Snow At Last!

Ahh … Winter … Snow at Last!

The official snowfall reading of 13.6 inches, makes for the most snow our area has seen in one storm in over 8 years, which is a long time indeed, and was well overdue. It was also the first snowfall in 2 years where more than 10.0" fell in one storm. Finally, this was the 9th heaviest snowfall for our area since 2002. Keno – our local weather meister

No wonder I’d forgotten what’s needed when deep snow falls. It’s been quite a while. And, if you’ve been with me for a bit, you know I’ve longed for it, especially this year. Now, finally, the ground is covered in a white blanket, as it should be in winter. Happy Gaia! Happy me!

As this deep snow called me inward, my desire for a clear, safe path for Zadie Byrd and me as well as my car to reach the road called me out. So, shovel I did, feeling deep gratitude for the moisture and the beauty, while my body nudged, ‘be careful … don’t overdo it …’. I l listened, shoveling a bit then resting. Shoveling some more, resting again. A few areas that I normally shovel were left undone, a choice that’s big for me.

Feeling weary with the work complete, I answered the call to turn my attention within. My weariness evoked questions of sustaining life here as the years go by and the body’s abilities shift. I felt the questions deep inside. A few tears fell and the roads of judgement (You should be able to do more … Blah, blah, blah.) and fear (What if I can’t sustain life in this place I love?) beckoned me to their path. (Hey let’s have a pity and worry party …)

No! I declined, remembering the roads of letting go, of trust, of gratitude, of care. That’s the place within where I want to live!

The questions remain as explorations to engage. Not as problems to be solved or answers to figure out, but as opportunities. To embrace the unknown. To trust life and creation. To live fully and enjoy every moment in this beautiful, sacred place. To recognize when I need support and ask for it. To walk in gratitude, no matter what.

Inside. Outside … the dance with Life!

Early Morning Western Sky in the San Luis Valley

Empty AND Full

Tashi Gomang Stupa overlooking the San Luis Valley

The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe. Albert Einstein

… prayers that we will remember who we are, the truth of our being, and that our being here, now will contribute to creating, sustaining, and maintaining the universe as a friendly place.

This blog day morning finds me empty of words, especially words with some modicum of wisdom to share. At the same time, I’m full. Filled with gratitude and an interesting flow in life. And I’m full of compassion, trust, heartache, joy, sadness, love, anger, and occasionally a pinch of angst. The soup of life with all its spices.

What words will come? When? I wonder as mind wanders exploring this sense of emptiness …

In the knowing that I am a mere fractal in the cosmos, one with all that is, ALL life, I feel a void in my connection with those living in what have become zones of horror – around the globe and right here at home. A void that is not empty of compassion, care, sadness, but rather the emptiness of feeling impotent in the face of such horrors. Heart aching for all that separates us from one another, from our wholeness. Our holiness.

And yet I am full. Filled in knowing that every breath I take with the vibration of love is an energetic contribution to the greater whole and to remembering that holiness. I’m full of life, of possibility, of seeds gestating as they await their time to sprout. I’m filled with joy as companion to the sadness, with curiosity that accompanies knowing, with care for self, for others, for all life.

I feel these extremes and polarities as I observe the world and even as I observe self. Empty and full. Emptying and filling. Fallow, sacred ground attuned to winter, yet feeling a toe in the water of spring.

Deep within, I trust that life is unfolding as it should in a universe that is kind as my heart aches for the suffering of all victims and perpetrators and for my own unconscious role as perpetrator. And I am prayerFULL that we will remember who we are, the truth of our being, and that our being here, now will contribute to creating, sustaining, and maintaining the universe as a friendly place.

May it be so!

