Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 356 – 12/7/2019

Bearing Witness to the Living Earth

WE ARE EARTH.
JUST LIKE EARTH, OUR BODIES ARE 70% WATER,
WITH THE SAME PROPORTION OF SALT AS THE OCEANS.
OUR BONES ARE MADE STRONG BY LIMESTONE
THAT COMES FROM PREHISTORIC SHELLFISH.
EVERY ATOM OF OUR BODY
HAS BEEN A ROCK OR A BUTTERFLY OR A DAISY OR A LION.
WHAT WE CALL MOUNTAIN, AIR, AND OCEAN
ARE THE BONES, THE BREATH, AND THE BLOOD
OF OUR MOST ANCIENT ANCESTORS
AND OUR FUTURE DESCENDANTS.
WE BELONG TO EARTH.

we come together today from across the planet, our island home for a twemty-four hour vigil to bear witness and take action for our earthmother, our one body, our home…

may we open to the complexity and mystery of our relationship to Earth and develop our humanity so that we can hold more of the whole and respond to life from that wholeness by connecting with the truth that we are one body…

our earth mother’s heartbeat echoes through all our relations… feel the momentum building as more and more of us hear her call to rise up and stand together as one large orchestra playing a seamless symphony and re-joy-sing in the harmony we embody as a beautiful wave now encircling the cosmos – peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is… peace prevails on earth, love is all there is…

join with me now in breathing deeply in to the womb of being while placing a hand on your heart and with each deep breath, feel your heart, our one heart, opening a little wider re-membering we all belong to each other, each of our individual destinies is tied with our one collective destiny… to journey to the core of our being, to our heart of gold to be our original face of radiant love, dancing with rainbow mystery…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 355 – 12/6/2019

as the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 25) meets in Madrid, activist, Greta Thunberg, arrived on the scene to march with the 500,000 strong in Spain and more across the planet raising one voice calling for action now for climate justice to put out the fire burning down our one home…

“I sincerely hope that the COP 25 will lead to something concrete and that will lead to also an increase in awareness among people in general and that those in power grasp the urgency of the climate crisis… with the global Fridays for Future movement continuing to sound the alarm, I know that we will do everything we can to make sure that this is something that cannot be ignored anymore, that they cannot just hide away anymore,” Thunberg said.

may we all act to stand for our beautiful planet and stop the raping… in so doing, we must put an end to war and imperialism which literally and in every way fuels the fires of destruction…

one voice for climate justice, one voice for peace on earth…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 354 – 12/5/2019

right now, it’s like this… an inner journey of  re-membering the dream of the beautiful world we are… thanks to all the beautiful beings walking this path of heart, inspiring me and all others… let us listen deeply to the wisdom of the keeper of the sacred white buffalo calf pipe…

~

I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations, ask you to understand an Indigenous perspective on what has happened in America, what we call “Turtle Island.” My words seek to unite the global community through a message from our sacred ceremonies to unite spiritually, each in our ways of beliefs in the Creator.

We have been warned from ancient prophecies of these times we live in today, but have also been given a vital message about a solution to turn these terrible times.

To understand the depth of this message, you must recognize the importance of Sacred Sites and realize the interconnectedness of what is happening today, in the reflection of the continued massacres that are occurring on other lands and our own Americas.

I have been learning about these important issues since the age of 12 when I received the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and its teachings. Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the beginning of time. These places have been violated for centuries and have brought us to the predicament that we are in at the global level.

Look around you. Our Mother Earth is very ill from these violations, and we are on the brink of destroying the possibility of a healthy and nurturing survival for generations to come, our children’s children.

Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site called the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, “Heart of Everything That Is,” from continued violations. Our ancestors never saw a satellite view of this site, but now that those pictures are available, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and, when fast-forwarded, it looks like a heart pumping.

The Diné have been protecting Big Mountain, calling it the liver of the earth, and we are suffering and going to suffer more from the extraction of the coal there and the poisoning processes used in doing so.

The Aborigines have warned of the contaminating effects of global warming on the Coral Reefs, which they see as Mother Earth’s blood purifier.

The indigenous people of the rainforest say that the rainforests are the lungs of the planet and need protection.

