Nurturing the Creator Within

Create with the flow of life!

Do I want to add to the drama, or pass and not play into the drama? … We all get triggered at times. If you are not conscious of your triggers, you can quickly get pulled into a family or work drama. You may not always remember to pause and ask yourself that question, but sometimes you may. With every decision to skip the drama you have taken one more step toward choosing a more empowering response to people and situations you find challenging. David Emerald & Donna Zajonc, MCC

A few days back I felt guided to a book that I read many years ago, David Emerald’s, The Empowerment Dynamic. I didn’t follow the guidance immediately but a bit later when I opened email, there was David and his partner Donna’s inspirational newsletter, TED* Works  [https://theempowermentdynamic.com/skip-the-drama/. Apparently, I needed a reminder.

That question ‘do I want to pass or play?’ and their story offered a great, if a bit prickly, reminder that I sometimes engage in other people’s drama, usually by being critical of rather than being curious. I notice that I do this more frequently in response to seeming little things – complaints on social media about weather, mosquitoes, the choices others make. It’s a drama that plays out in my head, ‘Grrrr, don’t they know this is contributing to the chaos and negativity of our world?’. Even though it’s not spoken or shared, and it too is a reaction that contributes to that negativity and chaos.

Every thought matters!

My reaction places me, hopefully only briefly, in the role of victim. And when I’m in the role of victim I don’t have access to my power as a co-creator. I’m not aligned with the knowing of my heart, nor am I able to access peace, joy, beauty, harmony, those aspects of the Universe that I long for our world to be.

Whether the potential drama of the moment is massive or a small blip, when we pause to ask whether to ‘pass or play’ we nurture the natural co-creator within. When we pass, we create. We open the door to gratitude, to curiosity, to care, to love. We contribute to a more beautiful world that works for all.

May we know that there are no small choices and that, as I shared last week, our heart knows the Truth that Everything IS a part of Everything else. May we invite her to remind us of that truth and to guide us in our choices whether they seem large or small. May I.

P.S. – David’s book was among those that guided me through a rocky period of change in my life way back in 2006-7. Beautifully and playfully written, The Power of TED* - The Empowerment Dynamic, is his poignant story of making the pivot from victim to creator during a challenging period in his life. David’s story and this pivot is much needed as the world we know crumbles and we seek to create our world anew. TED is off the shelf now and on the bedside table as I enjoy another read.

Early Mountain Morning

Pivot to Gentle, Curious, Adventurous Perception

The Flow in Nature Reflects the Flow of Life

The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life. In a vital sense, perception is reality. … There is such an intimate connection between the way we look at things and what we actually discover. If you can learn to look at your self and your life in a gentle, creative and adventurous way, you will be eternally surprised at what you find. John O’Donohue (Thoughts Are Our Inner Senses in Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World)

Life has a way of presenting us with opportunities when we are open to receiving. I aim each day to live in that openness and curiosity. Waking this morning with fresh awareness of two seemingly unrelated dream fragments, I wondered how they might relate to each other and what messages the dreams offered.

On top of them, Mind recalled a choice that I’d taken with me to sleep: which of two events scheduled at the same time should I attend? Then Mind leapt to analyzing, comparing the two, apparently seeking a rational decision to put the question to rest now even though the events are a few days away.

Feeling tense and pressured (self-imposed to be sure), I paused. That wasn’t how I wanted to make the choice. In the pause, a gentle suggestion rose, “Ask for guidance.” Ahh … I relaxed, pivoting to a more curious, gentle perception of the question. Hmm … What is my intention for joining either event? What guidance am I seeking?

Muse reminded me that ‘back to basics’ is always a good place to start. As I sat quietly, clarity began to emerge. I began to wonder, “What is in my highest good and the highest good of all? Which event will best serve my growth and provide opportunities for expressing my values, for building community, and for more closely aligning my life with Gaia?”

The questions as context further eased my angst and the self-imposed pressure to decide now. They give me clarity for the guidance I’m seeking and opened me to receive that guidance. They offered a gentle path to making the choice and offered an opportunity to be creative in doing so.

I realized that I could let go of ‘missing out’ on something and open to the gifts I’m sure to receive whichever event I choose to attend. That’s the beauty of our thoughts; of allowing them to emerge, to develop, to shift; and to being gentle with self and all that creation presents.

