Pivot to Compassion

Grandmother Tree in the Woods Out Back

The greatest evil and destruction arises when people are unable to feel compassion. The beauty of compassion continues to shelter and save our world. John O’Donohue

The heart is the mother and father and origin of all creatures: the one who knows the heart from the skin is blessed. Rumi

This morning as I moved toward settling in with Muse to reflect and write, I feel drawn to Beauty, a favorite John O’Donohue book of essays, and as I move to find where I left this frequent companion last, I think of Rumi. A few more steps bring me to both, stacked together, just the two of them. Settling in I wonder ‘who will have the words of wisdom to guide the unfolding this day?’ ‘What wants to be shared?’

After writing a bit more, I opened O’Donohue. Then Rumi. I opened to pages where the words went straight to this heart, stirring a recent exploration into compassion that led me to recognize places where I could replace animosity or a quick harsh judgement with compassion or its companions – kindness, grace, tenderness – along with a sprinkle or two of curiosity.

When I’m fully present, conscious, aware and take time to drop into my heart, compassion or its kin are most always my choice, even in those events where a boundary needs to be drawn or a misunderstanding needs attention. Heck, even when I think I’ve been wronged by another. I aim for the heart to rule.

Alas, I don’t always make that mark. When I’m moving too quickly through a multitude of choices, decisions, projects, concerns, the mind grabs the steering wheel of the bus of life until I come to my senses, the deeper knowing of my heart.

Life offers opportunities moment to moment to choose who is driving. Will mind take over? Will heart prevail? Will I be compassionate about and toward the contractor who is incommunicado weeks after a project was to start? Mind wants the project done. Now! Heart says, ‘what if you trusted the timing to be perfect?’. While mind blames and abuses, heart wonders if he and his family are okay? Has something happened that I’m not aware of?

What if I met every situation where I feel disappointed in this same way? How might I more fully embody the belief I wrote about a few weeks back: Everything is connected to everything else. Everything operates on behalf of everything else … (find it here)

For it is the small things, our moment-to-moment choices that loom large in how we experience our world, our personal satisfaction or lack thereof. And it’s those same things that are our contributions – for better or worse – to the future we are creating by those very choices.

Let’s choose love!

Art of the Inner Tree

Pivot to Sanity

Ziggurat and Spring Storm on the Horizon - 4-25-23

Till the cloud weeps, how should the garden

     smile?

The weeping of the cloud and the burning of

     the sun

are the pillars of this world: twist these two

     strands together.

Since the searing heat of the sun and the

    moisture of the clouds

keep the world fresh and sweet,

keep the sun of your intelligence burning bright

and your eye glistening with tears. Rumi - Intelligence and Tears

As I moved toward dreamtime last night, I opened a book of Rumi wisdom. The verse above is where my eyes landed. My heart followed. I felt the paradox that rises often with opposites: bitter and sweet, joy and sorrow. Each holding truth, sanity, yet not all the truth, nor all the sanity.

 Earlier in the evening I watched a Charles Eisenstein talk titled The Next Five Years. As I listened, I felt a deep resonance as he wove together a myriad of thoughts and possibilities about the years ahead. While much of what he sees is not rosy, I found it calming in a strange way. Accuracy. Recognition. Truth.

 In leaning into the darkness of possibilities that seem inevitable, I discovered the sanity that lives beyond denial. I was reminded that the future is in our hands, in the choices we make day to day, in the stories we embrace each time we choose, whether that choice is conscious or not. What does this choice say about me? What am I supporting when I take this action or when I react in certain, less than stellar, ways? How do I sustain and maintain my awareness and my sanity? What new stories do I/will I embrace to call forth a new world?

 Rumi’s wisdom speaks to me of the sanity necessary for navigating the crumbling complexities of our current world and for co-creating a new world. I’m not pointing to the ‘sanity’ of our legal system that judges whether someone is ‘competent’ or to sanity in our culture’s terms where we’ve come to dehumanize and render those who are different as ‘crazy’ (or worse).

 Rather I’m pointing to the sanity that is wholeness.

 In wholeness is our capacity to experience the depths of sorrow and despair, acknowledging the truth, the pain, the errors at the roots of this despair AND to embrace the pure joy of beauty, of Nature, of the miracles that are Life. Indeed, the beauty in that very sorrow and despair.

