who says you can’t go home again? what a treat, what a re-treat to re-trace old footsteps long ago imprinted in the sand and blown away by ocean breezes… to turn again to the sea, the vast deep sea of love energy as a welcoming center for weary travelers to drink in the high spirits of the waters of life… it’s good to be home again…
i awaken today in the land of my origin, in the state of my birth, in the room and bed of early childhood dreams and imagination with this intention arising and realized with a ride down a well worn trail, a memory lane seen today with fresh eyes as if for the first time and the thousandth time all rolled into one…
smiling, i re-member Ram Das’s quip about thinking you’re enlightened until you return home…
yes, these words of His Holiness pictured above are something to be practiced every moment of every day along with my current mantra…
may i meet this moment fully as a friend…
a thousand years ago, the Great Peacemaker came across the Great Lake Onondaga, now known as Ontario, in a stone canoe to the warring six-nation confederacy of the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois… gradually his words and actions won the people over, they accepted the Great Law of Peace and they buried their weapons under the Peace Tree by Lake Onondaga and formed councils for making wise choices together… in the Haudenosaunee, historians recognize the oldest known participatory democracy, one that inspired the founders in crafting the Constitution of the United States. …
let us be in this moment peacemakers of the earth mother following the teachings of the Great Peacemaker just as still do the Onondaga Nation, whose name means Keepers of the Central Fire, always beginning gatherings with prayers of thanksgiving…
THE PEOPLE
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
Now our minds are one.
THE EARTH MOTHER
We are all thankful to our mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother, we send greetings and thanks.
Now our minds are one.
THE ENLIGHTENED TEACHERS
We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. We send greetings and thanks to these caring teachers.
Now our minds are one.
THE CREATOR
Now we turn our thoughts to the creator, or great spirit, and send greetings and thanks for all the gifts of creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the creator.
Now our minds are one.
CLOSING WORDS
We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.
Now our minds are one.
namaste…
it’s been a looooong day’s journey into night, this red eye journey, this cozy family pilgrimage across the vast dark sky bringing the rains with us to the parched heartland turning into brilliant sun as we touch down on the land of our birth and travel over the river and through the woods back through time/space to a cherished gathering space, homing space of belonging…
every day, every moment is one of thanksgiving… for sky and earth, sun and moon, stars and ocean, family and friends, peace and justice, love and harmony, moths and mosquitoes, stone people and slithering ones…
gifting us the opportunity to awaken a little more, to open our one heart a little wider, to be yes, yes, yes….
the calendars say it was fifty-three years ago today, this young, bold leader was struck down but on this day i’m transported into my 12 year old self sitting in my 7th grade classroom in a sleepy, backwater town… the world took a dramatic turn when the principal appeared at the door of our classroom with a newsflash: the president has been shot and is dead… i re-member my outrage as if those words were just pronounced and how i could not believe how cavalierly he uttered them and with a smile… we were shooed out to recess where all of my classmates circled around me knowing JFK was like a member of our family… three years earlier, I had traipsed around the state with my father to his speeches and to his senate office in DC and i can still feel my heart almost beating out of my chest every time i’d get to greet him and shake his hand… and then the inauguration and his address that stirred a nation and now, 1000 days later, we’d be heading back to DC for the state funeral…
today, i’m a 9 year old living in Camelot on the brink of a new world and a 12 year old taking comfort in hearing strains of We Shall Overcome rising from the somber and dignified crowds of people gathered to say goodby to our fallen leader…
i salute all poetic peace pilgrims with JFK’s invocation of peace… namaste…
moving through turbulence
breathe in, breathe out
seeing emotions as energies in motion
breathe in, breathe out
like weather patterns always changing
breathe in, breathe out
like running waves rushing out to sea
breathe in, breathe out
like curling waves pulled home magnetically
breathe in, breathe out
ebbing and flowing like the tides in the sea
breathe in, breathe out
rising and setting like the sun majestically
breathe in, breathe out… breathe in, we breathe out
namaste
~
it’s time once again for our weekly picture that speaks a thousand words about the astonishing light of your being and i’m feeling this lotus blossom does just that… these flowers, when surrounded by fire or suffering or adversity become even more fragrant just as your light, your beauty awakens in such moments and your compassionate heart shines through… thanks be that our inner light can never be extinguished no matter how dark the times may feel… so, gaze into this flower, breathe in the sweetness and connect even more deeply in this moment with the lotus lightness of being you are and evermore will be… deep bows…
today, in the midst of dis-membering,
i re-member the mantra i’ve been chanting for decades…
may i be one of the thousands to call in the new world and midwife
heart consciousness joyfully from the inside out to the outside in
again and again…
feeling a season of things falling away
a long reflective moment of looking within
smiling thank you, thank you, thank you
i turn again to MLK as i continue in the company of so many courageous souls with the visioning of a life-sustaining world, the beautiful world we all want and how do we get there… i know in my heart that how we get there is where we get which is why it is critical for us to come together and stand for love… this path of peacefully saying no to hatred in all its forms in an affirmative, fiercely loving way, speaking truth to power is the way of all successful movements effecting lasting change… when we use tactics of force, words of denigration and the like, this is what we’ll create…
so, i’ll say again and again, now is the moment to dig deep within right down to the core, to the stillpoint, to our essence, our essence of love and to be impeccable in returning with every breath to the wellspring of source…
being the change, standing for love…