Pivot to Inspiration

Curious Mule Deer Watching

Blog day! The first of this calendar year!

Early this morning as I snuggled under the covers feeling gratitude for waking again from a good rest and for Life, I began to think about this first post of the new year and what has inspired me, nourishing my deep knowing that despite appearances to the contrary, a new world is emerging as the world we know continues to devolve and dissolve.

Then as I began to move about, building the morning fire, caring for my wrist injured in a fall, and preparing a mug of warm lemon water I felt tears begin to well up, not only in my eyes but in my whole being. Grief.

Grief for the horrors and suffering not just of we humans but of all Life. Grief for the grasp that systems of separation continue to hold over us. Grief …

I give my grief and its tears a place rather than attempting to shoo it away or deny its validity. For sure these times warrant grief. Grief for the suffering. Grief for the loss. Grief for the unimaginable perpetration of violence. And, yes, grief for the simple acts of letting go that we are invited into in this time – beliefs, habits, people, places, things that no longer serve who we each Be. It’s a lot for sure.

After a bit, the grief passes, ending its visit – for now. By simply giving it a place and my attention for a few moments in time I invite the return of light and the many paths of possibility opening in what is emergent as we begin this new cycle within the many cycles of Life.

And that brings me to what I want to share this day … So, take a moment and breathe with me – a slow deep inhale, inspiration; a gentle pause, then a gentle blowing the breath out, exhalation. Continue as we pivot to another inspiration, that of being stimulated to do or to feel something …

Inspiration. Many folks embrace a word for the year. Perhaps ‘inspiration’ will be mine. It certainly has been a focus as I’ve eased into the new year. Inspiration nourishes.

Each and every day I’m inspired by the beauty of ‘place’, of the Life that surrounds and breathes with me here in these sacred mountains. Whether I’m being watched by curious mule deer or I’m delighting in watching goldfinches flit about, I’m inspired. Simply gazing at the peaks that rise above these woods inspires me to take another breath. And another. And to step more deeply into aligning my life, my choices with All Life.

I’m inspired by activists like my friend Rivera Sun who each day demonstrate their commitments to peace, to justice, to kindness, to nonviolence, and to feeding our brothers and sisters. I’m inspired by the venerable Buddhist monks Walk for Peace from my hometown in Texas to our nation’s capital. Mile upon meditative mile each day they walk in peace, for the sake of peace. All in their own ways with their own unique expressions are calling forth a more beautiful world. My inspired heart joins them in the call.

I’m inspired by the many community leaders and builders here in my community and across the San Luis Valley.

And I’m both inspired and called to action by my young friends at Earth Regeneration Alliance and by the online community, The Living Commons that they launched this week. Here’s their brief year end/year beginning summary that just might inspire you as well.

Inspiration. What inspiring encounters have you experienced in this first week of the new year?

Inspiration. Let’s breathe together and BE Inspired!

Sacred Sangres

Looking Back/Looking Forward

Rainbow Arc of the Afternoon Sun

I’d thought that my Prelude to Solstice post would be the last of 2025. But, alas, this morning, I feel guided to end The Pivot’s year on a different note. And besides that, I miss the weekly ritual of discovering what wants to be shared. So, a few thoughts, questions rising in me as I look back at 2025 and forward to 2026 and a blessing for this turbulent, opportunity-rich time.

In a year-end post a few years back I wondered, What will we face this year? How will we face it and who will we be as we do so? The same can certainly be asked again. Yet, in looking back at the year and my personal path, I’m guided to look forward with curiosity and invite Muse to wonder where will I direct my energy, my attention, my precious care in the next moment, the next, and the year ahead?

What about you? What do you care about that deserves your energy, your attention, your precious care?

In this time of slowing down, the need for rest has made itself known quite clearly to me. Not just rest for the body, but for mind and spirit. I don’t expect that will change with the turning of a page to new calendar year. How will I honor it, this deep truth of winter’s rest, the way of Nature on our planet home, while at the same time taking whatever is my place in the unfolding of our world? What about you?

A few years back as a new year of uncertainty began, I found a beautiful John O’Donohue poem, Beannacht – A Blessing, written for his mother Josie. After reading and listening again to O’Donohue read the short poem (you can find his reading here) I felt such resonance with the times we’re navigating that I wanted to share it again.

