Honoring the Veins & Arteries of Our World

The Rio Grande River Near South Fork, Colorado

Rivers are the veins and arteries of our world, and they are essential to all life. In the U.S., we depend on our 3.5 million miles of rivers for our drinking water and the food we eat. Rivers provide crucial habitat for fish and wildlife, opportunities for recreation, and spiritual and cultural connections for us, our families, and our communities. Rivers make life possible, yet we are losing them. Amy Souers Kober, American Rivers (www.americanrivers.org)

Heading out early on the morning of the autumnal equinox to explore and honor the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, little did I know that the following day was World Rivers Day. Recently engaged in global activity to honor fresh waters, I simply wanted to get to know this river at the place where she begins her long (and oft interrupted) journey to the Gulf of Mexico.

Enroute to the headwaters, high in the San Juan Mountains 130 miles or so away, we crossed the Rio Grande numerous times, stopping at a couple of particularly beautiful Colorado State Wildlife Areas to touch the River below her genesis point. Our day of awe and beauty had only just begun.

Arriving at the Rio Grande Reservoir, more beauty to behold, beauty that touched my heart and brought feelings of deep gratitude for this River, for all Rivers, for all Life. During our slow meandering of the area, the sense of what it might have been in the days when indigenous peoples lived there in harmony with the River, the Earth, Life. Before my European ancestors brought what they believed was ‘progress’, what I now hold as colonization and control that has led us to feel we are separate from one another and from Nature.

 I think of the Lakota phrase “Mní wičhóni” (“Water is life”) that came powerfully into our consciousness as the protest anthem from Standing Rock. I remember that it also has a spiritual meaning rooted in Indigenous world views. Water not only sustains Life, Water is also sacred.

A key element in honoring the waters is to ask and to listen.  In doing so recently with rivers in the eastern United States, I have ‘heard’ their sorrow for the division and bloodshed of the past and their wish that this be healed. And I have sensed the rivers’ desire to flow freely.

In our culture of control, we view water on the move as disruptive and thus needing to be controlled. In nomadic times Rivers and humans moved freely in what I imagine to be a dance. ‘The River will rise soon … we need to move to higher ground.’ Listening to Nature and dancing with her. Today we demean such lifestyle choices. Countries, political boundaries, ownership have fenced us in to the ways of separation.

How shall we become free? How shall Life and Nature regain their natural freedom? Musings for now. Questions with mere hints of possibility. A call for greater awareness. For honoring. For asking. For listening. For gratitude. And not just out in the wild, beauty of Nature, but right here with each turn of the tap. Ask and allow the water to inform. Remember the sacredness. Respect and respond.

Marshy Headwaters of the Rio Grande River

Pivoting Into Autumn

Our Ancestors

The wise leader solves the problem of water first. Lao Tzu

The question before us, then, is not only how we will mobilize to redress the immediate harm done by the current militarism and violence. The question is also how we will plant the seeds of a peaceable economy. There is no more fundamental place to start than with how we grow food, how we feed ourselves and one another, how we relate to and care for the land. Woody Tasch – A Call to Farms

You’ll learn how to be a good ancestor. The answer is in the land, in the mountains, which are the sources of life. Dr. John Hausdoerffer

Tomorrow, September 21 is the International Day of Peace and day 1 of Campaign Nonviolence 12 Action Days (check it out here). I think of this as I reflect on the threads woven into this week past, threads that carry forward from last week’s post about living into a desired future (find it here).

Last week we were approaching a new moon, a time to set and renew intentions. In the wake of that new moon, I experienced two long-held intentions stepping forward with opportunities for attention and action.

The opportunities rose perfectly timed to redirect me from stepping into a commitment of time and energy that was interesting, but around which I felt little excitement or passion, and which, in hindsight, was only minimally aligned with my values.

Food and water. Now we’re talking passion and alignment. Both water and food are ingredients for building a culture of peace. They go hand in hand as elements of Nature that our culture all too often views as resources to be tapped.

The desired future that I want my daily choices to create includes sustainable, just, and accessible to all food systems, along with clean, pure water that sustains ALL Life. I believe that future will rise as we repair and restore our relationship with Nature, as we listen to that which sources Life and align our choices with our planet home.