The process unfolded in a short time, but the reminder of the importance of thoughts, awareness, and perspective will stay with me far beyond the making of this choice. May I be continually surprised by where my thoughts lead and the adventures they offer up.

Morning Clouds

Morning Musing on the Deck

Morning in the Woods

The opposite of love is not rage. The opposite of love is indifference. Love engages all our emotions: Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger is the force that protects that which is loved. We cannot access the depth of loving ourselves or others without our rage. Valarie Kaur (daily quote 5-17-23 in Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service This Nonviolent Life: Daily Inspiration for Your Nonviolent Journey)

Out on the deck! Sun beaming on my face. Cottonwood Creek offering background music with beautiful sounds of flow from the snow melt. Deer nearby. They scattered when I came out. Hummers joyful that the feeder is replenished. Zadie Byrd, content after breakfast, rests as she watches over these woods, ears UP. Stillness this blue-sky morning as the sun rises higher over the peaks.

Thus begins a blessed morning, a blessed day, in this blessed life. How do I express the depth of my gratitude for this, THIS? I wonder, ‘is a simple thank you, felt deeply in the heart, enough?’ For truly this morn, this moment my heart feels it. Appreciation for life, this life, this place, this being that I am radiates in every cell of my body. I am that. I am.

More gratitude for my health as last week’s cold symptoms wane, a lingering cough yet to clear (but moving in that direction!). Gratitude for the health that is this body, this spirit, and its movement to clear and release that which needs to be cleared and released. How we miss this subtle, yet obvious, miracle of LIFE working its magic. 24/7, 365 life is always ‘on’ no matter the calendar or the clock. All Ways! May we go beyond the world’s training of our rational minds so that we can know this, experience this. May I.

I pause to listen to an unfamiliar sound. Animal-like, but not familiar and hard to describe. Not a ‘moo’ or a ‘meow’. Soft, slow, short. Two deer walk up near the Circle of Elders, the sound moves with them. It is them or one of them. I have never heard a deer before. Life’s magic is given voice in this moment.

Before the pause, I was about to write about anger, posing the question ‘how does one feel anger from this place, this gratitude?’ I rarely feel angry and yet I know it has a presence in my life at some layer or level. It sometimes pops out obscuring the love, the care, the curiosity, the true being that I am and want to express in the world, with self, with others, with Zadie Byrd, with all of life. There is little, if anything, to be angry about in my life, about my life, even with its curveballs and setbacks.

As I’ve reflected this week, I’ve come to see that what truly rises my ire is the systems that are unjust, unfair, damaging to people and the planet and have many people trapped in their webs of greed. Perhaps too I am angry with myself for missed opportunities to speak out, do more. Where might I be a greater contribution? What is mine to do? I wonder.

I put the pen down and enjoy for a few more moments of the sun’s warmth, the creek’s song, and the beauty of the woods outback. As I open the computer, the quote above greets me with a new light on anger. The magic of life unfolding!

Cottonwood Creek

Deep Stirring

Between Snow Storms — Colorado Blue Sky Beauty

The Earth itself speaks in myth. There is an aliveness in it. It speaks across species, a form of ecological communication that invites us into the unknown forest. Emergence Magazine Valemon the Bear: Myth in the Age of the Anthropocene (click here for a treat!)

Much is stirring deep within this blustery third day of Spring, the 500th week of ‘dates with Creation’ (aka Muse), of sitting to write and share. A cursory search for the significance of the number 500, brought a spectrum of possibilities, none of which resonated deeply, so I left that path for what seems more fertile ground.

On the search I encountered Peter, Paul, & Mary’s hit song 500 miles. But rather than the sad feeling that this journey of The Zone and The Pivot has taken me away from home, I sense it brings me ‘home’, wherever and whatever home may be. Thank you for being on the journey.

As I write, a strong wind blows and large blobs of melting snow slide off of the roof. Plop! More snow is forecast. The few signs of Spring rising from the soil are hidden for now, snow and wet earth nurturing them for the warmth and their growth to come.

Deep stirring. Seeds ready to burst and sprout. In time, their time. Nature’s time.

My deep stirring feels like a call from and for new futures rising, and it is sprinkled with rich curiosity about the old, ancient times when our ancestors were in deep reverence for and clear communication with Earth, with ALL her beings, and with the cosmos.