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 2026 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.

Sunset

Prelude to the Winter Solstice 2025

Solstice Altar 2025

All of heaven and all of earth coordinate at the Winter Solstice. … Regardless of all the stories and traditions, this is a personal event of your life. It is the time that has been set up for you and Heaven to be with each other without interference. … It is the Silent Night, the stillness, the good-bye, the time in the manger with nature, with earth itself, in which you commit to the harmony of the earth. Gregge Tiffen (Winter Solstice: The Christmas Story)

I’m beginning to settle into what, for me, is a most sacred time in the seasonal cycles – the Winter Solstice. As the daylight becomes shorter here in the northern hemisphere, I feel the pull to go within. This is the way of the natural world, the world that we are of, for We are Nature.

The last four days have found me immersed in the online State of the World Forum 2025. Yesterday morning I was aiming to create a Solstice post before the day’s proceedings began. But I discovered that wasn’t the energetic flow of the day, and rather than attempting to be like a salmon and swim upstream, I surrendered into the flow that was offered. No rush. No push. No muti-tasking distractions. I followed the lead of the heart and gave myself permission to delay the post.

With the Forum behind me and much to muse and integrate, I begin to snuggle in for this deeply personal time of review and releasing all things of this cycle that will soon complete. I wonder what can one, one who is this part of the One, say at this Solstice amidst so much disruption, dissolution, dissonance, and pain?

Remember that you too are an important piece of the greater unfolding puzzle of universal flow and evolution. You are one of and with all that is, ever evolving as is all Life, seen and unseen. Just as Mother Earth prepares for the new at Solstice, so do you and I. We let go of everything, emptying so we can welcome the new.

All too often we fear being empty – even for a brief moment in time. Emptiness seems like a strange word to ascribe to the season of winter holidays with their bright lights, joyful sounds, and festivities to match.  And, yet, giving yourself the gift of emptying is an important part of being prepared to receive.

Remember and honor that which you know deep inside: this is your time to recalibrate from the inside out.  And, to do so you must empty, release, let go and recognize the wisdom that done is done. In the Christmas Story, we are told that the inn was full. And, yet a receptive place for the birth was found. So it is for each of us.

I find this excerpt from Gregge Tiffen’s ‘Winter Solstice: The Christmas Story’* a beautiful reminder of the choices I can make now and moment to moment, before my time of winter solitude, and beyond winter into the spring. May it support you as well to ease into the sacredness of this time and all that lies ahead.

Prelude*

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.

Twinkling Lights and the Dragonfly Hearth

Tapping Into Your Inner Well of Light

Snowscape - The Woods Out Back

You never own yourself and stand constantly at new frontiers wondering what lies beyond. There is a beauty in discovery that deeply satisfies us. John O’ Donohue, The Darker Dawns More Slowly (essay in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung (quoted in the above essay)

It’s a very complex day. Dr. Michael Lennox, Daily Astrology Post for 10 December 2025

Indeed, it’s a complex day in a complex time when our world feels increasingly complex especially the more we turn away from our inner light and our deep knowing of the simplicity of Life.

I was feeling this complexity accompanied by a sense of heaviness as I woke this morning, a tone I’ve visited frequently recently on my inner journey and certainly as I look out to events in our world. Both inner and outer worlds are complex, and they operate on their own spectrums of opposites – love/hate, respect/disdain, peace/violence, joy/sorrow. And, yes, light and dark.

I increasingly rely on my inner journey to provide some level of context, understanding, compassion, and even comfort for the trials, tribulations, and horrors of the world out there. The world beyond the boundary of my skin.

My eyes seeing the glory of the snow and my boots crunching slowly through the moist, white blanket covering the ground in the woods out back give me pause to see beauty. Beauty that brings light. Beauty that my heart knows is as widespread in our world as is the horror, the dark.

Beneath the snow just under the ground I walk is a vast network of Life interconnected, knowing its connection, fulfilling its purpose: Life. In the southern hemisphere that Life is springing forth from its winter rest. And in that natural flow all around the globe individuals and groups are moving, nurturing, working with that Life. More beauty begets more light. Outside and In.

