Back Home in the Woods

Sunrise in the Sangres

Home is the nicest word there is. Laura Ingalls Wilder, American author

There’s no place like home! Dorothy

I was delighted to discover Laura Ingalls Wilder’s quote this morning as ‘home’ is a word that I love, representing a place I love as well as anywhere that I feel a sense of belonging.

When and wherever I roam, I aim to make ‘home’ and to experience feeling at home. We each have our own ways of doing so. For me it’s maintaining my morning practice of sipping warm lemon water (now with a pinch or two of mineral rich Celtic salt) as I reflect and write in my journal. Feeling gratitude, I look ahead to the day before me. What will the day bring? How will I BE with whatever that is? Is something lingering from yesterday that needs my attention?

This ritual has come to anchor my day, grounding me at the start of each day’s dance.

And so it was on the short, four-day road trip to visit an elder friend who I hadn’t seen in 17 years and to meet up with my stepson and his family, meeting his beautiful children for the first time. Laughs, curiosities, creativity, exploration, love, hugs, and more were shared with all. Home away from the home where I dwell.

Love makes any place be like home – the love we bring and the love we discover is there awaiting our recognition and receptivity. That was my experience on this entire journey.

As Dorothy says to Toto, “There’s no place like home!” With this adventure on the yellow brick road behind me, today finds me feeling deeply satisfied as I ease back into life in these woods. Watching as the day dawns and the sun makes its way over the peaks on this day before the Summer Solstice, my heart is filled with awe and gratitude for the beauty, the abundance, and the peace of this sacred place that I’m blessed to occupy.

How often after a journey do we give ourselves the gift of time to simply feel satisfied? Perhaps we find it challenging to embrace satisfaction in a world that constantly emits messages that there isn’t enough, that life is a mess, and that we need to do more and have more to be satisfied.

Certainly life is messy and chaotic and uncertain, with discord easily found in all directions. Yet we need not allow that world to keep us from experiencing a sense of satisfaction, for that world is not the only world available to us.

These thoughts and queries rise in me as I settle in here at home after a satisfying and joyful journey. So often we don’t give ourselves the gift of inviting satisfaction and then resting in its joy if only for a few moments.

As the sun begins to break through early morning clouds over the peaks of the Sangres, I linger in that gift and carry it with me as I move into the day.

Early Morning Clouds

Pivoting to Rest

Leaping Limbs

There are days in life when you just need to pull the covers over your head … Gregge Tiffen

While I’m not pulling the covers over my head this day, I am guided to rest as I allow body, mind, and spirit to begin integrating the deep and wide experiences and learnings from a six-day retreat that ended yesterday.

Words will come in their time to share, and my guess is that I’ll be back next week.

Meanwhile I invite you to explore your own need for rest. Are you pushing through at a time when rest is calling? And, enjoy these quotes [compiled by Jennifer Healey in a 2019 blog post - https://healingbrave.com/blogs/all/quotes-about-rest-give-yourself-a-break] about the benefits of rest and to assess your own need for rest at this intense time.

Real rest feels like every cell is thanking you for taking care of you. It’s calm, not full of checklists and chores. It’s simple: not multitasking; not fixing broken things. Jennifer Williamson

When you rest, you catch your breath and it holds you up, like water wings… Anne Lamott

Your commitment to your wellness is part of the revolution. Danielle LaPorte

Cottonwood Creek is Flowing!

Unconscious Choices Speak Loudly

Grandmother Tree thrives long after a wound …

When we hold on to an idea or notion we feel rigid and less free. It prevents us from arriving at a deeper insight. In the spirit of meta meditation we can wish for ourselves and others to be free from wrong perceptions and wrong desires: “May I have clarity into my habits and shortcomings.” We can practice this in the morning as a reminder to be aware of our perceptions throughout the day.   Non-Attachment to Views & Freedom of Thought  -- Sr Tuệ Nghiêm (blog from Plum Village website)

 I popped into some friends’ home late Thursday afternoon to pick something up. They came running down the stairs excitedly asking, “Have you heard the news?”

“No. What news?” I was clueless having been out and about in town for several hours.

“Guilty! Trump guilty on ALL 34 counts!” they exclaimed. I joined their celebration and continued to do so at my next stop. Upon coming home I logged into network news for the first time in eons, listening to the commentators, feeling both stunned, pleased, and perhaps a bit smug with a sense of ‘victory’.

