From Having to Experiencing & Colonization to Community

Sun Rising Over Clouds in the Sangres

The heart and the soul have no possessions. They simply experience life.

Two seemingly diverse streams of thought emerged early one morning this week. First, was a question: how does colonization play out in me as an individual? As I began to explore that query, the idea of pivoting from ‘having’ to ‘experiencing’ rose. ‘What’s the connection?’ I mused.

Beyond the common understanding of colonization as the “settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area” (a definition that seems sterile in the face of eons of atrocities committed against indigenous peoples around the globe), colonization is “appropriating a place or domain for one’s own use”.

Colonization is rooted in and grows out of the idea of separation: we are separate from each other and from Nature. ‘I’ am better, smarter, stronger, etc. than you are. In separation conscious we aim to control and possess – land, others, ideas, material things, – and we fight to the death to maintain what is ‘ours’.

We see this playing out across the globe today in a politically polarized world where each ‘side’ is intent on colonizing the other. ‘Be the way I am or else’ is an all too frequent message. Blame is one of the games used to stoke the separation.

Continuing to reflect, I wondered, ‘how does this play out in us – you, me, and our daily lives?’

When we pay attention to mainstream mudslinging … err ‘news’, do we feel compelled to choose one side or the other? I sometimes do, and I’d venture a guess that most of us resonate with one side more than another. In doing so, we lose sight of our common humanity – the commUNITY that is life.

And that, perhaps, is one door through which a subtle shift in language from ‘having’ to ‘experiencing’ will support us to enter a new humanity: a humanity living from wisdom of the heart and soul.

The idea of this linguistic pivot isn’t new to me. For some time, I’ve aimed to ‘experience’ more and ‘have’ less in my thinking and speaking. ‘Having’ for me suggests possessing, fixed, and permanence; while ‘experiencing’ suggests flowing, transitory, impermanence, perhaps even evolutionary. ‘Having’ is of the physical realm, while ‘experiencing’ is of body, mind, and spirit.

The heart and the soul have no possessions. They simply experience life.

Do we ‘have’ a body? Or do we experience our soul’s presence in this physical form? Do I ‘have’ a cold? Or am I experiencing the symptoms of a cold? Do I ‘have’ a friend or a community of friends? Or do I experience friendship with another?

Do these simple shifts seem different to you? Does ‘experiencing’ open possibilities that ‘having’ does not?

How might it serve us to be more precise in this way with our thinking and our speaking given that on this our planet home everything manifests through sound? In the beginning was the Word …

Throughout so much of our recorded history – especially the history that dominates our Western education systems – language has been used to separate, to divide, to conquer. As I witness growing efforts to ban books and topics in our schools and libraries (indeed in our culture), I wonder what histories of cooperative cultures, grounded in wholeness, the truth of Oneness, and reverence for ALL Life have been lost? Suppressed?

In a sense ‘having’ seems to be colonization at a very personal level. I ‘have’ a house, a partner, a dog, a friend, a farm is different only in scale to I ‘have’ an empire. We tend to cling and even engage in violence to ‘protect’ our possessions.

What might be possible if we chose to simply experience the presence of these blessings in our lives, letting the flowing, transitory nature of Life take its course? Trusting the deep knowing of our hearts to guide.

Is this subtle shift one that will move us away from colonization on all levels and toward community? Is it a step in the giant leap in human consciousness that will bring harmonious Life to ALL beings, including our planet home? I think that I’ll continue to ‘have’ less and ‘experience’ more of this precious life.

