Humility: Voice of the Soul

Tracking

Through prayer we learn to see with the eyes of the soul. … It refines your eyes for the unknown narrative which is quietly working itself through your words, actions and thoughts. In this way prayer issues from, and increases, humility. The normal understanding of humility made it out to be a passive self-depreciation in which any sense of self-worth or value was diminished. Humility has a more profound meaning. Humility is a derivative of the Latin word ‘humus’ meaning ‘of the earth’. In this sense, humility is the art of being open and receptive to the inner wisdom of your clay. John O’Donohue (essay in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong)

In the early morning quiet with warming fire in the woodstove on this cold morning, I rediscovered this O’Donohue wisdom that I’d  read sometime back. It shined light into the darkness that I’d been holding around humility. I understood that my story about humility held the limits of the “normal understanding” that he speaks of. A new story could now emerge in the light.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve made passing reference to humility here in The Pivot. The first was mentioning that I bristled when a bio-field scan suggested it as a priority. ‘What’s wrong with my humility?’ I bristled, ‘I have plenty…’. Then, as I wrestled with the teaching style of the leader in a class I’d just started, I recognized that a dose of humility might be an antidote worth exploration.

If not front and center in these early days of the new year, humility has certainly been highlighted in the soup of my reflections and musings with ever-gentle Muse nudging me along. Today, thanks to O’Donohue, I’ve come to better understand why the suggestion that humility needed to be addressed triggered my defensive reaction. Likewise, his wisdom further opened my heart and the door to create a new story.

Reading the scan results with fresh eyes and heart, I wondered if the language had changed since my first reading. There was no ‘problem’ with me that needed to be ‘fixed’. Rather I found an invitation to walk through a door opening as another closed. Endings and beginnings. Phases and stages. Dissolving and evolving. Life.

Muse and I chuckled as I read the scan’s introduction: As we start to recognize the greater forces at play in bringing us through a Choice Point, life often invites us to gain humility. As we end a cycle in our lives and begin another there is potential for some of our old world to dissolve (or collapse in some people’s experience). This is because nature follows cycles. As we are part of nature we can expect some aspects of our lives to follow the same kind of cyclic pattern. (NES Health - Personal Scan)

Muse nods with a smile as I recognize that these ideas are familiar. I am Nature. Nature is me. My soul speaking its wisdom and calling forth the new. Clay being placed before me for co-creating, discovering my part in bringing forth the new world that is gently cracking the shell to burst into new life.

I am not alone. Much of our world, our old stories, our systems, our thinking is dissolving and collapsing before us. What a time to be alive and co-create the new future rising!

This is my soul gently speaking her understanding of our connection to Gaia and to one another, indeed to all life. Soul has a better understanding of our true nature than either body or mind. The soul knows! And now I understand the necessity of humility to hear her voice.

Humility opens the way to let go of resistance, to surrender to the flow of life, to discover the freedom in non-attachment, and to relinquishing the quest to control that which is not mine to control.

The door of the old is not completely shut. Yet, as the door and light of the new are shining, an unknown, yet somehow familiar, narrative is taking shape within to guide the thoughts, words, and deeds of the days ahead. May that light shine gently and brightly for one and all. And may we each hear the voice of our souls.

Crestone Peak

Irony and a Thanksgiving Prayer

The Haudenosaunee Flag (image from Naraya Cultural Preservation Council website)

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people. Now our minds are one. Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address – Greetings to the Natural World

So continues the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. It begins in this way

Words Before All Else: Greetings to the Natural World

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., it is ironic that for some the way to end Covid and prevent future pandemics is to impose vaccines on everyone yet our ancestors brought disease from Europe to these shores as colonizers centuries ago.

Muse startled me awake with that thought this ‘blog’ morning, one day after I’d both read a news clip about the possibility of renewed interest in mandating Covid vaccines for all, and I’d retrieved the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address – Greetings to the Natural World – with the intention to read it aloud each morning before Thanksgiving and perhaps beyond. If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember last year’s post about this sacred, indigenous gift (find it here).

There are of course many ironies around this holiday that we Americans have morphed from a time of giving thanks for all that is and for what we have to a time of plugging into the consumer culture of getting more. Muse and I will leave such ironies for another time (or not).

