Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 181 – 6/14/2020

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well come to this moment of acknowledging the astonishing light of our being, a light we have seen shining so brightly over the last three weeks, a light that has been shining since the beginning of beginningless time, a light calling us to listen, listen, listen to the soulsong singing our one body to come home to the heart, to the present moment, the only moment…

so many shoulders supporting us, such a boundless circle, a communion, a common union, our one body, yes, we are so created for these times… what follows is one of the thousand thousand fold expressions of this living truth of the astonishing light of our being…

~

We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For

You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered…

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?

Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for your leader.

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word ’struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

~ Hopi Elders’ Prophecy, June 8, 2000 ~

~

let us rise and deepen into the call for life, liberty and justice for all in our every thought, word and deed with every breath and step… and so it is… blessed being the astonishing light we are…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 180 – 6/13/2020

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with the words, “i can’t breathe” still echoing across the planet and through my being, i find myself needing a day of being completely unplugged, a day for reveren-sing breath, for sacred pause, for relea-sing grief, for re-imagining a land of the free still to be…

i invite you to join me in eight minutes and 46 seconds of breathing, of connecting into great mystery asking the ancestors to fill out our circle and to show us the way to peace, to a world where all relatives are valued as intricate threads in the web of life…

re-membering with each breath that we all belong to each other, no one is free until we all are free… may we each pick up our thread and tune into the soul song singing us of what is ours to do and be as co-creators of a cosmos of peace built on justice and guided by love…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 179 – 6/12/2020

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Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

~ Rumi ~

~

may we travel lightly with

more and more love

and more and more surrender

more and more love

and more and more surrender

more and more love

and more and more surrender

into the vast spaciousness of love

into the eternal chorus of the celestial realms with angelic beings re-joy-sing to earth beings below,

into the silent whispers of the stone peoples,

into the coyotes howling to the waxing moon,

into the twinkling eyes of children,

into your beloved’s hand holding yours promising never to forsake you,

into the smile of a stranger who is now a friend,

into the good, the true the beautiful, all that we can witness all over the planet in every moment through the eyes of love,

into the sweet nectar of love…

~

may we celebrate the cosmic dream of peace coming alive this moment at the close of a twelve year cycle and our collective metamorphosis uprising from sea of love energy to shining sea of love energy…

blessed be!

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 178 – 6/11/2020

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drawing down the energy of the almost waning half moon in pisces, the moon of trailblazing, of listening to the soul song, of leaping in faith as an imaginal cell, the fledgling aria reminds me that tomorrow venus’s metamorphosis comes to a close as she begins her next eight year cycle and aria also transports me to an old story from africa…

When a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come.

And when the mother is pregnant, she teaches that child’s song to the women of the village, so that when the child is born, they will welcome her with that song.

And when the child goes through the rites of puberty, they come together to sing that song.

And when the child falls, or hurts its knee, they will pick it up and remind her of the song.

And when the child crowns a noble achievement, they will celebrate with that song.

And if ever … along the way … the child gets swept up in the world and loses her way, the villagers will come together and remind her of her song.

And finally, when the child passes away, they will honor her life by singing the song.

~

…It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change’s gonna come, oh, yes, it will…

~ Sam Cook ~

~

as we pause on the precipice of a new journey into the unknown, may  we sing courageously celebrating rebirth…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 177 – 6/10/2020

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are you feeling called now more emphatically than ever to go and do the heart work? as we witness and listen to thousands and thousands of beings across the planet rise in concert with Venus to be and do the heart work of facing into shadow material and proclaiming enough is enough with racism, violence and dehumanization or better, deanimisation, as we want to include all beings; these triplets of the dying dominance worldview giving way more and more to real-eye-sing unity, peace and interconnection…

for a moment, i want to move from the macrocosm to this microcosm honoring the quintessential days, the last five days of five years ago, the anniversary of the dogstar, the blue star rupturing open my physical eye awakening  seeing predominantly with the spirit eye…

today, i’m called to contemplate the old story of there’s a spirit in everything, a genius, a divine spark that we are all called to re-member so Rilke’s words quoted in the image arise organically as do Michelangelo’s:

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

and even more emphatically when he says…

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

aren’t these words all an excellent instruction manual on doing the heart work of aligning with great spirit, rainbow mystery, the one heart, creative process, authenticity?…

yes, listen, listen, listen ever more deeply to our heartsong… release the spirit of the wise pilgrim navigating the journey, the genie always within every bottle/body… and then, may we all proclaim, free at last, free at last, free to…

walk in beauty on the path today

breathe it in and be carried away

by whispering winds demanding their say:

behold the wonder of each moment this day…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 176 – 6/9/2020

