The signs of spring

Say hello to Pedro, he is a beautiful young fox cub. More of Pedro's story in a little while.

In the last week here in the northern hemisphere we crossed the threshold from winter to spring. It's been weeks now in the Southwest of the UK that the daffodils have been smiling their happy dance of yellow and green. They are the advanced messengers of the lengthening days and shortening nights herald by the spring equinox. Over the weekend the clocks rolled an hour forward extending the light even further into the early evening. Up in the sky Venus and Jupiter are showering us with the energy of love and expansion. My life has been on a roller-coaster journey for much of the year. Intense experiences popping up all over the place. I am learning so much and yet occasionally wishing for some respite in my unfolding story. The occasional oasis of calm or sneaky peak of clarity is much appreciated amidst the hoopla. So many questions are swimming about my head leaving unanswered trails in their wake. Questions like ...

What is the obstacle in my life that needs to be seen and invited in as a companion?

Why am I so triggered by the voice of judgement from others?

What still remains hidden from view that needs to be seen and witnessed?

As happens in spring  we plant seeds to grow and be harvested in the coming year. I thought I knew the names of some of my seeds germinating in the darkness. And yet what I hadn't expected was the rushing torrent of fears that are re-emerging from the darkness to be so dense. Another reminded of the hurts and wounds in me that still need to be tended as much as the seeds of my possible futures. Although it does not get any easier, at least I now have the experience to know that I should not turn away. Once I can hear my inner voice, I recognise the process of deep listening is needed and deep creativity. As Amit Goswami would say ... do-be-do-be-do. Reflect, act, reflect some more and get more active. While this dance goes on in me, in each of us, I have to be on the look out for a spark to appear in a moment of lucidity. it is then the hands of the artist in me can begin to shape, create, dance and sing to move the spark and manifest it into a more physical form. From spirit to matter. And yes it does matter.

Recently I read a story of a tiny young fox called Pedro. His story reminded me that the process of tending to the nurturing and nourishing of the spark within is just like the way we would tend to any new born, be it animal, vegetable or mineral !!!

 ... he was discovered (like a spark) lost and separated from his mother. Without the love and care provided by the people at the Secret World Wildlife Rescue Centre, Pedro would not have survived alone for much longer in the hedgrow, he is too young. When he is a little stronger and older he will be returned to the wild to be the fox he is born to be. And that is the beauty of creativity, of the spark or seed of life ... life is always lived in relationship. We are never truly alone. Although it may feel that way sometimes. Beginnings need tender loving care before they can be set free to live their destiny.

In the springtime we plant seeds that with care will grow and mature into beautiful beings ... thereby fulfilling their potential and eventually returning back to the darkness to repeat the cycle again one day. Every step of the journey has its purpose and meaning. Each step needs care and attention. Early on it can feel lonely and precarious. And yet it is through relationship and a deep sense of connection to others that we find our way.

On Sunday evening I heard a poem by Mary Oliver that holds a similar message. It is called Wild Geese and goes like this ...

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting 

over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. 
 

Extra Five Minute Poems

I.
The gentle and the unexpected
are what I need
to keep me in the here and now
if I can see you coming
I can leave before you arrive
when asked to jump
I do not honestly say
how high
I just start jumping until
you go away
don't walk down the street
waving banners
and singing songs
I will only close the door
if you want to greet me
simply arrive


II.
I'm doing my best
It is all I can do
Holding onto the thread
Knitting and weaving
in my own way

Someday's I feel connected
Others the beat is off and no
Matter how hard I try the
Rhythm is dissonant,
Disjointed and distant

Oh to be alone again
To slowdown and watch the
Sky as the clouds float by
To listen to the sweet
Melody of the birds as they cry

To sense time unfold
Upon itself into forever
Lost in this magical
Time and place
I am found


III.
It's hard to die
Sometimes we can miss the doorway
Medicalisation can hold us together
Long after we should have gone

It's hard to die
To know the moment
To allow ourselves to let go
To be let go of, gently


IV.
She lay in her bed
asking for daffodil's
the only word she expressed,
daffodil's
my Aunt left for the shops
came back and placed
the flowers by her bed
'daffodils'' she says again
my Aunt retells the story
to the nurse
She wants custard creams
says the nurse
tea and biscuits follow
and my Aunt places
a dunked custard cream
in her mouth
daffodils, she smiles

Simple Spiral

This morning I leisurely past time playing down on the beach. The air was pleasantly warm. The sea was calm. The tide was ever so gradually going out. Tiny waves lapped up onto the pebbles on the sand. I began to collect shells and found myself making this ever so simple labyrinth.