Honoring the awareness that what my attention feeds is what grows, I put aside thoughts about vaccines and events of the past, and focus on the Thanksgiving Address, a beautiful prayer encompassing ALL life, reading each verse aloud.

Tears fell as I recited the prayer, touching that place of knowing that all too often in the ‘doing’ of life, I forget the interconnectedness and interdependence that makes life possible. Tears fell too for the treatment of indigenous peoples from the time our ancestors landed on these shores to today, for the agreements/promises made and to this day not kept. Tears for all who experience injustice in its many forms.

I’m grateful for the awareness Muse’s thought brought me and even for the sadness evoked. I’m grateful for how the ironies seemed to both broaden and deepen in me as I read each verse and opened to that sadness. Sadness for our culture’s lost connection with the Natural World of which we are but a tiny part. Sadness that we continue our colonizing ways, not just of lands and peoples, but of the very gifts of Mother Earth, Gaia herself. Sadness for cultural ways that try to colonize us each day of our lives.

The sadness lifts giving way to wonder as Zadie Byrd and I embark on our ritual morning walk this cold morning. The sky is bright blue, and the air, crisp and still. All is quiet except the occasional squawk of a Clark’s Nutcracker. Zadie picks up a scent of interest and we zigzag across the road and then off road into a grassy meadow.

As I often do, I wonder first how I might deepen my awareness of ‘all my relations’ and honor that in the daily choices I make. And I wonder how might our world be if everyone could connect with the beauty of place in a deeper way?

The Naraya Cultural Preservation Council says of the Thanksgiving Address:

When one recites the Thanksgiving Address the Natural World is thanked, and in thanking each life-sustaining force, one becomes spiritually tied to each of the forces of the Natural and Spiritual World.  The Thanksgiving Address teaches mutual respect, conservation, love, generosity, and the responsibility to understand that what is done to one part of the Web of Life, we do to ourselves.

I intend to recite it as part of my morning practice each day until I feel it more deeply in these bones. I invite you to join me.

Mother Nature (image from Naraya Cultural Preservation Council website)

Sacred Paths, Places and Peace

Meditation Corner

Fresh is the morning

Clear is the sky

Shiny are the rocks

Against the moist, dark Earth

Rain last evening helped quench the thirst of the soil and all who dwell in these woods. A morning after rain feels like an especially fresh start, much like a good, deep sleep when I’ve gone to bed weary. Rain and rest are balms for the soul quenching some of her longings.

Raucous raven’s cawing is dawn’s first sound as I settle in with Muse wondering where our journey will lead this morn. What wants to be revealed? Shared?

Much is stirring within and without, close to home and afar that warrants attention, reflection, care. Here at home new plants are thriving, feeding my spirit with joy as I gaze at the cheerful blooms and soft greenery with a heart full of gratitude. Afar, out there in the world, the new is being built on multiple and diverse fronts by visionaries, lovers of Earth and ALL her creatures, entrepreneurs, and others who know we must change and whose souls call forth life enhancing ways to do so: agriculture, food systems, health, energy, transportation, economies, and more. Activists are tracking and responding to what I pray are last ditch efforts to control rather than to nourish the dream of freedom and justice for ALL and the free will which we have been granted. They too are focused on multiple important fronts.

Their work inspires me. I cheer them on and lend support as opportunities to do so rise.

The last words I read yesterday evening weave with the practical wisdom of Pace e Bene’s daily inspiration several days ago:

At its heart, the journey of each life is a pilgrimage through unforeseen sacred places that enlarge and enrich the soul. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

and

If peace is what every government says it seeks and peace is the yearning of every heart, why aren’t we teaching it in schools? Colman McCarthy

Seemingly disparate at first read, Muse nudged me to read again, deeply. The Irish poet and the journalist each speak to our path and to paths forward. They point to paths in need of nurturing, focus, love, care. Paths that are sacred, as the journey to peace is a journey of each and all souls. Why aren’t we teaching peace? Why isn’t there a Department of Peace in each and every government from local to global?

The fearmongering of a crumbling world that is desperately trying to hang on to power and control will not stand as one by one, community by community, step by step, moment to moment we choose to recognize life’s sacredness and attend to learning, teaching, and practicing peace within and without all along the way.

The world’s woes are but reflections of darkness and pain calling out for light and healing. What world is calling to be created as we cultivate and nurture the light in our souls?

