Author: beallster@gmail.com

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 189 – 6/23/2018

beallster@gmail.com

“There was a startling recognition that the nature of the universe was not as I had been taught… I not only saw the connectedness, I felt it.… I was overwhelmed with the sensation of physically and mentally extending out into the cosmos. I realized that this was a biological response of my brain attempting to reorganize and give meaning to information about the wonderful and awesome processes that I was privileged to view.”

in the quotation above, astronaut Edgar Mitchell shares an epiphany from outer space travel, a shift in consciousness that has been called the overview effect… after many days/moons/turns around the sun of inner space exploration, the overview effect is living me leaving me feeling i have crossed the rubicon and sit perched in a nest high in the heavens and deep in the buoyant sea with telescopic vision empowering a 360 degree view of the cosmic web in that field out beyond right and wrong doing floating in grace…

namaste

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 188 – 6/22/2018

beallster@gmail.com

If you are seeking, seek us with joy
For we live in the kingdom of joy.
Do not give your heart to anything else
But to the love of those who are clear joy,
Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair.
For there are hopes: they are real, they exist –
Do not go in the direction of darkness –
I tell you: suns exist.

~ Rumi ~

some moments these words are easier to re-member than others and they are always true, paradoxical and true… our interesting times are filled with challenges on so many levels and like ocean waves they rise and pass away and the ocean of joy still remains, peace at the center of the dancing stillpoint… for in this moment, this beautiful moment, we are one vast sunflower field of radiant love… yes, suns exist and moons and rains and clouds and tears and pains and injustice and joy in this moment, in every moment, in every wild precious moment…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 187 – 6/21/2018

beallster@gmail.com

When there is no more separation between “this” and “that”, it is called the still-point of Tao. At the still point in the center of the circle, one sees the infinite in all things.

~ Chuang Tzu ~

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on soulstice, we stand in stillness with brother sun, welcoming you smiling with folded hands,  honoring your radiance breathing through our one heart, greeting you as beloved and opening our heart to you…

today, the veil between the worlds is so thin, a magical day to see through the mists… to return to the isle of Avalon on a metaphorical journey of transformation on this day the sun stands still for the divine union between heaven and earth, masculine and feminine, electricity and magnetism to occur… a sacred moment when divine feminine spirit pours the luminous light of love all over the cosmos… may we all feel this fluid energy of light flowing, a loving compassion that frees us to enter the vast unknown, to stand still with the sun…

how i love this day of standing still withe sun and

re-membering life is a pilgrimage to the inner sun, sol, soul,

the city of gold in the heart within the heart, sacred space of radiance…

holding the treasured wisdom of our true value and how we savethe worlds….

~

A Prayer of Healing

We come together this Summer Solstice under old oak trees, nurtured by the ground, the living green grass under our feet, to honor the longest day of the year. We see the pain of the Earth, the devastation of Her body. But today we celebrate Her. We say Prayers of Healing, for pachamama and for all Her children.

We join with the earth and with each other.
To celebrate the seas.
To rejoice the sunlight.
To sing the song of the stars.

We join with the earth and with each other.
To recall our destiny.
To renew our spirits.
To reinvigorate our bodies.

We join with the earth and with each other.
To create the human community.
To promote justice and peace.
To remember our children.

We join together as many and diverse expressions of one loving mystery: for the healing of the earth and the renewal of all life.We join with the earth and with each other.
To bring new life to the land.
To restore the waters.
To refresh the air.

We join with the earth and with each other.
To renew the forests.
To care for the plants.
To protect the creatures.

From the United Nations Environmental Sabbath

~

may we all trust in our inner radiance of divine love…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 186 – 6/20/2018

beallster@gmail.com

“Refugees are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, with the same hopes and ambitions as us—except that a twist of fate has bound their lives to a global refugee crisis on an unprecedented scale.”
~ Khaled Hosseini ~

Today is the 18th annual World Refugee Day. The United Nations Refugee Agency sponsors this day recognizing and raising awareness about the world’s obligation to welcome and shelter refugees—those forced to flee violence or disaster in their home land.

On 4 December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 55/76 decided that, from 2001, 20 June would be celebrated as World Refugee Day. In this resolution, the General Assembly noted that 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

World Refugee Day reminds us that all human beings are valuable, we all deserve protections, and we are all personally obligated to care for one another.