Tonight walking back from dinner the full moon was high in the sky revealing all her majestic beauty. Shining a silvery light to guide us back home.

Circles and spirals every which way I look as a reminder of the cyclical patterns constantly to be found in all forms of life. From the microcosm to the macrocosm. What goes around, comes around.

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

T. S. Eliot - Four Quartets: Little Gidding

Eve Ensler - Suddenly, my body

I love this woman for what she has to say, for the journey she is on and the way she shares it with us. I can feel her fierce burning passion for life and her warrior energy as she fights with all her might for what she cares passionately for - which is you and me, the fish and the trees, the earthworms and the whisper of the wind - the everything that is all connected in a beautiful flowing dance of life. The poet [Drew Dellinger] says this entire travelling cosmos is the secret one, slowly growing a body. And this is Eve Ensler feeling into her body, which by extension is the body we all share. The divine. And we can all touch this moment, the realisation that all suffering and harm can be transcended in an instance. Think love. Be love. Think one. Be one.

Take a moment ...

... and watch this. 



Peace and Love :)

Come and sit with me for a while ...

...  and we can glimpse the world from where I am. 
Or at least where I was at the beginning of 2009!

I am by your side. Feel whatever it is you want to feel and do whatever it is you want to do, it’s all ok. Is this education? Is it sustainability? Is it even education for sustainability? Who knows? I have no answers for you. If you need a buddy - I’m here for you. If you want someone to listen - I’m here for you.  If you want some company while you sit in silence - I’m here for you. If you want to build a fire, toast marshmallows, sing and dance, tell stories - I’m here for you. If you want sometime on your own, I can roll with that.  Are you feeling it yet? That’s me sharing with you a moment, a glimpse as to where I am. Now you’ve been there too you know where to find me, most of the time! Or at least this is where I was back in 2009. Now I am just as likely to be up in the gardens, down by the river or walking the path around the reservoir. Edges are more my place, back then I was deep in the woods.

To the question - What I’m exploring in the area of education for sustainability is; letting go of the old and welcoming the new?

Letting go of the Old – Developing my Mind

Education, Learning, Memorising, Theorising –  sitting in a chair day upon day listening to others, reading the works of others – that’s old, older, way older than me, it could even be older than the trees.  At its truest essence education is awesome. Education is life. Education can make a difference. At times education can provide spaces for transformation, liberation and hope. Education can be a pathway to other places. Why it is then I am writing about education in the category of the old, of the letting go? For me the modern, mainstream, institutionalised version of knowledge acquisition, of empiricism is dulled by its own myopia, is void of radical solutions and is becoming a one dimensional training camp for the masses.

What is to come of education when there is so much inequality, injustice, poverty, violence, destruction in the world?

What happens when I discover myself in an organisation and a system that is part of the damage and harm being done to others?

I struggle with these questions. I have tried lots of different ways of to effect change. I recognise that the larger community or structure I work within is a reflection of each individual. I thought the challenge was to change it one day, one person, one thought, deed and action at a time. Now I know that I can only change myself. Maybe most of my working day is spent doing things that seem to perpetuate what I have been trying to change. That does not have to define me or hold me back or trap me inside of the oppression. However, I feel it is important to fight back. It is essential to find opportunities for change in order to liberate and set us all free to live in a new community built on freedom, diversity, hope and love. My way of responding to these questions is to find new ways of communicating with people, new ways to learn and most of all new communities in which to redress the injustices that surround us in the hope that it will lead me along a path away from boredom and loneliness to a more enriched, compassionate and gentler life.

