New Year, New Stories

Full Moon Spiral

I am a person who constantly is trying to liberate myself from my socialization and the weight of the culture that I was born into . . . so that I can choose in every moment how I want to respond based on my values and care for the whole. Miki Kashtan (8 January 2023 – This Nonviolent Life: Daily Inspiration for Your Nonviolent Journey – Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service)

More and more I’m noticing places where my values, my dreams, my care are at odds with so much what’s brought forward in mainstream culture, so it was no surprise that this daily quote caught my attention. Its declaration of aiming to be at choice about how to respond in every moment based on values touched a resonant chord in me. That very idea itself is liberating.

As I began to explore, I wondered, ‘Do we need to struggle? For me, the language of ‘constantly trying to liberate’ suggests struggle.  Muse sighs and tickles another question or two: On what foundation is our culture built? What’s beneath the surface of our cultural habits and our socialization into that culture?

Stories. And stories about stories. Our stories. Old stories. Accurate stories and those that are not. Stories. Conscious stories. And those of which we are not aware.

I’m no stranger to how stories form our world, the culture, and ingrained habits of living and walking in that culture every day. Or to how our own stories about those stories (yes Muse, MY stories!) form the life we experience and how we experience it. Indeed, The Pivot is replete with stories as was The Zone, its predecessor. And with calls for new stories to create our world anew.

I believe that every thought we think and action we take is based on layers and layers of stories and beliefs, many of which we are aware of and far too many of which have been lost to our awareness. Yet conscious or not they inform our choices, build our world. And they inform our snap reactions, as I was reminded by an experience – and my reaction – this week. (‘Now we’re getting to it!’ encourages Muse.)

Despite a good amount of work and attention to shifting over the years, I discovered that a long-held story that I’m not enough still lingers in layers of my being, popping in at inconvenient times without invitation or conscious choice.

I experienced such a ‘visit’ several days ago when I received results from a recent body scan, a tool intended to provide insight, direction, and support. But rather than seeing my results as they were intended, I reacted as if they were a personal affront, criticism, clear evidence to support the old story that I’m not enough.

I spiraled (‘downward’ notes Muse) for a bit, holding the results as an indicator of something ‘wrong’ in me that needed to be ‘fixed’. It was familiar, if uncomfortable, territory until a different story rose in me. That story invited a different view, a view that the results are an invitation, not to fix, but to grow, to learn, to deepen understanding and awareness. I embraced the invitation into new territory or to familiar territory in a new way, opening curiosity about what I might discover. A path of exploration became clear.

New stories. We need them individually and collectively in our chaotic world that is crying for a remodel, a reboot. No current writer/thinker that I’m aware of groks and writes about the importance of stories more cogently than Charles Eisenstein. And, given my experience this week, it’s no surprise that he published an essay a couple days ago outlining his ideas contrasting the old stories of separation with new, emerging stories of interbeing: What is the Next Story? (I encourage you to read or listen here).

With each choice, thought, and action we are following the old or making way for the new, supporting its emergence. I know which path I choose. May my choices be conscious, clear, and consistent with calling forth the new.

New Snow on the Peaks!

Pivot to Slowing Down

Pines, Native Grasses, and Clouds Over the Foothills. No palm trees here.

The times are urgent; let us slow down. Slowing down is losing our way—not a human capacity or human capability. It is the invitations that are now in the world at large inviting us to listen deeply, to be keen, to be fresh, to be quick with our heels, to follow the sights and sounds of smells of the world." Dr. Bayo Akomolafe (Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service Daily Inspiration for your Nonviolent Journey – 9 November, 2021)

Slowing down is not the modus operandi that most of us take as we navigate life, especially life’s challenges. We speed up even knowing that speed often slows us done. Perhaps racing from place to place or task to task has the appearance of avoiding worry, suffering, and grief under the all too important cultural guise of being productive.

One of my urban dwelling friends recently shared her observation that drivers have speeded up and become reckless not only on her city’s freeways but in the alleyway behind her home. I see similar occurrences more frequently here in my small mountain community as more urban dwellers seek refuge in these quiet, sacred mountains. I wonder if they’re aware of the city habits that followed them.