Journaling early Friday morning these ‘morning after’ words landed on the page shortly before an early Zoom and a full plate of activity for the day: “insight re Trump as the U.S. shadow and reckoning -- and shows me how embedded separation is in me as I celebrated his guilty verdict quickly upon hearing and felt a sense of celebration and 'WOW' for many hours.”

I gulped and set the thoughts aside as I moved into my commitments for the day. But I sense they sat with me; simmering, marinating as I moved through the day.

On Saturday morning, I returned my conscious thoughts to Friday morning’s insight, writing in my journal:

“I want to get back to this idea of Trump as our shadow and reckoning and how embedded separation is in me as I celebrated the decision quite easily and in flow with others who shared the news with me. I feel sad about celebrating for it represents in some way celebrating separation. Victory over another. I'm sad for our vilification of one another rather than recognizing that in each of us, no matter how hidden beneath pain, trauma, and who knows what else, is the seed of Source. Of that which is aligned with what Sources Life. The root of corruption is in our broken hearts - not the broken hearts of romantic love and lust - but the heart severed in awareness from its connection to the Cosmos. To Light. To Love. To Gaia. To ONE Another.”

“We walk around with our broken hearts trying to fix or hold together broken systems that reflect this separation. We blame 'the other side' for the failures and our misery. We perpetuate this blame and division with vilifying social media posts, not recognizing how it reflects our own broken connection.”

 “If I truly believe with all my BEing that we are ONE, could I celebrate any condemnation of another? Have we really proven that 'the system works' as many proclaim? Or that 'the system is totally broken and rigged' as others protest?”

 Trump was certainly showing me my own shadow and inviting me to reckon with it and, hopefully, to reconcile gaps between what I say the I believe and the loud voice of my unconscious choices.

 As I’ve continued to sit with this, I understand more clearly why vilifying posts and drama laden news touch me deeply: they point to my own pain, the pain inflicted by separation. They point to those places where I fall short of fully living what I claim are my values. They separate rather than unify. They show me where I am holding on.

 As Sr Tue Nghiem suggests, when I am holding fast to a position,  I lose access to deeper understanding of and insight about self and all beyond. I feel rigid, restricted, and I’m out of touch with the field of infinite possibilities. I’m contributing my energy to separation, contrary to the Oneness my heart knows is real. I’m not at peace with myself or the world.

 Most of all I’m not contributing to the world that I want for my grandchildren and yours. The more beautiful world my heart knows is possible, if I will do my part to stay the course and focus my actions on building that world rather than feeding the old, worn-out world of separation.

And so this day I move into the world with a deepened commitment to choosing consciously and with heightened awareness of my choice.

Sunset Tree

Keeping the Prism Clear

Elder Rocks & Youngling Trees in the Woods Out Back

As far away light yields its harvest of colours when it passes through a prism, beauty opens out its radiance when it shines thorough the human heart. The heart is the place where beauty arrives; here is where it can be felt, recognized and shared. If there was no heart, beauty could never reach us. Through the heart beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us. … Compassion and attention keep the prism clear so that beauty may illuminate our life. John O’Donohue (The Heart: Prism for Beauty in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

Whether darkness is visiting us personally through difficult events or we are witnessing the darkness and horror of world events touching vast numbers of our fellow humans, we are challenged to hold the light and attend to beauty. Our heart may harden having received some erroneous message from our rational mind that such hardening is protection. ‘Only the rational mind is safe,’ mind may claim.

But a hardened heart dulls and clouds the prism, limiting its capacity, our capacity to witness and experience the beauty that is Life.

This Wednesday musing comes in the wake of hearing from two friends each with a family member in the dark dance of a serious medical diagnosis as well last night’s reading of the beautiful O’Donohue essay quoted above. It comes after investing in an early morning meander through the woods out back. Inviting the elders, tree beings and rock beings, and the youngsters, new blades of verdant grasses and other life bursting forth from underground, to share their wisdom. They are teaching me to listen, not with ears, but with my BEing.

How is it that they live, and some even thrive, without the accoutrements we humans have become addicted to? They need no email or text notification to communicate. To know when to emerge, when to be dormant. They share with one another. Tree to tree. Elder to youngster. Grasses to trees. Trees to grasses. Rock beings holding surface soil in place as one of their many purposes. The vast unseen mycelial network. Nature’s internet. Beauty.

How might life be if we logged into this as our Source? What beauty might we behold? What beauty might we call forth in co-creation with All that IS?

Perhaps this is the compassion and attention that will keep our prisms clear. Step by step. One by one. Until clear prisms illuminate our individual beauty and the beauty of all Life around the globe and beyond into the Cosmos.