I don’t want to spend time deconstructing or critiquing the old – many have gone before me with far greater erudition and insight. If this is of interest to you go and seek out the thoughts of Marx, Naess, Tawney, Capra, Henderson, Klein and whoever else you can name, the list is endless. I have been there, it is helpful and yet for me it has limits. All of the authors I just mentioned appeal to the mind and feed the intellect. They keep me struck in my head and focused on where I do not want be. As the Dalai Lama will tell you, “Too much energy in your country is spent developing the mind.” Even those who have voyaged into possible alternatives have stayed within boundaries and frameworks that use concepts and languages of the mind. Naess writes of the need for a philosophy of feeling.  Tawney calls for a deeper moral reappraisal of our life and times. Fromm asks us to move from having to being. All of which is amazingly well argued, yet does any of this go deep enough; does it speak to or touch our hearts?

I can't get no sleep
deep in the night
and no rest in sight
let me dream again
find a release
some peace
from this insomnia
  I can't get no sleep
just before dawn
and I can feel the morn
before another day
give me a break
as a lay here again
for all I need is
you by my side
just enough time
to drift off for
a while
to sleep

I’m unsure how the words of those who critique the old help when in the middle of the night I can’t sleep because my heart is pounding fast at the thought of an impending future with no clear plans or direction. Or when I can’t catch my breath as the knowing of how my way of life is inherently harmful and exploitative of so many others. What do their words do for me when I feel the ache in my heart for the loss around me? Or, am I, as someone told me recently, being selfish for asking these questions?

Between the Old and the New – on the edge of my existence

I don’t want to focus on the half empty glass. I can see, feel, hear, touch, smell and taste the destruction, the decay, the harm, the suffering being felt by others everyday.  I am seeking the counter balance.  I need more space to lighten things up and to gain more freedom. This is feeling too heavy, restrictive and burdensome. Not sure if I’m doing the right thing. I enjoy meeting new people, learning new ways of knowing and of being at Schumacher College. There are aspects of these new experiences that are intriguing, but I’m not in the forest enough or exploring the edges as much as I would like – just yet. There are still times when I feel like a caged animal being prodded and goaded. Or that I'm invisible and words come tumbling out of my mouth unheard or misunderstood. I feel what I need is more free-form than this. At times I feel I want to be left to be, to wander.  

Where is the New? How do I developing my Heart, expand my compassion and feel in such ways that my behaviour and actions evolve and change so as to create a more peaceful, harmonious, loving, caring, sustainable, just, playful and fun presence on this planet?

At home I stand one foot in the old and one foot in the new. I’m on a precipice dealing with my fears, which are having a party in my head and in my body. My trueself is watching my fears sing from the hilltops, charging through the lanes and essentially pressing all my anxiety buttons in the only way they know how. What does this all mean? Well it means sometimes it’s hard to breathe or to focus and concentrate on the simplest of tasks. It means that I get lost in conversations and exhausted by my own thoughts super fast. It means that I’m trying to keep it real in the best way I can so as to hang onto the railings of my life. And the words process, process, process come up time and time again. It’s like I’ve swallowed something huge and it now needs to be digested, digested, digested !!! I feel like I don't need to take anything new on board for a long time; no ideas, no people, no places, no sounds, no nothing. It's about emptying out not filling up.

I feel this physical need to get out of my own way, to stop the chattering of my ego and to actively and deeply listen and observe all that’s going on around me. In 2009 I was finding it hard to do that with the incessant demands of work. In my confused state I recognised it was time to step away from the University and sit awhile and listen until the next action found me. I’ve had enough searching, striving, looking, acting, speaking and writing - now I feel it's time to be.

I’m not looking backwards to the old. It’s time to honour the point of no return. You know that moment just before the champagne cork pops, or the feeling just as you take your foot off the ledge to bungee jump, or just when the string from a bow is released but the arrow has yet to move ... Well this is it ...  the moment all the forces of nature are pushing in one direction, the point of no return has been crossed and there is a nano-second of time when I realise I cannot go back and the future has yet to begin - that moment of NOW is so real, it's like the everything that is and ever was or will be. Life is 3-D, 4-D, 5-D ... infinite - D, all my senses are working to the max, AND YET in those moment of extreme awareness, of presence there is a knowing, a feeling of calm inevitability, of impending  futureness.

