Author: Jo Beall

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 109 – 4/4/2018

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Fifty-one years ago today, the prophet and poet, Martin Luther King, Jr delivered a rousing call to action in a speech entitled, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, to an overflow crowd at Riverside Church in New York City. Dr King’s challenge to engage in a radical revolution of values holds as true now as it did then.

Fifty years ago today, a bullet robbed us of one of the great human rights leaders of all time who called for a radical re-imagining of society calling forth our better angels to go deeply into the valley of the shadow of militarism, poverty and racism and to act boldly to end these pestilences…

The night before he was murdered, he gave one of his  most prophetic speeches known as the Mountaintop Sermon which called us to action, a call  that today all over the world we are awakening to with the…

 Poor People’s Campaign – A National Call for Moral Revival

there is no turning back now for now is the moment for us to do as Brother Martin asked…

‘Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.’

here is the MLK50 Pledge… thank you for joining me in this pledge and for making every moment a moment of peace…

A CALL TO PEACE AND ACTION

“No Justice, No peace;
Know Justice, Know Peace”
is our rallying cry.

On this day, we, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. call for peace. A peace that is more than the absence of war. We call for a just peace. A peace where all humans have the rights of security, prosperity, good and free education, accessible and plentiful food, clean water and a planet free from disastrous pollution to calamitous climate change.

We call for a just peace. A peace where people are able to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence. A peace committed to understanding, celebrating and learning from difference. A peace grounded in what Dr. King called the Beloved Community.

It takes more than words to bring about peace. It takes action. Action that decreases hostility between people and actions that promote trust so that our words have meaning. Action, must occur within a vision.

We call on ALL people to imagine a world without poverty, hunger and homelessness.Imagine a world where we reject racist ideologies and replace them with an all-inclusive spirit of love for ALL people. Imagine a world where we resolve disputes by peaceful conflict-resolution and true reconciliation. Imagine a world, where love and justice triumph.

“No Justice, No peace;
Know Justice, Know Peace”
is our rallying cry.

But, it will take more than vision to bring peace. We must face the injustices of the past and acknowledge the injustices of the present no matter how painful. This means we must find a way to talk WITH each other instead of AT each other. It will take all of us searching deep within our own souls, taking what some call the “inward journey of self-reflection.”

It will take all of us to name those things we would rather hide-those things that stop us from being our better selves. We must not only name them, but also begin the process of purging those things that stifle our growth and the growth of others. This will lead us to form and develop communities of understanding that will walk, talk and stand with us. It is in this spirit-with humility and mutuality-that we will come together with one another and build a community of peace and goodwill for all humankind.

“No Justice, No peace;
Know Justice, Know Peace”
is our rallying cry.

Contributed by:
Assistant Professor Andre E. Johnson,
Department of Communications,
University of Memphis

~

may we all stand hand in hand in love for love filled with the light of divine grace to peacefully serve the world…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 108 – 4/3/2018

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welcome this moon (month) of awakened april where we are still under the glow of  the full moon of poetry leading all pilgrims, also known as poets on a journey, to travel in an awakened way as we walk each other home to our one heart…

as we pioneer onward, a few signposts along the way of this deepening soul journey into greater and greater love…

  • A desire to explore new places, avenues, and opportunities
  • A vision of something better
  • An ingenuity to try new ideas, inventions, innovations, or enterprises
  • A readiness to assume personal responsibility
  • A commitment to community, family, a sense of place
  • A determination and the courage to never give up
  • A sense of independence while realizing our interdependency

may these words encourage us as we travel in an ever awakened way…

The Journey 
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 107 – 4/2/2018

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With every breath, I plant the seeds of devotion. I am a farmer of the heart.

