Soul Stirring of Winter

Beauty Abundant

The geography of your destiny is always clearer to the eye of your soul than to the intentions and the needs of your surface mind. John O’Donohue (Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong)

As winter weather continues to settle in and we move closer to the Winter Solstice, I find myself more pulled within. Much of what I read stirs something in this soul. I feel a choice point coming, a gestation of something that as of now has no words, no form, no clarity. Certainly, no certainty. I wonder how ‘it’ will emerge or even whether ‘it’ is an ‘it’ at all.

Muse gently reminds me to embrace the stirring and all that isn’t known, then guides me back to an experience that seems to point toward some shift on the horizon.

As I was putting away an abundance of leftovers a few days after my Thanksgiving feast with friends, I listened to Robin Wall Kimmerer reading her essay The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance in an Emergence Magazine podcast (find it here -- https://emergencemagazine.org/podcast/). She was speaking a topic near and dear to this heart while picking serviceberries: an economy based not on scarcity as it is now but on abundance, reciprocity, flow, a gift economy.

I listened, aware of the irony, the juxtaposition throughout: I’m packing and storing as I listen to a wise woman’s words about giving, sharing, and flow. Beyond the leftovers, I’m reminded of the abundance of pinon nuts that I harvested in the woods. Except for those shelled by a friend and enjoyed with our Thanksgiving feast, they sit on the pantry shelf waiting…

Abundance, flow, reciprocity, using, gifting … These ideas are not new. They resonate deep within as the truth of who we are, who I am. They point to possibilities some of which are emerging worldwide.

This, I think, is foundational to a level of consciousness needed to grapple with the issues of our time. Perhaps a part of Einstein’s admonition that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.

Then I wonder ‘what needs to shift in my thinking, my being, and my habits of doing?’ so that I more fully align with what I say I believe? What habits of choice do I hold and follow that are of the systems of scarcity? As I pose these questions to self, I do so in hopes that only remnants remail. Yet I know our systems have imbedded their ways, their thinking in us, in me to keep the lie of scarcity alive: ‘there isn’t enough, hang on to what you have’.

And so, I pack and store, having on some level bought into the lie of scarcity. Yet I hold a knowing that this is one of the ways of the past that is in hospice, moving toward laying to rest so that new ways can emerge, be nurtured. How that will look in this life I’ve created and in the world beyond is ours to determine, ours to co-create. May we do so in harmony with one another and with dear Gaia, Mother Nature, our home.

Mossy Love in the Woods Out Back

My Prayer of Thanks 2022

Morning Dance of the Fire Faeries

The power of giving thanks gives life its vitality! The power of giving thanks comes through your awareness that you are always in a position to receive all the elements the Universe has to offer. Everything is available to you.  Gregge Tiffen (The Power of Giving Thanks, November 2007)

 I’m thankful for the muse that visits at least weekly with some message that seems to want to be expressed. My weekly practice for over nine years now is one of the highlights of my week, in part because I rarely know what’s going to show up, until the words hit the page. It’s also been my practice to rest the muse on occasion and revisit/reprise a prior post. And, so it is this Thanksgiving (here in the U.S.) eve, as I reflect with a grateful heart on all this year has offered.

Last week in sharing the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, Greetings to the Natural World, I shared my belief that, while it is good to have a special day to give thanks, the irony of Thanksgiving’s origins in this country deserves a pause for thoughtful consideration. As you give thanks, I’ll leave that consideration to your heart and soul. I’m grateful that as a society we are beginning to acknowledge, understand, and hopefully, move beyond the dark choices that haunt our past.

 Despite the disgust and sadness I feel for the atrocities we force upon one another and on our dear planet, I’m grateful for this life and for the opportunities to learn and grow that are ever present.  Despite the irony of the holiday’s origins, I celebrate, grateful for my conviction that, despite history and the current chaos and cruelty worldwide, justice and light will prevail.

