Author: Jo Beall

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 69 – 2/23/2017

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Faced with our mortality, we each get to choose how we live… When Dr. Oliver Sacks learned he had only months remaining, he chose to live in the deepest, richest, most productive way he could realizing he is ocean. In his own words before he died:

Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life.

On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.

I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 68 – 2/22/2017

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on this day of the 22nd, a day vibrating at the frequency of grace, i turn to the familiar tale of hamsa or humso, beautiful swan embodying grace while chanting so hum, i am that… light and love…

once upon a time, little swan was resting in a pool in dreamtime… she looked up and saw a swirling black hole, the biggest one ever… in that moment, dragonfly appeared in the sky and swan inquired about the black hole to which dragonfly told her it is the doorway to the great beyond and to enter you must ask permission and earn the right…

little swan wasn’t sure she wanted to enter the black hole so she asked dragonfly what’s necessary to cross the portal and dragonfly told her she must accept whatever comes just as it is presenced without editing one iota of great spirit’s design…

little swan looked down at her ugly duckling body and replied that she’d graciously accept great spirit’s design and would not resist the currents of the black hole… she affirmed she would surrender to divine flow trusting in the present moment… her answer pleased dragonfly who began to spin a spell of magic engulfing little swan in a whirpool in the center of the pond…

when swan reappeared days later, she was transformed into a beautiful being of grace… dragonfly was shocked and wanted to know what had happened to which swan replied that she learned how to surrender to the power of great mystery, to surrender to the grace of the rhythm of the universe…

may we all let go and undam flow…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 67 – 2/21/2017

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Happy 59th Birthday, Peace Symbol!

 “Children of today easily identify it. They may not know its original meaning, but they know it stands for good things – be nice to friends, be kind to animals, no fighting. This is a marvelous achievement for Gerald Holtom’s simple design. Peoples around the world have marched with it, worn it, displayed it during combat, held it high on banners, and been arrested in its name. Ask any man, woman or child, ‘What one thing would everyone in the world want more than anything else?’ The answer would surely be world peace.’”

Ken Kolsbun, Peace: The Biography of a Symbol

on this day of walking into the unknown through a field of despair, a day when peace is so called for, it is a beautiful synchrony that it’s the re-birthday of peace…

Gerald Holtom, an artist and conscientious objector, created the Peace Symbol on February 21,1958. According to Christopher Driver, author of The Disarmers: A Study in Protest, Holtom created the design and then brought it to an organizer of a local British peace group. After several revisions, it was unveiled publicly on Good Friday of that year, by anti-nuclear demonstrators — the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) — who marched 50 miles from London’s Trafalgar Square to the weapons factory at Aldermaston. It was the first Ban-the-Bomb March.

When Gerald Holtom, a British designer and former World War II conscientious objector, sat down at his drawing board fifty-nine years ago, he was in almost total despair. He later told the editor of Peace News: ‘I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it symbolizing Earth.”

Welcome “International Peace Symbol Day.”  May we continue hoisting peace proudly everywhere weaving the remedy for despair…  Peace Out!

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 66 – 2/20/2017

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THE INNER IS FOUNDATION OF THE OUTER
THE STILL IS MASTER OF THE RESTLESS
THE SAGE TRAVELS ALL DAY
YET NEVER LEAVES HIS INNER TREASURE.

~Lao Tzu ~

i dream of being with a sound healer who attunes us to the frequency of grace naming the truth that suffering is grace, suffering takes us right into grace where our heart breaks wide open overflowing with lovingkindness and compassion…

on awakening, i live at the frequency of grace, breathing in and breathing out this journey of love…

Allow yourself to feel the love, the gratitude, the acknowledgement that is being showered upon you by all those who have had a connection, a contact, a friendship, an interaction or relationship with you in any way at any time.Allow yourself to be acknowledged for every kind deed and action
that you have ever offered to anyone, quietly,
from the kindness and compassion of your heart.Allow yourself to remember all the times you have laughed, giggled, chuckled, smiled and shared a precious moment with another.

Allow yourself to be honored for each and every time you enriched someone’s life by your conscious actions, your examples, your commitments,
your dedication and your big love.

Allow yourself to gather every precious memory of your most unique life and fill yourself with gratitude and joy for all that you have experienced.

Allow yourself to know that you are seen and appreciated as the magnificent being that you are, making a difference in this world.You are a special person,
who touches the lives of others and they are made better by your loving, gracefilled, compassionate presence.