Early Morning Softness and Beauty from the Woods

Resistance Revisited

Mama and youngster grazing in the morning

What you resist not only persists but will grow in size. Carl Jung

This blog day finds me in deep reflection about the state of our world, the untruths of separation on which world systems are built, and the consequences that seem to be growing exponentially 24/7. I’m challenged to write as thoughts, emotions, dreams, sadness, and love are swirling about in a soup of possibility that yet needs to simmer.

And yet, one of many ingredients in the soup of my week rises to be shared: a short video that has me relating to resistance in a new way, a way that today has few words, so I share it with you to add to the soup of your life and to invite you to join me in exploring where you find yourself resisting. Are you resisting change that will allow the butterfly within to emerge and take flight? Are you resisting the new world whose cells are growing daily?

Click here to watch! And enjoy!

Greening UP!

Spring Into the New!

Season’s First Wildflowers

The mystery and magic of being an individual is to live life in response to the deep call within, the call to become who we were dreamed to be. … Freedom … is the poise of the soul at one with a life which honours and engages its creative possibility. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

Signs of spring abound here in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at 8,000+ feet. Verdant leaves bursting with life, blades of wild grasses, pinecones beginning to form, early blooming wildflowers on the roads and trails I walk. Vibrant iris in my garden.

Present to this beauty and freshness, I’m reminded that each are becoming that which they were dreamed to be. That is the way of Nature. And Nature is us. Muse is active in my morning journaling as questions rise. What seeds of who you were dreamed to be are longing to be nourished and called forth? What seeds are yours to tend in creating our world anew?

I’ve been sitting with this and similar questions as I gently move with the winter to spring seasonal change here in the northern hemisphere.

I ask, ‘where is the new arising?’ I want to be there where seeds of a new world are sprouting. I want to discover what seeds are mine to nurture, to tend? I want to hear the whispers of freshness. I wonder who is calling forth that which is aligned with my heart, the ways of Nature, the cosmos?

Our planet home, Gaia, speaks volumes through all Her beings. She speaks gently in the meandering flow of streams and leaves rustling in spring breezes. As if to wake us up, she roars. Quaking, exploding, flooding, drying out. Listen! Air, fire, water, earth elements all preparing – perhaps prepared – to leap into their fullness, their wholeness when WE know and acknowledge that we are all One with them. One with all Life. Cells in the body of Life. Fractals in the greater whole of infinite beingness.

Material and not. Seen and unseen. Living, breathing Life is everywhere awaiting, cheering on our waking up, our remembering that which is real. That which gives Life. That which enhances Life. Life!

I’m recognizing a deep pull, magnetism to move with and toward what is rising. Honoring what is new in me. Discovering what is emergent in the world, ripe with creative potential for engagement. At the same time, I’m drawn to participate in the old, tired political system to re-elect a county commissioner who cares deeply about and works tirelessly for protecting our area’s water and to encourage local, organic, regenerative agriculture. Feed the people. Build the soil. Although these are the very elements that I see rising and want to nurture, I notice that the tasks to be done in a campaign are of the mind more than the heart.

Feeling pulled to choose one or the other, I’m gently reminded of ‘both/and’ and I wonder how I can honor participating in both to create synergy and support between the two? How can I bring heart to the old for the sake of nurturing the new? What is possible when I acknowledge that my heart longs to witness humanity rising as we remember who we are and to step into the creative possibilities of that? One by one. Step by step. Springing, ever gently, into the new!

Forever Changed

Morning Light, Morning Beauty

I woke feeling forever changed in some way that has no words (yet)…

Yesterday I wrote these words in a quick note to few close friends and associates with a link to an interview with Dr. Zach Bush that I’d watched the night before, representing how I felt after the experience of watching.

The interview was profound and, for me, deeply moving in ways that I suspect will continue to reveal themselves for some time to come. I experienced it as raw, vulnerable (and I feel a bit vulnerable in sharing), honest, sincere, moving, and much more. A snapshot of one chapter of Bush’s journey to the Divine, weaving his experience as a medical doctor to our innate purity at birth and at death. He invites us not only to witness the beauty and perfection of Nature, but to remember that we are fractals of a Divine perfect whole.

It isn’t a video that I thought I’d be sharing here in The Pivot, but that changed as I began thinking about this week’s post. As I often do on ‘blog eve’, I pulled an inspirational book from the shelf, curious to see what my eyes would land on and how it might guide or weave into the week’s post. Opening David Whyte: Essentials to a random page, I was gifted with his poem, A Seeming Stillness, and these words in the last stanzas:

Breathe then, as if breathing for the first time,

as if remembering with what difficulty

you came into the world, what strength it took

to make that first impossible in-breath,

into a cry to be heard by the world.