 Several years back, sitting quietly by the fire on a cold morning, I began to write in my journal. The words that came surprised me and took me to an unexpected place: gratitude for being me.  As I ease into Thanksgiving Day, I remember all that I’m grateful for and my words then inspire my prayer of thanks for 2022

 I’m grateful for the challenges and changes this year has thrust upon me personally and on all of us as a community of humans. I’m grateful for my friends and friends of my cousin who surrounded me with love and support in the wake of her sudden, unexpected death two years ago. I’m grateful that she entrusted me with the sacred task of handling the affairs she left behind and rewarded me for doing so. I’m grateful for the abundance that I’m able to share in my community and beyond.

 I’m grateful for how I live my life, the choices I make, the insight and curiosity I experience, my love of quiet and of Nature’s beauty. I’m grateful that I take reasonably good care of myself. I’m grateful that I take time to ease into the day and enjoy the morning quiet. I’m grateful for introspection and for how I see the world unfolding perfectly in this human experiment despite events that are horrific beyond my understanding. I’m grateful for this year’s events and for those individuals whose actions continue to challenge me to hold this light.

 I’m grateful for all the beings who are holding light in the midst of darkness.

 I remain grateful for nine years with Cool Hand Luke Skywalker and for all that he taught me about patience, forgiveness, rest, play, listening and so much more. His ongoing presence reminds me that life is a continuum not a finite event. I’m grateful for Zadie Byrd carrying the torch of being my canine companion. Her sweet presence in my life is a constant blessing that grows each year.

 I’m grateful for how I’ve faced the challenges in my life, even those where in hindsight I saw a different way for me to be. Each offered a gift and I did my best to accept it.

 This year I’m especially grateful that I enjoy my own company as well as the company of others. Both are so very important, yet we humans so very often shun being alone for fear of being lonely, forgetting that in our aloneness we hear Your voice and feel Your presence.

 Thank You for always being with me/in me. Thank YOU for allowing and guiding me to be me. I feel so close You, God, in these quiet moments and I am so very grateful.

 When we give thanks for being who we are, we tap into the vitality of life. Wherever this week finds you, may you feel a depth of gratitude that goes deeper and further than any you have felt in your past. May this special Thanksgiving prayer from Gregge Tiffen contribute to transporting you to that place.

Icy Cottonwood Creek Winds Through the Woods

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

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

Inhabiting Loss

Feasting on the Abundance of Pine Nuts …

Pathos is especially present in grief. When someone you love has died, it takes a long time to learn the art of inhabiting the loss. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

These words from O’Donohue’s essay To Learn How to Inhabit Loss greeted me this morning as I opened a favorite O’Donohue book, wondering about today’s post and how Muse would engage.

The title drew me in. His words drew me deeper. After reading a bit more, I fell into a deep sleep. Waking an hour or so later I felt alone with their beauty and their depth.

Although curious about the relevance, no words rose in me as I picked up my pen and stared at a blank page. It seemed that Muse had stepped aside guiding me to be with the question: How do I inhabit loss?

It isn’t an unfamiliar question, having come up in recent conversations each of which recalled my own journeys in the wake of death – my father’s when I was a teen, mother’s 43 years ago followed by a close uncle two weeks later, beloved canine Cool Hand Luke three years ago, my cousin just two years ago, and of being present with friends as they have danced with loss of beloveds.

Looking back, I see that each taught me something about inhabiting loss, that I was somehow blessed that grief didn’t pull me down, and that I found good and the beauty in each loss. Not only for me but for the departed one. Sometimes I think we forget to consider their perspective. From knowing they are continuing their soul’s journey free of the constraints of the body, free of whatever physical suffering they may have experienced.

While O’Donohue writes about loss in terms of death of someone loved, I wondered about other loss as well. Loss of innocence that comes with facing myths and outright lies in our families and in the history of our countries. Loss of the sense of self as old beliefs, patterns, habits dissolve. The loss of feeling patriotic as I come to understand that our political boundaries are meaningless to our Gaian home. The loss of trust in institutions that once seemed to have our bests interests at their core and that seemed to care. The loss of species, biodiversity, soil health. The list seems infinite.

