Awakening to Our Complicity

Along the Road - A Curious Cow

Every aspect of our lives is, in a sense, a vote for the kind of world we want to live in. Frances Moore Lappé

Lappé’s words landed in a deep place a week or so ago when I first read them in our local food hub’s newsletter. They came on the heels of words spoken by an associate during a Zoom call early one morning. “We’re all complicit,” she shared, not referring to any particular crisis or issue.

I was reminded that EveryThing we do, think, speak matters in this interconnected world that we are each a part of. And of how many choices -some conscious, others not- I make every day, each a vote for something. Am I voting for what I truly want – the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible? Or …

I thought about the motto of our local Valley Roots Food Hub that each week aggregates and delivers locally grown and produced foods from dozens of farmers, ranchers, and producers in our region: You have three votes every day!  

The choices we make about what to eat each day – breakfast, lunch, and dinner (not to mention snack time) – are votes we cast that make a difference in our personal lives, in our community, and beyond.  Each vote says something about the quality of health that we want for our bodies. Each vote says something about what we want for the vibrancy of our local community. Each vote says something about how much we care about our neighbors, the soil and, indeed, our precious planetary home.

As much as possible my food votes are for local, organic, regeneratively grown foods and products. I see them as votes for my health; a more vibrant, sustainable local economy; and for the health of the soil on which we depend.

But what about other areas of maintaining and navigating life? What do our purchases of clothing, household goods, and such say about the world we want to live in? What do they say about the degree of care, fairness, and economic justice we want for workers in the world? About our care for the environment and our planet? About our tolerance and acceptance of war and violence? What do our investments say about these issues?

In asking questions such as these, I awaken to my complicity in how the world is. It’s easier to blame others for the world’s multiple crises. I wonder whose interests are served by our finger-pointing divisiveness? Do we want to live in a world of blame with each side aiming to punish the other in endless cycles of war? What choices might I be making that unknowingly support the terrible suffering that the world of blame and separation create?

I find in these questions a deep spiritual essence. Questions that are integral to raising my level of consciousness and to clearly align my daily choices with the values which I claim are important to me.

The choices go far beyond economic choices of course. We choose to smile or not. To be patient with another or not. To be generous, kind. To listen deeply. To be curious. To be willing to learn. And more. Every thought, word, deed is a choice - a vote for how we want our world to be.

What world are you voting for in the choices you make today?

In the Woods …

Vulnerability - Are We Willing?

Nature’s Art on the Trail

When you become vulnerable, any ideal of perfect image you may have had of yourself falls away. Many people are addicted to perfection and in their pursuit of the ideal they have no patience with vulnerability. They close off anything that might leave them open to the risk of hurt. … With the revelation of corruption in so many political and religious domains, our perception of ideals has become tinged with cynicism. Yet no society can endure without the sense of honour, dignity and transcendence enshrined in its set of ideals. John O’Donohue

Writing in my journal several days ago I found my thoughts wander to the current array of political theatrics in the United States. ‘How do they get away it?’ I wondered, ‘they’ not being limited to a single political party or group, rather many elected officials and those who serve them. The ways of politics have become habitual rather than thoughtful, and we have become accustomed to ignoring them or watching as if they are entertainment. Disengaged. Enraged.

The journal stream ended with these words: Beyond blaming the other, we must face ourselves.

Reading O’Donohue’s words early this morning by the fire, the stream came back. It continued: And to face ourselves requires that we become vulnerable.

The absence of our openness to vulnerability breeds fundamentalism, self-righteousness, blame, and hard-heartedness. We fight and die to stave off the threat of being vulnerable.

Opening to vulnerability nurtures an open heart, compassion, curiosity, understanding, forgiveness, and creativity. Vulnerability is a pathway to peace.

What does vulnerability ask of us? What doors might more willingness to become vulnerable open for us, individually and collectively?

I’m reminded of an essay Charles Eisenstein posted earlier this week (click here to read) sharing the story of Raquel who dared to take a peaceful stand around a contentious, divisive issue and the stages she traveled to arrive at that place. I invite you to read it with an open heart and open mind, for surely like me, you find yourself on one side or the other of the issue she faced.

What if our political leaders could exhibit Raquel’s level of maturity, thoughtfulness, willingness to be vulnerable as they address issues of war? How can we create and hold this space, this possibility for them to step into? Are willing to step into this space ourselves? Are we willing to invite them?

O’Donohue’s words opened me to possibility. They point to the tricky, challenging path that making peace requires. Moving beyond blame to face ourselves and our shortcomings (past and present), forgiving ourselves and others. All for the sake of peace.