It's scary, intense, overwhelming IN YOUR FACE no ducking, no diving, no hiding and from this I am drawn to the possibility, the newness, the excitement of it all. WOW - this is happening to me, to the people I love, to acquaintances, to people I meet on the street and just get talking to. I am witness to these moments occurring around me and to me. There is a palpable shift going on, no judgement, no good or bad, just change. As the saying goes, it's a stepping off point onto the field of play, have your game head on people, get ready for the B of the Bang, for the lights to go Green, it's all going on. You better be a player or you'll get played! Hang onto your HATS, coz here I go ... whoosh!

Welcoming the New – Developing my Heart

The past is done. I want to spend more time in the forest and at the edges and maybe there I’ll become acquainted with the new. Right at this minute I don’t want to talk about it, analyse it, draw pictures of it, or write poetry about it. I simply want to spend time in this place and let what needs to happen to unfold. I don’t have a story to tell you. I’m doing my level best to get out of my head, to stop focusing on my thoughts and constantly feeding my mind. I’m not interested in reading. I don’t know what I’m going to do, how long I’ll stay or what will happen when I leave. I don’t have any answers for you. I’m not even sure what questions I have to answer.

I’m trying to learn how to trust my feelings and communicate this to myself and others. I’m trying to listen to and understand my heart and the hearts of others. This is my heart time. The development of my heart is where I am at. And I’m taking small, faltering, scary, wobbly steps each and everyday.  

To the present moment 'for now'!

As the sun set this evening I found myself walking the circumference of a local reservoir. The air was still except for the occasional flapping of birds wings and the gentle lapping of small waves as they reached the waters edge. Being cocooned in this human-made valley felt like being held in a giants hand. The trees grew long silhouettes as the shadows darkened and the last of the light glinted brightly on top of the water. Long after the sun dipped below the horizon the beautiful full moon arced over the tops of the hills behind me. As I turned to get my first awesome glimpse I had to stop for a while to take in the sheer scale and magnificence of this lunar sight. Words and photographs can't begin to do justice to what my eyes can see and my heart can feel as I gaze up at this moonlit sky. Small traces of cloud obscure the full effect as the moon visibly moves up into the night. I amble back to my car and start across the country lanes back home. On top of the moor to my left the moon has risen clear of the cloud cover and glows for all to see for miles around. I feel like I have been visited by some extraterrestrial being and been reminded of my connectedness to all things, of my smallness in this vast universe that stretches way beyond my imagination on this tiny bluegreen planet I lovingly call home.

Before arriving back at my house I stop off at the Happiness Centre to journey to the beat of a drum. On my astral travels I see my higher self walking down a path whilst I am being distracted by mischievous playful energies deviating me from where I am supposed to be travelling. I wonder why this is happening and I am given the message that I need to be more grounded. I want to know why it is I don't feel seen or heard. And the answer comes back that I need to be more objective and rationale in talking to people so they can understand and hear what it is I am trying to say. My emotional reactions to events get in the way of communicating my thougths and feelings to others. All of which is very helpful and interesting. As I enter 2012 and reflect back on my heart path I am realising I still have many lessons to learn. More recently I have found myself getting emotionally triggered and distanced from important people in my life because I am unable to communicate to them my needs in such a way as to be understood and seen. Feeling disconnected and invisible only serves to further trigger emotions of isolation and a very unhelpful cycle of negativity ensues. Tonight's messages have been a much needed insight into ways of reperceiving what is happening and discovering new responses to old patterns of behaviour. 

Is life a series of small seeminly faltering steps? And is admitting how scared I am going to diminish my emotional reaction and help me feel understood and thereby closer to those around me. I have no idea. But at least I now have an new avenue to explore on this fabulous journey called life. And when the people stuff gets all too much, all I need do is step back into nature to feel reconnected again.

