Embracing All As Sacred

The Sacredness of Place - Yucca, Stupa, San Luis Valley

The sacred is not in heaven or far away. It is all around us, and small human rituals can connect us to its presence. And of course the greatest challenge (and gift) is to see the sacred in each other. Alma Luz Villanueva

Empty is a beginning. Sue Bender (Everyday Sacred: A Woman’s Journey Home)

Recently I’ve found myself present to the idea, perhaps belief, that everything is sacred. It landed deeply in me as I found myself mindlessly pushing to complete sorting through lots of things with the intention of passing lots of them along. Letting go, releasing books, family and personal keepsakes, and personal items no longer in use to find new homes. How might this push, this chore become more enjoyable for me? How might I become mindful in engaging in the choices of what to release?

Enter the Sacred. I recognized that I wanted not just to clear things out, but to create both physical and energetic space in my home and my life for the sacredness of place, this place to enter more fully. At the same time I recognized that the things I was choosing to release were sacred as well.

I woke one morning thinking about the energy of our ‘stuff’, family and personal things that I was sorting through deciding what I was ready to release. As I became aware that each and every ‘thing’ at some time was a treasure either to me or to a departed family member I hold dear, a sense of the sacred, their sacredness, joined me. The ‘chore’ became ritual; the drudgery and push, joy and flow.

When we embrace everything as sacred and recognize its energetic holding not as a ‘thing’ but as a treasure dear to another beloved, we engage in a ritual of flow. I began to honor and respect each ‘thing’ as something created at another point in time by someone and later treasured either myself or a beloved friend or family member. I became more mindful, respectful, and tender in this letting go, trusting the process as sacred, divine flow. Remembering that the sacred is in everything and that emptying creates the space for beginning.

I know not what beginnings are before me as I complete this phase of release, but I do know that I’m more deeply present to the sacredness of place. Home, the woods out back, and the paths and trails nearby. Sacredness is not only in the sacred structures like the nearby Padmasambhava Stupa and Ziggurat but in the ground I walk and the grasses growing along way. Sacredness in the birdsong, the morning raven on a post, and the community of hummingbirds that gather at the feeder. With eyes to see and heart to feel, sacredness is indeed all around.

Wild grasses in the Morning Light

The Call to Beauty

Shrouded Mountain Morning

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Rumi

In a sense, all the contemporary crises can be reduced to a crisis about the nature of beauty. … When we address difficulty in terms of the call to beauty, new invitations come alive. Perhaps for the first time, we gain a clear view of how much ugliness we endure and allow. … Much of the stress and emptiness that haunts us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. Internally, the mind becomes coarse and dull if it remains unvisited by images and thoughts which hold the radiance of beauty. … the Beautiful offers us an invitation to order, coherence and unity. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

This blog morning finds my eyes kissing the beauty of wet ground, mountain fog, and lichen robust with moisture. Thankful for the blessed rain that fell much of the day yesterday, as my ears embraced the beauty of abundant drops falling on the roof.

In the early dawn I resist flipping the light switch and settle into this writing spot gazing toward the shrouded peak. My familiar friend is behind a foggy veil. Beauty to behold. Stress-dissolving, heart opening, pure, radiant Beauty.

Beauty calls too in the birdsong as the woods slowly waken, basking not in morning rays of sunlight, but in the infrequent moisture of our arid climate.

I wonder what other beauty is stirring unseen beneath the ground, and I’m drawn to pause the pen and venture out to walk in the woods. To feel what I see. As I prepare to head out, The Ink calls me back. I jot a few notes but strongly feel the call to be in the woods. Surely a feast is waiting.

Indeed, the woods are rich with beauty for all the senses. Plump lichen invite a gentle touch. The aroma of woodland moisture abounds, and I experience subtle aromatic differences between the pines I approach and sniff. Moisture softened earth beneath my feet as I feel my bare skin soak in the dampness. A doe rests peacefully under a pine as three friends wander nearby. I stop. We observe each other for a time. Perhaps we notice the beauty in one another. I continue to saunter about savoring the bountiful feast of Beauty.

