Turning Weed Thoughts into Flowers

wild-flower-meadow There are many distressing weed thoughts permeating our lives and thoughts these days. While the specific shape and size of these energy-consuming invaders varies according to our specific situation, there is a simple practice that may help us all live more peaceful and vibrant lives.

For me, a simple checking of the WHO or CDC website for the most accurate information on the current Coronavirus can thistle up the field of my mind for hours. There seem to be far too many places for data to latch on to fear and spin me into uncertainty. This is a very old and established framework of thought for me, and this new “threat” just props up my internal reasons for maintaining the illusion that I am a separate, isolated and at risk creature in an uncontrollable world.

It therefore takes practice and discipline to let creative imagination lead me out of the tall grass and back into a fragrant garden. Let me share a bit of what I see when I tap into the broader perspectives from outside time and space.

We have a planet which is careening headlong into environmental self-destruction. It is not possible for us to bring this impending environmental disintegration into focus, because it comes in scattered waves of evidence. We have learned too well to look only to what directly effects us and our scattered family members. Even when we acknowledge the peril to our planet’s health and balance, it is too hard to put the pieces together and to agree on how to tend to the Earth in her severe dis-ease.

Then a tiny virus occurs and we suddenly have a focal point. It enters a world without boundaries or categories, totally ignoring borders, ethnic differences, theology or any other divisive category the human mind has ever created. We discover that to care for our loved ones, we must care for all people everywhere. We are drawn together in heart and purpose to make sacrifices and rewrite our ways of life.

In my imagining, this breaks down all of the standard boundaries, even as it invites us to be more present in our lives. We stop traveling long distances and spending hours in commuter traffic. We open more time to be with family and to develop mutually supportive relationships with friends and neighbors. Creative ways of each offering our gifts and abilities in meaningful forms can replace our dependence on “jobs” which have often stolen energy and dignity with little reward.

We find that as the weather warms, we can gather in circles outdoor to hold meetings and share idea; express gratitude and envision creative possibilities. We grow community gardens and sing our songs out under the sky. We live more within our homes and take extraordinary care to keep them clean and free of chemicals so that our water and land remain healthy.

Many of the large group events which have been our distractions and taken huge amounts of financial support are released. We find more local expressions of creativity and discover that we have the resources for all people in every land to have free health care.

We use less fossil fuel on many levels and the Earth sighs with relief. We pull out the lawns and use the water for flowers and food, adding beauty and nourishment back in the land.

Perhaps we find that a few states in the middle of the country, which are free from the virus will become new homesteads. Close down the beef industry and tear out the industrial corn farms to make room for people to live at a more comfortable distance from one another as they restore the vitality of the soil. Go through a month of quarantine at the border and receive the grant of two acres of land. Relieve the press of population in the major seaboard megacities which will both ease the reinfecting cycle of illness and make it easier as severe weather events engulf these population centers.

I know that all of this is based on creative flights of fancy, but that may be the greatest healer and innovator in these times. The Chinese pictogram for “crisis” contains two elements. One is “danger,” and the other is “opportunity.” I invite all of us to take our weed thoughts of threat and fear and transform them into the living garden of new ideas. The transformation of our world and the reentry of the human family into harmony and balance within the web of life begins here.

Do you feel it? The sensation that was apprehension has become playful curiosity. There is more space in the body, heart and the mind for new possibilities. We change a thought, and then another. We entertain an outrageous idea and something amazing emerges. Wow, this is exciting! Let’s watch the flowers grow.

Joy to the World

jump-for-joy_0 Joy is one of the most sacred, healing and enlivening energies in the universe. It is at the heart of many of the celebrations of this season. It is also easily overshadowed by the cultural expectations, emotional investment and economic drive of these last days before Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I want to call us back to this transformative flow of joy as the best possible gift to both give and receive this season and throughout the coming year.

Why do I cling to my barriers to Joy? I, along with many adult humans, have learned that there is something dangerous about this illusive force. There are some powerful myths that we seem to take in with our mother’s milk and never question throughout our lives. One of these is that if you allow yourself to feel joy, with every cell of your being, that the next experience in your life will be one of tragedy and loss. We have been conditioned to believe that joy is a gift that at any moment will be snatched from our hands and sent crashing to the floor, to teach us never to reach for it again.

As a defense, our mind calls joy a “soft emotion,” appropriate for small children and elderly relatives. Those of us with any common sense know that it is dangerous and not to be trusted. But that is only because it is so very powerful in transforming our perception of the world, and therefore the quality of our lives.

Joy rises from that place of mystery, between unseen energy and visible expression in the world. When joy emerges, it comes as an irresistible force, almost volcanic in power, bursting forth from deep within. Joy is what makes the sprout push upward through the soil into the sunshine. It is what drives the beat of the drum and the soaring of the music. Joy makes the flames of the fire leap and dance. It is joy that wells up within the human dancers, fueling their exuberance and movement. When it breaks out from the core of our being, it changes everything we see, hear, taste, touch, intuit.