~ Rumi ~

ah yes, here we are in awakened april and still in the energetic glow of the full moon of awakening and rebirth on this day known as bright monday or easter monday when so much light pours in and i re-member this day six years ago when i had a spontaneous re-mission of cancer and three years ago when i went on pilgrimage to the heart chakra to celebrate that miracle  under the full moon at stonehenge… today marks 29 weeks of being on the deepest awakening initiation ever flowing through me, to honor this journey i want to share an invocation of light that hundreds of us have been offering to call forth divine grace to bless, comfort and inspire stability and balance through the great turning…

Invoking the Light of Grace

In the name of the Great Mother, we invoke the benevolent streams of universal light to come and enfold us in a sof cocoon of love’s transforming grace. COME COME COME… subtle realms of higher vibration… and infuse this coalescing energetic matrix with the purest frequencies of harmony, balance and stability. May this field of redeeming grace weave ever so gently, in, through and around us now, blessing us with its qualities of enduring strength and resilience. We now invite the Holy Spirit to enter into the deepest regions of our thoughts and feelings, offering up all of our resistances, attachments, pains, stress, anxiety and suffering to this inner Divine Presence. Holy Spirit, please help us to see our personal circumstances through the eyes of the soul. Shift our perceptions into right understanding, that we may pass through our difficult times with more poise and equanimity. Let deep and abiding comfort come from remembering who we really are… as embodied expressions of divinity Itself. There is no greater source of comfort than the Holy Spirit within me. There is no greater source of comfort than the Holy Spirit within me. There is no greater source of comfort than the Holy Spirit within me. By and through our experiences of suffering…

May our hearts be softened. May our minds be purified. May our words be more tenderly spoken. May our thoughts extend love to every living thing. May our actions be a blessing unto the world. May our souls shine throughout our human expression. And may we be continually humbled. Beloved Mother of all life, please saturate the Unity Grid with wave after wave of transforming love and grace. Bring greater comfort and understanding to every human soul who desires it. May every man, woman and child move more deeply into your embrace now, that we may be consoled as one. May this focus of Divine Light and its containing matrix be made imperishable, eternally sustained, all powerfully active and ever expanding until the evolutionary plan is fulfilled for all living things… in accordance with the highest good of all. We seal this activity in Cosmic Peace.

~

hover over us, beloved, and center us in grace…

deep bows and thousand thousandfold thanks…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 106 – 4/1/2018

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“At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us.”

~ Black Elk ~

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

~ TS Eliot ~

i awaken today with a song singing through… Hallelujah, one of my favorite songs of re-joy-sing alerting me to the sacred nature of this day of awakening, of rising from the dead, the things we have died to and re-joining the living in an awakened way….

for so many turns around the sun, i desire to live in a place named Stillness and today on the  52nd day on the road there within a 202nd  day on an initiation path of awakening, all the cells of this cell of the one cell are singing free at last!

this awakening journey along the rainbow trail is all about slowing down, breathing in rhythm with pachamama, anchored with her heartbeat, living cosmic balance breathing in and breathing out…

stillness is all there is and stillness loves dancing, dolphin dancing, in harmony with flow…

slowly, in slow motion, everything gets still and waves of the peace that passes all understanding wash through becoming the frequency of the ocean of being…

stillness, wellspring of joy at rainbow’s end…

happy trails!

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 105 – 3/31/2018

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i’ve spent the last couple of hours bathing in this full moon of rebirth, this first full moon after equinox inviting our harvesting of  the blessings of our seed energies planted under the new moon… today is a day of  standing in the crossroads and conversing with the dweller at the threshold who invites us to leap off the precipice to die into silence, to die to the past, to die to the future, to die into the breath, to completely let go… here, silence reveals itself as refuge, as awareness that can be trusted, tenderly loving and resounding with the majesty and the mystery of the sacred…

now, let us turn to a favorite full moon bathing practice…

~

may we be filled with lovingkindness

may we be well

may we be peacefull and at ease

may we be happy

~

may we all awaken to moon’s energy re-membering we are one heart…
may we all awaken to moon’s oceans as clean-sing tears…
may we all awaken to moon’s wind as enlivening breath…
may we all awaken to moon’s landscape as our body…

