September 23, 2019
You are receiving this because you or someone you love
- perhaps an animal- are floating in the blessing bowl here. You can disconnect anytime- just tell me.
- perhaps an animal- are floating in the blessing bowl here. You can disconnect anytime- just tell me.
Change is in the air. Although the humidity feels like peak
summer, there is no denying the surrounding signs of autumn. Foliage trades
green for yellow. Goldfinches, still tawny, graze the Echinacea seed heads.
Spider webs large and small pop up unannounced on familiar pathways.
Ever changing also is pain’s ebb and flow for the
creature(s) you love. Some of them are afloat in the blessing bowl. Here is my
equinox prayer for us. It’s adapted from Peter Traben Haas in Centering
Prayers, 2013.
Help me to stay open to love in this world of pain. Do not
let me close down in hurt; open me through forgiveness. When I turn inward in
my worries, lift my eyes skyward. If I feel unworthy in loneliness, remind me
of my infinitesimal but essential value serving life on our besieged planet. In silence and surrender, draw me to love.
*In keeping with autumn’s
official arrival, the mechanism for your blessing bowl connection is also about
to change. In October I will try to clarify.
FULL MOON FLOAT
What is required to stay afloat? A medium- typically water, the elixir of life-and buoyancy. Inflatable lungs are handy. You inhale, hold gently, lean back and surrender.
The surrender is the tricky part. It took me several
childhood summers and lots of adult loving encouragement i.e.; trust building,
to learn to float. Now I crave it.
I sat poolside Friday waiting for the noon joints-in-motion class to start. When I realized that by some quirky twist of
circumstances I would be the only student that day I said to the PT who leads
us, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just like to swim.”
“Be my guest,” she replied. She got goggles for both of us and
we swam and stretched for nearly an hour. It was heavenly despite no view of
sky. And quiet. No instructions, no conversation. I ended my healing time in
the water with a luxuriously long float.
And that is when I thought to myself, “What else might I
surrender? What more can I release?
What things, people, beliefs, behaviors that block healing – what might
any of us let go?”
July 20, 2019
The celebration is now. The build up has been stunning, engaging, and so
educational. Even the BBC Proms blasted off on Friday with a musical
exploration of the moon -Zosha Di Castri's latest work Long Is the Journey - Short Is the Memory, which marks the 50th
anniversary of the lunar landings.
I
can recall exactly where I was for the landing and on whose television and in
whose company I watched it. One of those event specific memory milestones that
bind many earthlings. Yet I do not think I grasped the enormity of it. So, it
has been fascinating to reeducate myself this month about what actually happened
five decades ago. Indeed, the long journey juxtaposed with the short memory.
It
only reinforces my bent for seeking sky. So this evening I stepped outside to
photograph a post-rain firmament, but putting on my sandals I was looking down,
of course. Behold.
Heavenly
blessings all around. Up and down.
6/20/2019
Some nights, stay up till
dawn,
as the moon sometimes does
for the sun.
Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way
Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way
of a well, then lifted out into the light.
Something opens our wings.
Something
makes boredom and hurt
disappear.
Someone fills the cup in
front of us.
We taste only sacredness.
by Rumi, translated by John
Moyne and Coleman Barks
May 20, 2019
Our blessing bowl runneth over!
Attached is a photo of two dogs we will be bringing home this Saturday-yikes
tomorrow. They are a bonded pair- Jasper and Bella- age 6 going on 2. They have
just about zero manners and check out their environment. (This photo was taken
the day we met them.) So this is definitely a rescue adventure.
Your prayers are
welcome here. Please ask that we find the patience and strength to become
worthy of their love and trust. Guide us to help these dogs become fulfilled
canines and to learn from their wisdom and spirit. Together we four may move
closer to our true divine identities.
To Learn
from Animal Being
by John O’Donohue
in To Bless the Space Between Us
by John O’Donohue
in To Bless the Space Between Us
Nearer to the earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.
Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We seldom manage
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The hear and now.
Gone and time emerging,
We seldom manage
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The hear and now.
May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.
May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.
Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.
4/18/19 Seeking sky
Life can be so
confounding. Even in the hope of glorious spring there is destruction and
despair. Check any news feed any hour for a dose of sorrow. Sometimes it is
overwhelming.
I make it a
spiritual practice to quietly but deliberately seek sky at the beginning and
end of each day. I admit that this can be challenging in some weather, ahem,
but I just try to bundle up and get out there. I just stand out there and
pray. My prayer starts with a series of very deep silent breaths. That usually
wordsmiths itself into some kind of reflection, question or expression of
gratitude.
Or not. No
training, oaths, or religious affiliation required. When I seek sky I feel
connection with my ancestors, life all around me, and God. Seeking sky centers
me for the day ahead and prepares me for night’s repair.
Isaiah 40:26 (CEB) Look up at the sky and consider: Who created
these? The one who brings out their attendants one by one, summoning each of
them by name. Because of God's great strength and mighty power, not one is
missing.
Above, evening April 7, right, dawn April 14
Full Circle Farm
Full Circle Farm
March 20, 2019
Meadowlark
singing on a driveway fence post today and full moon tonight. Spring arrives
after a wild sometimes brutal winter here.
Howard Therman*
writes “…all this until at last the cold seems endless and all there is seems to
be shadowy and foreboding. The earth is weary and heavy. Then something stirs-
a strange new vitality pulses through everything. One can feel the pressure of
some vast energy pushing, always pushing through dead branches, slumbering
roots- life surges everywhere within and without. Spring has come. The day
usurps the night view.”
Spring arrives
to find me complicated by gloomy grief for Tobey. He endured crippling
ice and shattering cold with a nose always on the alert for spring. Spring did
not arrive soon enough for that dog. As this equinox opens into glorious
outdoor bliss, it’s hard for me to accept his absence.
From the
Chinook Psalter*, “…May spring come to us, be in us, and recreate life in
us. May we forge a new friendship with the natural world and discover a
new affinity with beauty, with life…”
Tonight I float
in the blessing bowl with you. From another shore and into another season he
beckons to healing beyond borders.
* in Prayers
for Healing, edited by Maggie Oman, Conari Press, 1997
February 18, 2019
Crystallized winter's
Emptiness precedes all form.
Emptiness precedes all form.
Dreamscape expansion.
Moon caresses snow.
Earth’s celestial partner
Brilliance magnified.
Earth’s celestial partner
Brilliance magnified.
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