The Muse reminds me to look to nature, to the trees and flora of these woods. Their natural pace is seeded in their very being, as is ours. While the trees don’t move about from place to place as we do, they know that their pace of growth is in their design and matches the characteristics of the environment. No palm trees in the woods out back.

Could it benefit the earth and we humans individually and collectively to be more rooted in place? We know the answer is ‘yes’ if not from our own senses, then surely from the photos taken of a world in lockdown: Nature free; Earth and her beings breathing.

I feel my roots deepening after 13 years here, and, as I shared with a friend yesterday, I prefer being home to travelling, even short distances. Just as Zadie Byrd sleeps in the tub of our guest bathroom as her ‘safe place’, this place is my ‘tub’. I understand the necessity of some travel. But was it necessary for 400 private jets to descend on Glasgow for COP26 and for countless entourages of limousines to ferry dignitaries about? What is the consciousness that makes such choices? What is in our consciousness that can shift to call forth different choices like that of my friend, Rivera Sun (author, activist, teacher of nonviolence) who announced several weeks ago that she would no longer fly to teach?

What is mine to change in me, my choices, my community?

I’ve had this and similar questions in mind each morning during the COP26 gathering as I’ve listened to the mindful moments presented by Listening to the Earth . I was moved this morning by Belen Paez who heard the call of the forest as a youngster and whose work demonstrates that she continues to listen. She has attended many COPs and, along with a song from her region, shared that she senses a different kind of listening at this COP: a listening more deeply to one another and to the earth, along with a waking up of we humans to the importance of her native Amazon region to life on the planet.

In our fast-paced culture we find it easy and convenient to rely on others – leaders, governments, corporations, even NGOs to do the work of environmental restoration and protection. And, while they have important roles to play, we each need to look closer to home, in the mirror perhaps and to ask questions of ourselves. To borrow from the 35th President of the United States let’s ask not what the Planet can do for us, let’s ask what we can do for our Planet.

What choices and habits do I have that add to the pressure on the Amazon and other critical bioregions? That’s the hard work of individual exploration, discovery, and making changes. First, using what I know about plastics, polyester, conventionally grown cotton, etc. to make changes right here at home. Next, searching for resources, both information and more earth-friendly products (check out Green America for a wealth of information including their recently released scorecard on toxic textiles). Then taking action, perhaps bold action, from what I discover.

As conscious as I think I am, I can’t claim much more than a ‘fair to good’ record on my own scorecard on the home front. Although it’s no excuse, we are products of a culture that promotes consumption and convenience while it measures success almost entirely in economic terms.

Which, in the Muse’s sometimes roundabout way, brings us to slowing down. For surely it is in our rush that we make choices of ease and convenience for us while adding to the stress on Nature, on our Mother Planet Earth. When I slow down and give myself time to reflect, to hear Nature, I remember that I have an important role to play in sculpting the future of the planetary being of which I am a part. I remember that my choices are in part responsible for the strategies that companies follow in their quest to have me (and you and everyONE) consume their goods and services.

Where I spend and where I invest, regardless how much or little, matters. Beyond ones that are obvious for me (local, organic foods; investing in natural health; etc.) there are fields of information and possibility to explore. When I slow down and open to listening, I hear their call, their music, and their invitations to explore new points of inspiration and possibilities to pivot. Let’s Dance!

Sunset - Clouds in the Eastern Sky

Friendship and Pivoting to Possibility

A Quiet Spot for Reflection in the Sangres

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”  Anais Nin

I’ve been blessed to have a dear friend visiting me here at the Sangres for several days, our first opportunity to visit in person since the 2019 winter holiday season, mostly due to Covid. Like many other friends and families, we stayed in contact through the lockdown days. Now, having her here reminded me that there is nothing like the flow created when we are face-to-face, unmasked and yearning to share at a deeper level than email, texts, phone chats, and even Zoom accommodate.

My friend departed earlier this morning. The house is quiet, still. It feels a touch empty although the energy of the laughter and exploration remains in these walls and in my heart. True friends are blessings, reminders of life’s beauty, harmony, abundance, joy.

For me, true friendship includes being challenged by my friend as well as challenging them, all the while grounded in acceptance and rooted in the reality of unity. Recognizing and honoring differences while deeply knowing that we are the same.