Khenpo Karthar Stupa

REST: Pure and (Mostly) Simple

Thinker - Contemplation in the Woods Out Back

As the seasons become less recognizable and more nuanced, it feels even more crucial to follow their lead and adhere to their lessons while we still can. It’s less about remembering the weather and more about the flow, the pattern, and the creative tempo. Noticing the intricacy of the seasons wherever you live is akin to tapping into a well of details, subject matter, and lessons that might otherwise go overlooked. Jacqueline Suskin (A Year In Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression)

How could our world be if we allowed the ground of our lives to experience the fallowness of fields at rest in winter?

Yes, we’re almost a full month into this 24th year of the century. The date, 1-24, feels auspicious as I finally settle in to write much later in the day than is my usual routine. This is the first of 12 24th days of this 24th year.

A quick search online offers up a variety of positives for the number 24: deep connection with family and relationships; harmony, balance, and good fortune; a strong sense of responsibility, compassion, and nurturing nature; empathic. But I digress …

Rest. Rest. Rest. Winter is the season of rest. Nature rests in winter and this year I’m exploring how to more closely align my life with the season, a season with almost two months ahead of us before we burst into spring. So say our calendars even if our bodies have long since forgotten.

This year I’m asking my body to listen and to remember. I’m exploring and experimenting with the question of what deep rest means to me and, since this body wasn’t built for the deep rest of bear’s hibernation, what it can look like as I engage in the activities of maintaining life and interacting in the world.

I’m learning and discovering that sleep and stillness, while important, are only elements of rest. With intention and mindfulness of how I’m BEing I can invoke a state of rest as I walk in the woods out back and even as I move about engaging the daily ‘to do’ activities of life maintenance. I’m discovering that how I’m BEing as I move about determines whether the activity is restorative and restful or drains energy. Simple mindfulness and choice can call forth rest in the midst of movement.

The flow of each day varies, seemingly in response to the intention of deep rest and operating with few plans, appointments, or commitments other than to the rest itself. Morning time habits and routines, generally slow, are much slower, elongating time between waking and the morning walk or breaking fast. Slower too is the pace of and attention to activity as I hold this intention for rest and self-care, seeming to call forth a deeper level of awareness and care in almost all that I do.

It gives me pause to wonder and dream. Wonder how our world might be if we listened to the voice of Nature and Her rhythms. Wonder how our world could be if we allowed the ground of our lives to experience the fallowness of fields at rest in winter? Wonder what we might discover if we learned to truly rest and reflect? Dream that the Winter Solstice is a celebration welcoming the season of rest and return to the true meaning of the season’s holy days, honoring that which is true for one another? Dream what could be possible if we rested together, laying down our weapons of war and of words?

To BE quiet. To listen.

What might we hear from the deep voice of our souls? Might we find ways to unwind the wound-up wounds that divide us? Could we heal? Would we dare be such a threat to the corporatocracy of wars (those of weapons and those of words) that thrives on sustaining our unrest, our dis-ease?

This time of rest and pulling back from the world calls forth such musing. Not to find ‘the’ answers, but to wonder and to call forth possibility and to imagine the creation of a world where harmony prevails. Harmony with self. Harmony with others. Harmony with home, Mother Earth. Harmony with the flow of the cosmos. Harmony within. Harmony without.

Rest. Pure rest. Could it be a simple solution to the chaos and discord of our world?

Mountains at Rest in the Clouds

Challenged to Walk My Talk

Dragons Dancing in the Morning Light

The most important work of our time may well be to maintain a high frequency grounded in love as walk through the seemingly mundane tasks and choices of life. Worry, angst, criticism, and fear are low frequency energies that block our access to intention, vision, and creating our world anew.

As the polar vortex seemed to pass our region by (quite disorienting to wake to a balmy 24 degrees and discover that it’s minus 5 just a short 50 miles away and beyond across much of the country), a convergence of seemingly unrelated events in relatively quick succession conspired to invite me to walk my talk.

Yesterday morning gazing into the fire I’d just built in the wood stove, watching the flames dance and observing to see if I needed to make adjustments, I thought of fiery extremes – from a match to light a candle or ignite the tinder starting this contained fire that warm hearth, home, and heart to uncontrolled wildfires changing forever the landscape and all life in its path. The later bringing death and destruction and ultimately rebirth and regeneration.