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it’s one of those days, dear rumi, when the place i thought i was going to travel to turns into quite a different pilgrimage… i thought i was going to write about the peace movement and how it’s been so vibrant for a thousand years, metaphorically speaking, as a sparkling star reminds me… and then i keep hearing – and still we rise – which seems so right on this day of Venus rising as the morning star as she is in the final readying phase for the new eight year cycle and as George Floyd is celebrated with his final going home ceremony and around the globe we commit to dismantling the virus of racism and coming home to the knowing that we belong to each other living in a web of life amazingly interconnected and interdependent on each other…

three and a half years ago, i wrote the following words around the moment of women’s march following the inauguration in the usa and they seem even truer today… there’s a low tide of consciousness all over the globe seeping into our pores, but, when the tide is low, we leap high no matter what… it’s a curious happening, a paradoxical habit, this ability to bounce back in the face of a goliath like wave with the wherewithal to crush everything in its path… instead of succumbing, we are coming together, showing the strength of our numbers, standing together speaking truth to power from a place of love, alchemi-sing the call for justice with weaving a world that works for all… let us invoke the goddess maya for our movement poem…

~

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

~

may we rise, may we rise, may we rise, everyday may we rise gracefully to the occasion and weave a world of peace built on justice guided by love…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 175 – 6/8/2020

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a revered elder of the American peace movement was sentenced on today on justice june 8 to time served for her part with six other Catholic peace activists in the April 4, 2018 Kings Bay Plowshares nonviolent direct action for nuclear disarmament… Elizabeth McAlister, age 80 and the widow of Phillip Berrigan, had already spent more than 17 months in Georgia county jails following her arrest…

Elizabeth McAlister told the court that she had spent much of her adult life speaking and writing against weapons of mass destruction as contrary to life and destructive of life on every level. The action she took to address this crime against humanity and the earth “came out of years of training in the ways Jesus taught us,” and as instructed by the prophet Isaiah, to beat swords into plowshares.

“I’ve tried to faithfully follow the prophecy of Isaiah – learning how to live humanly with other human beings in a humane environment…”

she concluded by saying that it’s because of her children and grandchildren that she feels compelled to act. “I don’t apologize for it. I had to follow my conscience and my faith.”

i want to conclude this posting on a culture of peace with liz’s daughter’s statement to the court and the cosmos:

“Good morning, friends, My name is Frida Berrigan and I am here to speak on behalf of my mom, Elizabeth McAlister, one of the co-defendants in the Kings Bay Plowshares. I’m here in New London, Connecticut with my husband Patrick and our three kids, Liz’s grandchildren – Madeline, 6; Seamus, 7; and Rosena, 13. My brother Jerry is also here, with his wife, Molly and Liz’s other 3 grandchildren, Leah, 10; Jonah, 13 and Amos, 16. My sister Kate and her partner Karen are also here. They are now Liz’s roommates and live up the street a few blocks.

We are all here to love and support and stand with (sit with, here anyway) Liz as she has sat and stood, loved and supported so many over the last 45-50 years of her life as a nonviolent anti-nuclear activist, ally to those struggling against oppression and advocate for civil and human rights. Last night, we all logged on to zoom to pray with more than 100 friends and family from around the country. We shared bread and wine and stories and drew strength from one another.So many of the names that blipped up would be familiar to you; friends who have written letters of support and love from literally every corner of Liz’s life; her family members, her fellow sisters from her time as a Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary sister, people who have broken bread and broken laws with her over the last 4 or 5 decades, who lived in community with her — in and out of prison. Each of these letters attest to what you, Judge Wood and you, Prosecutor Knocke, know in your hearts and see with your own eyes: that our mother is a good and holy person whose only crime is to attend to the thrum and whisper of her conscience and not allow that still, small voice to be drown out by the blood thirsty screams and desperate caterwauling of nuclear preparations and constant war making. 