In this time when so much of the old is dissolving – inside and out, individually and collectively – it seems important to consider how to inhabit our world, acknowledging these losses without clinging to the past while attending to what is rising and that which wants to rise. Calling forth beauty, curiosity, and love to co-create our world anew, I leave you with a bit more O’Donohue wisdom:

Beauty shines with a light from beyond itself. Love is the name of that light. At the heart of beauty must be a huge care and affection for creation, for nowhere is beauty an accidental presence. Nor is beauty simply its own end. It is not self-absorbed but points beyond itself to an embrace of belonging that holds everything together. Yet not everything is beautiful and in a broken world occasions of beauty point to possibilities of providence that lie beneath the surface fragmentation. When we endeavor to view something through the lens of beauty, it is often surprising how much more we can see.

May we look at our world through the lens of beauty. May I!

Prayful Squirrel

Nurturing Compassion

A Road Less Travelled - No Speedsters and Dust Here

Be kind and forgiving to everything and everyone, including yourself, at all times without exception. Dr. David R. Hawkins (Power vs. Force)

One morning earlier this week as I sat by a warming fire in the pre-dawn quiet, a single word eased into my awareness:  compassion.

Wondering if Muse was aiming for an early start on the blog, I was curious that nothing framed the word. No question. No thought about it. No instruction or idea that I ‘should’ feel compassion for someone or something. Simply the word, compassion.

As I sat with the word for a bit, I began to wonder how compassion feels in the body. Putting attention on my heart, I began to imagine each breath coming from my heart. I frequently practice this heart coherence breathing, summoning feelings of gratitude, appreciation, care, each of which generate their own sense of peace, calm, and inner warmth.

Mind (‘not to be confused with me’, chimes in Muse) said ‘surely compassion should feel like these.’ But no feeling came. Nothing good or bad. Just emptiness, an opening for discovery.

On our morning walk a short while later, I was (‘yet again!’ chimes in Muse once more) triggered by someone speeding along the dirt road, kicking up clouds of dust. Guiding Zadie Byrd and myself off the road, I released my automatic outburst – a ‘what’s your rush? snarl’, then admonished myself for not being more patient. Done with that, we continued our walk, my attention on Zadie Byrd and the morning’s exquisite autumn beauty.

But awareness of my habitual reaction didn’t fade as such incidents usually do. Perhaps ‘compassion’ had something to say… (‘Ya think?’ says Muse whose humor is in high gear today.)

‘Just what is compassion?’, I wondered settling in to explore. Merriam-Webster tells me that compassion is sympathetic consciousness (awareness) of others’ distress with a desire to alleviate it (“Compassion.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compassion.).

Exploring further I learned that compassion is a 14th century word that shares some of its etymology with the word ‘patient’. Hmmm…patience as an element of compassion. ‘Now we’re getting to it,’ Muse suggests: a path to nurturing compassion, to inviting her to live more fully in and express through me.

Compassion beyond the shared sense of concern for a friend’s health or wellbeing. Compassion beyond the care that comes forth when someone close is grieving a loss. Compassion beyond caring for those in the path of war, violence, poverty, and social injustice. These are the places we are likely to feel compassion even when we don’t see the ‘how’ of alleviating the distress we witness. Compassion that flows so naturally that perhaps I take it for granted, assuming that I truly know enough to care.

As I write this, I feel the superficiality that may sometimes rest in my so-called compassion. I’m challenged to look beyond, to explore compassion (or its absence) in those domains where I find myself annoyed, impatient. Compassion for those with whom I disagree. How can compassion coexist with our differences? How does judgement get in the way of true compassion?

For isn’t this the ultimate nature of Oneness, of living in the nonduality that is the true nature of our Being? Of the Universe? And wouldn’t living in and from THAT reality generate the kind of world we would choose to live in?

Like gratitude and other higher states of being, compassion strengthens from nurturing over time with the practice of principles such as this suggested by Dr. David R. Hawkins in his seminal book Power vs. Force:

Be kind and forgiving to everything and everyone, including yourself, at all times without exception.

Thinking back to the speeding motorist and other ‘annoyances’, I’m reminded of these words from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama:

A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.

As I prepare for an afternoon walk, I’m guessing that I’ll have the opportunity to practice calling forth a truly compassionate attitude.

Webs of Life in the Woods Out Back

BEING: The Work Within

Fall Beauty in the Neighborhood

Our greatest contributions to life are not found in what we do, but rather in who and how we BE in the walk of our doing.