Ancestry is a related thread in the fabric of life this week, inspired by Dr. John Hausdoerffer in his webinar, Kinship with Mountains, (enjoy it here). If you’ve been with me for a while, the title alone clues you into why I was drawn to the event. Hausdoerffer speaks beautifully, questioning how Life could look when we “recognize Earth as our kin and Mountains as our ancestors.” I wonder, as does Hausdoerffer in his forthcoming book, What Kind of Ancestor Do I Want to Be?

Are my choices aligned with that? What pivots are indicated?

As summer gives way to fall here in the northern hemisphere and we approach the autumnal equinox with equal hours of daylight and darkness, I feel myself musing these heady questions from a deep, heart-centered place. What do I value and what actions align with that? As my priorities shift what old habits, beliefs, ways need to fall away?

It seems a different pattern to be in these questions in the season of harvest. Perhaps my harvest of opportunities this week is nourishment for navigating what lies ahead and the questions are integral to receiving that nourishment. Perhaps they will linger and be the focus of winter morning musings by the fire.

Perhaps I’m experiencing the speeding up of time in a changing world, on a changing planet. Perhaps I feel an age-related urgency.

I pause to observe Zadie Bryd licking her paws, then rubbing her face, as she lays nearby. I wonder what she’s experiencing in her body and whether there’s something I need to know or to do to support her.

The observation and questioning in that pause brings clarity that, no matter the project or priority, my prayer is that I step into the flow of Life with heart-felt love and care, being the kind of ancestor that will leave this world a better place.

Our Kin

Life As Sacred Tasks

Fearless Bunny

Where things are moving too quickly, nothing can stabilize, gather, or grow. John O’Donohue (Anam Cara)

The sacred isn’t speedy. And speedy isn’t sacred.

The saying “take time to smell the roses” comes to mind this morning as I settle in to write. This week I’ve been present to the times when I experience the sacred in the tasks of daily life and when those sacred tasks become unpleasant chores to be rushed through.

Sometimes I catch myself urging Zadie Byrd to ‘hurry up ... I’ve got things to do’. I’m more present to the doing and completing than to self, to soul, to this canine being and to the sacred task of care for another. In this state I miss noticing the bunnies, the hummers, the blooms.

I lose that coherence when I rush to ‘get things done’ rather than being present to each as a sacred task in support of life, a life that I love.

What is the cost of dismissing the mundane in our rush to check things off our ‘to do’ lists?

I thought about this one recent morning when I found myself rushing through opening windows upon rising. I became aware of unconsciously doing the daily task rather than being present to greeting the day. Moving from one window to the next, I failed to greet the mountains and acknowledge the woods. Did I even see them?

With this awareness, I paused and retraced my steps, returning to each window to greet and thank the beauty and the beings that I’m blessed to live among. I chuckled, recalling that I’d recently mentioned to a friend how much I appreciate this summer morning ritual. I shared I was happy that maintaining a comfortable temperature in the home requires my attention rather than an automatic setting. Just as building a fire in the wood stove does each winter morning; opening windows, placing fans, and adjusting them as the sun’s angle changes connects me to the season, to Nature, to Gaia, the Cosmos, and their cycles.  By choice there is no Alexa, Siri, or smart thermostat to stand between me and Mother Nature.

How much sacredness do we lose to so-called convenience – personally and collectively? I think of the lost nutritional value, degradation of our health and the planet’s well being as a result of industrialized agriculture. What if we held the earth and her capacity to produce food as sacred? What if we held food as sacred and more robustly supported those who practice regenerative agriculture, providing fresh, nutritious foods? Just as is true for our souls, nourishing food ‘cannot stabilize, gather, and grow’ at warp speed.

The sacred isn’t speedy. And speedy isn’t sacred. What sacredness have we lost in other domains of life? How can we enjoy the comforts of life without offending or abusing the Natural world? How can I? How can we/I maintain the sacredness of life and its tasks with each sacred breath we breath?

Happy Hummers!