Sunset Over the San Juans and San Luis Valley

From Asking Mind to Inviting Heart

Cathedral Window in the Woods

Let's ask the real questions, because it's only when we get to the root of what the violence is and where it's coming from and we focus on the root causes and begin to tackle them, will we have any hope whatsoever of beginning to get out of this mess that we are all in. Mairead Corrigan Maguire (quoted August 10 – This Nonviolent Life: Daily Inspiration for Your Nonviolent Journey – Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service)

The heart space is the source of genius. To go to the heart centre is to go to the stillness that connects us all and where the information is present. The heart is the fundamental space for our evolution. The heart is the place from which our society will transcend its current difficulties. Nassim Haramein (quoted in astrologer Pam Gregory’s August Newsletter)

These two seemingly disparate quotes merged in me this week as I reflected on the first: ‘what ARE the real questions?’. My reflection wasn’t focused on the multiple crises, messes, and tragedies we humans are creating. Rather, as I thought about root causes, the question became quite personal: What of the multitude of choices I make each day contribute to those crises? Gulp.

Although the question wasn’t new, it took on a deeper meaning, a renewed sense of responsibility to look at my choices anew. ALL my choices. Curiosity emerged about how to engage with the question from that responsibility. Without guilt, without burden. Taking a breath, a corollary question rose: What choices support Life, ALL Life? Another breath, ‘invite heart’.

Open questions. Questions to live in, to make choices from. Questions that evoke the possibility of creation. Questions not to answer and be ‘done’. Questions not for mind to answer. Rather, questions for heart to work its magic, its genius, its knowing, the intelligence of the Cosmos. Inviting Heart to take center stage.

Reminding me of Einstein’s famous idea that we won’t solve problems with the same thinking that created them, Muse nudged with a thought: Mind is trained in the ways of separation. Heart knows the truth of Oneness. Hmmmm …

The tap root of the crises we face is separation. Underneath poverty, injustice, inequality, war, greed, environmental degradation, fear is separation. From Self. From Nature. From one another. From Source. All too often our choices – conscious and not – reflect just that.

In the reality of Unity – the reality in which we live, knowingly or not – every choice is a vote. My choices moment to moment, thought to thought, action to action, step by step either support Life or they don’t. I am either choosing from the fallacy of separation, or I’m choosing from the truth of our interconnectedness with ALL Life. Mind or Heart?

What choices do I make every day? Where do I put my attention? What do I consume? Purchase? Wear? What actions do I take? The list goes on. One estimate says we make 35,000 “remotely conscious” decisions daily. That’s roughly one choice every two seconds if we sleep seven hours: about 9,000 choices while writing this post. How many did I make from my heart? You? What if we upped our game?

While a giant leap in consciousness may be in our collective future, I’m recalibrating to invite Heart to guide more of my choices. Perhaps that’s just how the leap is being seeded. As this 11th year of weekly posts dawns, those are the seeds I’m aiming to plant and nurture.

Cathedral of the Fae

#520! - A Milestone

The sun sets on a decade of blog posts — The Zone and The Pivot …

Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Welcome to The Success Zone, an eclectic place for your personal success!  I’m glad you’re here where each week…

With Emerson’s quote and my words of welcome this blog journey began 520 weeks ago, August 15, 2013. A decade of blog posts! A bit of celebration and reflection seems apropos for this milestone.

Little did I know that I would maintain the practice for a decade, keeping a weekly commitment to my, as a friend says, “date with creation”. A time each week to listen not to the mainstream but rather to the mainstays of Life: Nature, Spirit, My Heart. A time to ask, ‘what wants to be shared this day?’

 A decade, 520 weeks, of The Zone and our pivot to The Pivot in 2020 because as I said then, ‘a new story requires us to change’. Life has been a ride these 10 years for each of us!

Looking back, I’m grateful for rarely needing to push myself. Most weeks I’m excited to discover where the journey will lead. Some weeks I have a rough idea of the focus either because of an event in my life that I’m musing about, or something that has grabbed my attention seems worthy of sharing.

Days when I’m empty, clueless about the focus, yield surprises as I’m guided to open just the right book or Muse taps me on the shoulder, gently suggesting ‘This!’. Posts that come slowly or require more effort put me face to face with uncertainty and doubt. It’s often those posts that garner the most responses from you, dear readers, suggesting that we are often grappling with similar challenges each uniquely designed to our life path. I am grateful to each of you for allowing me to pop into your life each week and for reading and sharing your thoughts!