I don’t recall my German and Irish ancestors telling me the traditional stories of their peoples, their roots, the myths that live on through such handing down through the generations. Despite the lack of early kindling of this interest, today I find myself curious about such stories in this time when ‘something’ is definitely ‘on the move’ in me, in my immediate environs (aka ‘the woods out back’), and beyond in most every aspect of life all around the globe … and beyond.

I wonder what mythology is alive today that can inform this new future. Perhaps that is why I find the myths emerging from astrologers today so fascinating and why I’m fascinated with the stories from indigenous Earth Keepers. Perhaps that is why I found this offering from Emergence Magazine insightful and inspiring. I hope you’ll make yourself a special cup of tea and enjoy the gift.

The unknown forest is inviting us in. Will we embrace the invitation to enter and forge the new futures yearning to be birthed? Futures that we too long for deep within. Or will we cling to that which is crumbling and no longer serves? Will I?

Before the Equinox Storm

Pivot to Wonderment

Fuzzy Mountain Moonrise

Wonder enlarges the heart. When you wonder, you are drawn out of yourself. The cage of the ego and the railtracks of purpose no longer hold you prisoner. Wonder creates a lyrical space where thought and feeling take leave of their repetitive patterns, to regain their original impulse of reverence before the mystery of what is. John O’Donohue (Wonder Awakens Us to the Magic of the World – essay in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong).

Oh, what deep appreciation I have for the places O’Donohue explores, allowing us to join him through the legacy of his poetic, heart-felt words. Wonderment, that comforting (for me) state of awed admiration and respect, is what spending time with the writings of this man of the soul evokes. I’m reminded always to be present to whatever is in front of me. And, to wonder.

Wonderment seems to follow wonder. Not in a logical, sequential way, but rather as a doorway. Without wondering, without engaging my curious self, whether I’m looking out at the world or journeying within, the absence of wonder separates me from the sheer joy of wonderment, of life.

I’m reminded of yesterday’s conversation with a friend as we drove past a herd of yak on the Chok-u-rei Ranch here in the valley. My friend observes that some of these magnificent creatures stand close to one another as they graze. She wonders ‘what do they talk about in their closeness?’ I scan the herd looking for the youngsters and wonder at their playful romping, chasing one another before returning to their munching.

It is wonder that gifts us with the presence to notice the herd on this route we’ve each travelled hundreds of times over the years. The regenerative soil practicing ranch spans the only road from our community to the main highway, a 12-mile road through the flat valley floor that without a sense of wonder could be (and admittedly sometimes is) a blur.

Coming back from our journey we drive toward the mountains and quietly share our wonder at how their appearance shifts with various angles of light. Soon the moon, just past its fullness and being eclipsed by Mother Earth, will rise over the Sangres, offering another spectacle inviting wonderment of this place.

The wind blows strong and steady as I write this morning. I turn my wonder within as I aim to remember to do when weather is not to my liking. How might I embrace the wind as an element of the greater winds of change blowing all around in this cycle of time? Surely this element of air and its time of rapid movement has purpose in the ebb and flow of life. What might it be blowing out? What is the wind ushering in?

This seemingly simple flow of words eases the dread I was beginning to feel about the morning walk with Zadie Byrd. Embracing wind for what it is – a necessary element of Nature, unseen yet powerful – eases my need to ‘brace’ for stepping outside.

Muse nods with a smile, acknowledging my pivot, shifting from my early morning look at election returns to see if the unexpectedly tight race in my Congressional district has been called (it hasn’t – hope springs eternal!) to turning within to discover what wants to be shared in this weekly sacred space.

It occurs to me on this morning after midterm elections here in the U.S. that pivoting to wonderment offers a pathway for bridging the vast gaps that divide us. How might we shift from disdain, disagreement, ‘my way is the only way’ thinking and ways of being to genuine, heart-felt wonder about one another? How might we see that indeed there is no ‘other’, just the One. How might I?

I’m grateful for those engaged in the political, policy, and governance realms who are working towards bridging these divides. I’m grateful too for the wonder and beauty of Nature that surrounds and informs me in Her way. As the winds grow stronger this day, I’m reminded that wonderment is a path to embracing all of life even, perhaps especially, the wind.

Cottonwood Creek - Leaves Fallen, Ice to Come

Gratitude & Curiosity - The Dynamic Duo

Starry Night (courtesy of Unsplash)

Coupling curiosity and gratitude offers an antidote the fear, angst, and confusion of our world. The energy of the two together leaves little room for such distractions. Indeed, it paves the way for love.