Returning to the pen, The Ink, my notes remind me about the absence of beauty and our mistaking glamour for Beauty. I think of the absence of beauty in our political discourse, wondering how we might call for our leaders to bring beauty into that discourse. If, as O’Donohue suggests, the Beautiful offers an invitation to order, coherence, and unity, then perhaps it’s time for us to expect and insist that they do so. I notice where glamour is confused with beauty and the harm that follows in its many extractive forms. Abuse of Life, both human and not.

How might we call Beauty forth into the hearts and minds of those who do not yet know its power?

And how do we nurture those who do know? Those who listen to the beauty in Nature and in Life as they engage in their unique ways of kissing the ground. For example, farmers, ranchers, gardeners who are building soil, regenerating earth. Perhaps if we open more deeply to Nature’s innate wisdom and beauty, we will recognize the power of the dollars we spend on food and ‘vote’ for the regenerators rather than the corporate conglomerates that confuse the glamour of more money with the beauty of healthy soil and the food it produces.

We experience Beauty beyond the five senses as well. Beauty’s vibrance flows in the synchronicities of events flowing with ease. A thought about someone and the ding from their incoming text a short time later. A ‘chance’ encounter with someone creating a new, beautiful regenerative initiative. A community of friends coming together with ease to meet the needs of another.

Beauty abounds when we call it forth, observe, and serve from that place. Beauty answers our call.

Lichen Come to Life Out the Kitchen Window

Being With Change

Retreat Mountain View - A Change of Scenery

Everything is working according to a plan. The earth and its elements were not just thrown together. There is an established order of existence in creation, and as we carry on with the continual process, we can see the value from the natural outgrowth of what has gone on previously before us. … The Universe, in its progression, brings to the planet what already exists. What we are experiencing is the natural pathway for what already exists in the Universe. Gregge Tiffen (The Language of a Mystic: Change)

As I moved about building a morning fire (winter weather is paying these mountains a visit) and opened to what wants to be shared this blog day after a retreat last week, I thought about change. The abundant (some would say ‘overwhelming’) change we are both witness to and participants in around the globe in every aspect of life. The changes on our planet, some visible and felt, others subtle yet profound in their impact. Changes in each of us, physically, mentally, spiritually, that aggregate into our consciousness and our experiences of life.

That led me to remember that we’re in the 5th month of the year, and that the number 5 represents change. Wanting to revisit his words and wisdom, I pulled a couple of Tiffen’s booklets off the shelf.

As I thought about myself and the changes I’m experiencing – yes, physically, mentally, and spiritually – questions emerged: What are these changes asking of me? What am I to observe and how am I to BE with change? The questions didn’t ask for answers, rather they invited me more deeply into awareness and exploration.

In our noisy, busy, speed addicted world, I wonder if we are willing to invest time and energy being with such questions. Questions both personal to us and those of our world, our consciousness. And I wonder if we have lost some of our capacity to do so as we’ve handed many aspects of our lives to ‘experts’ and systems to manage. What have we lost and what may we be losing as we turn to artificial intelligence for answers and guidance? What have gained and what might the potential upside be?

I wonder if we are turning away from Life, from our connections with one another, from Nature, and from Mother Earth who birthed us.

Or perhaps, as Tiffen’s words remind me we might ask whether all this change that is unfolding is indeed the logical, sequential expression of a benevolent Universe that is simply showing us our way home? Guiding us to the next iteration of humanity on the planet?

In our changing world, what questions are you beholding?

Retreat Mountain Sunset

Gratitude as Presence - Presence as Gratitude

Foggy Mountain Morning

As above, so below; as within, so without; as the universe, so the soul. Hermes Trismegistus (quoted in Terry Tempest Williams newly published The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary)

The focus and heading came and quickly words followed. A flow I didn’t expect, and I’m left wondering whether and how the narrative weaves …

It is hard to keep up with the flurry and pace of events that are changing our world, and much of what the media reports is all too often hardly worthy of our attention. At the same time much of what is changing our world and changing in our world goes unreported, unnoticed. We are called to hone our skills of discernment and to find sources that we trust. Not an easy call.

Yet something in that call calls me to the sacred, to being present to what is and to acknowledge all that is with gratitude. To be fully present and grateful requires a level of meticulous care for where I place my attention, my presence. But gratitude? Surely, I am not grateful for the horrors being perpetrated against Life, yet those very acts invite me to open to the deeper meaning of what they reveal and what needs to shift in me so that I’m not snared by the focus that would have me look the other way. To disregard (capital ‘L’) Life so that I can get on with my (small ‘l’) life.