 

 

 

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 65 – 2/19/2017

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Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy… they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us….

~ Harper Lee ~

for this segment of showing the astonishing light of being, i turn to the mockingbird, astonishing light being of joyful song… one year ago on this very date, i learned of the unexpected death of the mockingbird whisperer, Nellie Harper Lee and today  i sit shiva for another mockingbird whisperer, for all mockingbird whisperers singing us home…

may we all feel the pure innocence and love of  mockingbird in this moment and live as simply and wholeheartedly as freespirit, as mockingbird…

 in this moment, we are mockingbird re-joy-singer visiting the divine inner child, the wise one who knows she’s here to sing, to sing her soul song of joy in a field of peace seeded with justice and guided by love…

thousandfold thanks for being this re-joy-sing journey of coming home to our one cosmic heart…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 64 – 2/18/2017

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timelessness floating

drawing down darkening moon

moving to silence

~

today is the day of release, to let go of everything… knowing, certainty, identity, order, control and enter the realm of timelessness… the moment to simply be… in the stillness of the darkening moon, the stillpoint, in the gap between notes, in the void… alone/all one… sacredly, secretly, silently, softly, surrenderedly, synchronisticly balancing the tension of the opposites in this state of suspension… simply being breathed in, simply being breathed out…. breathe in, breathe out healing, holiness, wholeness… rebirth into the pure land of our one cosmic heart… always being love, always becoming love… always one with great mystery…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 63 – 2/17/2017

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many moons ago, i posted this quotation which shares the heart of a way of being as we saunter along the poetic peace pilgrimage by way of the caravan of re-joy-sing,,,  a friend and talented artista had the perfect setting for it and today it is the perfect image as the caravan travels to the sacred space where an inner hurricane blew through the soulscape…

we’ve all been through these moments we would not wish on anyone, pain and suffering are as much a part of the fabic of our lives as ease and ecstasy… i’ve been through enough of these critical junctures to have learned a thing or two about getting through gracefully…

so, today, the caravan of re-joy-sing settles into this space of devastation to be with this gift wrapped seemingly so unattractively… as we sit with it and begin to unwrap it, we notice light is beginning to shine through… yes, as we release the pain and  deadness, hope springs alive for the re-weaving of the web of creation….

Hurricane

It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 62 – 2/16/2017

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heavy rains flood the land

a sad ebb tide rolls in dashing hope

new dreams will rise tomorrow

~

how i need to re-member the words of rumi today, on this day beginning so early and in such a flow tide of synchrony… hours later, a sea change rolls in… knowing and unknowing, i fall into a deep sleep awakening hours later to inner heavy rains whispering of loss and calling me to the caravan of re-joy-sing, the co-heart of sand painters who live like water painting the day with colored sands to be blown into the spirit realms, the ocean of devotion at day’s end seeding new dreams…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 61 – 2/15/2017

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Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

– Rainer Maria Rilke –

Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke is an extraordinary book of ten letters written to a young man of nineteen years about to enter the German military named Franz Kappus who wrote Rilke looking for guidance and a critique of some of his poems. Rilke was himself only 27 when the first letter was written. The resulting five year correspondence is a virtual owner’s manual on what it is to be an artist and a person. Since we are all poets, pilgrims on a journey, it seems poetic justice to share the wisdom here and now for us to apply to the metaphor of our own lives…

You ask whether your verses are any good… You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.

~

 

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 60 – 2/14/2017

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

today and everyday, our pilgrimage is a journey of love blessed by St Valentine, Patron  of Pilgrims, where…

every breath is a naming prayer

every step a walking meditation

bringing us home to our one cosmic heart, an ocean of devotion

~

dreams often inspire a flow of contemplation which inspire words and deeds… i’m in a classroom sharing with the openhearted children of the earth, sharing a heart mudra to the tune of “this little light of mine…” where you join your thumbs together for the base of the heart temple and your index fingers together for the spire which you place on your third eye to open the flow of divine light to shine through the heart as lovingkindness and compassion and then you move your hands, the heart temple of light, down to the belly, the center of being, the stillpoint, the watery womb of creation and with this movement, this simple action, our inner light, the eternal flame flows soundlessly throughout the all that is in ever widening waves, one with the tides of interbeing, the sheltering arms of the tree of life…

~

as we meet this moment fully, we are lovingkindness and compassion, joy dancing in swirling and whirling circles of peace passing all understanding, one with divine flow…