 In wholeness is our capacity to see the nuggets of truth in all points of view, as well as to recognize and navigate in the paradoxes that life and truth offer.

 In wholeness we find our knowing that we are One. One with our planet. One with Nature. One with one another, each and every One.

 In wholeness is our capacity to co-create new stories, new agreements, new systems and structures, new ways of allowing what Life knows to guide us when we don’t yet clearly see the path ahead or even the next step to take.

 In wholeness is the recognition that everything we create is based on story: family, community, country, systems, health, money, politics, art, business, home, EveryThing.

 In wholeness is our recognition that our old stories of separation no longer serve because they are not the truth of who we are.

 In wholeness is letting go of our old stories so that the new may rise.

 In wholeness is sanity, embracing the story of your heart even (perhaps especially) when that story runs counter to the cultural stories that you may find yourself still swimming in.

What a Difference a Day Makes! 4-26-23

Beauty and The Beasts

Mother Mary Statue - Mother Mary’s Garden, San Luis, Colorado

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

I felt drawn to Rumi this morning and as I searched for his volume on the shelf another book caught my attention. Muse seemed less surprised than I when I opened Carolyn Baker’s Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse to a chapter that began with the above quote. Ahh, the magic of life.

The surprise continued as I read the first paragraph where Baker cites the John O’Donohue book I turn to often, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, quoting a line that I used here just a few weeks back:

When we walk the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us.

My smile meets Muse’s knowing twinkle. THIS is the magic of how life flows. THIS is life that dances and wants to rise. THIS is who we are.

I felt as if I’d come home to discover surprise guests, gifts both comforting and unsettling. I felt comfort in the wise words, of being reminded of the power of beauty, and of beauty’s existence in so many forms. When we look for beauty, it is either present to be discovered or we encounter a space, a longing where beauty beckons us to create its essence. As O’Donohue suggests, beauty comes to trust us when we hold reverence for her and for all life.

At the same time, I was present to the unsettled nature of this time and to inhabiting my own unsettledness. It feels to me as if the cacophonies of chaos are raising their voices in every domain of life. The pace toward and of the collapse of the world we have known seems to have quickened. We are gifted with the challenge of navigating life in uncharted waters. Beauty offers to light the path.

Navigation is both a solo journey and one of community. We each have our own path of inner work to engage as well as engaging in maintaining our daily life on the physical plane in outmoded, crumbling systems. This is no different for communities large and small. Each must reckon with the past, create its identity in the present, and maintain life as it looks ahead to new futures rising.

It is a time of beasts, but it need not be a time deficient of beauty. At the heart of the collapse of systems built on the lie of separation are the emergence of systems and structures built on the truth of unity, our interconnectedness with one another and with ALL of life. Our dance encompasses both – the dying along with all that is gestating and being born.

While we hospice the disintegration of that which we once knew, let us midwife the birth of that which wants to rise not from the greed of separation but from the true nature of our loving hearts.

Sunset Moon Over the San Luis Valley

Easing into 2022 with Rest

A White Christmas Labyrinth!

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterwards. Proverb

The only real rest comes when you’re alone with God. Rumi

As I began to update what has become my ‘Auld Lang Syne’ final post of the year, the online countdown clock indicated that it’s 2 days, 14 hours, 41 minutes, 56 seconds until the new year is rung in here in the Colorado Rockies. But, hey, ‘who’s counting?’ wonders the Muse.

As was the case at the end of 2020, many – perhaps most – await the turning of the clock to 2022 with bated breath, wishing to bid adieu to another tumultuous year. We want to turn the page. We long to dive deeply into the fresh start that began with the Solstice promise of our personal newness and culminates as we replace our 2021 calendars with new pages of promise and possibility that the coming year has the potential to bring forth.

It is, as always, up to us – individually and collectively – to bring promise, possibility, and potential to fruition. As sure as the sun’s light is returning day by day here in the northern hemisphere, we will have opportunities to do just that in the hours, days, weeks, and months ahead. What if we trusted the opportunities to come forth at just the right divine time rather than pushing to ‘make’ them happen?