I pause, take a few breaths as I wonder at and about the words. Ah, the sacred. Follow the call to the sacred for that is where the weave of presence and gratitude play. What is sacred in the minute details of life? Life? In both the seen and unseen?

While Every Thing is sacred, I think of place. The sacred land on which I dwell and of all the creatures whose visits bless me. I think of the visible life here, the soil, the grasses, wildflowers beginning to bloom, the pines, the birdsong, and deer that saunter through. Of The Mountain. Of the invisible microscopic beings and networks of underground communication and communion. And I think of the much-needed sacred moisture, forecast and yet to fall.

I think of each breath, mine and these beings, and how they are intertwined. Each with its role in the greater function of Life. I wonder about all that I don’t grok about that intertwining and of my role in the unfolding.

Gratitude as Presence, Presence as Gratitude – a starting point of deeper listening to step more fully into the reciprocity that keeps Life and life flowing. A place to begin again to more deeply align with that sacred flow. Of weaving. Of Life.

First Bloom - A Touch of Color on the Dry Landscape

Inaction IN Action

Inaction in action.

I woke to these words clear as a bell this blog morning. Not hearing nor seeing them, they emerged from the inside out as I slowly opened myself to the day. I sensed them. The direction, focus, indeed the title for today’s Pivot felt as deep knowing that the three simple words were guidance for Friday’s May Day Strong events and how I will engage.

Questions emerged: Inaction in action. Who will you Be? Who will you stand with by your choices on Friday? And beyond?

I’m not surprised to awaken to Pivot guidance on Wednesday mornings. That’s how these weekly posts have emerged over the 659-week journey of The SuccessZone and its pivot to becoming The Pivot in 2020. From some mysterious ‘place’ both inside and beyond me. A place not a location. A place we are all a part of and rely upon, the Source of All Life. At the same time responding in some way to the world I’ve experienced.

But I digress, an easy tack to take when I experience resistance to something. Just turn the other way. A tack that may work for an instant or a bit beyond, but somehow whatever I resist finds me … usually at some inconvenient moment. This morning as I wonder why the resistance? I’m guided back to the questions: What is to be shared? How am I guided to engage on Friday?

I journeyed down a bit of a rabbit hole thinking that perhaps I need to share lots of information about May Day itself and plans for the day. But you who want that know just where to find what you need.

Thinking, that was the mistake. Just listen. Bring attention to the day. Everyone will make their choice.

What about mine? I feel guided to be in solidarity by engaging in NO commerce and turning away from my electronic connections with the world which in themselves are commercial operations. No Zoom. No social media or following the ‘news’. Disrupting my own patterns so I can listen to another voice. Mother Nature and Her wisdom. Returning in a sense to the pagan roots of May Day. Celebrating Spring’s fertility and the return of light on this day that is the midway point between the Equinox and Solstice.

And as I listen, I will honor those who courageously walk away from jobs, from schools, from the cultural pull to consume as well as those who organize, who march, who provide all manner of support in creating some disruption that will make a difference. I will honor those in Minnesota who inspired this day’s events with the Minnesota Day of Truth and Freedom on that cold day in January and in every city, town, and hamlet who join in their own special ways.

And I will honor those who work tirelessly day in and day out to bring our world to a more peaceful place. For indeed, with a loving heart and clear intention, everything we do is a part of co-creating just that. Even inaction is a choice to act.

An old snag along my path reminds me to not be ‘snagged’ by the culture …

A Simple Pivot this Earth Day

From Global Alliance for Rights of Nature Earth Day 2026

We capitalize Nature because relationship begins with recognition. Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN)

A simple pivot when you pick up the pen or your fingers touch the keyboard – from nature to Nature. Nature – a collection of living, breathing beings each and everyone more than deserving of our recognition. Not a collection of ‘its’ to be exploited. A whole that IS LIFE.

And it is time, this Earth Day, to remember and recognize just that. GARN’s post which greeted me this morning says it well:

This Earth day change how you write and you begin to change how you relate.

We always capitalize Nature. Why?

