Lunar landings

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.

Winter Gifts

Gift of Winter by Madisyn Taylor from Daily Om 12/25/28, abridged

In fall, the earth begins the process of releasing all the things she has been holding onto throughout spring and summer, and by midwinter she has let everything go. She sits clean and undecorated in her simplicity, free of the frenzy of life that defines her in the warmer seasons. There is a quiet humility about the earth in the winter months, as animals and people retreat inside to escape the wet and sometimes freezing cold that takes hold. Inside our homes we create abundance and warmth in response to being effectively kicked indoors by the dark and cold that permeate the outdoors. 

...If we surrender to this time as nature intended, we allow ourselves to slow down, sleep more, and lower the volumes on our busy minds. At the same time, we crave company in our dwellings, and the insulated warmth of the hearth tends to bring people together, creating more warmth and fostering connections that last through the coming year. 

We laugh, eat, and talk, sleep, or catch up on reading, while outside our windows the earth grows dark earlier and stays cold longer, accepting as always of the process of change and her place within it. We might remember to learn from her as she so gracefully surrenders to the emptiness that precedes all form, the peace that precedes activity, the darkness that precedes the light. For everything she gives and teaches, we might offer a blessing, extending a goodly portion of the gratitude of this season her way, holding her in our hearts and thanking her for our very lives.

Message from the universe

A full moon ushers in March. Celestial energy touches Earth’s.

“The gift the universe gives is a perspective on relationship. It sings to us of kinship with life-giving energy extending the length and breadth of space that has no limitations and is welcoming of all. The universe is trying to tell us that we need to replicate this spirit in relationships of our own.” 

Miriam Therese Winter Paradoxology p.165

Blue moons

Blue moons bookend January. Two full moons in one month. Auspicious and daunting or momentous and uplifting?

In our frailty it is easy to drift toward the daunting. “Only the healthy find relief in heavenly arrays,” we bemoan. “I am in too much pain.” Perhaps even too much pain to go outside and look up.

In our frailty, let’s look in our deep darkness to catch sight of a glint that redirects our gaze upward. The blue moons are not either daunting or uplifting. They are both and. As is our pain. Hope you get to step outside inside tonight.

renascence at the new year

Solstice 2017

New Year 2018

…It is not strange though it is mysterious that our “New Year” comes at the darkest time in the seasonal cycle. When there is personal darkness, where there is pain to overcome, when we are forced to renew ourselves against all the odds, the psychic energy required simply to survive has tremendous force, as great as that of a bulb pushing up through the icy ground in spring, so after the overcoming, there is extra energy, a flood of energy that can go into creation.

May Sarton 1912-1995

Equinox, Rosh Hashanah and a beloved's birthday

God let there be awareness
where ignorance now prevails.

Scatter our long hidden fears
with your bright beam of courage.

And knit fine cloaks of your love
to shelter us and the world.

                   

by Debbie Aliya

from  Prayers for Healing, 365 Blessings, Poems, and Meditations edited by Maggie Oman. 

Keeping the Sabbath

Why is it that when I am sitting in nature I am flooded with the feelings I long for when I'm sitting in church?

Emily Dickinson
Keeping the Sabbath

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –

I keep it, staying at Home –

With a Bobolink for a Chorister –

And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –

I, just wear my Wings –

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I’m going, all along.