Your essence has always been that first vulnerability

of being found, of being heard and of being seen,

and from the very beginning

the one who has always needed,

and been given, so much invisible help.

This is how you were when you first came

into this world, this is how you were

when you took your first breath in that world,

this is how you are now,

all unawares, in your new body and your new life,

this is the raw vulnerability of your every day,

and this is how you will want to be,

and be remembered, when you leave the world.

So very affirming of how I heard Bush’s interview, Whyte’s words seemed to say, ‘Share this!’.

I don’t share it lightly. It isn’t short and sweet. It’s long (almost two hours in the two parts) and tender, an invitation to gift yourself with a deep dive that may support you as you navigate the change and chaos all around. While it isn’t about politics, relationships, or the economy, et cetera, Bush weaves our part in all of these into his story. And, you may find, as I did, ‘his’ story is indeed our story. A story of who we are, and the vast potential of the purity that is seeded within. For those willing, here’s the link to Part 1.

Our world, indeed, the cosmos, is moving and changing fast as are we individually and collectively. Staying present to that with wonder and curiosity is one of my antidotes to the chaos of the mainstream, dancing with being ‘informed’ and recognizing that we are in a state of forming anew each and every day.

A Magical Tree Called ‘Merlin’

Heaven on Earth

Young Big Horn Sheep - Rio Grande National Monument - Keynote: Seeking new beginnings.

This blog morning emerges as one to be brief in words as I emerge from four days immersed in friendship, celebration, exploration, and adventure in the beauty of the high mountains of Northern New Mexico.

I walked through many doorways – inside and out – on this shared journey with friends, my first away from home travel in almost four years.

No doubt much will emerge from the adventures of this journey, a reminder that we each have the potential to create ‘heaven on Earth’ wherever we are by our level of consciousness, the frequency we bring to the experience, and the clarity of our intention and vision.

Seeds planted in the conversations and our individual reflections of this Heavenly Retreat will emerge in many ways and forms I reflect on the experiences and consider questions such as ‘What is the message of the baby Big Horn sheep who posed on the rim of the Rio Grande River Canyon with it’s keynote, seeking new beginnings, and the Ram is the mascot of my zodiac sign?’ So today I simply want to share a few images of encounters offered up by Mother Earth and her blessed creations that will guide my reflections.

What about you? What represents Heaven on Earth to you? How does this guide you in life’s choices each day?

Wild Turkeys of Heavenly Retreat - Keynote: Shared Blessings and Harvest

Confluence of the Red and Rio Grande Rivers - What streams in my life want to merge?

Magical, Mystical Leaning Pine - What other wisdom does she have to impart?

Pivoting to Kinship with ALL Life

Full Moon Morning … I am Moon, Moon is me.

If we extend our idea of family beyond the individual to the wider world of creatures and ecosystems, we can begin to ask what we want for them. From them. We can begin to see ourselves in relation. Acknowledging and reckoning with death—with the limit on our existence, with the fact that we are temporary—can reframe what it means to live. What do we want to leave behind? What do we want to support, maintain, in the limited time we are here? Jenn Shapland, Thin Skin (This Nonviolent Life: Daily Inspiration for Your Nonviolent Journey – Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service – quote for April 23, 2024)

…being kin is not so much a given as it is an intentional process. Kinning does not depend on genetic codes. Rather it is cultivated by humans … Gavin Van Horn (from his introduction to the series Kinship: Belonging In A World Of Relations)

Stepping outside early upon rising, I took in the beauty of the full moon. In the stillness of dawn, I felt myself as part of Moon and Moon as part of me, each of us individual yet integral parts of a greater whole. It was a moment of fully, deeply recognizing my kinship, our kinship, with all Life.

Just as I’m present to the beauty and awe in this reality of my oneness with all Life, I’m also aware of how challenged I am to live fully into this reality: to live and walk through the choices I make daily while holding ALL Life as family, as kin.

As I welcome the season’s first hummingbird with wonderment and joy, hanging a feeder out each morning, not so welcome beings come to mind. I think of mouse, mosquito, and fly not as kin, but as pests to be dispensed with.