Long before modern law, many cultures understood the living world as a community of beings, not a collection of resources. Mountains had presence, rivers had voices, forests were relatives, and language reflected that relationship.

The industrial age broke that bond: Nature became lowercase, abstract, extractable, governable without consent.

Capitalizing Nature is a return, not backward, but deeper. It restores agency and aligns language with a growing legal reality where rivers, forests, and ecosystems are recognized as rights-bearing entities.

The United Nations now capitalizes Nature in official reports. The law is shifting because the story we tell is shifting, as words shape perception, perception shapes behavior, and behavior shapes the future.

We capitalize Nature because relationship begins with recognition.

This Earth Day, start there.

I made this pivot some years back when I first became aware of the Rights of Nature movement and this simple yet profound shift one can make. As I’ve hiked these sacred mountains and as I saunter in the Woods Out Back, more and more I sense the true nature of Nature and that we indeed all are One.  And when I forget, there is always some gentle reminder, like the mule deer that was resting under Grandmother Pinon on my morning walk a couple days back.

Honor the Earth and all Her Beings this day. Honor Nature and honor you as a part of all Life.

Resting Under the Grandmother Tree

Flowing With Life

Step Into the Steam that is Life!

There is an effortlessness to the movement of Duck as you watch them glide downstream. Just as Duck enjoys the current that guides them, you too are asked to stop paddling ineffectually upstream against the flow of life. Elder Duck in The Animal Elders Oracle Guidebook by Asha Frost

Just before entering a conversation several days back, I drew a card from the Animal Oracle deck. Elder Duck invited me to ‘follow the flow’ into that conversation which unfolded as quite magical. And in the days since, I’ve felt Duck’s presence as I’ve made choices walking through each day.

Such was the case yesterday, Pivot Wednesday, when what I thought and ‘planned’ to be a fairly short meeting extended several hours. While I could have chosen to wrap the meeting before business was complete and schedule completion at another time, I felt Elder Duck’s guidance to ‘follow the flow’ and honor whatever time was needed to complete the business. Somewhere beyond my rational, thinking mind I sensed ‘This is the time. Move with the energy. The Pivot will flow in its time.’

And on this ‘day after’ I find myself in a flow that invites me to share Elder Duck’s wisdom without my typical musing as I integrate a deeper sense of both yesterday’s meeting and my choice to allow it to unfold rather than stepping in to control.  Elder Duck speaks:

Invoke my medicine when it is taking an overwhelming amount of energy to move in a certain direction. Yes, there are times in life when we need to dig deep and push through, but this is not one of them. Roadblocks and hurdles, like boulders or dams across the river, are powerful signs at this time. My medicine reminds you to stop trying to jump over them or run through them. With my help, you can choose to glide around them or take a new stream entirely. Follow the flow, for the water knows exactly what it’s doing. Elder Duck in The Animal Elders Oracle Guidebook by Asha Frost

This may not be your ‘medicine’ at this moment in time, but I invite you to take a brief pause. To breathe. To be present to the moment. And to inquire ‘am I in the flow that Life wishes to carry me?’ Carry this question with you into tomorrow’s potent New Moon inviting us to step into the flow of co-creating the world our hearts desire.

The Ziggurat on a Colorado Blue Sky Day

(Re)Turning to What Is Essential

Full Moon Morning

Our lives are a small stitch sewn on a vast circle of mystery. While we are forever mounting a campaign to order, know, grasp, and control, we are constantly reminded that with all our cunning, we still don’t know a hoot, really, about life. … But until we look inside our looking, until we become fully present to what it means to be a human being, we will stray from that which is essential. Richard Strozzi Heckler (Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion)

 I pulled this 1997 gem off the shelf last week in the midst of clearing out ‘stuff’, step one in transforming what has been my office into a playful, creative studio space. An inside place where I can be fully present to and express those parts of me mostly ignored (I was ignorant to their being a part of my Being!) in the days – no decades – of doing career, family, etc. You know, the things our culture tells us bring success, happiness, and supposedly all the things we want. A place to be curious just as I am when I saunter in the woods out back. Ah, but I digress…

If you’ve been with me on these weekly musings for a while, you’ve read about my explorations and practices of ‘presence’ for some time and that the Venerable Monks’ Walk for Peace from my hometown, Fort Worth, Texas to Washington D.C. inspired me to be more fully present to my breath. Each breath. Not an easy practice in our world, so let’s pause and breathe together for a moment. … Ah… What if we did that more often?