New Doors, New Worlds

Angel’s Wing …

Between every two pine trees is a doorway to a new world. John Muir

So many pines. So many possible new worlds. What worlds will we create? I wonder …

Winter’s grip is easing after a week of snow, sub-freezing, record-breaking low temperatures. I too still feel winter’s interior pull. Not yet ready to ‘spring’ into action, I hold on to the quiet solitude that is a favorite winter experience.

As I move more firewood in for the hearth, I imagine just below the surface of the soil dormant plants and grasses beginning to stir and to think of sending green shoots into the visible world. Soon they will pop here as they have already done in less harsh environs.

These plant beings like the bears that will soon stir out of hibernation will enter a world that may look like the one they left behind months ago when they retreated to their underworld. Likewise, the woods out back where I sauntered earlier this morning seem as they were before winter’s cold grip.

But the world they are waking to has changed. They too have changed. Change, visible and not, is a constant. Speaking of this nature of change, a wise sage once told me, “you cannot walk through a doorway without creating change.” Sometimes we forget how subtle change can seem and how every change ripples out through all the world.

Today I sense a different quality to change than that of a year or so ago. I sense change is deeper, wider, faster than most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. It’s easy fall into the trap of thinking that change is happening to us. Muse nods in agreement, adding that more humans are waking to how and what our choices contribute to change, to the shape and character of the world.

While many are waking to and embracing new doorways, new possibilities for creating a world beyond the world of separation where we live into the truth that there is no ‘other’, some cling to the so-called security and comfort that separation, differentiation, and win/loose competition.

Yet the doors between the pines in the woods invite us to listen to Nature’s ways of living in harmony. Indeed all of Nature invites us to listen, to discover her ways, her truths. The rivers invite us to explore flow. The oceans ebb and flow with the moon. The stone beings hold deep memory for us to tap into, and the plant beings offer nourishment and an opportunity to more align with Mother Earth’s seasons.

Muse gently pulls me back to choices, to the thoughts and actions about where our attention goes and to the importance of aligning those choices with doors to the world we want to create, the world we want to engage in. What do we care about? What are we committed to? Are those the focus of my attention? My actions? My choices?

Rigor in our thinking and aligning what we speak and the actions we take with our beliefs requires attention, commitment, and care. These are the keys to open the doors to new worlds, co-creating with Creation and cooperating with one another each step of the way. This is being the change we want to see in the world.

Resting In the Doorways

Imagining a New Reality

Winter Vistas …

You represent and unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice. … The imagination is committed to the justice of wholeness. … Imagination is the most reverent mirror of the inner world. John O’ Donohue (The Body is Your Only Home in Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World

Once again, I’m challenged to settle in and focus attention, to put pen to paper, words to paragraphs on the page. O’Donohue’s words draw me deep within as they invite me to bring voice to the world I alone represent.

Winter’s gifts of soul time and precious solitude are giving way to a spectrum of activity that ranges from the mundane of tax preparation and heater repair to the magical, mystical realms of imagination. Winter’s embrace nurtures the later, holding seeded ideas until their time to sprout. The world I give voice to seems scattered, unformed like a bonus seed packet of ‘surprises’.

As the first shoots of green are breaking through the soil, I’m in awe of their response to some inner voice that knows and guides: Now! This is the time. These plant beings are tuned into the greater energy force field of our planet home. They listen. They know. They ebb and flow, go dormant then grow in tune with rhythms lost to most of us in our culture as we attend to the outer world more than the inner.

It is these greater rhythms that I am drawn to tune into more deeply in this phase of life. Observing them sparks something inside, a seed gone dormant long ago perhaps, and expands my capacity to imagine and contribute to a world far different from what we label ‘reality’ today.

This week I found myself returning to the childlike nature I remember as a toddler growing up in the country and breaking the bounds of home to head to the pasture and commune with the cows. Oh how I wish I could remember cow wisdom. The family canine, Sweetheart, a Lassie-like Collie, came along and would nudge me homeward before our escape became a worry to parents whose ‘reality’ was vastly different than mine.

I walked these woods with what of that nature I could muster and I ‘heard’ and ‘saw’ the land in new ways that don’t yet have words. A felt sense of deeper connection, more confidence in my capacity to sense the land’s needs as well as its sacredness.