I woke early this morn with a grateful heart. Feeling a deep sense of gratitude in my whole being.  Blissful peace. While I’ve long practiced breathing gratitude in and out, the deeper sense I experienced this day is one I want to cultivate further, to live in and with as I walk this earth.

I step outside long before dawn to be with the dark sky, the stars, the planets, galaxies beyond our own. Mars high in the sky directly overhead. The little dipper nearby. Awestruck by the peace and beauty. The quiet. Stillness. Gratitude more deeply anchored.

Gently a nudge from Muse stirs something inside. I think of curiosity, like gratitude, a ‘friendship’ that I’ve cultivated over the years.

Being reminded of the important role each play in my life, it occurs to me in a blinding flash of the obvious, that together the two make a powerful pair. Thanks to Muse, I am from time to time an ‘oracle of the obvious’.

I sense that coupling curiosity and gratitude offers an antidote to the fear, angst, and confusion in our world – individually and collectively. The energy of the two together leaves little room for such distractions. Indeed, it paves the way for love.

For a moment I wonder ‘what becomes possible in my world when I walk in both gratitude and curiosity rather than with one or the other’? In the next I recognize that I experienced just that yesterday while I was on the ground gathering pine nuts under a pinyon tree near the house.

While being deeply grateful for the abundance, I was likewise aware that I wasn’t in sync with the rhythm of the trees, particularly when the nuts would fall. I’d been placing sheets in areas where I thought nuts were ready to drop. Thinking that a particular tree was ‘done’, I’d moved the sheets to another tree a couple days before.

To my surprise the tree that I thought was complete had a dropped an abundance of nuts during the night.

“That’s what you get for thinking,” Muse chimes in with a chuckle. “Listen to the trees!”

As I sat beneath the tree, I expressed my gratitude. And I asked for guidance. How might I listen and hear your rhythm? As if in response I wondered about the indigenous peoples whose land I occupy. How did they harvest, prepare, use this bounty? How did they relate to this tree? To these woods? How might I cultivate their reverence and care for Mother Earth more deeply in me?

Gratitude it seemed had paved a path to curiosity. The sense of feeling both was palpable and reminded me of a community meeting that I attended recently where neither gratitude nor curiosity seemed to be present. Rather than being curious about what isn’t yet known, many people were demanding answers. There was little, if any, gratitude for the work that had gone into organizing and preparing for the meeting. It was a bit chaotic to the point that I too became a tad annoyed. Yet I remained grateful for the team’s efforts. I wondered ‘where has curiosity gone?’. How can we become more curious about possibilities rather than leaping to opposition grounded in fear?

Beyond my community and its challenges, I wonder the same for our world. How might we evoke gratitude and curiosity into our public conversations? For surely this dynamic duo in partnership with one another are powerful antidotes to the fear and anger so present in our culture today.

Will you join me in sprinkling more seeds of gratitude and curiosity in your conversations and your observations of our world? Of your world? Let’s pave this world with love!

A Developing Cone - Three Months Before Maturity

From Conflict Arises Beauty: Everything is Music

Sunflowers, Sun, Trees, Sky - Beauty Abounds in the Woods Out Back

The mystery of music is its uncanny ability to coax harmony out of contradiction and chaos. Often the beauty of great music is a beauty born from the rasp of chaos. The confidence of creativity knows that deep conflict often yields the most interesting harmony and order. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

We have fallen into the place where everything is music. Rumi

As I read O’Donohue’s essay on music one recent morning I felt a gentle nudge, a Muse reminder of the beauty in life that can arise from conflict. O’Donohue’s words typically carry me and open possibilities far beyond his topic. No exception to that found in these words.

I thought of conflicts past when I was less conscious than (hopefully) I am today and felt gratitude for the beauty in my life that has risen like a phoenix from ashes of the past or any other such mythical tale. I see threads of beauty throughout the journey in the choices, effort, angst, allowing, letting go, holding on. You know, life.

I reflect that although I didn’t consciously set out to create this sacred sanctuary in the woods of the Rocky Mountains, step by step the Dragonfly House emerged from a conflict that has roots in the events of September 11, 2001. Five years passed before I moved to Colorado and another seven before I landed in this spot. Twenty plus years (perhaps I’m more patient than I thought) and still evolving at its pace through ‘chaos and contradiction’, confusion, uncertainty, even fear. Fueled along the way by Nature, beauty, care, love, joy, friends, beloved canines, to name a few.