I was reminded of that on my early morning walk with Zadie Byrd, remembering a time when this friend challenged me to pivot from a particular pattern of thinking to considering another possibility. Accepting that challenge seven years ago, led me to purchase this home and create the Dragonfly House – a world that was in me, but only birthed in conversational dance with my friend.

That reminded me of a favorite book, Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander’s The Art of Possibility. The authors beautifully contrast the worldview of scarcity and survival with that of possibility; the ‘world of measurement’ with the ‘universe of possibility’:

All the manifestations of the world of measurement – the winning and losing, the gaining of acceptance and the threatened rejection, the raised hopes and the dash into despair – all are based on a single assumption that is hidden from our awareness. The assumption is that life is about staying alive and making it through – surviving in a world of scarcity and peril…

This is the world and focus of the body. It is the world of exploitation and control, the world of mass consciousness that disregards the wisdom of nature and the deep knowing of our souls.

What if beyond that world we could begin to glimpse another and, in our glimpsing, create a more beautiful world:

… a universe of possibility that stretches beyond the world of measurement to include all worlds: infinite, generative, and abundant. Unimpeded on a daily basis by the concern for survival, free from the generalized assumption of scarcity, a person stands in the great space of possibility in a posture of openness, with an unfettered imagination for what can be. … When you are oriented to abundance, you care less about being in control, and you take more risks. … In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold.

The last sentence lands deep in me, a recognition I aim to live life from the universe of possibility: setting the context, showing up, inviting life to unfold, knowing that it will, adjusting the context as I learn and grow. Ultimately trusting my inner compass to navigate the waters in and the waters out.

This time between eclipses – the lunar eclipse last week and the solar eclipse coming on June 10 with the new moon – also a time of stresses and strife on the planet and in humanity seems a good time to consider what world we are living in – individually and collectively – and to make course corrections in service to ourselves, to one another, and to our planetary home. A time to reset our context and allow the world to unfold.

A Beautiful Morning in the Sangres

Practicing The Way of Love

Champions for Love (PHOTO CREDIT: Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries)

Nonviolence is based on the assumption that human nature … unfailingly responds to the advances of love. … An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.  Mohandas Gandhi

Nonviolence is an absolute commitment to the way of love. Martin Luther King Jr.

Many threads and thought bubbles dangle in my awareness this morning as I sit with the muse: endings and beginnings when, in the reality of Universal law, all life is a continuum; how the planet is responding to our oh so human choices; my own oh so human choices; grieving destruction in the woods nearby; the power of language; transforming self and beyond with the practice of love.

Of all these, the transformative power of love and making love a sacred practice in life are the threads I want to weave this day as the 23rd Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence nears completion.

My heart is filled with gratitude for having discovered this annual ‘season’ beginning on January 30th (the anniversary of Gandhi’s death) and ending 64 days later, April 4 (this year, the 53rd anniversary of Dr. King’s death).  Sixty-four days each with a theme to consider and incorporate into creating a culture of peace, of love, of nonviolence.

Seven weeks ago at the outset of the ‘season’ I suggested making life a sacred journey of nonviolence. Today I invite us to make life a sacred journey of love, of peace, of truly transforming ourselves and our culture with the power of love.

Each of the 54 themes bringing us to the final 10 days offers a clue, a path, an idea to weave into daily life. The final 10 themes do the same: responsibility, self-sufficiency, service, citizenship, intervention, witnessing, release, peace, commitment, celebration.  

Of all the daily themes, love and peace are two that come forth as overarching elements. Without love, responsibility can become blame (others) or burden (self). Without love, service, intervention, witnessing can be acts of butting in.  Without love, citizenship can become battle for who is right; release, an act of insincerity; and self-sufficiency, a path to greed and fear of not having enough. Without love, peace is ever elusive.

Love is the power, the transformative energy that both Gandhi and King called forth in their words and their actions. While the idea is simple, using love’s transformative power is not always the easy choice.

As I was reminded while listening to Josh Reeves, Lead Minister at Mile Hi Church in Lakewood, Colorado, in a beautiful talk this weekend: love is a practice that requires practice.