These are the musings that rise from my deep longing for a world where my stepson doesn’t feel the need to let me know that he and his family were not at the parade where a mass shooting occurred. A world where all children are safe, nurtured, nourished. Indeed, where all of us are safe, nurtured, nourished. A world where freedom and justice are the foundations of our way of life.

May we hold the challenges of this time as sacred places on our journey that enlarge and enrich our souls. May I?

Mountain Morning Mist

Senses of the Heart

Cottonwood Creek - My Teacher this Week

Listen with ears of the heart. See with eyes of the Heart. Pam Gregory

As I settle in to write this morning the day is barely dawning. Earlier I stepped out to see the Moon in her fullness as she moved to the western horizon. The stunning lineup of planets and the all the stars were giving way to dawn’s light. In the cool crispness I observed the clear sky, absent of smoke and haze present in recent days.

As I breathe in the fresh, cool air – deep and slow - I pull the afghan knitted decades ago by my grandmother over my legs and feet and invite Muse in.

Thinking of Gran reminds that I’ve experienced promptings this week to reflect on family. I, my generation, is the last of this branch of the family since I and my now deceased cousins each for different reasons chose not to bear children.

I don’t regret my choice, having been a partner in raising my stepson, now with a family of his own and continuing to hold him close to my heart despite the miles and life priorities that limit frequent contact. I choose not to create obligation or guilt, but to allow the relationship to flow where it flows. As Muse reminds me that a relationship based on obligation is no relationship at all, I realize that it is a decision that I’ve made with my heart, asking my head to follow heart’s lead in defying a culture that holds a particular definition of how ‘family’ should look.

These days I embrace Nature as my family of choice, the ‘family’ that I love and learn from daily. This is the ‘family’ I long to be in right relationship with. Muse prompts a wondering: is it possible to be in right relationship with another human while our relationship with Nature is askew?

In the little corner of the globe that I occupy and call home I want to right my relationship with Mother Earth and ALL of her progeny. This week She reminded me in Her gentle way that a part of right relationship requires asking permission.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been gathering water from nearby Cottonwood Creek as a part of the experimental nourishing two pinon pines in the woods out back. Mother and Grandmother Pinon each agreed when I asked if they would be willing to receive. So, I began the process: bringing in water from the creek, mixing an Ormus formula, activating with frequency 528Hz tones, pouring around the tree. I’ve felt a deep connection to each tree as I engaged.

One morning this week at the creek as I busily filled a bucket and thanked the water, I realized that I’d never asked for permission to do so. It was as if the creek was speaking to my heart. The reminder brought a wave of guilt and sadness for my thoughtlessness, yet I knew that I was hearing through the ears of my heart.

I asked for the creek and the water’s forgiveness and for permission to continue. In hindsight I see that those words were more from my head than my heart as I quickly completed my bucket filling task and brought the water home.

I’ve carried this moment with me as I’ve observed with deep gratitude all the ways that Mother Earth and Nature support me with unquestioning, unconditional love. My heart sees the many ways that I take that love for granted, assuming that I have permission to walk on the earth wherever and whenever I choose and to use the resources She provides unconsciously and at will.

These are habits of lifetime and culture that I in this chapter of life I aim to shift by engaging the senses of my heart more fully from moment to moment and day to day.

I cannot know how my life would have unfolded if I’d learned early on to listen to Mother Earth in this way. As I feel deep gratitude that I am learning now, I wonder how our culture might be had we followed this wisdom of the ancients – listening to and working in cooperation with Nature. I aspire to do my part to give our progeny the gift of knowing. Perhaps this is a pivot we each might attend to in our own unique way.

Cones Birthing on the Grandmother Tree

Pivoting to Unity Consciousness

Mothership Over the Sangres

Unity consciousness is a state of enlightenment where we pierce the mask of illusion which creates separation and fragmentation. Behind the appearance of separation is one unified field of wholeness. Here the seer and the scenery are one. Deepak Chopra

 The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare to state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, the products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two. Ken Wilbur

 Sometimes pivots happen in a flash (or a blinding flash of the obvious!). You experience an ‘aha’ moment that has you, and in the next moment you hold a new perspective. Other pivots are a process, much like changing the direction of a big ship, that occurs over time and distance. One day you’re living from that new perspective. The next, well … not so much. Muse smiles.

