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

Living A Desired Future Now

Blessed Moisture Comes to the Mountains! …

I believe it to be perfectly possible for an individual to adopt the way of life of the future . . . without having to wait for others to do so. And if an individual can observe a certain rule of conduct, cannot a group of individuals do the same? Cannot whole groups of peoples—whole nations? No one need wait for anyone else to adopt a humane and enlightened course of action. Mohandas Gandhi

Act as if the future you want is already here. Pam Gregory, Astrologer

A thread seems woven into much of what I’ve read and watched this week: the choices I make today are creating the world I will experience tomorrow and beyond. Noticing the thread in numerous places, I noted that this week there is a New Moon (Thursday, September 14 at 9:40pm EDT in the U.S.), a time in many belief systems for setting new intentions, starting new projects, and such.

This idea that today’s choices create the future isn’t new of course, yet I’m curious at it being so present for me. Curious, not to figure out what my noticing it all around me means, but rather curious to delve more deeply into my choices, my habits and what they foretell. Perhaps to reflect on past choices and pivots as links to life as I experience it today. And, to sense more clearly what a ‘desired future’ looks like to me.

Many questions bubble. What I wonder might I learn from this pondering? What pivots might I make? What revelations might I resist?

As I allow these questions to live in me and others to rise, I leave you this week with another quote that, in a very different way, carries this thread. Who do we need to be to allow the “departed arrow to sing in the wind and remake the world”?

 I am quite confident that even as the oceans boil, and the hurricanes beat violently against our once safe shores, and the air sweats with the heat of impending doom, and our fists protest the denial of climate justice, that there is a path to take that has nothing to do with victory or defeat: a place we do not yet know the coordinates to; a question we do not yet know how to ask. The point of the departed arrow is not merely to pierce the bullseye and carry the trophy: the point of the arrow is to sing the wind and remake the world in the brevity of flight. There are things we must do, sayings we must say, thoughts we must think, that look nothing like the images of success that have so thoroughly possessed our visions of justice.

May this new decade be remembered as the decade of the strange path, of the third way, of the broken binary, of the traversal disruption, the kairotic moment, the posthuman movement for emancipation, the gift of disorientation that opened up new places of power, and of slow limbs. May this decade bring more than just solutions, more than just a future - may it bring words we don't know yet, and temporalities we have not yet inhabited. May we be slower than speed could calculate, and swifter than the pull of the gravity of words can incarcerate. And may we be visited so thoroughly, and met in wild places so overwhelmingly, that we are left undone. Ready for composting. Ready for the impossible. Welcome to the decade of the fugitive. Bayo Akomolafe (post from January, 2020)

…With A Dusting of Snow

From Insisting to Inviting

Full, Super, Blue Moonset

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. Rumi

The morning after last week’s full, super, blue moon dawned beautifully. Clear sky; still, crisp air. Moon hanging in the western sky on its way to meet the horizon. I headed out for a long, solo walk before Zadie Byrd woke.

Returning home, she was awake, curious as to the whereabouts of her human, and ready to go out for ‘her’ morning walk. I was ready for canine company and wanted to watch Moon meet the western horizon. With Zadie harnessed up we headed down the road in that direction at her slow, morning- sniffing pace. A short distance down the road, sniffing needs satisfied and morning ‘business’ complete, she stopped, stiffened her body and looked at me with her ‘I’m done. Let’s go home’ eyes.

Not knowing whether she’s in pain or perhaps sensing danger ahead, when this occurs I generally follow Zadie’s lead. Sometimes though I insist, sternly saying ‘we’re going this way’ or gently pulling her leash, cajoling with treats and a silly running game to test her movement and energy.

This day, catching myself before I began to insist, I paused. I looked at the moon and took a deep breath. What would forcing accomplish given the peace I felt from walking under this stunning moon? Was I willing to pay the price of the deep peace I was feeling to have my way?

No.

I engaged in a different approach. Dropping the leash, I continued walking several steps and invited ‘Zades’ to ‘come’ join me.