I feel a deep sense of gratitude for and satisfaction with reaching this milestone, although it was never a goal. Early on my purpose was to share ideas and strategies for personal success and to support building my coaching business. I enrolled in courses promising to teach me how to write the ‘great blog’ and to ‘grow my list’. Rarely, if ever, did the content or ideas resonate with me. ‘Emerson didn’t need a marketing expert to share his wisdom,’ I would sometimes grumble.

 Spirit seemed to have another purpose. The goal, if any, became to simply show up with curiosity and care, listen, write, and share. That intention holds today.

We’ve all been through a lot since August, 2013. I’ll spare you the history and share just a few highlights in my life.

Just as I began to prepare to launch The Zone, my computer crashed, and my landlord informed me that he was going to sell the house I’d been happily renting for several years. Somehow those potential setbacks didn’t delay the launch. And I kept my weekly date through some tumultuous time on the local water board, buying a home, and operating a bed and breakfast along with my coaching practice.

Shortly after posting #311 on August 1, 2019, Cool Hand Luke let me know that it was his time to cross the rainbow bridge. Post #335 was done on Zadie Byrd’s first full day here in her new, ‘furever’ home. Covid came on the scene a month or so later, and The Zone became The Pivot with issue #349. As I was completing post #360 on July 8, 2020, I received the call that my dear cousin had attempted suicide and was, at that time, ‘unresponsive’. After a three-day journey across five states during ‘lockdown’, Zadie Byrd’s first road trip, posts for the next six weeks were written in Washington state where I was handling her estate.

 I share these events not to brag, but rather to deepen my own understanding and acceptance of the satisfaction that grows from consistency and commitment. And from the willingness to follow my path, my heart. I’m a bit awestruck by its depth. And I’m most grateful!

Each of us has been committed to something (multiple somethings for most!). We are committed to something today. Let’s each be sure that our commitments are to that which is life generating, life enhancing. To mainstays, not the mainstream.  To coherence and peace, not tumult and chaos. To courage and love, not fear. To the truth of our Oneness, not the divisiveness of separation.

This felt sense of satisfaction does not mean that my weekly commitment is complete. The weekly journey continues with a renewed commitment to speak from my heart as I question the status quo, travel my own journey to life more fully aligned with Mother Earth, and live in the wonder that is this life in crazy, tumultuous times of uncertainty and change.

For how long, I cannot say. I’m clear that I will know when ‘I’m done.’ For now, eclectic musing, sometimes contradictory, will continue. The words will by MY words, not words from someone’s artificial intelligence program. And that’s a story for another day…

Although the sun is setting on a decade of posts, this morning’s encounter with bunny in the grass, points to fertile ground for future explorations.

Today’s morning encounter with bunny suggests fertile ground for future explorations. Onward!

Reverence Unbound Informs and Inspires

Blanca Peak and the Great Sand Dunes provide background for Orisons Flying Rain Sandhill Crane sculptures.

I wanted to collaborate with all the living beings who were living there or passing through. The land is the artwork, and I wanted to celebrate it and every being on it, as well as reconnect it and all its inhabitants with their presents, pasts, and futures. Marguerite Humeau, Artist, Orisons (www.orisons.art)

Imagine for a moment (or linger longer) the possibilities that would emerge if each of us took such a reverential approach to co-creating our life experiences. How might we be informed and even inspired if we held each of our multiple environs reverently and collaborated with them? Our homes and the lands they occupy. Our places of work, of worship, of play. What if we celebrated all that is, all that has been, and all that is to be?

In the wake of attending the opening of the vast earthworks installation, Orisons, and hearing the artist and curator speak about their three-year collaboration to opening day, such questions have risen in me from a deeper place than I’ve experienced before. The questions feel both informed and inspired by the artist, Marguerite Humeau, and her deep reverence for the land – its present, its past, its future. I witnessed that reverence in the care and thoughtfulness of the 160-acre installation itself and in Humeau’s presentation to the opening day audience along with curator, Cortney Stell.