 Lasting pivots require practice, attention, and awareness. Daily. Moment to moment. ‘Yep,’ agrees Muse.

 In our world where our language and crumbling systems are built on the illusion of separation, the pivot to unity consciousness seems daunting. Our language has not yet incorporated what science now tells us about the unified field that we are part and parcel of. Our systems, long invested in securing borders; maintaining control; and depending on ideas such as right/wrong, good/bad, we/they, are so ingrained that we are challenged to break free of them.

 These are the musings that rise as I reflect on life’s experiences this week.

 As I journaled one morning, curious about what a couple electrical breakdowns were reflecting, I began to feel the pressure that the world’s systems are under and how my own body’s power systems are likely experiencing the same. The clear message came: ‘TRUST! Trust the enfoldment – all of it, especially that which you don’t prefer. Expect the not to be expected and be light in the dance of intensity and change.’

 I took a breath, letting the crystal clarity of the message settle in as I witnessed dawn bringing light to the woods out back. The boundary between those woods and me evaporated. I am there. The trees and landscape are here. There is no ‘here’ or ‘there’. In that blissful moment the illusion of separation vanished. In that moment I experience the reality that I AM ONE with ALL that is.

 As I sat with the experience, the stream continued to flow:

• I am One with all life and ALL is life.

• I am One with the landfill as surely as I am One with the beautiful peaks.

• I am One with the entities of corporate/degenerative agriculture as surely as I am One with regenerative farmers and ranchers.

• I am One with the war mongers as surely as I am One with those who work for and live in peace.

• I am One with the plastic in the oceans as surely as I am One with the whales, dolphins, and all beings in the seas.

• I am One with those who spread hate as surely as I am One with those whose words and deeds uplift and spread kindness, love, and light.

• I am One with disease as surely as I am One with health.

 This is what I/we know deep in my/our bones, my being. May my words speak this truth. May my life reflect this knowing as I map, navigate, and make choices in the territory of life’s gifts and experiences. May the illusions of separation fall as reality of who I am/we are deepens in my/our awareness. So Be It!

Resilience! After Winter Comes Spring

Zadie Byrd's Zinger

Sun Setting on a Very Full Day

When we see difficult circumstances as a chance to grow in bravery and wisdom, in patience and kindness, when we become more conscious of being hooked and we don’t escalate it, then our personal distress can connect us with the discomfort and unhappiness of others. What we usually consider a problem becomes a source of empathy. Pema Chodron (daily quote for Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service’s Daily Inspiration for Your Nonviolent Journey – 24 January 2022)

As I began to think about today’s post, Muse, ever wise, sensing my weariness and knowing that my primary focus this day is caring for and keeping my eye on Zadie Byrd who had eye surgery yesterday, gently tapped me on the shoulder and suggested ‘go easy this day. Share Zadie’s lesson, you know, the one where she turned the tables on you …’.

I readily agreed. Her lesson was potent, playful, and caught me just as I started down the road to criticism and judgement. You know, the one I shared last week? (click here if you missed it). Zadie’s Zinger stopped me in my tracks, elongated the choice point of discernment, and ultimately gave me a chuckle. I suspect that Muse was chuckling too – if not in outright guffaw mode.

Out for our walk one rather cold morning this week, I heard, at some distance from us, the unmistakable voice of someone speaking loudly on their cell phone. Ugh! I suspected that meant they were paying no attention to their canine. Then, just as judgement was about to kick in full blown, Zadie Byrd looked at me, and I heard my voice speak, ‘not yours!’, a cue I use with Zadie when she begins to react to something that we don’t need to tend to. In a flash, my well-practiced litany of criticism stopped. Zadie had zinged me at that choice point of discernment where the opportunity for love waits patiently. In doing so, she gave me the opportunity to pivot from my costly litany to a laugh and to love and appreciation, sprinkled with compassion and care for those missing the morning’s beauty and the joy of canine teaching and connection.

After a full day of travel and waiting when we arrived home from the veterinary hospital late yesterday, I just wanted to come inside and unpack all our ‘stuff’ from the trip, but wise Zadie Byrd had a different plan. ‘Let’s catch the last rays of sun before it disappears,’ she seemed to say as she plopped down facing the fading light and resisting my coaxing to come inside. So, I joined her and, after a few moments, realized that I was basking not only in the sun’s healing rays but in the success of the day and in all that love offers when we are open to receive.