The labyrinth is guiding some gentle adjustments and inspiring creations to strengthen the energetic flow and the contribution of this land to the greater whole – community, continent, Gaia, and beyond.

I feel as if I’m writing a dream. The ‘adult’ me wondering ‘will this make sense?’. The childlike me inviting you to come play on the playground of creating our world anew.

Listening to and holding sacred this vortex of energy in the woods out back

Humility: Voice of the Soul

Tracking

Through prayer we learn to see with the eyes of the soul. … It refines your eyes for the unknown narrative which is quietly working itself through your words, actions and thoughts. In this way prayer issues from, and increases, humility. The normal understanding of humility made it out to be a passive self-depreciation in which any sense of self-worth or value was diminished. Humility has a more profound meaning. Humility is a derivative of the Latin word ‘humus’ meaning ‘of the earth’. In this sense, humility is the art of being open and receptive to the inner wisdom of your clay. John O’Donohue (essay in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong)

In the early morning quiet with warming fire in the woodstove on this cold morning, I rediscovered this O’Donohue wisdom that I’d  read sometime back. It shined light into the darkness that I’d been holding around humility. I understood that my story about humility held the limits of the “normal understanding” that he speaks of. A new story could now emerge in the light.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve made passing reference to humility here in The Pivot. The first was mentioning that I bristled when a bio-field scan suggested it as a priority. ‘What’s wrong with my humility?’ I bristled, ‘I have plenty…’. Then, as I wrestled with the teaching style of the leader in a class I’d just started, I recognized that a dose of humility might be an antidote worth exploration.

If not front and center in these early days of the new year, humility has certainly been highlighted in the soup of my reflections and musings with ever-gentle Muse nudging me along. Today, thanks to O’Donohue, I’ve come to better understand why the suggestion that humility needed to be addressed triggered my defensive reaction. Likewise, his wisdom further opened my heart and the door to create a new story.

Reading the scan results with fresh eyes and heart, I wondered if the language had changed since my first reading. There was no ‘problem’ with me that needed to be ‘fixed’. Rather I found an invitation to walk through a door opening as another closed. Endings and beginnings. Phases and stages. Dissolving and evolving. Life.

Muse and I chuckled as I read the scan’s introduction: As we start to recognize the greater forces at play in bringing us through a Choice Point, life often invites us to gain humility. As we end a cycle in our lives and begin another there is potential for some of our old world to dissolve (or collapse in some people’s experience). This is because nature follows cycles. As we are part of nature we can expect some aspects of our lives to follow the same kind of cyclic pattern. (NES Health - Personal Scan)

Muse nods with a smile as I recognize that these ideas are familiar. I am Nature. Nature is me. My soul speaking its wisdom and calling forth the new. Clay being placed before me for co-creating, discovering my part in bringing forth the new world that is gently cracking the shell to burst into new life.

I am not alone. Much of our world, our old stories, our systems, our thinking is dissolving and collapsing before us. What a time to be alive and co-create the new future rising!

This is my soul gently speaking her understanding of our connection to Gaia and to one another, indeed to all life. Soul has a better understanding of our true nature than either body or mind. The soul knows! And now I understand the necessity of humility to hear her voice.

Humility opens the way to let go of resistance, to surrender to the flow of life, to discover the freedom in non-attachment, and to relinquishing the quest to control that which is not mine to control.

The door of the old is not completely shut. Yet, as the door and light of the new are shining, an unknown, yet somehow familiar, narrative is taking shape within to guide the thoughts, words, and deeds of the days ahead. May that light shine gently and brightly for one and all. And may we each hear the voice of our souls.

Crestone Peak

New Year, New Stories

Full Moon Spiral

I am a person who constantly is trying to liberate myself from my socialization and the weight of the culture that I was born into . . . so that I can choose in every moment how I want to respond based on my values and care for the whole. Miki Kashtan (8 January 2023 – This Nonviolent Life: Daily Inspiration for Your Nonviolent Journey – Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service)

More and more I’m noticing places where my values, my dreams, my care are at odds with so much what’s brought forward in mainstream culture, so it was no surprise that this daily quote caught my attention. Its declaration of aiming to be at choice about how to respond in every moment based on values touched a resonant chord in me. That very idea itself is liberating.

