote and our interaction with him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjkq_ex0zmw&feature=youtu.be

🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕

photo from the Urban Coyote Initiative. Their mission; Promote scientific knowledge about and coexistence with urban coyotes through exceptional photography and other visual media.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/UrbanCoyoteInitiative/about/?ref=page_internal

🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕🏚🐕

June 30, 2018 Connection

🐝🌿🌟🌿

🐝

Touching the robe’s hem –

Breathing in, then quiet sigh.

Connection forged.

🐝🌿🌟🌿🐝

I had never looked at my home from across the canyon. Then, Natalie sent this image. Lovely. It gives the impression of there being no one around for many miles. Indeed – depending on the direction I personally choose to look - the impression changes for me also.
When I go out on my back deck and look out across the canyon, the nearest home is some distance away and across a deep canyon. It would be daunting to go straight across to the homes on the other side so even though I can see them, I can not easily reach them by direct route.
However, when I go out my front door, I see my door is not far from Natalie, Ellen, Terra, Susan and Dick’s front doors. It is all about perspective. It is all about where I am looking.
The human is an interesting balance of ‘pack’ versus ‘solitary’. Too much time in one or the other (for most of us) creates issues of unbalance. The balance point needed varies from person to person. It also varies related to where we are in our personal earth walk.
It is common for the little one to say, “I am lonely.” The older one tends to want more alone time. However, the adult may also feel lonely, but may be less likely to speak the words, they may just hold the feeling, quietly suffering. It is heart tearing, to see another suffer loneliness.
I have been there. I have been in that place of hunger for human touch, human voice, friendly human words and laughter.
Many years ago, I read the book TOUCHING by the cultural anthropologist Ashley Montagu. In this tome, he speaks of the suffering of little infants when they are not physically touched. He calls this need ‘skin hunger’. Whereas I may have previously had a sense of the need for connection, it was through the words of Ashley Montagu I came to more deeply and viscerally understand this need. Montagu shared, the infant’s primary communication is through physical touch, making touch of paramount importance. As the we mature, other forms of connection gain importance, including visual and auditory. Sharing words with another, finding commonality of thought also creates connection as we mature.
At some point, we may realize, there is an inner realm. Even without any training, we may now and again sit quiet, breathing slow and easy, eyes closed or quietly open without a ‘seeking vision’ but rather observing without avarice to obtain information. THEN a place is touched, rich in connection. With soft exhalation, we are full to overflowing as we let go of desire. We have found peace. We have surprisingly found connection in the center of that peace. This is the beginning of the true end to loneliness. We have touched connection with life itself. We have touched the hem of The Robe Divine. 

🐝🌿🌟🌿🐝

“Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.”
Paul Tillich 

🐝🌿🌟🌿🐝

“As I called to Thee in the wilderness of my loneliness, Thou didst burst through the dawn to greet me with Thy joy. Thou didst emerge from the molten door of the sun to pour Thy power into the pores of my life. Thou didst tear away the night of my ignorance to reveal Thy silver rays of speaking silence!”
Paramahansa Yogananda
http://www.yogananda-srf.org/HowtoLive/Beauty_and_Joy,_Grace_and_Refuge__Living_in_the_Presence_of_the_Mother_Divine.aspx#.WzeAU_acFPY

🐝🌿🌟🌿🐝
An olive mountain neighbor – Natalie Mcguire –

 took this photo of my home from across the canyon
🐝🌿🌟🌿🐝