I’m truly, truly grateful and feeling very blessed as Zadie Byrd sleeps nearby. And I may just join the chorus of snores soon.

Catching Some Healing Rays!

Invite All of Life In

Sunlight on the New Blanket of Snow

We are in a time of tremendous volatility, not just externally, but for many people internally as well. On a daily basis, it seems, the world is flipping from one timeline to another to another. The future looks dark; I blink my eyes and all is bright. A blue sky fills with clouds in a minute, then they are gone again. Multiple realities coexist on a single planet. Multiple realities coexist in a single person.

… if you have been fluctuating between elation and despair, you are not alone. If despondency colors the breaking dawn, you are not alone. If a single ray of light (like a warm hello) dispels the despondency, you are not alone. If that hope is so fragile that a mere ill glance shatters it, you are not alone. Charles Eisenstein (read the essay here)

I experienced ‘one of those days’ a few days ago. Feeling disconnected, irritable, unhappy despite a soft white blanket that had fallen on Mother Earth the day before. The foggy funk lifted for a brief moment as I watched Zadie Byrd roll joyfully in the snow. As quickly as she hopped up the dark cloud over me returned. Unlike Zadie’s ability to shake the flakes from her furry coat, my efforts to ‘shake’ the cloud weren’t so effective.

And so I allowed ‘it’ to be and allowed myself to be under ‘it’ with whatever curiosity I could muster to discover any message hidden within. I had little energy to focus or ‘do’ anything, despite several projects and tasks idly awaiting my attention. I’d love to say, ‘so I just sat quietly and listened’, but in my humanness, I tried to force some focus, get something done. Oh, how our culture values toughing it out to check some task off of our to-do list.

Failing culture’s strategy for the blahs, I turned to Nature, the labyrinth and a long, slow saunter in the woods out.

This is where my solace lives. The place where my sadness can be, and my tears can flow with abandon.  The place that is receptive, understanding, and listens as no human can. The place that knows, accepts, and allows. The place that dissipates the dark clouds when it is time for them to go.

I think about the clouds that bring moisture to the Earth’s surface just as clouds of sadness allow my cleansing tears to fall.

Cleansed by Nature’s beauty and softness, her receptivity and acceptance, and by the tears that fell as I embraced a beloved grandmother tree, the dark cloud lifted. I am those clouds, the snow and rain, and I am all the tears as well as all the trees.

I remind myself that we are in a time of great change and uncertainty, of vast opportunity, and of an invitation to invite in all of life. The bitter. The sweet. We are invited to remember what our hearts know, and our minds have forgotten: We are all one, each a part of the other. The entire ocean is in the drop. The bitter in the sweet. There is no separation in the reality that is life.

As the Muse and I settled in for this week’s journey, I thought about the plethora of inspiring quotes that have been shared this week in the wake of Thich Nhat Hanh’s passing. Many have landed deep, resonating as wisdom for this time. Responding to a gentle nudge to find a pithy one to share, I discovered a recording of Thay reading his poignant poem, Please Call Me By My True Names. The poem’s final verses resonate as a prayer for all humanity to understand that we are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart

can be left open,

the door of compassion.

(listen and read it here)

In our sleepy forgetfulness, we cling to the illusion that we can allow some of Life in and keep some of Life out. Alas, we wake and remember that all of Life invites us to open the door of our hearts and invite in ALL of Life. Indeed, may we grant All of Life our gentle embrace.

Beauty Before the Snowfall

Easing into 2022 with Rest

A White Christmas Labyrinth!

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterwards. Proverb

The only real rest comes when you’re alone with God. Rumi

As I began to update what has become my ‘Auld Lang Syne’ final post of the year, the online countdown clock indicated that it’s 2 days, 14 hours, 41 minutes, 56 seconds until the new year is rung in here in the Colorado Rockies. But, hey, ‘who’s counting?’ wonders the Muse.

As was the case at the end of 2020, many – perhaps most – await the turning of the clock to 2022 with bated breath, wishing to bid adieu to another tumultuous year. We want to turn the page. We long to dive deeply into the fresh start that began with the Solstice promise of our personal newness and culminates as we replace our 2021 calendars with new pages of promise and possibility that the coming year has the potential to bring forth.