My capacity to deeply know and embody this Truth that we are not separate from one another or from any aspect of Life is one of the satisfying joys of an inner journey of opening to the mystery and embracing Life as quest, of tapping into my inner well of light and making the darkness conscious. It’s not the quest of the world to control and conquer, but to explore, to question, to discover my and our True nature. And to take each step, each day from that place.

In this season of far too much busyness, hustle, bustle I encourage you to give yourself time and space to tap into your well of inner light. You might ask, ‘What is my quest? What practices support me to strengthen and tap into my inner well of light?’

How might we nurture such a quest in our world?

Nature’s Crunchy, Moist, White Blanket

Silent Beauty to Behold

Bobcat Visits

No one but me by the fire, …

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

What we strive for

in perfection

is not what turns us

into the lit angel

we desire,

what disturbs

and then nourishes

has everything

we need. …

David Whyte (from his poem The Winter of Listening in David Whyte: Essentials)

Ahh! Winter. At last. Moist, white nourishment from above.

 Recent winters here in the Sangres have brought little snow, the white blanket landscape that aligns with my inner longing for quiet. Stillness. More attention to matters of the heart. Listening to heart, to Soul, to all Life.

 That annual longing began to rise in me early this year, just as temperatures lowered and leaves, following their natural rhythm, began to turn in response. The longing deepened in me as blessed moisture in the form of snowflakes blanketed the ground last week and deepens further still as another round of snow is falling this blog morning. Perhaps this wintry weather and my recent encounters with wildlife portend the beginning of a true ‘listening winter’.

 As I was sitting quietly by the fire a couple days ago, movement just outside the door caught my attention. Coyote, I guessed. Incorrectly. Moving to the window, bobcat came into full view, moving gently, yet deliberately across the snow-covered ground. Another followed. Mesmerizing to observe.

 A solitary Being bobcat is. Comfortable being alone with itself. Silent. Discerning. Holding close what it knows is to remain hidden. Like the quiet in the snowy landscape that I experience as so comforting. Silent beauty to behold. Silence and beauty that beckon me within. Into a winter of listening with all my senses.

 After several minutes of exploration around the wood stacks, bobcat make their way into the woods, out of sight, but not out of mind or heart. I return to the fire with gratitude for being blessed to observe their presence and with deeper reverence for place and for Life. All Life and the wonder that Life holds if we dare to behold its beauty.

 A bit later I set out for a short sunset walk to stretch my legs, move my body, and take in more of the snowy landscape. Down the road I paused and turned southward to take in the beauty of distant Blanca Peak, the fourth highest peak in Colorado, a mountain held as sacred and called Sisnaajini by the Dine (Navajo) peoples. I hold my gaze for a bit, then as I’m feeling deep gratitude for Being in this place and musing why our culture doesn’t more fully honor the sacredness of place, I notice a small group of mule deer have wandered into view close by.

 Gentle wanderers, in their own way they, like bobcat seem to be inviting me to the inner journey of winter ahead. More silent beauty to behold in the Winter of Listening ahead.

Sacred Blanca Peak and Mule Deer at Sunset

My Prayer of Thanks 2025

Magic in the Snowy Woods

The power of giving thanks gives life its vitality! The power of giving thanks comes through your awareness that you are always in a position to receive all the elements the Universe has to offer. Everything is available to you.  Gregge Tiffen (The Power of Giving Thanks, November 2007)

 As I do most every morning, I felt grateful upon waking this day before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. Stepping outside to connect with the star beings, I discovered clouds conspiring to obscure my visual connection. Firing up the wood stove, I cozied in with my journal to discover what reflections would emerge.

 I reflected once again that, while it is good to have a special day to give thanks, the irony of Thanksgiving’s origins in this country deserves us to pause for thoughtful consideration. I’m grateful that as a society we are beginning to acknowledge, understand, and hopefully, heal the dark choices that haunt our past.

 In recent weeks, I’ve deepened my exploration in this regard, discovering and beginning to reckon with the role of my ancestors in these choices. I’m also considering my complicity, simply by being a part of this culture and not having greater awareness of its impact on all. As you give thanks, I invite your heart and soul to open to your own exploration.