Consider the truly joy-filled people you have encountered in your life. You have surely met at least one person whose whole being shines with light, love, and peace. These are not naive or feeble-minded individuals. They have lived life fully, experiencing both happiness and sorrow, illness and health, gains and losses. They have also learned the secret to overcoming the fear that joy will lead inevitably to grief. They have discovered the power of gratitude. Gratitude for what brings them joy, but also gratitude for everything that occurs in their lives.

I would invite you to consider this simple opening to joy:

Each morning, as my day begins, I sing my gratitude to the elements of nature and all the living beings who share the beauty of this place. I ask to live in harmony and balance. I offer my thanks for my life, this land and the man I share my life with.

As evening comes, I offer gratitude for everything that happened during the day. Everything. Sometimes it is a new awareness of how petty and self-absorbed I am, and how I let anger and fear take too much of my day. Other times wisdom or friendship have taken me to a new place of understanding. Whatever has happened, I welcome it as a gift to help me see my unique human experience on the Earth. All that is revealed adds to my willingness to question the barriers I carry that keep me from living in freedom, simplicity and joy.

In this season, may we all follow the lead of the little ones and old folks who laugh freely and sing playfully. May we enjoy those who are openly light-hearted and shine their love into our lives. May we find joy infectious and irresistible.

In the words of the song from Three Dog Night:

Singin’ joy to the world
All the boys and girls now
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Joy to you and me

Each One a Living Dance – Poem

This poem emerged as I was waking up the other morning. It was born in that place between sleep and wakefulness – words tapping themselves into being on my computer keyboard.

As I reread the words, they are exactly what I want to say to family members and dear friends; neighbors and coworkers; classmates and students; teachers and guides. They are the promise I want to make to strangers and loved ones.

They are the words I will speak, looking into my own eyes in the mirror. I invite you to do the same.

Now, in deep gratitude, I speak them to you.

5196498-color-twist

EACH ONE A LIVING DANCE

I will not hold you in a static form:
for you are a brilliant dance of energy,
shifting and changing in each second,
becoming more than any imagination can hold.

I will not lock you into my “knowing,”
for it is just my limited mind
reassuring itself through the ability
to categorize and find familiar patterns.

I will not confine you in terms and descriptions:
for they speak of the past and of the surface,
missing the eternity of your being,
and the constant transformation of all things.

I will open to your becoming.
Only your own soul knows your road,
for it alone recognizes the dream
which invited you here in the beginning.

I will embrace the mystery of your unfolding.
No other will ever carry this dance of
emerging, expressing and releasing
for it is your unique gift.

I will listen to the song of your creation.
It alone reflects the riches of your being,
singing our in vibration: color as well as pitch,
to birth the dawning of a new day.

Dedication of My Life

I wrote and began living these vows in November. Throughout the preparations for our move and transition to Arizona they were in the foreground. Over the past few weeks they have been obscured by learning new things and building new connections. I am therefore especially grateful for the turning of the year as a time to remember and reintegrate them into my breathing, my waking, my dreaming and my living.

I ask those of you who read them now to be my witnesses – those who hold me and my intention in love and light.

DEDICATING MY LIFE IN DEVOTION TO THE WHOLENESS OF THE EARTH AND ALL HER CHILDREN

I dedicate my life – devoting my body, emotions, spirit, mind and soul to the healing and nurture of the Earth and all Her children in all expressions of life.

I will seek to clear any thing, thought, habit, issue, or memory which diverts my attention from this devotion.

I will seek the guidance of the helping spiritual ancestors in their many expressions, through ritual, ceremony and honoring of the Earth. I will place my trust in the wisdom and insights they provide, resting in a perspective that is higher and broader than my own.

I will do those actions, nurture those images and follow those works of disciplined mind that enhance my ability to live my life as a being of light, sheathed in a human, Earth-walk form. In doing this I honor the sacred core within every living being and expression of divine creativity.

I will serve with my physical time and energy where and how I am led by this deepest truth, not assuming need or lack, but adding my gift to the renewal of the Web of Life and the reflection of the Sacred in All that Is.

I will seek this deep wisdom for my decisions about my travels, priorities, standard and way of living my daily life, my writing, speaking and listening.

I will honor the inner call I feel to be a hollow bone – to be one through whom the Light and Love of the Sacred flow freely and without hindrance of ego and self-interest to the best of my ability in each moment.

I will keep the questions of “How can I live and What can I give of my deepest heart for the healing of the Earth today?” as my daily companions and supports of my devotion.

I will place living this life and walking this path at the center of my life, allowing them to be the pivotal expression of my Earth Walk.

I am answering a calling I received at latest in my youth, and possibly in many earlier lifetimes of seeking to be of service to this world. I say YES to expressing myself as a blending together of the elements of this beautiful planet, enlivened by the Light of All that Is – A Daughter of the Light and a Child of the Earth.

In my living, and one day in my dying, I will honor who I am called to be within the Web of Life.