It is, as always, up to us – individually and collectively – to bring promise, possibility, and potential to fruition. As sure as the sun’s light is returning day by day here in the northern hemisphere, we will have opportunities to do just that in the hours, days, weeks, and months ahead. What if we trusted the opportunities to come forth at just the right divine time rather than pushing to ‘make’ them happen?

While this year held much tragedy and darkness, lights of love continued to be shined in dark corners needing our attention and care.  May we each be a part of shining the light of love in all the days ahead. May we tap into the countless sources of light available beyond the chaos of the mainstream and its ways. May we receive whatever light we need as we add our unique rays to loving constellations of light and life.

Although the onset of a new year signals the end of the holiday season in our culture, Winter has only just begun. The dark, the cold invites me inward (more snow would help the cause!). The Muse smiles a happy, knowing smile. The season that began fewer than 10 days ago has a 12-week run before it gives way to Spring. Yet our cultural habit of a new year is to make plans and spring into action with goals and commitments to DO more.

What if we took more time for rest and renewal as Nature does in the season of cold? Inward to rest, to renew. Inward to commune with the sacred and to gather all that is necessary to burst forth in Spring. While certainly there is life and livelihood to maintain, jobs to go to, businesses to tend, political action to be voiced, stories to be told, I wonder how the world might be if we began the calendar year in greater alignment with Nature?

What might be possible for us individually and collectively if our first goal for the new year was intending rest and renewal of body, mind, and spirit?

As I reflect on saying ‘Goodbye’ and refrain from saying ‘good riddance’, my year end reflections first written at the end of 2016 seem as apropos (with a few additions) today as they did five years ago.

At year end, we tend to look back on joys, sorrows, what we accomplished, where we may have fallen short. Hopefully our review list includes acknowledging all that we discovered about ourselves and learned from the opportunities and events life presented.

As 2021 ends, many will breathe a sigh of relief that it is finally over along with a breath of hope for better days in the year ahead.  The world we live in is chaotic and uncertain. It IS! Those who put attention on that world forgetting that it is the world we live IN, NOT the world we are OF may look ahead with dread or fear.

That need not be.

Within each of us is a seed of understanding who we truly are. Nurturing that seed grows our faith in our capacity to be resilient in the face of the world’s chaos. In this year ahead, I have a sense that we will need to tap into our spiritual strength in ways we may not have done before.

This seed of faith is within us all. It is not faith in anything outside of us. Rather it is faith in who we are, each as an individual, integral part of an intelligent Universe. It is a reminder that life is so much more than we experience and observe in our daily routines.

As you ring in 2022, I invite you to join me in nourishing your seed of faith in each of the 365 days ahead and to remember how important your presence and your ray of light is at this moment on the planet.

With that intention top of mind and heart, I’ll be participating in a global event 7 Days of Rest and Sacred Renewal during the first week of the new year. The event’s introductory words drew me in with their reminder of the power of intention and clarity and the potent possibility that alignment and collective action call forth:

7 Days of Rest is an annual, open co-creative event inviting individuals and groups around the world to initiate and join local and online events for the healing and thriving of Earth and all her inhabitants. During the first 7 Days of 2022, we unite in seeding the New Year with a sacred field of intention and blessing for a thriving world for all of Life.​ Together we co-create a collective space for renewing ourselves and our sacred bonds with each other and with all of Life. Through rest, deep listening, wisdom sharing and compassionate action we amplify the emerging global culture of peace, health, cooperation and wise governance.

I’m deeply grateful for this discovery/resource (the website -click here - is chock full of nourishing offerings daily!) and I’m looking forward to diving in daily with each of the daily themes. Join me in whatever way best fits your schedule, your life, and your intentions for the year ahead.

Happy New Year!

I hope you’ll join me in participating in this global gathering!

The Web and Flow of Life

Good Morning Sun!

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. Chief Seattle

Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force. Lao Tzu

Last night as I was easing into sleep the words ‘web of life’ popped into my awareness, seeming to indicate both the title and focus for this week’s muse.  Having received a generous and unexpected gift earlier in the day, I was filled with gratitude not only for the gift and the givers, but for the web of life that I am a part of. The people. The places. The events. The flow. The mystery. The web that is woven moment by moment, choice by choice, ever evolving, ever changing. Infinite.