Humeau is a French artist who lives and has her studio in London. Her understanding of and reverence for land 4,700 miles from home is inspiring. Cortney Stell, Executive Director of the Denver-based Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum which commissioned the work, curated the installation.

My own reverence for the land, for the vast San Luis Valley, for Gaia and her beings continues to be fed by my Orisons experience, by possibilities rising, by questions that continue to emerge, by the very nature of reverence itself. Reverence, Muse gently reminds me, kindles curiosity.

There is a quieting, slowing that I experience when reverence rises. Noise and speed do not blend well with reverence. I wonder about the nature of reverence itself. I so want to say ‘herself’ as reverence feels very soft, feminine, much like Humeau and the strategically placed Orisons sculptures. This is in contrast to the outward, ruggedness of the land which the sculptures occupy.

Sandhill Crane Songs - One of 84 Orisons sculptures

I wonder how reverence can help us navigate life in this chaotic time when so much seems out of balance, out of sync with the wholeness that is life. What can I learn from visiting and contemplating this art? Might cultivating reverence inform us of how to live in greater alignment with one another and with our planetary home? How might reverence call forth the wholeness that is life?

What if we asked, as artist Humeau does, “How would it feel for us as humans to truly merge into the biosphere?” I taste, I sense a morsel of the answer when I saunter in the woods out back. I felt the possibility as I navigated prairie dog and kangaroo mouse burrows in the Orisons landscape on opening day. The land and its beings – present, past, future – have much to share. Will I learn to listen deeply enough to hear?

All too often we reserve reverence for that and those with whom we agree, those we love, things important to us – hardly reverence for ALL life. But what if we cultivated our capacity to feel reverence as deeply for the land we occupy, for Gaia herself, for ALL beings, ALL life as I experienced that Marguerite Humeau expresses in Orisons?

Indeed, what if …?

Horseweed Pendulum

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!

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 from the Noise to The New

Good Morning Sunshine!

The new is here. The old is just making a lot of noise dying. Eckhart Tolle (quoted by Pam Gregory in a recent video)

A recent (Muse says, ‘long running’) theme these Pivot posts is around shifting our attention from what is being reported as ‘news’ to that which is rising and wants to rise. To that which is life generating and life enhancing. From fear mongering to love generating. I know that many of made such a shift in focus. Others are in the process. Where are you?

What do you want to be informed about?

Consider for a moment: when was the last time a news broadcast enhanced your life? Then wonder: what is possible if we focus on, attend to, and participate in what many call ‘a new earth’? Heck even giving the new equal time could represent a big shift. And, adds Muse, inspire you to pivot even more.

In two conversations this week sharing this idea I was asked ‘where do you find this new?’. So, this week as I rest and engage in extreme self-care to heal from a painful kink in my back (including excavating old beliefs, thoughts, or fears that may have contributed to that ‘kink’), I thought that I’d share a few of my favorite sources of information, inspiration, exploration, and learning. Here are three of the plethora of organizations, groups, and individuals who are on the ground doing the exploration and work of creating a new earth, a new humanity.

Humanity’s Team – a non-profit whose mission is to ‘make conscious living pervasive worldwide by 2040’. You’ll find their free programs at this link. I’ve cued the program from Dr. Jude Currivan, just released today, on my ‘must watch’ list.

Pam Gregory, Astrologer – I’ve long been curious about the impact of planetary cycles on us individually and collectively. Putting aside the detailed aspects that she presents; Pam puts this in the context of current events and trends as well as pointing to maintaining calm in the chaos. This recent video with little astrology shares the focus she brings to the world in the context of July 2023 astrology.

Kinship Earth/The KINS Network -- a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating humanity's consciousness to its next level of maturity: the awareness of our inherent interconnectedness with all life. A recently discovered group for me, I’m enjoying learning about this global network of heart-centered change agents. Curious? Click here.