While this year held much tragedy and darkness, lights of love continued to be shined in dark corners needing our attention and care.  May we each be a part of shining the light of love in all the days ahead. May we tap into the countless sources of light available beyond the chaos of the mainstream and its ways. May we receive whatever light we need as we add our unique rays to loving constellations of light and life.

Although the onset of a new year signals the end of the holiday season in our culture, Winter has only just begun. The dark, the cold invites me inward (more snow would help the cause!). The Muse smiles a happy, knowing smile. The season that began fewer than 10 days ago has a 12-week run before it gives way to Spring. Yet our cultural habit of a new year is to make plans and spring into action with goals and commitments to DO more.

What if we took more time for rest and renewal as Nature does in the season of cold? Inward to rest, to renew. Inward to commune with the sacred and to gather all that is necessary to burst forth in Spring. While certainly there is life and livelihood to maintain, jobs to go to, businesses to tend, political action to be voiced, stories to be told, I wonder how the world might be if we began the calendar year in greater alignment with Nature?

What might be possible for us individually and collectively if our first goal for the new year was intending rest and renewal of body, mind, and spirit?

As I reflect on saying ‘Goodbye’ and refrain from saying ‘good riddance’, my year end reflections first written at the end of 2016 seem as apropos (with a few additions) today as they did five years ago.

At year end, we tend to look back on joys, sorrows, what we accomplished, where we may have fallen short. Hopefully our review list includes acknowledging all that we discovered about ourselves and learned from the opportunities and events life presented.

As 2021 ends, many will breathe a sigh of relief that it is finally over along with a breath of hope for better days in the year ahead.  The world we live in is chaotic and uncertain. It IS! Those who put attention on that world forgetting that it is the world we live IN, NOT the world we are OF may look ahead with dread or fear.

That need not be.

Within each of us is a seed of understanding who we truly are. Nurturing that seed grows our faith in our capacity to be resilient in the face of the world’s chaos. In this year ahead, I have a sense that we will need to tap into our spiritual strength in ways we may not have done before.

This seed of faith is within us all. It is not faith in anything outside of us. Rather it is faith in who we are, each as an individual, integral part of an intelligent Universe. It is a reminder that life is so much more than we experience and observe in our daily routines.

As you ring in 2022, I invite you to join me in nourishing your seed of faith in each of the 365 days ahead and to remember how important your presence and your ray of light is at this moment on the planet.

With that intention top of mind and heart, I’ll be participating in a global event 7 Days of Rest and Sacred Renewal during the first week of the new year. The event’s introductory words drew me in with their reminder of the power of intention and clarity and the potent possibility that alignment and collective action call forth:

7 Days of Rest is an annual, open co-creative event inviting individuals and groups around the world to initiate and join local and online events for the healing and thriving of Earth and all her inhabitants. During the first 7 Days of 2022, we unite in seeding the New Year with a sacred field of intention and blessing for a thriving world for all of Life.​ Together we co-create a collective space for renewing ourselves and our sacred bonds with each other and with all of Life. Through rest, deep listening, wisdom sharing and compassionate action we amplify the emerging global culture of peace, health, cooperation and wise governance.

I’m deeply grateful for this discovery/resource (the website -click here - is chock full of nourishing offerings daily!) and I’m looking forward to diving in daily with each of the daily themes. Join me in whatever way best fits your schedule, your life, and your intentions for the year ahead.

Happy New Year!

I hope you’ll join me in participating in this global gathering!

Vigilance From the Inside Out

Majestic Mountain Magic

If thou wilt be observant and vigilant, thou wilt see at every moment the response to thy action. Be observant if thou wouldst have a pure heart, for something is born to thee in consequence of every action.  Rumi

As I sat with the muse earlier this morning, I was thinking about a question I’ve been holding for some time:  what science are we to believe? There is after all enough conflicting scientific information, especially in the domain of health, to make one’s head spin and to foment individual and collective confusion.

Science isn’t my wheelhouse. Not even close. Looking at scientific data and reading articles replete with same is torture for me. Yet, I want to know and to understand alternatives so that I can make good choices. ‘Good choices’ being defines as choices that are right for me. I don’t subscribe to the notion that one size fits all. Not in terms of health, nutrition, or any set/subset of ideas and ideologies.  What is best/right/etc. for me may not be the same for you in science, in health, and, yes even in politics.

