Author: beallster@gmail.com

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 199 – 7/3/2018

beallster@gmail.com

on the eve of  july 4th celebrations in the usa, i contemplate freedom re-membering so many profound words from Viktor Frankl, a being whose life was an unbroken contemplation on liberation… join me in bathing in this frequency and may our bathing flood the cosmos with wave after wave of freedom…

~

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

…never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed… what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best… to transform personal tragedy into triumph…

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 198 – 7/2/2018

beallster@gmail.com

saluting the source flowing through all our relations always, may we join together as the one heart we are in the field out beyond, the field of the stillness of love and the silence of peace….

For the Traveler

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

~ John O’Donohue ~

happy trails, beloveds…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 197 – 7/1/2018

beallster@gmail.com

today is doubly potent for it’s our day to share an image of the astonishing light of being as well as the beginning of jocund july and what a LOVEly image demonstrating the high-spirited lightness of being in this new beginning, new breath, new moment, new month, new moon around the corner, new day, new journey, newly standing on the brink of a new world pausing with all the pregnant possibilities alive in such a confluence quickening and fluttering our one heart knowing we are poised to take flight, to wing our way on unknown migratory routes trusting our one heart to fledge the way… as we open to this new beginning, let’s re-member how to awaken in this moment, this beautiful moment, in every moment, every beautiful moment…

~

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?  What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

~ David Whyte ~

~

during this cosmic turtle moon, may we all feel the astonishing lightness of being high-spirited water falling home and the deep peace of  the rhythm of light-waves…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 196 – 6/30/2018

beallster@gmail.com

“Live in joy and freedom, even amongst those who are sick or troubled. Live in joy and a peaceful heart, even among those in conflict. Quiet the mind and heart and find the sweet joy of living in the dharma.”

~ Buddha ~

in this sacred moment , i feel us sitting on a high dune with a panoramic view of the all that is poised in a pregnant pause on the edge, the verge of a new world – can you hear her breathing?

this new world of  unconditional love guiding us into justice for all building a rock solid peace beyond our most expansive imaginings…

did you feel a crescendo today as thousands and thousands gathered across the land to stand in love for love real-eye-sing there is only one of us here and in moments when it feels the center cannot hold, it is incumbent upon us wherever we are to engage, to involve ourselves in right action, sacred action…

~

always being love

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 195 – 6/29/2018

beallster@gmail.com

thank you for walking home with me along the rainbow trail to Tahoma, the great mother of mountains and cathedral of stillness… today marks a sacred anniversary… three years of sauntering the devotional path, one thousand ninety-six days of opening portals of grace, twenty-six thousand three hundred four hours of offering the wounds of us all up for clean-sing, one million five hundred seventy-eight thousand and two hundred forty moments of being breathed into life more abundant…

thank you Beloved for breaking our hearts open ever wider empowering us to see through the eyes of love, to deepen in the ways of compassion, to stretch our capacity for patience and trust, to flow in the peace that passeth all understanding in this moment, this beautiful moment…

deepest bows to my beloved contemplative partner whose steadfast love brings us to this moment and to all transmitters and receivers populating our one cosmic sea of love energy…

thanks be, thanks be, thanks be, beloveds…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 194 – 6/28/2018

beallster@gmail.com

today is a perfect balance to yesterday when i awoke to being a wellspring of bubbling joy for today the call of sitting by the well is imperative as waves of grief – ancestral, cosmic, present moment – flood…

~

grief is an ocean ebbing and flowing,

at times overwhelming, other times still…

grief is a winding deepening valley,

 at times arid desert, other times blossoming field…

grief is a river bending and turning,

bursting our illusion of life’s course remaining unchanging…

grief is re-membering and celebrating the beauty, joy, love and gratitude for what was while seeding and watering the dream field to blossom anew…

~

grief, the mother of compassion…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 193 – 6/27/2018

beallster@gmail.com

wandering along the ocean, dancing with the breeze

looking toward the skies, waltzing with the trees

sister moon is dancing too, floating through the clouds of blue

waxing full and all aglow, she whispers to the earth below

come home to the heart and listen, all answers are within

awaken to the clarion call to stand together one for all

~

this capricorn full moon under the cancer sun coming at such a pivotal moment is profoundly impacting both inner and outer tides with intense ebbs and the flows… and yes, i’m still galvanized two years later by the emphatic knowing of how we must come together, we must break through the constricting shells that no longer hold us supportively, shells that are cutting off our air supply…

so, it was such a joy to go out into the night to commune with sister moon and a circle of co-hearts feeling her divine feminine energy washing through us, purifying inner inflammation reflected in an outer world on fire… her light like a soothing balm, like a gentle lullaby, a sweet reminder of all is well in this moment, this beautiful moment…

i’m experiencing all as an unbroken circle holding hands around the cosmos breathing in the rhythm of the waves to the tune of metta or lovingkindness…

may we be filled with lovingkindness

may we be well

may we be peaceful and at ease

 may we be happy

 let it be, let it be, let it be… deep bows, beloveds and wise pilgrim sister moon for magnetizing us home to om and listen, listen, listen to our heartsong of great mystery…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 192 – 6/26/2018

beallster@gmail.com

and, what a day of traveling the way of the heart beginning with re-membering love winning as in three years ago, the Supremes ruling for marriage equality all over the USA and moving on to re-membering on that very same day President Obama delivering balm for the soul of our nation at a memorial service in Charleston, SC including his singing “Amazing Grace”  which reminds me of a daily practice I’ve followed for almost three years which tunes one into the frequency of grace as well as grounding one into the wellspring of joy that is always bubbling in the deepest core of our being…

yes, what a joy to travel the way of the heart, what a healing balm as we meet each moment as fully as we are able and meet it as a friend, as we experience each moment as a moment of peace, as life sings us filling us with loving kindness and more and more compassion…

 namaste’

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 191 – 6/25/2018

beallster@gmail.com

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not ever complete the last one,
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, that primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

~

i circle around, i circle around, the boundaries of the earth…

i have loved Rilke’s poem and this chant for so many moons, the feeling of expansiveness and liberation… for a quintessence of moons while deepening in stillness, i’ve also been deepening my practice of the three tenets of  the Order of Zen Peacemakers – not knowing, bearing witness, and taking action and this poem sings these tenets inspiring moving into them on a day when impermanence is rocking my everyday world reheartening me to take  action by being lovingkindness in ever-widening circles… join me – the still waters are clean-sing…

~

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
~ Joy Harjo ~
~

May every moment of our holy meandering unfold in harmony, gathering place for nomads of the heart, awakening to the illumination we be…

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 190 – 6/24/2018

beallster@gmail.com

in honor of the astonishing light of being…

A Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in the circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
~Rumi~

“When I run after what I think I want,
my days are a furnace of distress and anxiety;
if I sit in my own place of patience,
what I need flows to me
and without any pain.
From this, I understand that what I want
also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me.
There is a great secret in this for anyone who can grasp it”

~Rumi~

shanti shanti shantihi…