In his talk, Love Like That: Love That Reveals, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5sl5HeeSg0&t=70s] Reeves shares his personal mantra for practicing love to transform what life brings your way: 

I experience fear, but I practice love.

I experience anger, but I practice love.

I experience hurt, but I practice love.

Life offers events and experiences that give us opportunities to pivot, to choose differently. As I reflected on experiences that can bring me to thoughts, words, even actions I’d prefer to shift, I added some pivot points of my own:

I experience irritation, but I practice love.

I experience those whose views I loathe, but I practice love.

As I look beyond this Season for Nonviolence, I celebrate these seven weeks and 64 themes of reflection and focus toward creating a world where love is understood and practiced in its purest form. I make a commitment to myself to deepen my understanding and to add new pivot points to peace into my practice.

Mother Earth Speaks. Are We Listening?

Mastery on the Path of Nonviolence

Snow Bird

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. Leonardo da Vinci

Mastering nonviolence is not a destination. Rather it is a journey of commitment to practicing the diverse qualities that counter the learned violence in so much of our culture. I’m discovering that one may never truly master nonviolence; rather, you commit to it as a way of life.

I was reminded this week that nonviolence is not separate from life’s events nor is it a task to be completed and forgotten. Nonviolence is a way of being in oneself and in the world. My canine companion, Zadie Byrd, was puny and caring for (and about) her distracted me from attention to the Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence theme for several days. I noticed however that her condition didn’t deter me from awareness of old patterns of unkind, violent thinking as they attempted to creep in. That awareness felt like progress on the path.

When I finally turned my attention to the themes, mastery was the first to catch my attention. Mastering nonviolence, like mastery of anything, is a commitment to its ways.  Practice. Experiment. Learn. And, as you honor that commitment you begin to master some of those ways, laying to rest the learned violence of your past.

Begin to live fully into any one of this week’s other themes: compassion, cooperation, accountability, uniqueness, openness, or disarmament, and you will travel far on the road of nonviolence. It is that simple, and, as the saying goes, not necessarily easy.

In choosing nonviolence as a way of being in life and putting attention on the daily themes during this year’s Season for Nonviolence, the interrelatedness and connection of nonviolent qualities becomes clear. Each is an element of the whole, the way of nonviolence. Evoking and practicing just one strengthens all others and builds nonviolence from the inside out.

While I may not be able to disarm the world of its weaponry, I can envision a weapon-free world. I can choose guitars over guns and to disarm myself of words used as weapons of attack against another. I can withhold support for companies and organizations that benefit from violence and war.

While I may not be out on the street demonstrating compassion for those in need, I can recognize the pain of the world that we all carry and greet everyone whose path I cross with a caring smile. I can gently touch my hand to my heart and radiate compassion in all that I do.

Though my expressions of who I am may not rank as best sellers or front page news, I can honor my uniqueness as an instrument playing the grand symphony of life, where expression of our individual YOUniqueness is all that the Universe asks of us.

With spring on the horizon, I feel myself emerging from winter’s inward focus, desiring to connect with others, and looking forward to opportunities for cooperation in strengthening community.

For these and for all my choices, I can be accountable to how my thoughts, my words, and my deeds reflect the nonviolence that I wish to see and to be in the world.

Trickling Beneath the Snow - Spring is on the way!

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Hazy evening in the Sangres

Peace cannot be achieved by violence, it can only be attained through understanding. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here we are one day beyond the mid-point of the 64 days in the Season for Nonviolence. The muse is curious that I’ve stayed with a theme and carried it forward each week, a different experience in these weekly musings, starting from a not quite blank slate.

The themes this week led me to wonder if there is a point beyond which too much of a good thing becomes an obstacle. And, if so, what is that point?

Take patience, one of this week’s themes, for example. Do I want to be patient with injustice? With inequality? Poverty? Hunger? Degradation of the environment?  Can we take patience too far?  Perhaps patience has a pivot point: being patient with self, with others, and the process while not allowing that patience to become indifference or giving up. That point we must each determine for ourselves. No wonder Pema Chodron’s words ring true: Patience is not learned in safety.

The week’s other themes included generosity, listening, forgiveness, making amends, conflict resolution, and acknowledgment/appreciation.  Is there a point beyond which too much might get in the way of creating a nonviolent culture?