To be clear, there are facts. Yes, there are observable results. From them conclusions are reached that are then labelled ‘the truth’.  I’m old enough to remember that science was used to claim cigarette smoking was safe. Few would make that argument today.

All too often, it seems to me, that ‘truth’ has an agenda: to entice us to buy and consume, to convince us to go along with and accept conclusions to be part of the crowd. Something, be it a product or a candidate or an idea, is for sale. We are the target audience.

Frequently there are conflicting scientific facts, differing approaches and studies to the same question, and, sadly agendas that compete with one another. We hold warring views of what is in the common, public interest and how best to honor that.

Navigating this environment requires our vigilance: keen awareness of how we are being and what we are doing in the world. After all we are creating that world by our thoughts, our words, our deeds. The world, other people, nature, the planet herself are responding to us. We are responding (and reacting) to one another. Conflicts ‘out there’ reflect our inner conflicts.

The world as it is now will not hand us clear answers to the decisions and choices we will face in the days, weeks, months, and, possibly, years ahead. We will argue over ‘this’ and ‘that’/’us’ and ‘them’/’right’ and ‘wrong’ until we can embrace the pure-hearted truth that there is no ‘this’ and ‘that’. No ‘us’ or ‘them’. No ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.  There is but one unified field of which we are all a part.

Navigating that road and making choices along the way demands our vigilance step by step, moment by moment, day by day.  Navigating that road requires that we be clear about what we believe at the same time we are open and adaptable to other possibilities. Navigating that road requires both strength of our convictions and the nimbleness to adjust. Navigating that road invites us to know more deeply who we are and what our true purpose is at this moment in time on the planet.

Early Morning Moon in the Sangres

Patience and Rumi Wisdom for This Day

Labyrinth in the Morning Light

What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Rumi 

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them. Rumi

Before this day, the morning after election day here in the U.S., dawned I woke thinking about patience: the need to be patient as all votes are counted, the need to be patient with uncertainty, the need to be patient with myself and the swirls of thoughts and feelings, the need to be patient with each other … each and every ‘other’.

As I waited for the darkness outside to lighten so that I could venture out to walk the labyrinth in the woods outback, I was drawn to Rumi. What did he have to say about patience?

Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.

This day I find it difficult to see the ‘rose’ amid the thorn. Indeed, thorns seem to outnumber roses. I have no doubt that soon the sun will rise, but how will I light my day in what feels a dark time? How will I pivot to my deep knowing that the Universe is unfolding in divine perfect order, despite and interpretations I may have to the contrary?

I take my swirl to the labyrinth. Coyote, the wise jokester, howls in the distance. I chuckle wondering just what he may know that I haven’t yet discovered. I walk slowly toward the center, hand on my heavy heart, asking that heart to be open and to light the path ahead. Reaching the center, I thank the four directions, Mother Earth, the sky and all above. I begin the slow walk out, the heaviness of my load lightened just a bit.

Questions begin to form: How will I stay present to the perfection of this time and of however events unfold in the days ahead? How will I invite the darkness to inform me, to be my candle? What are the messages of the pain I feel? Of the pain I see in others? How will I remember to make choices from a loving heart and from understanding that this time is just a blip on the infinite timeline of existence? How do I live the truth that every blip matters to my/to our evolution, learning, and growth?

‘This’ time, these events, my swirls of thoughts and feelings matter. My sadness, my anger, my worry each matter. So do my love, my compassion and my patience. My curiosity matters. My care matters. My gratitude matters. My thoughtfulness matters. My questions about how to be and how to participate matter. Yours too. All our swirls of thoughts and feelings matter as does how we BE with them and what we DO in response to the world that we are in and the world that we are co-creating with each (and every) other and with Source.

I’m at peace with having more questions than answers in this moment. I don’t know how a collective pivot toward love (click here if you missed last week’s post) might unfold. I’m curious about how to create economic systems and systems of governance that work for all. I’m curious how I will navigate the coming days and beyond and what may emerge in this space in the weeks ahead. And, yes, I’m curious about who will win the Presidential election and how that result will be met with each of us.

Sunset on Election Day