I’ve experienced the days since last week’s musing as tumultuous (to say the least) both within and daring to look out and step into the world. I’ve needed to return to awareness of my breath more often than I’ve actually done as I’ve explored deep, unfamiliar inner terrain for the sake of clearing out old gunk of the unconscious, creating space within as I’m doing in the physical space where I dwell. And I’ve needed it as I bear witness to our world and human fragility.

Thumbing through Strozzi Heckler’s musings, I was curious to discover what I’d highlighted almost 30 years ago when I first encountered his work. Two words: Presence and Practice! A full circle moment and a sense, confirmation perhaps, that I’m returning to what is essential.  Hopefully, in this chapter of my life, with a deeper commitment to discovering and living in alignment with the very essence of Life itself. Here are a couple of those highlights:

Presence is being present – a state impregnated with an open-ended curiosity, relaxation, and power that comes from seamlessly knitting together one’s mind, body, and spirit. … it is only through practice that this unification can occur. ‘If you want to tame something,’ the fox advises the Little Prince, ‘sit with it every day at the same time.’ A practice is not so much about achieving a goal, avoiding something, improving yourself, or making your wishes come true, as about creating a positive environment, internally and externally, for the awakening process to take hold.

 Oh, how different life might have unfolded if I’d really heard and heeded this wisdom then! But I hold no regrets, trusting that my journey has unfolded just as it has been meant to unfold, including the oopsies, U-turns, delays, losses, gains, changes made, and those avoided.

 Yes, we live in a time that is beyond confusion, even beyond chaos. Rampant hypocrisy. Mis and disinformation. Threats. Heart wrenching violence and abuse. Faith rupturing corruption. The need to reckon with our past. And so much more. That we must navigate these is clear. But navigating in and through does not mean submission to.

 Presence and practice offer us clear paths. We ‘look inside our looking’ to explore the essence of human Beingness. In practicing presence, we open to possibilities offered by returning to discover what is essential – the essence of Life itself. This opens us into co-creating, with others and with Life, a more coherent world for our children, grandchildren, and generations beyond.

Snow on the Peaks Sunset

Synchronicity, Listening, and Speaking Up

Elder Blue Jay Speaks

The path of truth invites you to root fully in your integrity. It’s not always the easiest or most comfortable choice…Elder Blue Jay (The Animal Elders Oracle Guidebook)

I’ve experienced seemingly random threads on this topic of truth - of listening deeply and speaking up - on my personal path recently. And I’ve observed the same out there in the world – uncomfortable truths being revealed, reckoning with our silence, both past and present, discerning human generated truth amidst the FUAI (Flood of Unidentified Artificial Intelligence).

Until this morning, the treads out there and my own exploration of speaking up seemed separate. But, in two back-to-back events, the randomness evaporated and the threads began to weave into a tapestry of deep listening and authentic voice. I felt the simultaneous guidance to speak up and to listen more deeply and with greater discernment. Not new. Deepened and widened.

Robert Hamburger’s Substack post The Hollowing of Human Speech: We’re Starting to Sound Less Like Ourselves reminded me of a post a few weeks back citing that “Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development recently analyzed hundreds of thousands of video transcriptions and found something unsettling: humans are unconsciously absorbing AI linguistic patterns into their own everyday speech, completely independent of whether they personally use AI to write.” The ‘YIKES!’ of that planted a seed that seemed to sprout and connect with reflections on deep listening, the quest for truth, and speaking up.

Then as I began to turn my attention to writing today’s post, I consulted The Elder Animals Oracle, asking the heartfelt question ‘What wants to be shared today?’ The message wasn’t loud, but it was clear: Speak Up! Not just about speaking up, but about how we listen, how we discern, and the blind spots we may have in seeking convenience and ease; about whatever your heart wants to share, in both close relationships and in interacting in the world.

Elder Blue Jay’s message landed in me as an answer to a question I’ve been sitting with trusting that clarity would come. It did! And the elder’s message put icing on the cake of confirmation about something I’d spoken up about recently, albeit a bit reluctantly. The cake? In response to speaking up, I was invited to say more which led to a rich, relational conversation and opened into seeds of a wider, generative exploration of possibilities.