Simply asking the questions helped me shift from the anger, sadness, and disbelief at the continued war-mongering choices of my country’s leadership that I woke with this day. No matter what the question, war is not the answer. Love is.  Am I willing to step into the vulnerability of that? Are we?      

The Ziggurat on a Hazy Morning

Imagination-Creating Possibility in the Unthinkable

Autumn Mountain Morning

The imagination is capable of kindness that the mind often lacks … it does not engage in things in a cold, clear-cut way but always searches for the hidden words that wait at the edge of things. The mind tends to see things in a singularly simple, divided way: there is good and bad, ugly and beautiful. The imagination, in contrast, extends a greater hospitality to whatever is awkward, paradoxical or contradictory. … The imagination is always more loyal to the deeper unity of everything. It has patience with contradiction because there it glimpses new possibilities. And the imagination is the great friend of possibility. …this is what beauty is: possibility that enlarges and delights the heart. John O’Donohue Beauty-The Invisible Embrace

In the midst of the unthinkable, of horrors and hatred, of rancor and disrespect, turning from mind to heart offers a doorway of passage into a field of brighter possibilities.

Earlier this week I was given an opportunity to imagine the future, my future, three years out. The conversation inspired me to reflect more deeply on what a world of unity, peace, compassion, and integrity look like. How would we/I be in our responses to today’s multiple crises and violence? How would our leaders BE and what choices would they make in a world truly committed to peace? How might we shift?

The following day Charles Eisenstein shared his thoughts on those very questions (click here to watch). His answer in short: forgiveness, shifting from blame and revenge to forgiveness and seeking to understand. Not an easy or simple path, as any of us who have been ‘wronged’ and sought to forgive another know from our experience. Yet might we dare to allow our hearts to dream what our minds will surely declare is ‘impossible’?

In the midst of the unthinkable, of horrors and hatred, of rancor and disrespect, turning from mind to heart offers a doorway of passage into a field of brighter possibilities. Can we imagine a different future than where the arc of history seems headed? Dare we dream and endeavor to bring such dreams into reality, creating sacred spaces and fields of possibility?

I’m reminded of Rumi’s wise words:

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

Even in the comfort and relative safety of home it is not always easy to imagine such a bright future. Life’s daily details and our habitual keeping up with today’s dramas, horrors, and predictions of the next scary thing may trap us in dead-end, worn out thinking and lead us to forget our power to imagine and call forth a different future.

Yet imagine a new world we must. Seeking those whose ideals resonate with ours and joining them in community to call forth and create the new. Creating new pathways and ways of being and doing right where we are.

Moment to moment we choose where to focus our attention, where to devote our precious life energy. What might be possible if, beyond our compassion and empathy, our sorrow and grief, we tapped into the kindness of the imagination to dream a future where we’ve grown our capacity to listen (deeply listen) to one another along with our willingness to engage in this way. Where we have the capacity to forgive past deeds (our own as well as those of others) and to imagine and create a new world together. And then to trust that such a world is possible even when that seems not so and despite history’s evidence to the contrary. How much beauty can we imagine?

To be sure, I have work to do. Let’s dance!

The Portal on Cordial

Places of Solace

Labyrinth in the Woods Out Back - My Anchor Place of Solace

Anger is a great flame of presence. It is difficult to mistake or ignore an angry presence. John O’Donohue

 All you need is love. John Lennon/The Beatles

As I woke and moved into this day, I felt a deep sadness coupled with a touch of anxiety. Although I’m far away from the most recent violent atrocities, the war mongering words following those events feel closer. I notice I’m a bit ‘edgy’. Observing interactions with Zadie Byrd for the last few days, I see myself being sometimes snappy, impatient, and moving to impose a sense of control. I sense it’s not about Zadie Byrd. Hmm…

Words don’t come quickly as they often do in the morning quiet. I’m restless. Words that do come seem inadequate to how I feel, what I sense, and to this time of violence, unrest, and change on a scale beyond our prior experience.

I needed time in a place of solace to grok the world and my feelings: the woods out back. I needed to lean into Grandmother Pinon and allow my tears to flow as waves of anger joined the sadness and anxiety that rises when I dare ask, ‘could this happen here?’

I know the answer. I see under currents in the vitriol of our so-called leaders and others who declare to ‘defend their position to the death’. I hear saber-rattling and war-mongering language coming from all sides.

‘What will it take for us to heal these vast divides?’ I ask as I enter the labyrinth that, for me, is the anchor point for the solace of these sacred woods.