I feel winter slowing creeping in here in the Sangres. Cooler temperatures brought the turning of leaves, some now beginning to let go and make their way to the ground in gentle autumn breezes. The season’s first freezing temperature was felt this week. The abundant harvests of summer fruits and vegetables shifts to the harvests of fall: apples, potatoes, winter squash, the makings of warm, nourishing soups.

Although I begin to feel the pull within to the slow, quiet, inward time that winter brings, there are tasks to complete before winter weather settles in. She’s only flirting with us now, gently reminding me that it is time for the baskets of geraniums to be tended and prepared to come inside and for the kindling box to be filled. There are shutters to paint and reinstall and winter supplies to be purchased and stored. Yes, there are tasks to do.

Sidelined from those tasks for several days last week, my energy was redirected to healing a shoulder that called for my attention using the language of pain. As I engaged in the process my first actions were directed toward relief, then to correcting whatever was out of alignment and opening the flow of any blocked energy.

I felt deep gratitude for the Chinese herbs I have on hand and for the local healing professionals who worked me into their schedules. As the pain eased energy was freed up to engage curiosity. I’d noticed a pattern – same pain, same time last year. Hmm…what might I need to see, to explore, to understand? In the questioning I was opened to an exploration of old ancestral habits and patterns of the women in my lineage – mother, grandmothers, great grands, and beyond. The insights brought some understanding and a desire to more deeply explore. That will be part of my winter’s ‘work’.

Right on time the information found its way to me and Muse to support the process. Cycles cycle in just that way when I am open, observant, curious, and allow them to emerge. I was reminded yet again of the importance of tending to who and how I BE in the process of doing whatever is before me. Muse suggests that the choices of Being are ultimately far more important that what we choose to do.

The work of Being is an inside job that reflects wide and deep into the world. I was reminded of this by the words I read last night shortly before making my way to dreamtime, words from a book that I pulled off the shelf as the result of a conversation earlier this week. Curiosity, synchronicity, allowing, cycles, life.

The outer work can never be small

if the inner work is great.

And the outer work can never be great

if the inner work is small.

Meister Eckhart 

Our world – humanity and our precious planet home – need the best of our Being now. We need to not simply understand, but to know and live the interconnectedness, the Oneness of all that is. I’ll be tuning in to several sessions of Humanity’s Team’s 2022 Global Oneness Summit, Birthing a New World. Because indeed we are birthing a new world and her nature will be determined by who we BE. https://www.humanitysteam.org/Global-Oneness-Summit

And Beauty in the Mountains

Imagining ...

The Portal

For the awakened imagination there is no such thing as inner poverty. John O’Donohue (essay The Celtic Imagination: Experience and the ‘Web of Betweenness’ in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

I returned to reading John O’Donohue’s brilliant, moving words this week, simply picking up the book and thumbing pages until sensing I was where I needed to be. I’d come to the reading time with no particular intention nor with a question in search of an answer. I came for nourishment, as his words never fail to feed this soul.

The essay I landed on and quoted above ends with this:

As in the rainforest, a dazzling diversity of life-forms complement and sustain each other; there is secret oxygen with which we unknowingly sustain one another. True community is not produced; it is invoked and awakened. True community is an ideal where the full identities of awakened and realized individuals challenge and complement each other. In this sense both individuality and originality enrich self and others.

Imagine we humans are that diverse and complementary rainforest. For a moment I think of the divisiveness I observe here in the place where I live as a micro to the countless conflicts beyond this sacred place.

Then O’Donohue’s words spark memory of a long held ideal, vision, belief that when we each discover and follow the path of our purpose, our passion, our gifts, we will experience healing of all that divides us. We will harmonize with one another naturally never by force as well as with all life and our beloved planet home, Gaia.

I reflect on the extent to which our current world falls far short of this imagined ideal and how, sadly, our systems are designed to create something far different than true community. Hence ‘community’ is not invoked or awakened in much of daily life. Nor is our true nature, yours and mine, called forth into expression. Rather our true selves and true community lie in wait as potentials that we’ll attend to ‘someday’. Someday when we have time. Someday when we can ‘afford’ it. Someday when …

Perhaps that is why we witness and experience so many systems failing. Perhaps those systems that have pitted us against one another in oh so many ways are calling forth our ‘someday’ in this moment, suggesting that for humanity survive, ‘someday’ is now. Perhaps fear and ‘winning’ at any cost, the highest ‘price’ being the peace of the soul from which our true essence can arise – individually and collectively – have run their course.