Trees and Words

Today is the day I take down my Christmas tree. She has been standing beautifully in the corner of the lounge for the last 3 weeks ... glowing proudly ... shouting out in her own way about the excitement of the festivities. And still today she looks as amazing as she did on the first day. Somehow it feels wrong to stop this display of beauty. And yet the tradition says on the twelfth day the Christmas decorations should come down ... hum.  Not sure I want to follow tradition this year. I do want to express my utmost gratitude to this most magical of trees. It has been a blessing to share this home for a few short weeks.

Today besides gratitude, I have two words ringing in my ears ... patience ... and perseverance.

Patience is a quality that can be a challenge to practice, especially in these modern digital times when everything can feel so immediate. To wait is an eternity. Even the thought of waiting can feel unacceptable. No matter how fast our lives become or how immediate there is still a place for patience. Maybe that is what the slow movement is about, bringing us back to an appreciation of life by providing moments of slowness, stillness, gaps in time in which to notice, feel, breathe, connect with ourselves and our surroundings. In this sense patience is not waiting, it is being. Some say music is not the sounds of the notes from the playing of instruments, it is the spaces of silence between the sounds. Could life be the same way? Could life be the spaces between the experiences? Now I can appreciate the gift of patience.

Perseverance is a quality somewhat like patience. It has this added dimension of pushing on through. When the challenge feels overwhelming, impossible to conceive do we let go and surrender our dreams? There is always a time of letting go, night follows day, for the moon to rise the sun has to set. However, movement and change do not ask of us to give up our deepest love. When on a quest our adventures will take us into places of unimaginable darkness, we will be tested, taken to our limits and then some more. In these moments it is not so much about turning back, dropping the ball or surrendering our dreams. It maybe that we have to discover a new perspective, or dig deep to find the jewel in the mud or uncover the learning. That is perseverance. The willingness not to turn away from love and be overtaken by fear, hate, mistrust, anger or disappointment.

All of this is much easier to write than it is to practice. I notice myself everyday questioning, doubting myself and others, looking for the downfall rather than seeing the opportunity. I am human, not perfect, ever learning, ever growing.

Find your heart, open your heart

open heart

 open heart

breathe in light

share smiles

breathe in light

share hugs

trust life

trust somemore

it'll be ok

open heart

open heart

breathe in sunshine

share love

breathe in life

share happiness

be yourself

simply be

all is well

open heart

open heart

know the flow

share the dance

know the flow

experience the diversity

co-create

co-relate

all is one

 "The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It's not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It's encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way." Carlos Barrios

Magnificent Otters in the Amazon

This video from the BBC (UK) shows the most spectacular images of otters in the Amazon. A once endangered species otters are now being protected to enable there numbers to grow. The family of otters swim in the waters and catch fish to eat. The younger otter looks on earnestly in the hope that some food will pass their way. Seeing otters in their natural habitat going about their normal life is very special. They have their own language and their own unique stories.Earlier today I was reading the words of Martin Shaw, a master story carrier and mythologist. He reminds us everything in the natural world carries the lines of story. All we need do is listen deeply and observe intently.

"The patterning of crows over a winter field is an oracular thought of the mud, sky, and bird; the elegant procession of the reindeer across a spring meadow is part of some epic train of imagination that has been running for tens of thousands of years. The swift dive of the killer whale is a new vision from an ancient sea. Thought is not just contained in language, not even for us humans. But it is all story. The animals are myth-tellers in the way that they are. The hundred ways the otter gleefully crosses a stream is the same way the tellers splash their routes through a story: the same destination but differing currents, details, and varying intensities of stroke. These images are more than just metaphors for our own condition but, entered respectfully, offer a glimpse of the great, muscled thoughts of the living world. It is always thinking."

For those interested in taking a dive into story and myth check out Martin's blog

Vegetarian Lobster !!!