I invite you to explore, to see what resonates with your heart, and to share with your community. And I’d love to know what sources you follow that inform and inspire you. Let’s put our attention on the world we want to see!

InJoy!

Hiding bunny watches Zadie Byrd and I pass by.

Nurturing the Creator Within

Create with the flow of life!

Do I want to add to the drama, or pass and not play into the drama? … We all get triggered at times. If you are not conscious of your triggers, you can quickly get pulled into a family or work drama. You may not always remember to pause and ask yourself that question, but sometimes you may. With every decision to skip the drama you have taken one more step toward choosing a more empowering response to people and situations you find challenging. David Emerald & Donna Zajonc, MCC

A few days back I felt guided to a book that I read many years ago, David Emerald’s, The Empowerment Dynamic. I didn’t follow the guidance immediately but a bit later when I opened email, there was David and his partner Donna’s inspirational newsletter, TED* Works  [https://theempowermentdynamic.com/skip-the-drama/. Apparently, I needed a reminder.

That question ‘do I want to pass or play?’ and their story offered a great, if a bit prickly, reminder that I sometimes engage in other people’s drama, usually by being critical of rather than being curious. I notice that I do this more frequently in response to seeming little things – complaints on social media about weather, mosquitoes, the choices others make. It’s a drama that plays out in my head, ‘Grrrr, don’t they know this is contributing to the chaos and negativity of our world?’. Even though it’s not spoken or shared, and it too is a reaction that contributes to that negativity and chaos.

Every thought matters!

My reaction places me, hopefully only briefly, in the role of victim. And when I’m in the role of victim I don’t have access to my power as a co-creator. I’m not aligned with the knowing of my heart, nor am I able to access peace, joy, beauty, harmony, those aspects of the Universe that I long for our world to be.

Whether the potential drama of the moment is massive or a small blip, when we pause to ask whether to ‘pass or play’ we nurture the natural co-creator within. When we pass, we create. We open the door to gratitude, to curiosity, to care, to love. We contribute to a more beautiful world that works for all.

May we know that there are no small choices and that, as I shared last week, our heart knows the Truth that Everything IS a part of Everything else. May we invite her to remind us of that truth and to guide us in our choices whether they seem large or small. May I.

P.S. – David’s book was among those that guided me through a rocky period of change in my life way back in 2006-7. Beautifully and playfully written, The Power of TED* - The Empowerment Dynamic, is his poignant story of making the pivot from victim to creator during a challenging period in his life. David’s story and this pivot is much needed as the world we know crumbles and we seek to create our world anew. TED is off the shelf now and on the bedside table as I enjoy another read.

Early Mountain Morning

How BIG Are the Little Things?

Everything is a part of Everything else

Everything operates on behalf of everything else

Everything is interactive, interrelated, and interdependent/symbiotic, and with you

You are part of everything and everything is part of you

You operate on behalf of everything else, and everything operates on behalf of you (Myra Jackson)

Sorting through some papers this past weekend I came across a slide from sometime in 2020 or ’21, the Covid years. It seemed a good reminder on many levels and across all domains so I placed it where I would likely see it every morning.

This morning I needed it to remind me of how I understand our world, indeed the cosmos, to be. I also needed to remember that even though this is how the universe, our planet, and each of us IS, our awareness of our true nature is not automatic. Practice is required to fully embody the truth of who we are.

 I don’t know about you, but I need lots of practice. Of this I was reminded when Zadie Byrd and I popped outside as the day began to dawn. When she finished her ‘business’ I noticed plants with a thirst needing to be quenched.

Turning my attention to responding to that need and my desire to care for them in gratitude for reaping the beauty they contribute to my life; I discovered a hose had been moved and left disconnected by a wonderful helper who washed windows yesterday. Putting the system back together would require a bit more work than simply connecting the hose. ‘Annoyed’ is the gentlest term available to describe my instant reaction.      

