Beyond development is a place where I don't feel alone

The theme of my week has been community. What is community? Is it important? How do you build community? How does my community reach out to the lonely? What is it I do to build and nurture my community? And what is it I should not do to build community?

When a person passes through a rite of passage in a ritualistic way by leaving their community, going out alone into a threshold experience and reintegrating their new learning back into community, it is this final stage that is so essential and so neglected in modern society. We need to be witnessed and seen in our newness. We learn not just for ourselves, but in order to share our gifts with others. That is what connects us all together in this web of life. That is what makes us one living consciousness constantly coming into being.

With this in mind check out the beauty of the sounds contained in this song and allow your imagination to drift off to wherever it needs to go.




First we develop ourselves, our souls. Then we build our society by tending to our communities contained within our society. Finally we nourish and regenerate our Mother Earth, Pachamama and all her ecosystems contained within of which we are also a part.

Similarly, first we build our home, then we build the home of another and before you know it a community is born.

As within, so without. As below, so above.

Love Week is Round the Corner

I was reading an email daily message from a writer called Richard Rohr. And the theme of love came up. I found it to be a timely comment on the week I have just experienced. The last paragraph of his message especially got me thinking, it goes like this:

"Is there at least one place in your life where you are giving and receiving love? If it happens in one place, it can happen everywhere. If you are truly capable of loving one person, you’re capable of loving more than one, and eventually even your enemy, and finally all. Love is one piece. Thus, we rightly speak of being “in love” and Paul speaks of being “in Christ.” Love is all or nothing. You either express love or you don’t. The Scholastic philosopher, Josef Pieper, said it very well, “the proper habitat for truth is human relationship.” How we relate to anyone is how we relate to everything else, too."

Bring on the love ... only love!

Watery Depths

The month may have changed from January to February, however, the watery theme has remained. Where there is water there is emotion. This week has been a deep swirl of stirred up feelings. Imagine giant waves crashing to shore and you'll have an image of how this week has felt.

Syncronistically, remember there are no accidents, I have regularly been exposed throughout the last 7 days to the sound of whale song accompanied by the dulcet tones of a clarinet. Music, emotions and water. A heady mix if ever there was one. No wonder my heart is all shaken up.

And now we are on the cusp of the week of LOVE. valentine's day is fast approaching ... Oh boy ... emotion and heart energy to the max. I am swimming in feelings !!! So much so that the words of a poem have been leaking out:

Love and passion in Totnes
  I am falling
     falling
        head over heels
in love
  with my beloved
her smiling eyes shining
my heart wide open
      in synchronicity
         beating in rhythm
boom- ka-cha-boom-ka-cha-boom
                     YEAH!
     just like that
 we are in a deep embrace
   of such beauty and grace
swept up into a kiss
            of immeasurable bliss
  travelling beyond space and time
       and yet of this place
TOTNES!
oooohhhhh passionate Totnes
     where trees hug you
love tasted here is never forgotten
        instead it is begotten
like a threshold moment
      a line crossed in the sand
                  our hearts are entwined
  inclined to kindness
   senses re-attuned
to the invisible
             inseparable pulse that is shared
                   between us
                           all of us
               the continuum of everything
making the sound of love music
     that goes something like this ...
 do-be-do-be-do
  one continuous melody
one simultaneous movement
   a compassionate flow
        we all know
            that grows
                   in love
                 from love
           towards love
here in Totnes.