Our world – humanity and the planet - need our truest selves to attend them. Amidst the world’s chaos and breakdowns how might we put more attention on invoking our own true essence, that ‘secret oxygen’ with which we sustain not only one another, but first, ourselves for the sake of our wholeness?

The answer of course comes from deep within and we must first be willing to put our toes in the water, then dive into the deep well. While our journeys are unique and individual to each of us, they hold the potential for invoking true community in our world: world as diverse and complementary as the rainforest. Self as an integral part of that world. Self and world as life generating, life enhancing. Self and world as whole. The Heaven of our dreams manifest on Gaia.

Imagine …

Raven ‘Cawing’ Forth Magic in the Woods

Gratitude & Curiosity - The Dynamic Duo

Starry Night (courtesy of Unsplash)

Coupling curiosity and gratitude offers an antidote the fear, angst, and confusion of our world. The energy of the two together leaves little room for such distractions. Indeed, it paves the way for love.

I woke early this morn with a grateful heart. Feeling a deep sense of gratitude in my whole being.  Blissful peace. While I’ve long practiced breathing gratitude in and out, the deeper sense I experienced this day is one I want to cultivate further, to live in and with as I walk this earth.

I step outside long before dawn to be with the dark sky, the stars, the planets, galaxies beyond our own. Mars high in the sky directly overhead. The little dipper nearby. Awestruck by the peace and beauty. The quiet. Stillness. Gratitude more deeply anchored.

Gently a nudge from Muse stirs something inside. I think of curiosity, like gratitude, a ‘friendship’ that I’ve cultivated over the years.

Being reminded of the important role each play in my life, it occurs to me in a blinding flash of the obvious, that together the two make a powerful pair. Thanks to Muse, I am from time to time an ‘oracle of the obvious’.

I sense that coupling curiosity and gratitude offers an antidote to the fear, angst, and confusion in our world – individually and collectively. The energy of the two together leaves little room for such distractions. Indeed, it paves the way for love.

For a moment I wonder ‘what becomes possible in my world when I walk in both gratitude and curiosity rather than with one or the other’? In the next I recognize that I experienced just that yesterday while I was on the ground gathering pine nuts under a pinyon tree near the house.

While being deeply grateful for the abundance, I was likewise aware that I wasn’t in sync with the rhythm of the trees, particularly when the nuts would fall. I’d been placing sheets in areas where I thought nuts were ready to drop. Thinking that a particular tree was ‘done’, I’d moved the sheets to another tree a couple days before.

To my surprise the tree that I thought was complete had a dropped an abundance of nuts during the night.

“That’s what you get for thinking,” Muse chimes in with a chuckle. “Listen to the trees!”

As I sat beneath the tree, I expressed my gratitude. And I asked for guidance. How might I listen and hear your rhythm? As if in response I wondered about the indigenous peoples whose land I occupy. How did they harvest, prepare, use this bounty? How did they relate to this tree? To these woods? How might I cultivate their reverence and care for Mother Earth more deeply in me?

Gratitude it seemed had paved a path to curiosity. The sense of feeling both was palpable and reminded me of a community meeting that I attended recently where neither gratitude nor curiosity seemed to be present. Rather than being curious about what isn’t yet known, many people were demanding answers. There was little, if any, gratitude for the work that had gone into organizing and preparing for the meeting. It was a bit chaotic to the point that I too became a tad annoyed. Yet I remained grateful for the team’s efforts. I wondered ‘where has curiosity gone?’. How can we become more curious about possibilities rather than leaping to opposition grounded in fear?

Beyond my community and its challenges, I wonder the same for our world. How might we evoke gratitude and curiosity into our public conversations? For surely this dynamic duo in partnership with one another are powerful antidotes to the fear and anger so present in our culture today.

Will you join me in sprinkling more seeds of gratitude and curiosity in your conversations and your observations of our world? Of your world? Let’s pave this world with love!

A Developing Cone - Three Months Before Maturity