THIS is the divine perfection of a greater whole that calls forth Life’s cycles. THIS is the power that sources Life. THIS is CREATION.

Then I thought of planetary influences, each with their own extremes of expression. Fiery Mars and its continuum from the wise, compassionate will of the benevolent warrior in heart-based action on behalf of Life to its shadow, the angry warrior who kills on command – command of another or the command of a fearful mind separate from and threatened by any ‘other’ who dares be different from the self he knows and those around who mirror that self, having forgotten the wiser Self that is but a cell in the greater whole.

Capturing these thoughts in my journal, I wrote, ‘why do we feed this cancer with hate and fear that divides, chooses sides, and grows, just as we feel our minds and bodies thoughts and foods that feed disease within?’ And then, a quick prayer: Bring us back to wisdom, to our greater knowing that we are ONE.

Suddenly mind began to pop like popcorn in a hot pan. A flurry of ideas moved through me, visions of how I want the world to be for our grandchildren and generations beyond them and mostly focused on politics, governance, and the basis on which we make choices. I felt uplifted and inspired and a sense that ‘we can do this!’

I felt plopped square in the middle of the deep knowing that the most important work of our time may well be to maintain a high frequency grounded in love as walk through the seemingly mundane tasks and choices of life. Worry, angst, criticism, and fear are low frequency energies that block our access to intention, vision, and creating our world anew.

As the day unfolded, unknowing co-conspirators, including my canine companion Zadie Byrd presented the choice and the challenge to walk that talk. As if on a mission, Zades began this uncoordinated, yet easily flowing parade with an admonition to ‘not be too serious in my care for her and in my attention to the world’. Speaking through a friend who’s an animal communicator, she asked that I not engage in negativity and that we “move forward”. Doggie wisdom for sure!

A flash of Alfred E. Neuman’s “What, me worry?” ran through me. Yet as the day’s parade marched on, I was invited to own that, yes, I do. And to recognize that the worry isn’t serving me, Zades, or the multiple fields of which I’m a part. Indeed, that worry is simply creating more of the same – reasons to worry, to feel angst, and even to drop into fear.

The tricky thing is that my worry is subtle and sometimes cloaks itself in care so that I won’t recognize it. Concern for a member of my community currently experiencing challenges or Zades’ health, for example. Angst about the current political divides and rancor in political rhetoric. And what about AI, the economy, etc. etc.?

As the parade marched on, an email from a long-time colleague and friend landed in my in-box, announcing her new podcast, Terrified Nation: Can We Save It? – a title that from almost any other source would have garnered a quick peck of the delete button. But I know this person to be a visionary. She has been working in the political realm for decades to bridge divides and several months back launched American Futures, a challenge to define what we imagine for our future (click here to explore and share your vision!)

As I listened to the first introductory podcast episodes (and I encourage you to do so here), I realized how this subtle, sneaky worry detracts me from maintaining a clear intention and vision of how I want life to be. After years of practice and applying what I know about how life works, I can still get caught up in the fear-mongering fray.

But, thanks to a band of unknowing co-conspirators to wake me up to the subtlety, I’m committed to focus my energy on what I envision for self, for Zades, for home and hearth, for community, for planet, and beyond. This is my brand of ‘woke’!

Vigilance and vision are required to walk my talk. A vigilant visionary I aim to be!

Sunset over the San Juans

Trusting My Soul

Sun and Clouds — New Years Eve Morning

Self-compassion is paramount. When you are compassionate with yourself, you trust in your soul, which you let guide your life. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny better than you do. John O’Donohue (Interview by Mary NurrieStearns on https://personaltransformation.com/)

Trusting my soul. Ahhh … that feels so very rich, right, nourishing. Aligned with my highest aim. Shooting for the stars, not as a goal to accomplish, but to remember that I came from stardust (as did we all) and my soul knows the wisdom of this cosmic connection. The connection that maps the geography of my destiny.