But fairly quickly as I huffed and puffed, I realized that this wasn’t how I wanted to begin my day or experience the quiet, peaceful dawn. I wanted to align myself with the beauty that surrounds me, to remember that I am a part of that, and to be in alignment with Her. My huffy, puffy reaction wasn’t coherent with who I am, what I believe, or what I know to be true about life. I wanted to step into this day with full coherence, present to and grateful for my life, for ALL life.

 I paused, asking my heart to lead and my pulse to align with the pulse of Gaia, of the cosmos. Calmer, I reset the watering system and went inside to reflect. The quote above came to mind. I thought about how everything matters, even (perhaps especially) the so-called ‘little’ things.

 These little things grab our attention and sometimes evoke in us out of proportion reactions. They are potent with opportunities. Opportunities to be grateful. Opportunities to express care and love. Opportunities to make refinements, to learn, to grow. Opportunities to BE who we truly are.

These little things impact us personally, contributing to OR working against our health, our happiness, our overall well-being. Whether they are moments of gratitude and bliss or forays into drama, they impact us individually and collectively. They become part of the collective consciousness that is creating our world and how we experience that world moment to moment, day to day. We are responsible for choosing. And every choice matters.

Our heart knows the Truth that Everything IS a part of Everything else. May we invite her to remind us of that truth and to guide us in our choices whether they seem large or small. May I.

Blessed Solstice!

Solstice Sun Rises Over the Sangres

We are cradled in the arms of an ever-changing planet. Remembering this helps us understand why it is so important to shift the behaviors of our imperiled species and protect the only planet we call home. … When we step into the vast dance of Earth around Sun, and Moon around Earth, we attune to a profound sense of place that is a remedy for digital overload, overcommitment, frenetic busy-ness, and on-demand culture. Seasons belie the myth of same-ness. Cycles upend our attachment to false stability. Everything is changing. And it will keep on changing. Rivera Sun (newsletter 21 June 2023 – www.riverasun.com)

Blessed Solstice! Today is the Sun’s turning. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere it is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, the shortest night. Our long days have reached their peak and will begin to gradually shorten as our night times grow longer.

Out early this morning, before the Sun rose over the Sangres I walked the labyrinth, doing my own form of ritual – gratitude and blessings to the four directions, to Mother Earth, to the sky and all above; then finishing as the Sun crested the peaks bringing her light to the treetops. On our morning walk Zadie Byrd and I encountered numerous rabbits moving about.

Later, I sauntered for an hour or so in the woods, attention focused on new growth bursting forth in the pines and on the active avian life – hummingbirds, jays, robin. A mountain blue bird and a chickadee with nests and baby chirps nearby greeted me.

Reflecting on the preciousness of this new life, I was present to its precariousness, having made the sad discovery of a fallen nest and broken eggs yesterday afternoon. A western wood peewee built her nest in a corner of our front deck as she has done for many years. I’ve watched her on the nest for several days as I’ve come and gone from the house, and I was looking forward to witnessing her ritual of hatching, feeding, the fledging her young soon. I’m curious whether she will make another attempt. Or return next year.

This Solstice Day, I feel deeply connected to and blessed by the life in these woods, the seen and the unseen, the winged and four-legged, the pines, the grasses, the cacti, the lichen, the rock beings, and even the pesky mosquitos and gnats that have arrived in their season. The connection gives me pause.

I wonder how I/we can live in greater harmony this life, with the whole of life. What new stories can we live into to become stewards of a New Earth? What new choices and ways of being will have us be ‘ancestors of a thriving planet and planetary civilization’? What can we dream into being that is out of this world and will carry us into the next? What future do you dare to dream?

As my friend, author and activist Rivera Sun, suggests in her newsletter today, connecting with planetary cycles reminds us of our place and offers respite from the chaos in our world. Connect with the Sun’s energy this day. Know that its energy and its light are fuel for all of life. Dare to dream!

Blessed Solstice! Blessed Life!

Colorado’s Summer Bloom - The Columbine