Acknowledgement seems an especially important ingredient for nonviolence given our current political culture and the violence that occurred as a result of the failure of a candidate for president to acknowledge defeat. From my perspective (and I acknowledge that some will disagree), this lack of acknowledgement reinforces the wedge that perpetuates our ‘us vs. them’ political and social culture.

But admitting the reality of something is only one aspect of acknowledgement. Recognition and appreciation are equally important. What if we would recognize the good in another’s point of view or in their way of being? What if we would recognize and appreciate the fear that many have toward others who are different?  What do I need to acknowledge that will contribute to nonviolence? Who/what do I need to recognize and appreciate?

Our capacity to acknowledge and appreciate grows from generosity in our listening, in being willing to forgive and make amends and in our willingness to engage in resolving our differences using nonviolent approaches.

In reflecting daily on these themes, I continue to be reminded that the journey of nonviolence starts within. Perhaps that factor is the root of our challenge to create a culture of nonviolence. We have yet to reach the point where our collective will pivots toward nonviolence and peace. While the journey starts within, it ripples beyond to the village required. How I contribute to that pivot today?

Nonviolence in the Woods Out Back

Paradox, Discernment & Wisdom

Hints of Fall on a Beautiful Morning in the Sanges

We are being asked to discover what we think are our limits and to move beyond them, understanding our limitlessness.

One of the limits I experience in myself and I observe is rampant in our culture is the need to know, to be certain. We want guarantees that things are (or will be) this way or that before we allow those things (events, situations, people, products, etc.) to emerge and evolve. Although we might discount, even laugh, at the idea of seeing the future in a crystal ball, we would sure like to peek and to know.

We would like someone to tell us the ‘facts’, the ‘truth’ (the whole truth and nothing but …) about important matters in our daily lives. Take Covid-19 as one example among many. We want the facts, without contradictions and politicizing. Then we could easily choose what actions to take to maintain our health.

What we have instead in this era of competition is controversy, conflict, confusion, and chaos mixed with finger-pointing, blame, and (most destructive of all) fear mongering.

We are asked to choose sides as our health becomes a political football with elections to be won as more important than lives to be saved or personal freedom to be restored (yes, I said restored, not protected – but that’s a topic for another day).

We are told what someone ‘out there’ thinks we want to hear. Never mind that the message was totally different to another audience yesterday. And, that it will change yet again tomorrow. But, hey, who cares? Babel is the name of this frenzied game.

But Covid-19 and, indeed, most of the important matters in our lives are not so simple. There is no one size fits all approach to any of these concerns. There is no one set of cast in stone facts that are ‘THE facts’. We are being asked to discover what we think are our limits and to move beyond them, understanding our limitlessness.

Thus, it is up to us, individually and collectively, to examine the often paradoxical and contradictory information – both facts and opinions – and discern the best answer for us. To do so requires a commitment and vigilant practice to strengthen our discernment muscle (yes, you have one, even if it is a bit atrophied!).

We do so by turning off/tuning out the noise of the world.  We take time to sit and bask in the peace and quiet of the absence of that noise. Finally, we tune in to the quiet of our mind, our heart, our body, our nature. We invite the quiet to break its silence and speak gently to the core of our being. We allow its gentle nudging to stir up what we already know and to blend that with the new. We discern.

In the quiet, as we release our addiction to knowing, we come to know ourselves. We discover what is true for us. As we follow our truth, we honor that our knowing, our truth may not hold true for others. In the quiet, we come to understand that the source of deep knowing is not ‘out there’.

In the quiet, we build our capacity to accept the paradoxes and contractions of the world’s ways. We begin to discern from the inside out rather than relying on others to discern for us. Our wisdom builds. And, from that wisdom, we glimpse our limitless nature.  

Indeed! It IS a Beautiful Morning!

Sprouting Seeds of Change: A New World View

In the Flow of Life and Change

… the work of pivoting to a new paradigm in which humanity along with all of nature on our planet can thrive …is deep and personal, each of us contributing to a larger collective. … Our work is work of the heart. Commitment, discipline, and consistent awareness are required. Being counter to much of our culture, using words of peace will require acts of courage, different, yet no less demanding, than engaging in battle. Read last week’s post here.