 I’ve added this exploration to my attention and focus on the positive and good that is emerging in our world. On possibilities for a bright future and on those who are actively calling it forth. Despite the disgust and sadness I feel for the atrocities we force upon one another and on our dear planet, I’m grateful for this life and for the opportunities to learn and grow that are ever present.  Despite the irony of the holiday’s origins, I celebrate, grateful for my conviction that, despite history and the current chaos and cruelty worldwide, justice and light will prevail.

 Several years back, sitting quietly by the fire on another cold morning, the words that came surprised me and took me to an unexpected place: gratitude for being me. When we give thanks for being who we are, we tap into the vitality of Life.

 Today as I ease into Thanksgiving Day 2025 and gaze out toward the wintry woods, I feel into the deep knowing that I am One with all Life. Mind surrenders and a gentle wave of deep peace moves in me, through me, and around me leaving gratitude in its wake. The gray dawn sky brightens with a few moments of red/orange/pink vibrance. Another day. Another beginning in the infinite cycle of Life.

 Sensing that gratitude asks not for my words, not my list of what I’m grateful for, but rather for my heart, my presence to gratitude and, indeed, Life itself, this is my Prayer of Thanks for 2025.

 May you tap into the peace and gratitude within and flow in that wave throughout these days of thanksgiving and all the holy days ahead.

San Luis Valley - Vastness Beyond the Woods

A Personal Harmonic Convergence, OR ...

Evening Shadow on the Trail

When I devote myself to perceiving things as they really are, the sovereign beauty of Mother Earth leaves me speechless. I enter silent interdependence with her. … Unconditional love is present in every moment. … When I don’t allow sufficient time and space, all these wonders slip beneath my radar. I become numb…This is my colonized mind. It still wants to assert itself. Bit by bit, I am rewiring my mind and embracing other ways of being. Hilary Giovale, Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair

… With this New Moon, we are going to a deep place in our unconscious, setting intentions from raw layers of passion and truth that your shadow work may have only recently illuminated. … Dr. Michael Lennox, New Moon in Scorpio – post for November 19,2025

Personal harmonic convergence or a ‘perfect storm’ to niggle my inner victim? That choice, how I interpret my world, its events and observations, rose in me in the quiet dawn this morning as I was present to the dark of the moon and New Moon coming just before midnight tonight here in the mountains (tomorrow for you in the eastern US, across the pond, and down under).

Reflecting on an especially strong pull inward in recent days, the convergence of several experiences and observations emerged, each offering up the choice of perception. Would I give myself the time and space to see harmony, opportunity, possibility, and even gifts – the real? Or would I turn to the rational, colonized thinking that paints me as victim – what the world says is real?

• Recognizing the dissolution, discord, and chaos in the world is not separate from me, but rather a reflection of that which is discordant, dissolving, and chaotic in me; the old working its way toward the emergence of something new.

• Maintaining awareness of an inner sense that cosmic forces are calling forth and supporting a leap in human consciousness toward living the Truth of who we Be, a storyline being told across many disciplines which are beyond the world’s story found in mainstream news.

• Exploring colonization and grappling with the shame that’s risen from becoming aware of my unconscious complicity in perpetuating its harms as well as from the choices of my ancestors who were party to the destruction of Indigenous culture. Beholding the question: what is mine to do?

• Experiencing lingering effects and curiosity in the wake of last week’s intense solar activity; how I experienced the activity in body, mind, and spirit; and how I’m choosing to interpret and behold the experience.

• Observing how I’m approaching a significant change in our rural health system as well as how I’m standing firm (but not angry) dealing with a company whose deceptive practices I discovered after purchasing a product. Each is informing me of where I feel vulnerable, experience fear, and lack trust in the Divine unfolding of Life.

I’m recognizing that what is real is in the eye of the Beholder and I’m guided to Behold that which is unfolding beyond the so-called news. Being present to the wonder of the cosmos right along with the places in me that invite reckoning, reconciliation, and release. Responding to the call of this New Moon.

May you hear her inward call as well and choose the path of harmony, embracing the beginning of a new lunar cycle abundant with opportunity to leap into the new.