How do I know when I’m trusting my soul? I wonder, and …

Compassion. I’ve been sitting with you, contemplating your nature for a bit. Compassion – ‘with passion’. Passion from the soul which feels, perhaps fills, the heart of my being.

So, compassion, you are of the heart, and that heart must throw off the shackles of numbness that hold illusions of protection.

Protection. From what? From whom? Being numb is no protection at all! Indeed, in my numbness I cannot see the world, another, or even myself and behold the beauty that is Life. And I cannot see the suffering, the pain, the degradation … Wake up!

To feel compassion is to care. Self-compassion is self-care. Daring to dwell deep in the heart and care for the heart of the matter. The matter of Life. All Life. Sacred Life.

These words, these thoughts seem jumbled as if they are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box to guide me. What pieces are missing?

What, if any, action flows from compassion? What is mine to do, to act upon? The question burns. Our culture demands action, doing. Surely it is not enough to simply feel the pain of another’s suffering. Or of Mother Earth being trampled and abused as a resource until we use her up. Or of callous killing in the guise of being secure.

But how will my soul answer?

What IS mine to do in ending these cycles of violence? What needs to awaken in me?

I shudder a bit, and, with a gulp, ask Muse, “Is this jumble what is to be shared today?”

“Trust your soul,” comes the reply, likely with a wink and, perhaps, a nod.

Soul suggests there is a bit more. In opening to deeper compassion and honesty about the world, I must not let that world drag me into its morass. Mine is to discover the geography of my destiny and then to trust the map. My map, drawn in communion with the cosmos, and present in my soul. Mine is to know that my, indeed our, greatest task is to BE above the fray, even when events bring that fray to our doorstep.

Beyond the world’s chaos my soul envisions the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. My task, soul seems to say, is to hold that vision in the darkest of times, especially for those who are suffering or in survival mode and those whose misery leads them to foment discord and more. To lift them up in my heart and see them, indeed all of us, IN that more beautiful world. To behold love as the standard by which humanity will thrive and to hold myself to that standard. The puzzle pieces begin to fall into place …

A Colorado Blue Sky Day!

Beannacht - A New Years Blessing

Snowy Peaks to End the Year

This first blog day of the new year finds me curious about the year ahead, what will unfold in me, for me, and what will unfold in our tumultuous world. I’m exploring within just what ‘reweaving wholeness’ (last week’s blog topic and the focus of 2024’s 7 Days of Rest) means personally and collectively in a world where so much is dissolving.

What will we face this year? How will we face it and who will we be as we do so?

Searching for a quote to launch the year, I found a beautiful John O’Donohue poem, Beannacht – A Blessing, written for his mother Josie. After reading and listening to O’Donohue read the short poem (you can find his reading here) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfvS2LYbZLQ I felt such resonance that I’m sharing it in lieu of writing a longer post.

As he so often does, O’Donohue expresses and calls forth awareness of a deep knowing in my heart. May our walk through all that 2024 brings be as graceful as his words.

Beannacht – A Blessing

 On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

 And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

 When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

 May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

 And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

Crestone Peak

Weaving Wholeness into Life

There may be bumps and shadows in the road ahead …

… we seed the New Year with a global field of intention and healing, honoring our collective calling to wholeness. Each day we journey through primordial portals of remembrance, guiding our dreaming and becoming. (7 Days of Rest & Reweaving Wholeness - click here from info)

 As the clock ticks away the final 4 days, 12 hours, 50 minutes, 19 seconds of 2023 I find myself looking more forward than back. What will I weave into the fabric of this new cycle?

 I think of the elements in my Solstice prayer.

 – Oneness, discernment, compassion, deep listening, maturity, child-like wonder, peace – with curiosity and commitment to weave each into how I want through life in this cycle.