~

may our one heart open dormant seeds
may our tears fill rain clouds
may our breath give flight to migrating birds
may our body be refuge

~

may sister moon receive our one heart for her energy
may  sister moon receive our tears for her oceans
may sister moon receive our breath for her wind
may  sister moon receive our body for her landscape

~

 may sister moon open dormant seeds
may sister moon fill rain clouds
may sister moon give flight to migrating birds
may  sister moon nurture refuge

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 104 – 3/30/2018

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Nobody who finds himself on the road to wholeness can escape that characteristic suspension which is the meaning of crucifixion.

For he will infallibly run into things that thwart and “cross” him…

~ CG Jung ~

today, as many across the globe honor this day as Good Friday, a (w)holy day in (w)holy week, i contemplate what crucifixion means and where it leads… i find this Jung quotation about being on the road to (w)holeness necessitating crucifixion so right on for on each of our paths, aren’t we led daily to cross roads where we are given the choice to dissolve into and serve our greater self who responds in kind with wholeheartedly entering the human realm? Isn’t this cross the true cross, the sacred stillpoint in the tiny space of the heart where every dance begins, where we real-eyes the gift of our suffering with grace, of our bearing what is leads us to the deepest peace of the flowing river of joy?

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 103 – 3/29/2018

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in celebration of we’moon herstory month, on this day observed in the christian calendar as the last supper, it seems very fitting to re-member the day from a divine feminine perspective, as a rollicking dinner party a la Judy Chicago’s reinterpretation of The Last Supper from the point of view of women, who, throughout history, have prepared the meals and set the table…

for thirty years, a print of this acrylic has hung in the dining area wherever i live honoring the feminine energy of communion, of feasting, of sharing and sacrificing (as in making sacred) what we have with others…

three years ago on the day of the last supper, i arrived on the isle of avalon, sacred space of the goddess where beloved community of thirteen joined in the breaking of bread and drinking of holy water and clean-sing (cleansing), as in the washing of feet, of our soles who kiss the earth and ground us into embodied presence…

in this moment, in every moment, we offer thanks for our last supper/first supper, last breath/first breath, our always flowing in the rhythm of dying/rebirthing, ebbing/flowing, breathing in/breathing out always being love, always becoming love…

may we all take this moment to ingest the energies of  the divine feminine and divine masculine in sacred communion…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 102 – 3/28/2018

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take heart, pilgrim!

you were born for this:

to leap into the void, sprout wings and fly…

~

as i write tonight, i am so tired so i shall let  Pema’s words on the deepening interior journey we are all traversing speak for me…

On the journey of the bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is our heart—our wounded, softened heart. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings.

~

yes, take heart..

shanti, shanti, shantihi…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 101 – 3/27/2018

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as a wee child, i was instructed in the wisdom of pausing when things are getting overwhelming… years later i would hear of the wisdom of incorporating this practice of pausing throughout the day according to our ultradian healing rhythm cycling throughout our body every ninety minutes or so… honoring this cycle sustains the natural healing program of  our body temples…

so right now, in this moment, let’s tune in together to the transformational frequency and experience one of the most important actions we can do this moment, this day, this life…

Pause

Breathe

Rest in the Gap

Slow Down

Relax

Witness the Beauty

Listen

Bless this Space…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 100 – 3/26/2018

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100 Days!

On this journey, I AM being present in a deeper way…

each breath through our one heart a gift

each step on earth mother a kiss

each communion with sun a celebration

each reunion with moon a dance

each moment being in flow

~

On this road less traveled, I AM trusting more profoundly…

listening to the whispers from our one heart

aligning with cosmic wisdom

 flowing in beauty all around

~

On this pilgrimage home, I AM surrendering more completely…

re-membering we are love and that’s all that there is

living from the heart in thought word and deed

real-eye-sing we are rainbow clouds

flowing into great mystery