Morning Visit from Coyote

Present to Mystery, Beauty, and the Wonder of Life

Northern Lights from the Woods Out Back 11-11-2025

Beauty is the harvest of presence. David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

Mystery cannot be unraveled by thought. … Mystery keeps its secret to itself. Through its reserve it invites us ever nearer to the hearth of truth and belonging. … A life that has closed off mystery has deadened itself. … The wonder of presence is the majesty of what it so subtly conceals. John O’Donohue (Our longing is an echo of the divine longing – essay in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong)

Light is the greatest unnoticed force of transfiguration in the world: it literally alters everything it touches and through colour dresses nature to delight, befriend, inspire and shelter us. … We dwell between the air and the earth, guests of that middle kingdom where light and colour embrace. … The spectrum of colour is the reservoir, the broad band of color that is always present. But the human eye can never behold the whole visual/non-visual range of that spectrum. John O’Donohue (The Colour of Beauty in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

Most people don’t look …

The gaze that pierces – few have it –

What does the gaze pierce?

The question mark.

 (Henri Cartier-Bresson quoted in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong)

This blog morning finds me in awe and wonder of as well as gratitude for the beauty that surrounds me. I’m blessed to live in a landscape that wraps me in its cozy blanket of beauty whether I’m present to it or oblivious, having turned my attention somewhere else. The ever-present beauty of this place gives itself without regard to my focus, my gaze.

Last night the northern sky invited my attention in the midst of a strong geomagnetic storm. At last, a dream long held unfolded before my eyes (and the much sharper camera lens). I was seeing the Northern Lights. The aurora borealis right here standing on my deck in the woods out back, watching as I rode waves of feels – joy, gratitude, awe, excitement, satisfaction, and more.

On this morning after my excitement, I’m present to deep gratitude for the experience, and for the mystery, wonder, and beauty of the cosmos.  Life, Gaia, and beyond is simply stunning, inviting us to know that we each are integral parts of a greater whole, even, perhaps especially, in the midst of chaos and crisis around every corner (and, perhaps, knocking at your door). As I step into the wonder of this ‘dream come true’ event, I find wisdom in the words of John O’Donohue and David Whyte inspiring me to deepen my reflection and my appreciation.

You may not have witnessed the Northern Lights last evening, but what beauty did you encounter? What tickles your attention to allow mystery, the great unknown, to live comfortably within just as it seeks to comfort you, not with answers, but with its very presence? What on this day will you invite to ignite your gaze to pierce the cloak of the obvious and embrace the beauty and wonder that is Life? 

Dawn — The Morning After 11-12-2025

The Dedicated Work of Repair

Full Moon Through the Trees

Well into my thirties, I lived in a socially approved trance. I did not understand that I was white; I just thought of myself as being normal. … I had never heard of settler colonialism; I just thought America was a nation of immigrants. There was no point in learning about my ancestors; I was an individual, and they were uninteresting people from a long time ago. Hilary Giovale, Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair

Under the crust of that portion of Earth called the United States of America – “from California … to the Gulf Stream waters” – are interred bones, villages, fields, and sacred objects of American Indians. They cry out for their stories to be heard through their descendants who carry the memories of how the country was founded and how it came to be as it is today. Roxanne Dubar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

One of the views that colonization has forced upon us is the belief that there is a separation between us and our Creator (God). This distorted image was designed with the specific intent of controlling the masses. … Reestablishing an immediate connection to our Creator is one of the most important steps that we can take in ending the hold of colonization in our lives. Recognizing that the Creator is the source of our being and that we can never be separated from that source informs us of our true power. Sherri Mitchell – Weh’Ha’Mu’ Kwasset (She Who Brings the Light), Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change

As I looked up to the Mountain this Full Moon Morning, I was present to the satisfaction of completing the repair of something that needed attention; to the often hard work of repair; to the ongoing nature of what begs for repair in our culture; and to the dedication that’s needed to engage in repair whatever form it needs to take.

Lingering in the satisfaction of yesterday's completion of repairs in the form of a new roof on the home I’m blessed to steward, I thought of a family member who is on a dedicated journey of repairing a break in his family and whose journey reached a significant milestone yesterday.

While overjoyed with yesterday’s outcome, he knows that the process is more a journey than a destination that’s been reached. His dedication may now expand beyond healing experienced and inherited trauma to the deep work of past trauma not continuing into future generations, one of the forms of repair so needed in our culture.