This perspective offers me context for a current conflict that has me engaged and curious (after going through a brief stage of rage and furious). Navigating what has become a challenging working relationship, I’m in the question of how to participate in a way that creates beauty. Beauty in the collaborative relationship as well as in the fruits of that labor. What music wants to rise from what is currently ‘raspy chaos’? How do I conduct myself to bring beauty into both?

Beyond the human defined bounds of the dot on the planet that I’m blessed to occupy, what beauty wants to rise in humanity? In Nature? What if we would hold greater intention to create music and beauty in all of life? What pivots and new scaffolding would call such beautiful music forward in us, for us and for Mother Earth?

Muse smiles at my leap from me to we, acknowledging my care for our world while gently guiding me back to the choices before me to make and the actions I need to take right here in this micro-climate that is home. In them is my power to create beauty here that extends to the world beyond. Music indeed.

Writing complete as day began to dawn, I closed my journal and looked out into the woods, discovering a large black bear ambling through the landscape 50 feet or so from the house. When it ambled out of sight, curiosity led me to read up on the spiritual meaning of bear: Awakening the Power of the Unconscious. Feel free to amble through any time Bear …  Did someone say ‘music’?

Bear in the Woods

Pivot from Complaint to Curiosity

Dust Storm on the Plains

Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather, whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not. Anonymous (of British origin)

 A complaining tongue reveals an ungrateful heart. … The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. And the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward

 The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. Albert Einstein

 Other than when sailing in Galveston Bay decades ago, the perceptible movement of air at rather high speeds has never been a favored weather event. Years later living on the high plains among west Texas cotton fields and now here in the mountains above the drought-stricken San Luis Valley, I grapple with how I might make peace with the 20-30MPH winds gusting to 45-50MPH and the dust that is stirred up as these winds blow.

Muse, tapping on my shoulder, suggests this just could be an opportunity to listen more deeply to Nature and to hear her voice. I do wonder what the intense wind is offering. What is the bigger picture, macro, to my experiencing this wind here in my little micro space in the woods? My attention shifts from the default of complaint to my deep curiosity about our planet. What IS this wind saying?

How do I listen to this voice of the Earth, Gaia, home? For I sense that she wants our attention … umm MY attention. Is the intense wind in some way a reflection of the chaos we are embroiled in as humanity? Is she asking that I/we look in the mirror at our habits, our choices and how they are connected to weather extremes? Is she suggesting that we haven’t heard her whispers in gentle breezes, so now she must increase her volume?

 Are we throwing complaints at her not intending harm yet causing harm because we don’t truly understand our part in creating the chaos all of Nature is reflecting?

 What would it take to be as grateful for the wind today as I was seven years ago when Nature delivered a much needed 15-inch dump of spring snow? What is the wind moving that can’t move on its own? What if this wind is what’s needed to move seeds to a new home? Or, to keep pesky mosquitos at bay? Would there be stunningly beautiful sand dunes to enjoy in the nearby Great Sand Dunes National Park if wind had not played its role in the symphony that created that beauty? Heck, would there even be a park at all? And what about the growing use of wind as a source of renewable power?

I discover gratitude is nourishment for curiosity, much healthier than complaint. What if Nature truly is reflecting our human behaviors? Everything IS connected, you know! What if Nature’s extremes are inviting us to listen – to develop the willingness and capacity to truly hear one another? What if our responding to Her invitation is key not just to the human family of disparate beings with varied gifts and divergent opinions getting along, but also to working in greater cooperation with Gaia, our Mother, our home?

What might be possible for our world if we eliminated complaints from our menu of habits? Where might curiosity lead us if we dare to ask bold questions and let our imaginations wonder? What does Nature have to say? Are we listening? Am I?  

Mother’s Day Snow 2015

Gratitude and a Piece of Humble Pie

Mountains and Trees and Sunbeams - Oh My!

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. Meister Eckhart

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Melody Beattie

 … friends, family, home, garden, labyrinth, the woods out back, pine trees, Cottonwood Creek, Zadie Byrd, Luke, health, computer, comfort, cool breeze, hummingbirds, flowers, neighbors, Elephant Cloud, Merc, helping hands when I need them, teachers/guides, awareness, remembering … These are just a few of the abundance of ‘things’ (including feelings, situations, etc.) that I quickly noted I am grateful for once I stopped and remembered to BE grateful.