 As was the case at the end of 2022, many – perhaps most – await the turning of the clock to 2024 with bated breath, wishing to bid adieu to another tumultuous year. We want to turn the page. We long to dive deeply into the fresh start that began with the Solstice promise of our personal newness and culminates as we replace our 2023 calendars with new pages of promise and possibility that the coming year has the potential to bring forth.

 It is, as always, up to us – individually and collectively – to bring promise, possibility, and potential to fruition. What will we weave into life this year? How will we bring the diverse threads of the intrinsic nature and indispensable quality of ourselves fully into Life? How might our world be if we enter the new with that as our intention?

 As sure as the Sun’s light is returning day by day here in the northern hemisphere, we will have opportunities to do just that in the hours, days, weeks, and months ahead. What if we trusted the opportunities to come forth at just the right divine time rather than pushing to ‘make’ them happen?

 Although like 2022, this year held much tragedy and darkness, lights of love continued to shine in dark corners needing our attention and care.  May lights of love shine brightly on our weaving in all the days ahead. May we tap into the countless sources of light available beyond the chaos of the mainstream and its ways. May we receive whatever light we need as we add our unique rays to loving constellations of light and life and weave wholeness into the fabric of our lives – individually and collectively.

 While the onset of a new year signals the end of the holiday season in our culture, Winter has only just begun. The dark, the cold invites me inward (more snow would help the cause!). The season that began a mere seven days ago has a 12-week run before giving way to Spring. Yet our cultural habit is to greet the new year with our plans and to spring into action with goals and commitments to DO more as soon as the new year dawns.

 What if we took more time for rest and renewal as Nature does in the season of cold? What if we put our attention on nurturing our deep, true essence? What if we followed Nature’s lead, snuggling into ourselves to commune with the sacred and to gather all that is necessary to burst forth in Spring? While certainly there is life and livelihood to maintain, jobs to go to, businesses to tend, political action to be voiced, stories to be told, I wonder how the world might be if we began the calendar year in greater alignment with Nature? Mother Nature? Our Nature?

 In some way, I feel as if the new has already begun, with my curiosity and reflections focused forward not back to what is done. As I reflect on saying ‘Goodbye’ to the time gone by, my year end reflections include bundles of gratitude for what I’ve learned and discovered, how I’ve grown and changed. I experience these as subtle and internal shifts that have generated more smiles, more friendliness, more contentment and joy.

 What do you bring to your year-end reflections?

 As 2023 ends, many will breathe a sigh of relief that it is finally over along with a breath of hope for better days in the year ahead.  The world we live in is chaotic and uncertain. It IS! Those who put attention on that world forgetting that it is the world we live IN, NOT the world we are OF may look ahead with dread or fear.

 That need not be.

 Within each of us is a seed of understanding who we truly are. Nurturing that seed grows our faith in our capacity to be resilient in the face of the world’s chaos. This seed of faith is within us all. It is not faith in anything outside of us. Rather it is faith in who we are, each as an individual, integral part of an intelligent Universe. It is a reminder that life is so much more than we experience and observe in our daily routines. In this year ahead, may we each tap into our essence, our spiritual strength and weave it into the fabric of life.

 As you ring in 2024, I invite you to remember how important your presence and your ray of light is at this moment on the planet and to nourish your capacity to weave in each of the 365 days ahead by joining the global, online gathering 7 Days of Rest and Reweaving Wholeness, January 1-7.

 As they did at year end 2021 and 2022, the event’s introductory words draw me in with their reminder of the power of intention and clarity and the potent possibility that alignment and collective action call forth:

 7 Days of Rest, January 1-7, is an annual, open co-creative event dedicated to the healing and replenishment of the planet and all its inhabitants. All are invited to enjoy the rich array of offerings, including wisdom teachings, meditations, music, inspirations and more, that are generously offered by the global community. … we seed the New Year with a global field of intention and healing, honoring our collective calling to wholeness. Each day we journey through primordial portals of remembrance, guiding our dreaming and becoming. As we commune with these essences of Life, we remember our ancestral roots, our original untamed nature, and the ancient knowing of ourselves as infinitely diverse expressions of One Source. Together, we reweave our unique threads of light in integrity and harmony with the fabric of our living universe.