This morning as I began my usual morning routines and practices, Zadie Byrd caught my attention, signaling that she needed something different – to be outside and go on our morning walk before my routines. I’m paying close attention to her these days, as she’s showing some new behaviors that may indicate increasing pain. My job is to observe and listen to Zadie’s flow and to mine.

Responding to what I sensed she needed took me out in the early morning light, one of my favorite times of day. As we walked, I thought about the flow of life. How at times I flow easily with what life presents. And, how I sometimes resist. I saw clearly not just what feels better in the moment, but how the energy of flowing with what life offers me weaves a web of ease, of peace, of abundance, of generosity, of acceptance. And, perhaps, even a touch of grace.

Now as I write, the phone rings. Recognizing the number, I answer the call (it’s my neighbor and I want to be sure that she is okay). As we begin to close our quick conversation, she asks the question that seems to be top of mind for many people: ‘did you get a shot?’.  Curiously, I noticed that unlike many others, she didn’t ask if I got ‘my shot’, as if there is one (or two) out there with my name on it.

When I first started being asked the later question, I bristled a bit. My internal reaction (‘it’s none of your business!’) pointed to a deeper sense of the conflict between what the culture says that I ‘should’ do and what my body and my intuition have to say about what is right for me. I hadn’t yet reached a firm commitment to listen to my body which, at least for now, says ‘no’.  

My desire is to weave threads of health and well-being that are more grounded in nature, the planet, and Universal law. I want to flow as the energy of life flows, naturally.  I want to make choices from a better understanding of the reality that we alone are not weaving the web of life.

Just as she is speaking through earthquakes, extreme weather events, and volcanos, Gaia speaks through the virus. What messages might it offer in support of humanity’s evolutionary growth? How might we question and listen from this perspective? How might we pivot toward greater consideration of our planetary home?

May we listen anew to the web and flow with life rather than endlessly trying to avoid some of its greatest gifts. May I.

A Bit of Fresh Spring Snow on the Mountains

Pivoting to the Feminine

The Beauty and Softness of a Winter Morning

Western women will save the world. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Several threads woven through my week focus on the idea, the necessity really, of integrating feminine principles and energy fully into our culture. Wikipedia lists the following as traits of the feminine:  nurturance, sensitivity, sweetness, supportiveness, gentleness, warmth, passivity, cooperativeness, expressiveness, modesty, humility, empathy, affection, tenderness, and being emotional, kind, helpful, devoted, and understanding. Who among us would not agree that more expressions of these qualities will make the world a better place?

Women as well as expressions of these principles were, from my perspective, front and center in both the Inauguration of President Biden last week and in the new President’s first week of executive actions and his communication with we the people.  I found that refreshing, inspiring, and hopeful.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is famously quoted for saying that 'Western women would save the world' at the Vancouver Peace Summit in 2009. He went on to say "Some people may call me a feminist...But we need more effort to promote basic human values — human compassion, human affection. And in that respect, females have more sensitivity for others' pain and suffering."

Those words came to mind instantly when Alice Walker’s poem 'Calling All Grand Mothers' published in 2010 landed in my inbox, giving further voice to the urgency of this pivot. 

Calling All Grand Mothers

We have to live
differently
 
or we
will die
in the same
 
old ways.
 
Therefore
I call on all Grand Mothers
everywhere
on the planet
to rise
and take your place
in the leadership
of the world ….

You can read the rest of this timely, poignant poem from Hard Times Require Furious Dancing here:

The feminine is not solely about what we DO, but rather how and who we BE.  It is not about gender or sexual preference. Men, women, LGBT, straight, all of us have access to the energy that is feminine. 

It is about the perspectives we hold in life and the beliefs and actions that follow. A few days ago a Facebook post shared by a friend related a conversation between two men talking over a beer. One got up saying he was going to go 'wash the dishes'. The other seemed surprised and said "I don't help my wife." The man going to wash the dishes replied that he wasn't 'helping his wife', that he lived in the home and had a responsibility to participate in its care. That represents collaboration, cooperation, empathy and so many other feminine principles in action!

A deep knowing that ‘we have to live differently’ has long been a theme running through these weekly muses and my life in general.  I often ask myself ‘what do I need to shift to be a better partner on and to the planet?’.  Powerfully weaving more feminine threads into my expressions of life seems to be an element of the answer. Join me?

Zadie Byrd’s New Friend