Now More Than Ever, We Need to Stand with Refugees…

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

~ MLK ~

 

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 185 – 6/19/2018

beallster@gmail.com

On June 19, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. Ninety-nine years earlier, on June 19, 1865, we celebrated the first African-American Emancipation Day, the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States… Let us celebrate today with the words of President Obama on June 19. 2016…

Just outside the Oval Office hangs a painting depicting the night of December 31, 1862. In it, African-American men, women, and children crowd around a single pocket watch, waiting for the clock to strike midnight and the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect. As the slaves huddle anxiously in the dimly lit room, we can sense how even two more minutes seems like an eternity to wait for one’s freedom. But the slaves of Galveston, Texas, had to wait more than two years after Lincoln’s decree and two months after Appomattox to receive word that they were free at last.

Today we commemorate the anniversary of that delayed but welcome news. Decades of collective action would follow as equality and justice for African-Americans advanced slowly, frustratingly, gradually, on our nation’s journey toward a more perfect union. On this Juneteenth, we remember that struggle as we reflect on how far we’ve come as a country. The slaves of Galveston knew their freedom was only a first step, just as the bloodied foot soldiers who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge 100 years later knew they had to keep marching.

Juneteenth is a time to recommit ourselves to the work that remains undone. We remember that even in the darkest hours, there is cause to hope for tomorrow’s light. Today, no matter our race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, we recommit ourselves to working to free modern-day slaves around the world and to honoring in our own time the efforts of those who fought so hard to steer our country truer to our highest ideals.

~

may we be… free at last… free at last…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 184 – 6/18/2018

beallster@gmail.com

The true character of society is revealed in how it treats its children.

~ Nelson Mandela ~

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“The practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child,” spokesperson for the U.N. human-rights office.

~

Basta! Enough!

outrage continues to grow with the US’s inhumane zero tolerance policy of separating families at the border…

we  are required to act… please shout out your concern for children, children are not political pawns… we must safeguard their lives and earn the honor of being their protectors…

our hearts are all braking as we witness families trying to start a new life only to have their families torn apart… we can do better than this, we must do better than this… our actions matter – let us support those yearning to be and breathe free…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 183 – 6/17/2018

beallster@gmail.com

on this day ninety years ago, another first flight took place when Amelia Earhart embarked on the first trans-Atlantic flight by a woman… flying from Newfoundland to Wales in 21 hours, she captured our imagination forever… her legendary feats are the very emblem of courage — and of a being who refused to let fears and adversity ground her dreams…  let’s take this moment on astonishing lightness of being day to revel in her flight and soar…

~

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Everyone has oceans to fly, if they have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?

No borders, just horizons – only freedom.

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

~

freedom forever…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 182 – 6/16/2018

beallster@gmail.com

there are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors…

~Jim Morrison~

i thought i was going to travel down a familiar path today and then life’s heartsong pulled me onto another path through a gateway into unitive consciousness… one of those journeys deeper into the heart cave, a journey of emerge and see, where you watch the tides and wait until they are going out so as not to be flooded and in the waiting trust is building… in the journey, in life, in flow…

yes, to breaking out of the shell, free from fixed prison walls…

and, to re-member in this moment, this beautiful moment…

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

– Buddha –

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in this moment, this beautiful moment,

greet yourself with elation

as you arrive at the threshhold, the doorway home…

smile and breathe in this wondrous stranger…

embrace yourself, reverence yourself, open your heart as wide as you can to yourself, to the whole youniverse…

sit, feast, luxuriate, dance your radiance

diving ever deeper into the ocean of love…

~

this contemplation is a gift of love given to source in appreciation for the gift of life… may this gift bless all our relations and expand and return a thousand thousandfold blessings…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 181 – 6/15/2018

beallster@gmail.com

feeling in rhythm with the sun today

slowing down, standing still, listening in a deeper way

floating under a cloud into the heart cave

breathing at the frequency of the cosmic compassion wave….

blessing the space of grace where we interbe

transmitting lovingkindness without words,  communing silently

~

and for this moment, let’s be the space of grace…. smiling to start our internal love engine, let’s reach out our hands to one another to pass the love around the world and as we breathe in deeply through our one one heart feel our belly, our core, our heart cave expanding as we chant together…

may we be filled with lovingkindness

may we be well

may we be peaceful and at ease

may we be happy…

~

may we be at peace

may our one heart remain open

may we realize the beauty of our true nature

may we know the astonishing light of our being

may we be a source of healing for all…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 180 – 6/14/2018

beallster@gmail.com

Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.

~ Pema Chodron ~

What is Freedom?

But it’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for this is freedom—freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.

Excerpted from:

 Living Beautifully
with Uncertainty and Change
by Pema Chödrön
pages 6–7
trusting the journey of divine mystery…