That need for dedication to collective repair and reparation looms large in my field of awareness, inquiry, and intention.  I feel the call to repair that in me which may keep me tethered, even lightly, to the ways of separation; to repair my complicity in the devastating colonization that my ancestors perpetrated on Indigenous peoples of this land generations ago.

Toward that end I’m returning my attention to finding a pathway for returning Indigenous artifacts collected by family members two generations back to the peoples to whom they rightfully belong. They have hung in my living room for decades, at first proudly, but in more recent years as a reminder, a call that I have work to do.

I’m also reckoning with a family story, some remnants of which are packed away in my garage, that I was reminded of in a dream just a few days ago. The prideful story is of one of many ‘reverends’ in my family who was a missionary and who “taught phonetics to the Indians”, a story that I had little interest in when I heard it in my younger years. Now, that story and its cruel intent to destroy a rich culture for the purpose of “civilizing the heathens”, along with the recognition that I ‘own’ and occupy stolen land are alive in me, evoking sincere questioning: What IS mine to do? What is the dedicated work that I am called to?

I’ve been aware of the question in my exploration of and engagement in regeneration of land, economics, etc. I sense strong connection and interweaving in the territories of repair/restoration and regeneration for both are matters of consciousness, of the shift from living the myth of separation to living in the knowing that we are all one.

What’s alive in your field of attention, inviting you to engage in the dedicated work of repair?

Morning Beauty and a New Plaque at the Padmasambhava Stupa

From the Swirl to the Spiral

Looking UP into Grandfather Juniper

Life constantly offers us the opportunity to consciously choose to step into its ever upward spiral. To discover, learn, and grow from each experience we encounter on our path.

Yet sometimes we experience life as swirling noisy events, activities, people all seeming to attempt to grasp our attention and pull us off Life’s spiral.

I aim to make conscious choices that keep me on that upward spiral. That’s the place where head and heart, walk and talk are aligned. Grace is easily accessible. Breath is slow, steady, deep. Love and trust along with curiosity keep the tenacles of doubt, worry, and fear at bay. An easy flow where the journey is energizing not exhausting. The place of co-creation.

In my humanness I sometimes fall short of my lofty aim, descending into the swirl of incoming news from the world and events needing my attention, feeling the weight of each choice and distracted by the noise – sometimes real, sometimes imagined.

Yesterday the real noise of a roofing crew overhead outside beginning the noisy task of replacing the metal roof while indoors a plumber was finding yet another issue with the boiler that heats the home, met news of a friend being injured while travelling, along with a turn of events in an intense family situation, and an evolving concern in my immediate neighborhood.

Experiencing personally the intensity of events I often observe and hear about from others, I (mostly) maintained grace in a few challenging interactions with the roofing contractor, and I trusted that the plumber would be able to resolve the boiler issues so that I could warm the house on what was forecast to be the season’s coldest night so far (he did!). By days end I was exhausted.

As I fell asleep a few hours later, I prayed for deep rest along with ease and clarity in the day ahead.

In the quiet pre-dawn darkness after a deep sleep and before the roofing crew arrived, I reflected on yesterday’s events realizing that while I didn’t fall off the upward spiral, I hadn’t been fully grounded there. The swirl had pulled me into its grasp a bit. I wanted to create this day differently.

Recognizing my high need for quiet, I’m spending much of this blog day away from home and the noise overhead, enjoying the slow pace of a local café and attending to other things that I care about – supporting a family member and gathering information about a proposed project’s impact on our neighborhood, and, of course, The Pivot). I’ll sustain and maintain a more grounded position on the upward spiral and be more alert to if, when, and how the swirl tries to pull me into its grasp. And I’m guessing that at this day’s end, I may feel weary but not exhausted and that satisfaction and gratitude will be my assessments of the day.

In the intensity of current life are you on Life’s spiral or in the stressful swirl?

As the week winds down, Halloween is upon us. The veil between worlds is experience by many as thin. We are midway between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, celebrated since ancient times as Samhain. I’ll be celebrating this turn of the season toward Winter’s call to slow down and focus within. What a blessing to keep us on Life’s spiral and out of the world’s swirl.

Season’s Turning