 The website is chock full of nourishing offerings each day. I’m looking forward to deep exploration of each of the daily themes. I hope that you’ll join me in whatever way best fits your essence, your schedule, your life, and your intentions for the year ahead.

 To Weaving Wholeness and Happiness in the New Year! 

Beauty Ahead!

My Solstice Prayer 2023

Snow!

The beauty of Winter Solstice is courage in itself. It is the courage to know that to be new is not necessarily going to be accepted by those expecting the commonplace. … a new you is ready … that will carry you through the new cycle. … Solstice is the time when you give up what you have and accept what is being born as the new power within you, the awareness within you, the new person within you. Gregge Tiffen (Winter Solstice: The Christmas Story)

As I ease into the quiet of Solstice Eve and Solstice Day, I begin to contemplate what of the old needs to fall away, and I start to imagine who might I be in this new cycle. As I sit in the early morning quiet, my prayer for this sacred day when Heaven and Nature sing in harmony and for the cycle ahead begins to emerge…

May I let go of whatever stories of separation remain a part of me so that I can live more fully into the truth of Oneness.

May my critical eye be only a tool for discernment, not judgements of others.

May I grow in my capacity to act from compassion, calling forth compassion first, releasing judgement and doubt, and recognizing where compassion is needed.

May I listen deeply to my heart, to others, to Nature, and to guidance from Spirit.

May I have the maturity to live in the kind of peaceful world that I desire.

May I let go of childish ways and embrace all life with child-like wonder.

May I know peace and may I BE peace in my walk through our chaotic world.

May you find moments of peace in the midst of the world’s noise and busyness to release the old and step into your creation of the new. I appreciate these wise words from Max Ehrmann, penned in 1927, which seems so relevant almost 100 years later (listen here).

Nestled in the Snow …

Easing into Solstice 2023

Deer in the Woods

All of heaven and all of earth coordinate at the Winter Solstice. Gregge Tiffen (Winter Solstice: The Christmas Story)

What I would exhort you to, what I would give as a gift to you, what I would lay down a soul for, would be for your awareness to recognize that this is a personal event for your life. It is the time that has been set up on this planet for you and Heaven to be with each other without interference. Gregge Tiffen (The Winter Solstice: Giving To Yourself – December, 2007)

With the daylight shortening as we move toward the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, the longer nights can seem to reflect the darkness of violence happening around the globe. It’s good to remember that our friends to the south are experiencing the longest light of their year. So it is with our awareness that as so much of humanity is expressing itself in dark ways, there is also much light, much love, much joy, and much hope for a brighter tomorrow.

It seems that we’ve drifted in our understanding of this season. …the time … for you and Heaven to be with each other without interference. Breathe that in for just a moment. Breathe a breath of gratitude for the gift. May we put our attention on the light and live in awareness of love as we pray for peace to break out all over the globe.

As I enter this Solstice time, I feel deeply blessed to not be engaged in much of the busyness that has come to define this holiday season. I’m grateful that on cold mornings with a warming fire in the woodstove I can look to the woods out back through the eyes of a heart that knows no separation from my tree relatives, from the rock beings, the winged ones, or from the four-legged creatures of all sizes that dwell or pass through this sacred place. My heart knows this as surely as it knows my oneness with the unseen Life that thrives here.

 I’m tuning in to the sacredness of this time, to the station of Nature’s beauty, and to the bubbling of old and new deep inside.  At the same time, I observe so much and so many in the world who are unable to do so.

Divisiveness and angst have intensified exponentially in recent years. So too have the opportunities for personal growth and evolution, individually and collectively. It is on those opportunities that I want to focus my attention this Solstice time.