The Gwich’in Nation in Alaska has had to face oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, also known to the Gwich’in as “Where life begins.”

The coastal plain is the birthplace of many life forms of the animal nations. The death of these animal nations will destroy indigenous nations in this territory.

As these destructive developments continue all over the world, we will witness much more extinct animal, plant, and human nations, because of humankind’s misuse of power and their lack of understanding of the “balance of life.”

The Indigenous people warn that these negative developments will cause havoc globally. There are many, many more original teachings and knowledge about Mother Earth’s Sacred Sites, her chakras, and connections to our spirit that will surely affect our future generations.

There needs to be a fast move toward other forms of energy that are safe for all Nations upon Mother Earth. We need to understand the types of minds that are continuing to destroy the spirit of our whole global community. Unless we do this, the powers of destruction will overwhelm us.

Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. This Prophecy was hard to believe! The water was plentiful, pure,  full of energy, nutrition, and spirit. Today we have to buy clean water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it’s just clear liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford.

Not everyone will have the right to drink safe water. We fail to appreciate and honor our Sacred Sites, ripping out the minerals and gifts that lay underneath them as if Mother Earth were simply a resource, instead of the source of life itself.

Attacking nations and using more resources to carry out destruction in the name of peace is not the answer! We need to understand how all these decisions affect the global nation; we will not be immune to its repercussions. Allowing continual contamination of our food and land is affecting the way we think.

A “disease of the mind” has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring peace.

In our Prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unites spiritually as a global nation or faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives’ eyes.

We are the only species that is destroying the source of life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land. Using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.

I ask you to join me in this endeavor. Our vision is for the peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace.

As each day passes, I ask all nations to begin a global effort and remember to give thanks for the pure food that has been gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.

This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony, or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war, and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the vast myth of progress and development that ruled the last millennium.

To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. You are the one who must decide.

You alone – and only you – can make this crucial choice, to walk in honor or to dishonor your relatives. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World.

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger?

Know that you are essential to this world. Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You are desperately needed to save the soul of this world. Did you think you were put here for something less? In a Sacred Hoop of Life, there is no beginning and no ending.

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 353 – 12/4/2019

somehow, Oregon’s state logo, She Flies with Her Own Wings, seems  a perfect turn of phrase for  this moment… this moment of slowing down, turning inward and descending into the watery depths to take this moment to bathe in the illumination of the central sun within, and luxuriate in her nourishing radiance…

like my state, this moment i’m flying on inner wings across a timeless landscape drawing down and up the energy of the self organizing intelligence of the cosmos, of the implicate order to open our heart circle ever wider to the flow of compassion and lovingkindness that is the very air we breathe…

will everyone join in a moment of gathering the quintessence and our attention and intention in a moment of silent metta, lovingkindness emanating and radiating from the deep inner ground of being?

may we return to this mantra in sync with our ultradian rhythms which occur every ninety minutes or so and harmonize our nervous system with its natural healing cycle…

~

may we all be filled with lovingkindness

may we all feel safe and at ease

may we all accept ourselves just as we are

may we all be deep peace

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 352 – 12/3/2019

the awakening of the rainbow light of awareness is the beautiful moment when the central sun breaks free within illuminating the soul’s journey on the pathless path…

today begins in a soulful space of re-membering dreams/waking reality of buddhic beings filling life so richly with their unbounded, joyful exuberance, yes, i’m talking about the four legged dog people and as i muse upon my longing to live as simply and as in the moment as they, a little jingle arises like the sun…

~

live simply, live free, live in open, spacious reality

die to the old, birth in the new

enter the cave of dreaming womb, transmuting seed into radiant bloom

flowering now in a garden of delight, greeting this day of joyous light

~

i so love dwelling in this spacious field of gold and receiving this gift of a golden key of life – to live simply, to live free, to live in open, spacious reality – has been re-joy-sing me all day long and now i re-member an old shaker song arising from the same open source…

~

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning we come round right.