As her daughter, I could wish that her hearing was not quite so good. As her kids – my brother, sister and I – wish she had not spent 17 months and 9 days in your county detention centers. We would like to say enough is enough. She has paid too high a price already, and we who love her have paid that price too. But as a 46-year-old white citizen of a nation that is going to spend $720 plus billion on the military this year, even in the face of an economy smashing pandemic that has killed 100,000 people and laid bare the stark inequity and fundamental brokenness of every fiber of the social safety net, I am grateful that people like my mother are willing to stand up and say: “Trident is a crime.”As a 46-year-old white citizen in a country where white supremacy and militarized policing are so emboldened that Derek Chauvin can crush George Floyd’s life out of him in front of a crowd, in front of cameras, where the McMichaels father and son can gun down Ahmaud Arbery in broad daylight as he jogged through the streets of a quiet Georgia town, I draw hope and inspiration from white people who continue to invoke Dr. King’s framework of the giant triplets of racism, militarism and materialism… these weights that cripple our collective humanity.

I draw hope and inspiration from my mom and her friends who declare that “Black Lives Matter”, who wed their anti-nuclear analysis with an anti-racist ethos, and declare that the ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide.So, I am here as a daughter who doesn’t want her 80-year-old mother sent back to jail, and a human being who wonders how anything ever changes if people like my mom aren’t willing to take that risk.I’m hoping you agree with the government that Liz McAlister has served enough time in jail already and you’ll help our family close this long and challenging episode of our lives today by sentencing her to time served. I also hope that you will recognize that as a person who owns nothing but the clothes on her back and the water colors she uses to paint with her grandchildren, you will waive all fines and restitution. Thank you.”

may we all listen deeply to the still small voice inside and act accordingly to create a culture of peace…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 174 – 6/7/2020

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celebrating you, celebrating all relatives on this day of re-membering the astonishing light of being within, the great central sun that shines eternally….

~

The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

~ Mary Oliver ~

~

may we each light up the whole sky with love with our every breath…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 173 – 6/6/2020

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When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~ Wendell Berry ~

~

let’s meet in a field

seeing true nature everywhere

being lovingkindness

~

yes, today let’s celebrate the full moon in the buddhist way with metta, lovingkindness, a practice so called for in these turbulent times for it involves involves concentrating and reciting, either silently or out loud, phrases of good wishes, good will toward ourself and others to purify us of hatred, ill will and enmity…

when we practice good will, we remove fear and negative reactivity from our mind re-membering at some point everyone has been our mother…

so let’s begin the practice with good will toward ourself… May I be safe and protected from physical and mental harm. May I be strong and healthy and enjoy well-being. May I be peaceful and truly happy. May I live my life with more joy and ease…

now extend those good wishes to those whom we like, family, mentors, good friends, and others… May you be safe and protected from physical and mental harm. May you be strong and healthy. May you be peaceful and happy. May you live with joy and ease…

Thay has said, “While it is easy to love the lovable, it may be the unlovable who need our love more.” so the next stage is to express good will, to the extent you can, toward someone who has caused you some slight injury; to the extent possible, extend these good wishes toward people who have caused you more pain, and to institutions and organizations that have caused you, your family, or your community pain and suffering…

finally, extend metta to all living beings in the universe… visualize yourself as a kind of lighthouse, with good will and lovingkindness streaming out from your heart and body in every direction, including up and down being 360 degrees of metta… May all beings be safe and protected from harm. May each and every being without exception be strong and healthy. May all living beings be peaceful and know true happiness. May each and every living being without exception live their lives with more joy and ease. And together may we complete the great journey of awakening liberation in all our relatives…

may we all rest in grace and feel  free…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 172 – 6/5/2020

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today is filled to overflowing with so much to honor… it is World Environment Day and with our crisis of climate change, our attention is so riveted here… it is Breonna Taylor’s 27th birthday, tragically she was murdered by police in her home in March while the world over we are still mourning the murder of George Floyd who is bringing us together to say enough!… enough to systemic racism which dehumanizes us all and this reminds me of another George Floyd – Martin Luther King – which weaves right into today is also the 52nd anniversary of the shooting of Robert F Kennedy, a man who suffered deeply following the assassination of his brother, a man who faced darkness, who tamed the savage forces and transmuted them into a widening circle of compassion…

on this day of the full moon in sagittarius with the penumbral lunar eclipse, the first of of eclipse season, i am compelled to write of this tomorrow and return to Bobby and Martin today and the wisdom we can derive from re-membering Bobby’s words and actions of wise leadership in a moment of volcanic eruption to help with grief…

“I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible–you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization–black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.“

yes, may we dedicate ourselves to peace and say a prayer, an intention for the usa, the planet, the cosmos and all our relatives real-eye-sing we are one interconnected being belonging to each other…