Just what I long for and intend to create as I put a wrap on my 76th trip around our star and step into my 77th round.

I thanked the elder, remembering that Blue Jay was one of the first birds I identified as a child. While Blue Jay does not reside here in the woods, I’m in close relationship with its kin who do, both Pinon and Stellar’s Jays. They speak up. Loud and clear! Thank you wise, winged beings!

As I look back, the dots of other events and encounters connect in interesting patterns not as random, separate events. Rather in the noise of our world, I was presented with threads beneath the noise of mainstream. Curiosities and concerns were being offered clues, signs along the way about using my voice more clearly and intentionally and about the voices in the world and the growing challenge to discern who and what is human created content versus AI feel good puff or fear mongering stories meant to generate confusion, fear, and uncertainty.

We are reckoning with much from our past and in our present, including the cost of our silence when we witness misdeeds and withhold our voice. After listening deeply into a panel discussion beginning to reckon with just that and reading Hamburger’s post, I’m beholding an inquiry about what is slipping away in the noise of manufactured words as well as in withholding our voices. Are we willing to lay our humanity on the altar of convenience? Of ease? It occurs to me as I write that approach hasn’t worked out so well for us in terms of our health as we consume quantities of fast, convenient food. But that’s a story (or a rant!) for another day.

We are grappling and reckoning with much individually and collectively as the volume of disclosure rises and blatant hypocrisy inches toward becoming the norm.

I experience that when I pause to breathe, become fully present, listen beyond and beneath the noise to my heart the synchronicity of experiences is revealed along with a way forward: what step to take and what is mine to speak in the next moment.

What seemingly separate threads in your world may be synchronicities awaiting discovery to guide you in your listening and your speaking up?

Presence to What?

Morning Musing Under the Mother Tree

All grace arises out of presence. Tara Brach

Today is about slowing your roll and taking in the big picture of what is being required of you, both in your personal life and in how you are relating to the outside world and all its calamity. Dr. Michael Lennox (Daily Astro Alert: March 25, 2026)

All grace arises out of presence. In a world where we need so much more grace, I’ve been observing and reflecting on presence. Observing my own presence and lack thereof. Observing how I experience both the presence and lack thereof in relating with others.

Observing the inner peace of full presence I experience when I set aside scattered thoughts and I’m present to the one thing always with me, breath, and to whatever needs attention in that moment. Experiencing the internal war when scattered thoughts take over, seemingly able to resist being guided back to simply attending to breath. I’m reminded of something I wrote decades ago: Scattered thoughts like a herd stampeding go nowhere, fast.

Experiencing the joyful resonance of being fully present with others who are likewise fully present to whatever we are engaged in, along with the disconcerting, disappointing dissonance when I experience that I or the other isn’t fully present.

As I read Dr. Mike’s message about slowing your roll, I felt a resonance in me to step back and look at the bigger picture of presence for the sake of calling forth the co-creation of a world aligned with Life.

I think of The Agreement Beneath All Names with its gentle calling to remember

The ground beneath all nations is the same breathing body.

The sky above all prayers does not choose sides.

Then, as we remember, The Agreement’s invitation to

… choose again — each morning, each meeting, each moment of heat—

to respond instead of react,

to include instead of conquer,

to listen long enough for the deeper truth to surface.

And I wonder: How do I more fully bring my presence to this call for grace within and without? What are the deeper truths that want to surface? What is possible for our world and our future, if we cooperate and co-create from them? What conversations and invitations am I being asked to engage?

I wonder too as the old power-over, patriarchal systems crumble (explode, dissolve, and fade away) what habits of those systems might we need to lay to rest with them? Might it be useful to pivot from setting goals and rigorously following plans to listening and reimagining what is Life-aligned and allowing ourselves to be guided to that unfoldment? Are efficiency, productivity, and speed habits of these old systems that we need to release to create space for allowing emergence? Is multi-tasking one of many subtle patriarchal tools/habits that separate us from one another and from full presence? What is the sun setting on?

Let’s muse, breathe, and co-create together with Mother Earth and All Life! 

What shall we lay to rest at sunset in the days ahead?