If you threaten someone’s worldview, they will often react to you as if you were threatening their physical body. … a worldview can function like a force field … Paul K. Chappell, A New Peace Paradigm: Understanding Our Human Needs

We live in a worldview that separates from our wholeness – body, mind, and spirit.  This paradigm separates us from one another and from nature, the planet that birthed and sustains us. Is it any wonder that that masks and ‘social distancing’ are this paradigm’s answer to slow the spread of Covid 19, and that strengthening one’s immune system is not front and center to the strategy and conversation?

My point is not to get into the controversy over the effectiveness of masks and other approaches, but to invite us to look at the challenges and deep work required to sprout and nurture a new worldview. As I discovered (again, for the first time) this week in a blinding flash of the obvious, the worldview of separation is so deeply embedded in our being that we are often unaware of how it guides our choices. It, like water to the fish, is transparent. For the fish, awareness may not matter; for us, awareness is required.

My discovery came from a story that a member of the faith community, an activist herself as well as a counselor to those on the front lines of activism and service.  It deepened my understanding of why the drive to succeed at all cost has never felt quite right. It invited me to look back at my years of workaholism in a new light.

She told of a conversation in which she was counseling a young man who had been loading food all day on an assembly line. He was so focused that he forgot to eat, hydrate, or go to the bathroom. He slept only three to four hours over five or six days. In our culture we tend to praise and admire such dedication. We might add some words suggesting some self-care.

We rarely look more deeply to the root, the worldview from which these choices arise. We accept, even honor, the dedication and commitment. It seems required in times of urgent need such as these.  I too acknowledge and honor those who serve in so many ways. In acknowledging, we might say something like ‘I had no choice … it had to be done.’ Who among us has not spoken those words?

But the minister took a deeper look. She saw a deep awareness that (and I’m paraphrasing/semi-quoting her words here) ‘this system of individual performance without connection to mind, body, spirit is white, male, supremacy, domination, capitalist thinking … it is the disconnection from mother … and, we will not move from this place in the consciousness that created it.’ 

The connection of our performance-based approach to so much of life and this worldview seems obvious in hindsight. The minister’s story resonates deeply in my being. It shines new light on the choices I’ve made to withdraw and live quietly connecting with myself and nature. And, on how blessed I am to be able to make those choices.

It reminded me of the challenges of making personal change. And, more importantly, of the historical context of how difficult birthing a new paradigm, a new view of the world is.

The seeds of a new paradigm are sprouting all around as the old worldview fights to hold on to its old, outmoded ways. Chaotic and messy is the nature of creation. Pivoting to the new is not easy. It will often seem as if we are going against the flow of life. It is work of the heart and work in the streets. We can do this. Indeed, we must.

Nurturing Seeds Inside and Out

Spring! Awaken, Think Deeply, Pivot

Yield and step into the flow of nature.

Life seems to fail us because we do not make new space for ourselves. … life is a continuum of things being ‘broke’. Unless you are willing to take a new stance, walk a new path, find a new answer, develop a new character, build a new body, express in new terms, and see through new eyes, everything will remain the same. … Nature moves down two pathways. One assures equal balance on the planet. The other leads to a natural development and advancement of all living things.  Gregge Tiffen (It’s Springtime! Flow with the Power of Nature – March, 2007)

Spring! The earth spins and the season of new growth begins here in the northern hemisphere. Half of the globe is springing into newness and light. The other half ‘falling’ into the season of harvest with the darkness of winter just beyond.

But no matter the season, life has changed drastically for all of us. We have the power to decide how that change will emerge. As nature moves down her two pathways, balance and advancement, will we step into her flow, listen deeply to her voice, reflect on her cries, and pivot to create new ways to live on our precious planet?  Or, will we simply pause, rest, entertain ourselves in the hope that life will soon return to ‘normal’? Which will I choose?

Do we have the courage to challenge the thinking of scientific materialism that has taken us further and further from nature, our mother? Do I?

Are we willing to be honest with ourselves about the destruction we each cause in our daily participation in a culture that values science and the material world over spirit, not understanding that the two are not separate? Am I?

Might we examine the life we call ‘normal’ knowing (even complaining about) the stresses that it creates in our bodies, our relationships, and all of life? Might I?