One of the sources I turn to at Solstice is Gregge Tiffen’s writings about this sacred time. I find the message below a gentle reminder of the choices I can make moment to moment in all the days of winter solitude ahead and beyond this winter into the spring:

Prelude (Winter Solstice: The Christmas Story)

There is nothing I can give you which you have not got; but there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take.

No Heaven can come to us, unless our hearts find rest in today.

Take Heaven

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

Take Peace

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see, and to see, we have only to look, I beseech you,

Look!

In the quiet there is tranquility. May your life move and radiate in that unity and your heart sing the hymn of peace to all mankind.

And so, at this time, I greet you not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with prayer that for now and forever the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

 In the Christmas Story, we are told that the inn was full. And, yet a receptive place for the birth was found. And so it is for each of us.

We too need to empty and make ourselves receptive to the new.  Solstice is a time to declare one cycle complete, making way for another to begin. It is a time to embrace the realm of spirit and turn our backs on the material world, if only for a brief time. It is a time to bless and release all who have crossed our path in this cycle, knowing that those who are meant to return will be there in the new one.

And, perhaps most important of all, it is time to let go of who we were in the cycle that is completing.  The ‘you’ of that cycle is complete as well. And a new you of your design and making awaits.

We need not wait for the day of Solstice to take Heaven, to take Peace, and to Look at the radiance in the darkness within and without. Let us take them now and allow the potency of this time to fill us. This is our time to empty. This is our time to embrace seeds of the new; to be receptive.

As our planet celebrates her birthday, my prayer is that I align with all my relations such that my comfort, my safety, my Life is not at their expense. This is my prayer for Solistice, for the year ahead, for Gaia, for Life. May this be our song of Joy to the World with ALL of Nature singing in harmony with one another and with the Heavens. Hallelujah!

Let us honor Mother Earth by taking time to reflect the gifts of the time when heaven and nature sing as one. May we each sing along in our own unique and harmonious way.

Icy Rio Grande River - Del Norte, Colorado

Maintaining Peace Within

Dragonfly in the Sand

In times of tragedy, what is the balance between bearing witness and self-preservation? Megan Lierley (in The Good Trade – December 5, 2023).

Mindful of how important it is to maintain a high frequency as I navigate life, especially in my interactions with others, a question rose in me as I rose into this day: How do I maintain peace within and broadcast love when I’ve observed or when I’m discussing a particular event around which I hold judgement?

In essence, the question is similar to the challenge I posed here a couple weeks back (click here to revisit My Thanksgiving Prayer): maintaining inner peace as we witness horrific events and the choices of others with whom we do not agree.

Pausing, taking a breath, engaging gratitude are strong practices to help meet the challenge. But ‘what else?’ I wondered as I built the morning fire to break the chill that crept into the house overnight.

I recalled a recent conversation when a friend shared that she finds herself fascinated by “the ways some people are choosing to express themselves these days.” Her comment reframed judgement and called forth curiosity, another path to peace within.

As I began to think about a focus for today’s Pivot my wondering shifted: ‘Is this what wants to be shared?’ Before beginning to write I popped online to check our local weather guy’s website and the day’s forecast and, uncharacteristically, scanned through my email inbox. A particular subject line, How to Mindfully Consume Difficult News, caught my eye.

Scanning through the article, I felt a sense of guidance and affirmation. Yes, this IS today’s Pivot. For indeed this IS a time for mindful choices, for care of self, for feeling what we feel while tapping into our heart’s knowing so that in our walk through the world, we maintain a sense of peace and project that peace into our chaotic world. While the article addresses primarily practices for staying informed through various news media, at its core, it’s about maintaining inner peace. You can read the article here.

How might our world pivot with more mindful choices about how we stay informed and how we communicate with others around the information we are discovering? How do we/I BE as witness events and choices which we find horrific and even those with which we simply disagree? Perhaps musing such questions can bring us to more mindful choices and support us to walk through the world more peacefully, broadcasting from the spectrum of love. And perhaps in our individual answers we strengthen our ability to restore and maintain peace within, for surely love and care rise from that place.

Snowy Peaks to the South