As I began to explore, I wondered, ‘Do we need to struggle? For me, the language of ‘constantly trying to liberate’ suggests struggle.  Muse sighs and tickles another question or two: On what foundation is our culture built? What’s beneath the surface of our cultural habits and our socialization into that culture?

Stories. And stories about stories. Our stories. Old stories. Accurate stories and those that are not. Stories. Conscious stories. And those of which we are not aware.

I’m no stranger to how stories form our world, the culture, and ingrained habits of living and walking in that culture every day. Or to how our own stories about those stories (yes Muse, MY stories!) form the life we experience and how we experience it. Indeed, The Pivot is replete with stories as was The Zone, its predecessor. And with calls for new stories to create our world anew.

I believe that every thought we think and action we take is based on layers and layers of stories and beliefs, many of which we are aware of and far too many of which have been lost to our awareness. Yet conscious or not they inform our choices, build our world. And they inform our snap reactions, as I was reminded by an experience – and my reaction – this week. (‘Now we’re getting to it!’ encourages Muse.)

Despite a good amount of work and attention to shifting over the years, I discovered that a long-held story that I’m not enough still lingers in layers of my being, popping in at inconvenient times without invitation or conscious choice.

I experienced such a ‘visit’ several days ago when I received results from a recent body scan, a tool intended to provide insight, direction, and support. But rather than seeing my results as they were intended, I reacted as if they were a personal affront, criticism, clear evidence to support the old story that I’m not enough.

I spiraled (‘downward’ notes Muse) for a bit, holding the results as an indicator of something ‘wrong’ in me that needed to be ‘fixed’. It was familiar, if uncomfortable, territory until a different story rose in me. That story invited a different view, a view that the results are an invitation, not to fix, but to grow, to learn, to deepen understanding and awareness. I embraced the invitation into new territory or to familiar territory in a new way, opening curiosity about what I might discover. A path of exploration became clear.

New stories. We need them individually and collectively in our chaotic world that is crying for a remodel, a reboot. No current writer/thinker that I’m aware of groks and writes about the importance of stories more cogently than Charles Eisenstein. And, given my experience this week, it’s no surprise that he published an essay a couple days ago outlining his ideas contrasting the old stories of separation with new, emerging stories of interbeing: What is the Next Story? (I encourage you to read or listen here).

With each choice, thought, and action we are following the old or making way for the new, supporting its emergence. I know which path I choose. May my choices be conscious, clear, and consistent with calling forth the new.

New Snow on the Peaks!

Making Home in New Territory

Snowy Mountain Morning

It is like a voyage of discovery into unknown lands, seeking not for new territory but for new knowledge. It should appeal to those with a good sense of adventure.  Fredrick Sanger (English Scientist)

Words are slow to organize themselves this first ‘blog day’ of 2023. Yesterday I said to a friend that I feel myself in some new ground that invites exploration, some inner terrain presenting itself, not yet clearly, rather shrouded like the mountain peaks here in the sacred Sangres. A few days earlier another long-time friend voiced something similar and laughing said ‘where’s the instruction manual for this?’

Her humor evoked a quick, simultaneous response, a duet from the two of us ‘there is no manual; YOU/we are writing it.’ I’m certain Muse chuckled and recognized the fodder for this and future Pivots.

I’m blessed that from the cozy comfort of home, I can voyage into unknown lands, uncharted inner territory dependent not on an instruction manual but on trusting my own internal GPS as signposts present themselves for discovery. While I feel quite at home here in this place I love, I wonder how I will embrace this new territory. What will I need to unpack, to resolve, to discover in order to make this new territory ‘home’?

So far each of the 7 Days of Rest and Return to Essence have offered up much to reflect upon, starting with day 1 and its theme, Presence. What is the Essence of Presence? And the Presence of Essence?

As I sink into exploring Essence, I discover it as a felt sense beyond any words – lofty or otherwise – to describe. In this new territory, it seems that logic is invited to sit quietly on the bench rather than actively playing on the field. Perhaps that is what makes way for Essence to emerge and inspires me to explore.