I woke this morning with the word gratitude front and center and the message ‘return to gratitude’. Hmmmm… As one who aims to live in gratitude, I was humbled to need a reminder to ‘return’. When did I set gratitude aside? When did I forget?

Heartmath Institute’s ‘Quick Coherence Technique’ (click here for a 2 minute practice) took only a few moments to bring me to that familiar, visceral feeling of appreciation and love for all of life. My heart that had been burdened by a combination of irritation, regret, and confusion about the reactionary funk I’d been in, immediately felt lighter. I was more ready to meet and greet the day than I’d been for several days. Best of all I didn’t feel ‘grumpy’.

Grounded in gratitude I can begin to create some order in the chaos of my confusion around how I’ve handled several recent interactions with others and even with myself. I can pivot from confusion and irritation to curiosity. In the spirit of Nietzsche (see last week’s post here), I can seek to uncover what meaning I made unconsciously about the event, person (or canine 😉) that triggered my reaction.

From the ground of appreciation and gratefulness I can feed the version of reality that I want to experience and call forth in the world: the reality that we are indeed all one. In this reality the vices of separation – irritation, regret, anger, fear, confusion – are cast aside for there is no need for the false protection that we perceive them to offer.

Being grateful for the gifts of insight these irritations offered to me, I can forgive myself for the forgetfulness that contributed to the false reality of separation. As I let them go, I can be curious about what other messages the irritations may hold, what they point to in terms of what I care most deeply about.

Thank you. Thank You. THANK YOU. Let this be my prayer moment to moment, day by day, event by event.

Mountains and Trees and Clouds and Haze on a Lazy Sunday Morning

Today Is My Favorite

Majestic Mountain Morning

Curiosity and gratitude: elixirs for life!

The day dawns, calling forth another beautiful day here in the sacred Sangre de Cristo Mountains of southern Colorado.

Settling in as I do most mornings to write, this day’s attention is to the weekly muse and what wants to be shared, explored. A stream of thoughts and images emerge. Enjoying the early morning light, I think of winter and how I am nourished and restored by her short days and long dark nights. I think of our friends in the southern hemisphere moving toward their winter while we here in Gaia’s northern hemisphere have just passed the midpoint of our journey toward the Summer Solstice (Happy belated Beltane!).

In winter there is a deep quiet in these woods, especially when a blanket of snow cradles the ground and all of nature. I embrace winter and allow her to hug me back. I declare that she is my favorite season, and in her quiet, dark beauty she is.

The earth turns and today I wake to early dawning light in these woods. Sunbeams highlight the 14,000-foot peaks long before the sun crests the mountain range and its rays reach these woods 6,000 feet below. As Zadie Byrd and I cross the threshold of the front door, the fragrance of pine trees after a spring rain greets us. ‘Hearing’ these majestic beings through the sense of smell is a true delight. Hummingbirds buzz about and birds high in the trees chime in to welcome the day. I think ‘this is my favorite time of year’.

With the later sunset of longer days, we cross the threshold again at day’s end. Pines still aromatic. Birds singing. Hummers buzzing. The sun sets over the San Juan Mountains to the west, casting a red glow on the Sangres and ending the day with a glorious show of gold.

As I take in nature’s beauty through all my senses, recognizing today as my favorite, I am reminded how grateful I am for life and for being on the planet at this pivotal time. I feel this despite the chaos and injustice in the world. I sense this time is but a phase, like a baby going through its ‘terrible twos’ while having a potent future ahead. We are in a time where humanity and our planet need our love coupled with the patience of the adults who guide that toddler.

I am also reminded of the questions generated by my curiosity: How will humanity get from ‘here’ to our potent future? How might I contribute? What/who are my best sources of reliable information? How would life be if I adopted a lighter, more playful approach to all that seems so serious? What’s for dinner?

Gratitude and curiosity each fuel my desire and my capacity to see beyond current conditions to a future where justice prevails and in which we embrace the planet as our partner. ‘Today’ is my favorite because it is yet another opportunity to employ both curiosity and gratitude with whatever comes my way. They are elixirs for life, infinite in supply, and available 24/7.

What about you? What are you grateful for? What are you curious about? Where/how will you employ these gifts to make today your favorite?

Golden Sunset