At first, she seemed a bit perplexed being beyond the length of the leash from me. Then she came looking somewhat curious. ‘What is my human up to now?’ she was perhaps wondering. As she caught on, supported by tasty rewards and lots of praise, we sauntered to the end of our road, overlooking the vast valley and San Juan mountains and I watched as the horizon at long last greeted the moon, Zadie Byrd happily sniffing nearby. We were both satisfied, and it was time to return home.

Reflecting on the experience later, I was present to the open heartedness of a genuine invitation and how my heart tightens when I insist.

Insisting holds little, if any, difference than demanding and forcing, acts that have no regard for another. They leave no room for choice, and when I engage in that way, leave me feeling heavy and glum. Insisting is an act of mind, not heart; of ego, not spirit; of force, not power.

Inviting, engaging another being in the process and offering choice, is an act of the heart. It reflects an inner power that has no need to force others. Inviting is an act of spirit.

Once again, canine companion Zadie Byrd carries the mantle of wise teacher, offering up opportunities for me to pause, to pivot, to learn, to grow. Inviting me to the field where she lives.

Zadie Byrd’s Off Leash Experience Continues

Completion: Physically & Meta-Physically

Looking Up Through the Mother Tree

Completion is the natural progression of the planet established out of the characteristic of the planet. … The esoteric meaning of the number nine is completion. An aspect of knowledge is now a part of you to such an extent that nothing can diminish it or be added to it. The learning has been completed up to the point you find yourself. Gregge Tiffen (The Language of a Mystic: Completion)

Today, 8-30-2023, is a ‘nine’ day: completion.

Yesterday morning found me reflecting on cycles. Frustrated at being unable to move forward with a project that I very much want to complete, I wondered, ‘Where am I in the greater cycles of life that seems to make this hard? Is my timing off?’

Since the project is sorting through old files, records, and photos the timing in this period of several planets being in retrograde motion seemed perfect. It’s a time for rethinking, reworking, reorganizing, reexamining … “re- almost anything,” says a friend astute in planetary influences. What could be off?

As I examined my approach I saw chaos, disorder, clutter. I noticed that I wasn’t clear about what is truly important to me in these boxes of ‘stuff’. One side of the internal tug-of-war said, “toss it all!” as the other cautioned thoughtfulness, clarity, and care. Each time I’d opened a box, I was caught in the middle of that tug. I was stuck.

I began to see that I hadn’t prepared myself or the project for smooth execution. Rather I’d just dived in and was attempting to swim upstream against the tide. I’d missed a critical step in creating: preparation.

Recognizing that, I took a breath and a step back, then another breath to connect with my heart. I hit the rewind button. ‘How can I best prepare?’ The question rose in me as a breath of fresh air.

Muse cut through the confusion giving voice to my heart. ‘Create order. Clear the clutter,’ came the clear answer.

Having quite recently reorganized the garage, I quickly saw a clear path to establish order and summoned help to move the boxes out, organizing them for easy access when my inner preparation is complete.

With order restored and clutter removed, I’m prepared to do the inner, meta-physical preparation. A first step is to review my hesitancy (Muse says ‘resistance!’) to release old things. And I need to ask what seem to be key questions:

·        What choices will help me simplify and create more ease and flow in life?

·        What choices support my growth?

·        What do I value and choose to care for?

Once again, I’m reminded of the potency and richness lying in wait in the mundane tasks and choices of life. Not overworking them or making something a ‘big deal’, rather using them as gifts of life that support awareness and remind me that everything is creation and creation is a process. Skip a step and I’m out of step in moving toward completion.

Perhaps as a reward for engaging in this re-examination and adjusting to strengthen my ability to act, a remodeling project here at the house, delayed by a contractor not being available, was completed yesterday evening. WooHoo! A definite cause for celebration and for evaluating what I learned and discovered in that process. Also, a reminder of the satisfaction that comes with completion and inspiration for the project ahead.

Engaging with awareness and clear choices, I experience ease. Blundering through obliviously, I struggle. Cycles teach me this.

Humanity and Mother Earth – of which we are microcosms of the macrocosm – are engaged in their own cycles coming to completion. May our participation in Life support us all to do so with ease.

Looking Up Through the Grandmother Tree

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