Each day’s offering of reflective questions (offered by 7 Days creator Shelly Ostroff) are nourishing not only exploration of this new territory, but its future development.

Day 2 Resonance -- What would it look like in your life to make choices that resonate with the core of your being and the wellbeing of the all? What are the stories, the noise, habits and the distractions that need to be to shed for this to happen? What practices and behaviors want to be amplified? What wants to be transformed, and what potential pathways reveal themselves as you slow down, simplify and attune to the language of essence?

These questions resonate deep within, not as new, but expanding territory where the surface has been scratched. An invitation to deepen.

Day 3 Radiance -- Invite in the consciousness of radiance to be present with you. What are the images and sensations that arise? Imagine yourself embodying the essence of radiance in the moment - how does radiance feel, how does radiance move?

I find myself tiptoeing into these questions, looking out to find radiance more than looking within. Muse takes note, and nudges that perhaps some excavation may be required to develop acceptance of my radiance in this territory.

Day 4 Gratitude is a personal favorite and territory that seems very familiar having developed practices of gratitude for many years. I’m grateful for recognizing that I’m in new territory and curious to discover how gratitude will guide the way. Among several beautiful reflection questions, Ostroff offers this: How do you experience the relationship of generosity and gratitude and how does this relationship manifest in your life? How does expressing and receiving gratitude cultivate loving sacred relationship?

Collectively and individually, we are in new territory, indeed many new territories in a plethora of domains. I’m discovering signposts resonant with my internal GPS along with some that challenge me to adjust course as I navigate to feel at home in new territory.

May we each find the signposts we need within and without to navigate and be at home in the new. Perhaps this lively, poignant tune, shared by a fellow explorer in her own new territory, will lighten your spirit for the journey ahead (Phillip Phillips Home).

Nature’s Patterns

Irony and a Thanksgiving Prayer

The Haudenosaunee Flag (image from Naraya Cultural Preservation Council website)

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people. Now our minds are one. Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address – Greetings to the Natural World

So continues the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. It begins in this way

Words Before All Else: Greetings to the Natural World

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., it is ironic that for some the way to end Covid and prevent future pandemics is to impose vaccines on everyone yet our ancestors brought disease from Europe to these shores as colonizers centuries ago.

Muse startled me awake with that thought this ‘blog’ morning, one day after I’d both read a news clip about the possibility of renewed interest in mandating Covid vaccines for all, and I’d retrieved the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address – Greetings to the Natural World – with the intention to read it aloud each morning before Thanksgiving and perhaps beyond. If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember last year’s post about this sacred, indigenous gift (find it here).

There are of course many ironies around this holiday that we Americans have morphed from a time of giving thanks for all that is and for what we have to a time of plugging into the consumer culture of getting more. Muse and I will leave such ironies for another time (or not).

Honoring the awareness that what my attention feeds is what grows, I put aside thoughts about vaccines and events of the past, and focus on the Thanksgiving Address, a beautiful prayer encompassing ALL life, reading each verse aloud.

Tears fell as I recited the prayer, touching that place of knowing that all too often in the ‘doing’ of life, I forget the interconnectedness and interdependence that makes life possible. Tears fell too for the treatment of indigenous peoples from the time our ancestors landed on these shores to today, for the agreements/promises made and to this day not kept. Tears for all who experience injustice in its many forms.

I’m grateful for the awareness Muse’s thought brought me and even for the sadness evoked. I’m grateful for how the ironies seemed to both broaden and deepen in me as I read each verse and opened to that sadness. Sadness for our culture’s lost connection with the Natural World of which we are but a tiny part. Sadness that we continue our colonizing ways, not just of lands and peoples, but of the very gifts of Mother Earth, Gaia herself. Sadness for cultural ways that try to colonize us each day of our lives.

The sadness lifts giving way to wonder as Zadie Byrd and I embark on our ritual morning walk this cold morning. The sky is bright blue, and the air, crisp and still. All is quiet except the occasional squawk of a Clark’s Nutcracker. Zadie picks up a scent of interest and we zigzag across the road and then off road into a grassy meadow.