Awareness of this gap, this contradiction isn’t new to me. I’ve wrestled with it for some time, wondering, ‘What is the way forward when dealing with a mouse skittering across the floorboard of a car borrowed from a friend?’ How willing am I to accept some life as anything but ‘pesky’? To live with mouse as kin and forego pulling out the mouse trap? Today, not very. Sadly, negotiation has not proved fruitful in the past.

So, I act despite knowing this same consciousness plays out in our relationships with one another, from next door neighbor to culture wars around the globe. From bullying in the school yard to accepting the necessity of death and destruction when one people violently attack another, the other responds in kind, and violence escalates. From judgmental, snarky comments on social media to name-calling political attacks and accusations of each ‘side’ against the other, while dismissing those who dare to suggest we engage in a different way - in deep listening to and dialog with one another – as naïve and or/conspiracy theorists.

Many have lost their ability and willingness to embrace all humanity as kin. How will we remember?

My heart knows there are better ways. Our hearts know that the days of violent conflict, whether word or deed, cannot stand for any of our kin. Perhaps it is time to challenge these hearts to remember and to engage in recognizing our kinship with one another and with ALL Life, offering our fearful minds a respite and inviting our hearts’ deep knowing to lead the way.

We can do this. For ourselves. For one another. And for those whose ancestors we are.

Tree Kin in the Woods Out Back

Breaking the Binds of Urgency

Alert without Urgency!

Urgency. We don’t really have that here. Dogon elder, Guimolo Dolo (quoted in Cynthia Jurs’ Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World)

My people say, ‘The times are urgent let us slow down.’ Bayo Akomolafe (quoted in Cynthia Jurs’ Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World)

Ancient wisdom from another continent.

As Earth Day approaches, war rages, and breaking world systems reveal their weaknesses, we hear increasing calls to act, to contribute, and to ‘do’ more, all with a sense of great urgency. Urgency for what? What if our urgency is part of the problem? What if in our felt sense of urgency we are acting and reacting in the same worn-out ways that perpetuate the problems and keep us on a hamster wheel? Stuck in motion. Moving faster, harder. Not getting the results we want.

These questions rose in me yesterday as I was reminded of a story in Cynthia Jurs profoundly moving book, Summoned by the Earth. I was reminded of the many reflections the book evoked in me a few weeks back. Fodder for future Pivot posts, I thought, especially with Earth Day on the horizon.

This morning, wondering what wanted to be shared, I opened the book. When my eyes landed on the page, I discovered it was just where the story of Jurs experience with the Dogon elder quoted above begins. [Message received. Thank you.]

Urgency. I wondered about the word itself and its origins. And I asked, ‘What might a world without urgency look like, feel like? What might be possible without the angst and outright fear that urgency evokes around almost every issue of our time?’

Looking at the etymology of ‘urge’, I discovered that it is from the Latin urgere – to press hard, push forward, force, drive, compel, stimulate. Ugh! Sounds like the very characteristics of a world of competition, separation, and indeed, war. Further exploration revealed that ‘urge’ may be from a PIE root, urgh – to tie, bind. Hmm … bind … that doesn’t sound like a world of freedom, of sovereignty, of peace.

As I reflected on these origins, I felt a sense of constriction in my body and sensed urgency’s connection to fear. It’s similar to how I feel when I find myself rushing, urgently needing to be ‘on time’ for whatever is on my calendar or to complete a task quickly so I can move to the next.

Habitual, unconscious urgency. An all too familiar pattern that today has a new twist: an awareness that the energy of urgency binds me to these old patterns and habits and to unconscious choices and reactions to circumstances. Urgency limits possibility and minimizes the potential for miracles that emerge from BEing in cooperation and co-creation with Nature, with my natural rhythms, and with the very Source of Life itself.

As Earth Day approaches, I feel curious and inspired to notice when urgency rises and to be at choice in how I respond. I’m curious what miracles may rise in a world without urgency, where we slow down and more deeply connect with Self, with one another, with Source, and are guided from the inside out, not by what we encounter outside of ourselves.

In that curiosity, I leave you with a bit more of Cynthia Jurs wisdom of sacred time and of opening to the possibility, the magic of a more beauty and peace-filled world:

When we go for a slow walk in nature, breathing mindfully with each step and looking up on occasion to notice the blue sky or the clouds gathering; when we suddenly hear the animal calls, the birdsong, or the wind rustling in the trees at the just the right moment; these seem like little miracles signaling the presence of spirit moving between us, inviting us to be aware of something so much larger than ourselves – a relationship of interbeing. These are the moments when an opening to another world is revealed, and if we stop to catch our breath, we may glimpse the light.

The Ziggurat