Walking the first circuit feeling gratitude for THIS place, I drop more deeply into my heart and its knowing. ‘Love’. The answer echoes, having been spoken by Grandmother Tree minutes earlier. I wonder, ‘how do we channel our anger, our outrage into Love? How do I?’ I hold these questions as I continue to walk to the center. They seem to ease the sadness and angst, and I can express heartfelt thanks to the four directions, to Mother Earth, and Father Sky with a sense of peace.

As I acknowledge Father Sky, I invoke a prayer that sky above be traversed only by actions of peace. May all our places and spaces be used only for purposes of peace.

As I begin the slow walk from the center, my questions remain, yet love’s presence brings light and curiosity to the heaviness of the sadness, anger, and anxiety that I carry as I wonder about my role, my actions, my choices.

I need to visit these places of solace to keep love and light in the soup of this heavy, violent prone world. Perhaps we all do.

Where are your places of solace? Where do you take your deep cares for self, for others, for our world to lighten the load and maintain love’s presence?

As we move closer to Saturday’s powerful solar eclipse and its intense energy, I invite you to inhabit a place of solace for a while. Whether long or short, give yourself the gift of acknowledging how you’re experiencing the chaos and horrors of our world. Then, when that feels complete, add all the elements of love and light you can muster for yourself, for humanity, for the planet, for our world.

For this is how we shift – individually and collectively – acknowledging what is without allowing ‘it’ to drown out who we BE as we move ever closer to living the Truth that we are all One.

Pathway in the Woods Out Back

From Control to Flow

Autumn and Winter on Display in the Mountains

How can we uproot the desire to impose our will upon the living worlds around us? How do we become more receptive to nonhuman languages and ways of being? Gavin Van Horn (Kinning: Introducing the Kinship Series)

This question has been with me since first reading it a week or so ago when I dove back into Volume 1 of fascinating series (Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations). The essence of the question isn’t new to me (or to you, if you’ve been ‘pivoting’ with me for a while), but the language landed deep when I revisited it this morning as Muse and I began the weekly exploration of what to share here.

Though Van Horn’s question is intended as a query into deepening our relationship with Nature and recognizing all of Life as our kin, it seems apropos as well in this time of social and political upheaval, when we don’t seem to have the capacity or willingness to get along with one another, much less to hold nonhuman life as kin. Our embeddedness in separation runs deep and wide. In separation we endeavor to control (Muse smiles, noting that hasn’t worked so well for humanity over the eons); in unity we flow with life. Flow, hmm…

Perhaps my attraction and attention to rivers and our local mountain streams these days is because they flow. Their flow is visible and audible, gifts of sight and sound that nourish this being. Toes feeling the movement of the chilly water, a sniff of the air’s freshness … dare I put the water to my lips for a taste?

All my senses point to flow when I’m in the presence of a river or stream. Shoulders drop into gravity’s ease and I sigh deeply … Ahh…..flowing with life.

I aim to walk through life in ITS flow rather than trying to schedule and control every moment. I want to do so in a grounded way, listening to all life – that of this body, mind, and soul as well as to life and the energy of life that surrounds me.

‘Where does the energy want to flow?’ becomes the primary question, overriding ‘how do I control this to go my way?’ and the stress that follows when my control efforts are foiled.

The question bubbled in me as my plan and schedule was thwarted by a technology breakdown earlier this week. The issue was beyond my limited capacity to solve tech issues, so I engaged a favorite computer techie to resolve the issue. I’d planned to schedule time with him later in the week for some technology upgrades and, in the process of dealing with the breakdown, learned that he wouldn’t be available at the time I’d planned. Ugh!

Present to becoming frazzled and irritated, I paused. Taking a deep breath, it was clear that the energy was guiding me in a different direction. Would I push through to stick with my plan? Or would I go with the flow of the energy?

I chose to flow. The result? The technology upgrade that I’d set aside (Muse says ‘avoided’!) for some time is now complete, opening the way for greater ease in several other activities and plans. The learning curve I’ve avoided doesn’t seem as steep as I’d feared. And I’m much more at ease.

Letting go, allowing, flowing with the energy in these daily events, places where often we may not recognize the presence of a choice point, become my doorways to listening more deeply to self and to all of life, especially the thriving life that surrounds me in this sacred land I inhabit. Relating to the details of life in flow rather than control seems to be an indication that Nature has much to share. An invitation for me to simply listen.

Could this be a tiny step on the path to deepening my kinship with all Life, choosing to flow with rather than control Life that is not mine to control? Perhaps a bit more uprooting is underway…

The Season’s First Morning Fire

Honoring the Veins & Arteries of Our World

The Rio Grande River Near South Fork, Colorado

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marshy Headwaters of the Rio Grande River

Pivoting Into Autumn

Our Ancestors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Kin

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