As I often do, I wonder first how I might deepen my awareness of ‘all my relations’ and honor that in the daily choices I make. And I wonder how might our world be if everyone could connect with the beauty of place in a deeper way?

The Naraya Cultural Preservation Council says of the Thanksgiving Address:

When one recites the Thanksgiving Address the Natural World is thanked, and in thanking each life-sustaining force, one becomes spiritually tied to each of the forces of the Natural and Spiritual World.  The Thanksgiving Address teaches mutual respect, conservation, love, generosity, and the responsibility to understand that what is done to one part of the Web of Life, we do to ourselves.

I intend to recite it as part of my morning practice each day until I feel it more deeply in these bones. I invite you to join me.

Mother Nature (image from Naraya Cultural Preservation Council website)

Pivot to Wonderment

Fuzzy Mountain Moonrise

Wonder enlarges the heart. When you wonder, you are drawn out of yourself. The cage of the ego and the railtracks of purpose no longer hold you prisoner. Wonder creates a lyrical space where thought and feeling take leave of their repetitive patterns, to regain their original impulse of reverence before the mystery of what is. John O’Donohue (Wonder Awakens Us to the Magic of the World – essay in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong).

Oh, what deep appreciation I have for the places O’Donohue explores, allowing us to join him through the legacy of his poetic, heart-felt words. Wonderment, that comforting (for me) state of awed admiration and respect, is what spending time with the writings of this man of the soul evokes. I’m reminded always to be present to whatever is in front of me. And, to wonder.

Wonderment seems to follow wonder. Not in a logical, sequential way, but rather as a doorway. Without wondering, without engaging my curious self, whether I’m looking out at the world or journeying within, the absence of wonder separates me from the sheer joy of wonderment, of life.

I’m reminded of yesterday’s conversation with a friend as we drove past a herd of yak on the Chok-u-rei Ranch here in the valley. My friend observes that some of these magnificent creatures stand close to one another as they graze. She wonders ‘what do they talk about in their closeness?’ I scan the herd looking for the youngsters and wonder at their playful romping, chasing one another before returning to their munching.

It is wonder that gifts us with the presence to notice the herd on this route we’ve each travelled hundreds of times over the years. The regenerative soil practicing ranch spans the only road from our community to the main highway, a 12-mile road through the flat valley floor that without a sense of wonder could be (and admittedly sometimes is) a blur.

Coming back from our journey we drive toward the mountains and quietly share our wonder at how their appearance shifts with various angles of light. Soon the moon, just past its fullness and being eclipsed by Mother Earth, will rise over the Sangres, offering another spectacle inviting wonderment of this place.

The wind blows strong and steady as I write this morning. I turn my wonder within as I aim to remember to do when weather is not to my liking. How might I embrace the wind as an element of the greater winds of change blowing all around in this cycle of time? Surely this element of air and its time of rapid movement has purpose in the ebb and flow of life. What might it be blowing out? What is the wind ushering in?

This seemingly simple flow of words eases the dread I was beginning to feel about the morning walk with Zadie Byrd. Embracing wind for what it is – a necessary element of Nature, unseen yet powerful – eases my need to ‘brace’ for stepping outside.

Muse nods with a smile, acknowledging my pivot, shifting from my early morning look at election returns to see if the unexpectedly tight race in my Congressional district has been called (it hasn’t – hope springs eternal!) to turning within to discover what wants to be shared in this weekly sacred space.

It occurs to me on this morning after midterm elections here in the U.S. that pivoting to wonderment offers a pathway for bridging the vast gaps that divide us. How might we shift from disdain, disagreement, ‘my way is the only way’ thinking and ways of being to genuine, heart-felt wonder about one another? How might we see that indeed there is no ‘other’, just the One. How might I?

I’m grateful for those engaged in the political, policy, and governance realms who are working towards bridging these divides. I’m grateful too for the wonder and beauty of Nature that surrounds and informs me in Her way. As the winds grow stronger this day, I’m reminded that wonderment is a path to embracing all of life even, perhaps especially, the wind.

Cottonwood Creek - Leaves Fallen, Ice to Come