Our children who haven’t yet lost their connection to nature are asking and, rightfully, demanding. From Greta Thunberg, to the Sunrise Movement (www.sunrisemovement.org), to your own children and grandchildren as voiced by this young person’s question to ‘mom’ over breakfast posted by a colleague yesterday on Facebook:

Mom, we’re doing our part and staying home from school, not seeing our friends, not going outside. We are doing this even though Coronavirus won’t kill us. We’re doing this to help the adults and the older people to live longer and healthier lives. So, when this is all over, will they repay us by making changes to save the environment? So that we will be able to live longer, healthier lives when we are their age?
Because, you know, that seems fair to me.

How will we respond? How will I?

Will we simply hit the ‘play’ button when this pause is over and scramble to return to life as it was or as close to that as we can make it? Or will we use this time to think deeply and pivot to creating a culture and systems that recognize and use both spirit and science/material things, that honor the ways of nature and acknowledges that we will not control her?  Will we boldly demand a culture and systems that respect ALL life?

As I watch the snow fall in the woods out my window my heart knows that these are questions. And, as history has shown us time after time, a ‘war’ on the problem is not the answer.

Use this time wisely. Rest. Take extraordinary care of yourself and those you love. Hold those whose choices you loath in light and love for they too are on a journey of learning just as each of us. Muster the courage and willingness to think deeply and honestly about your life. Build upon that courage to pivot to walk through life anew.    

The calendar says ‘Spring’. Mother Nature says ‘not yet’.

Father Time

Gently Resting in the Shady Woods

A wise and benevolent father protects the day-by-day life of his progeny and prepares them for an endless journey of growth, development, and maturity.  Gregge Tiffen (Father Time – June 2007)

In what was a big leap into possibility last week (you can read it here http://cindyreinhardt.com/blog/the-end-of-time-a-fantasy-of-possibility), I suggested what the world might be like without clocks and other tools we use to control one another. I’ve continued to reflect on this for myself, reexamining my own relationship to cycles and time.

As I began to think about this week’s musing, I found myself reviewing previous June posts. I wasn’t surprised to find that I’d explored time several years back. And, that I’d done so just in time for Father’s Day here in the U.S. (Good timing, I’d say!). My musing then rings true today, so, I brushed off and polished that post just a bit to share this week.

In his early writing, Gregge Tiffen reflected on time, the clock and how it is used as a mechanism for manipulation and control.  His writing along with my own struggles with time led me to think that we might be wise to look at time anew.

This week, in many parts of the globe fathers and father figures will be celebrated for their roles in preparing us for this journey called life.  For some, the benevolent, wise father created context and order in our early life giving us a foundation on which to set sail on our course in life.  For them, we are grateful.

Others lived a different experience: fathers, who lacking wisdom and benevolence, sought to control. For them, with forgiveness, we can also be grateful. Perhaps that forgiveness can come more easily when we understand that fathers often feel trapped in systems that equate success with control and that honor time over natural instinct and cycles.

Harmony is the essence of nature, instinct, and natural cycles. As I continue to experiment with living less by the clock and more by awareness of my personal cycles, I feel more harmonious within.  Doing so is not so easy in this 24/7, fast-paced world.

We use time as a weapon. Finding it hard to let go and trust that events will unfold in divine perfect time, we set deadlines. I’ve come to understand just how ‘deadly’ they are. I wonder: How deeply have I bought into this world’s accepted systems where time is used to control? How might life be if we were more compassionate with ourselves and others about time?  How can I be wiser and more benevolent with time?

At one time or another, we’ve all put pressure on ourselves with words and beliefs about scarcity of time (‘I don’t have time …’). Some years ago, I broke the habit of using that language and replaced it with ‘I have enough time for everything that is important in my life’. Slowly that became my belief. It feels like wisdom, and it opens the door to being benevolent to me and to others.

With practice we can ease the pressure and begin to make choices that honor our natural rhythms – not as a program to complete, but as exploration of a different way to live. Eat when you’re hungry. Rest when you’re weary. Bloom when you’re ready. That may be the best of benevolence and wisdom in a world that sometimes seems to have lost both. 

Romping Through Water on the Trail