From Dance to Freedom

In a conversation with friends at the end of 2010 I realised my word for 2011 was DANCE. For me this represented so many qualities including  a deeper exploration of a somatic sense of knowing, finding and being in the flow, as well as moving in union with the energetic entities I meet along the way be they human or other than human. So often the movement I would make to describe this experience is the sign of the caduceus or the double helix. Caduceus is associated with Hermes in Greek mythology and Mercury in Roman mythology, both of whom are notable tricksters. The trickster is a figure in stories that often acts as the hinge or the pivotal point. They are much needed characters that offer moments of transformation and change necessary for a story to move forward. Interesting that this waving movement symbolised my meaning of dance. As I sit here dwelling on what has happened during this year I can say that many beautiful dances were co-created and there is always a dance to be found. Somehow the trickster knows when a situation or person becomes stuck they need some assistance to reconnect to the dance of life and flow again. I wonder, who were the tricksters in my life this year? I can think of one or two already !!! My inner desire remains one of observer more than participant. But hey, at last now and again I also get up and dance.

On my walks this week I have been asking myself what is the word that is emerging for 2012. And for now the word that resonates most is FREEDOM. I am not sensing a movement, sound or image to express my meaning for freedom just yet;,however, today FREEDOM FEELS GOOD. And while reading a book last night about a story called The Maiden Tsar, I came across these words by Marion Woodman:

"In life, we can be so over-whelmed by what is happening that ... we do not know whether we are driven by compulsion or by our own free will. To be asked the question in the midst of our apparently irrational behaviour, is an invitation to look at our behaviour as a way of finding within it what had remained hidden ... The drive that remains hidden is compulsion; the drive that is revealed is freedom. In the question [I am/you are] being invited to enter into [our] own authentic life. The authentic life is the transformation of compulsion into freedom without the loss of the energy contained in the compulsion."*

My interpretation of this is that for us not to be under the influence of our unconscious we need to wake up to our feelings of emptiness, lack of worth and disconnection from our bodies. By finding our loving connection to the inner positive mother, to the Great Mother, Pachamama - we can trust life and not fear life. And we no longer seek this yearning for security through external opulence, greed and possessions.  Instead we experience wholeness, balance and love. What marion Woodman calls the inner marriage of the masculine and the feminine. In so doing we find our freedom, we can let go of our fears and our actions and behaviours will be transformed and informed by a loving compassion that has always been there, that has always be part of us, it was simply hidden until we uncovered it and awakened to its presence. And it follows, what changes on the inside also changes on the outside - as within, so without.

Let it be ... FREEDOM it is for 2012.


* Bly, R. and Woodman, M. (1998) The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine, Henry Holt, New York. (p.132)

You Were Made For This

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. 

Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind. 

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless. In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. 

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater? Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. 

We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. 

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for. 

By Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D Author of the best seller Women Who Run with the Wolves

Celebrating the solstice be it winter or summer ... may you have a good day!

The solstice is arriving, the eight days of Hannukah are beginning, and Christmas Day is approaching. Something universal in the human spirit is rising at this time to celebrate the light that defiantly, brightly shines--even now, in what is in the Northern Hemisphere the darkest time of the year. While the lights sparkle and rich aromas and melodies rise up, the cold bites and the body yearns to hibernate.    

It can be one of the most wonderful, and, paradoxically, one of the most difficult times of the whole year. We are made to notice light and fullness, but also darkness and emptiness; we are reminded of our connectedness, but also of our aloneness. 

Every person we love (including every person, alive now or not, who we have ever loved) awakens our recognition of the Universal Beloved, That which is the essence of all that is lovable and loving, the One from whom we can never be separated. 

Giving gifts is a way to remind ourselves of love, to enact our gratitude, to express the spirit of generosity that is our only sanity. 

And yet so is being quiet and still, and noticing the fullness that is always already present. 

And so, of course, life requires us to choose again. To find our heart's "yes" to both light and darkness. To find a way to walk with love in this still only half-made world, this place where love is yet to fully take its hold. 

May your heart find a way to practice this holiday season. May you find a way to notice the light in the darkness in every single body, to notice the non-separation that lets you reach across the gaps that face you!

- These words are attributed to Terry Patton - Beyond Awakenings - although I was unable to find the link on google. They are not my words, nevertheless, I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment. -