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 351 – 12/2/2019

ah/awe, descending december… already i feel the pull of the sun coming to a standstill, soulstice, and like the sun, feel my rhythms coming to a standstill, a slowing down into the stillpoint, a season of getting down to bare bones and nourishing the roots, the essence at the core of being in the deep inner ground…

yes, may we all travel awakened, lightened, flowing with the wisdom of the deep dark earth where we transform, go beyond the form, the pattern, to be and become our, as yet, unknown self, a dancing star…

For the Unknown Self


So much of what delights and troubles you
Happens on a surface
You take for ground.
Your mind thinks your life alone,
Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,
Yet it seems that a little below your heart
There houses in you an unknown self
Who prefers the patterns of the dark
And is not persuaded by the eye’s affection
Or caught by the flash of thought.

It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience
With all your unfolding expression,
Is never drawn to break into light
Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness
And misjudge what you do and who you are.

It presides within like an evening freedom
That will often see you enchanted by twilight
Without ever recognizing the falling night,
It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
All you do and say and think is fostered
Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.

It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
That is not ruffled by disappointment;
It presides in a deeper current of time
Free from the force of cause and sequence
That otherwise shapes your life.

Were it to break forth into day,
Its dark light might quench your mind,
For it knows how your primeval heart
Sisters every cell of your life
To all your known mind would avoid,

Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
Offering you only discrete glimpses
Of how you construct your life.

At times, it will lead you strangely,
Magnetized by some resonance
That ambushes your vigilance.

It works most resolutely at night
As the poet who draws your dreams,
Creating for you many secret doors,
Decorated with pictures of your hunger;

It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to wholesome ease.

~ John O’Donohue ~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 350 – 12/1/2019

welcome to one of my favorite of the moons – descending december and as it’s sunday it’s the astonishing light of your being day…. today’s picture honors a wise elder who transitioned on the day before the day of mourning/thanksgiving day in the usa… known as a “Living Treasure” by her tribe, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, and as a “Living Cultural Legend” by the Oregon Council of the Arts, Grandmother Agnes Baker-Pilgrim is an ambassador for our earthmother who has touched the lives of people from many lands, helping us remember sacred ways of living…

let us listen to a message she delivered five years ago…

~

“I’ve been talking about Water around the world for about 15 years.

The Creator called upon me to be a Voice for the Voiceless and for a long time I didn’t know what that meant.  But then I hit upon that one of those, that needs our voice, is Water.

And spirit said, all humans came from water in the amniotic sac of our mother’s womb and that Water is our first medicine. We are to take care of it and guard it . Not just for now but for seven generations to come in the unborn.

Water is very sacred. We are all born in water. We have an obligation to take care of it.

75% of our bodies are made of water. There’s water in our blood, water in our tears, water in our spit,  and water in our brain. The brain has zillions of cells and each one needs to be coated with water.  The elements that are in good water are what we need to oil our joints. If you’re an elder like me you listen, so you can have those elements flowing through your body.

And I found out water can hear. So talk to the water inside of you and thank it for your life. When I use water — whether I’m  drinking it or cooking with it, taking a shower, washing my hands, washing my clothes, brushing my teeth of flushing the toilet… Wherever I use water, I bless it.

I believe that if you do a ritual with water every morning and thank it for your life – even if you do that for two weeks – you will find a difference in your body.

Here  I am going on 90 years. Water keeps me agile and strong and well because when I drink my water I tell it, “I love you! Do whatever you need to do to take care of my body. You know your job and I will always bless you.”

When I’m standing in the shower, “Bless me. I love you.”

When I’m driving my car over a bridge of water anywhere in the world I say, “Bless you water. Thank you for all that live in you and drink from your banks.” And I thank it in that way.

When I’m in an airplane and I look out the window and see lakes and rivers and oceans, I bless the water.  I thank it for taking care of the habitat and the whales and all those that are out in the water. Us humans, us two-leggeds are the caretakers of this planet.  It is our job.

A long time ago the Beloved Creator woke me in the Dreamtime and he said, “Go and be this Voice for the water.  Tell everyplace you go about water, that it is our first medicine.”

Everybody has to take care of the water. Not for the adults so much, but for the children that are going to come after you and for the next seven generations of the unborn.

Water should be everyone’s concern. Without water we all die. All life dies. Water is precious.

I pray that whoever sees this, that you too will take care of your Mother Earth wherever you live and you will care for the water that surrounds you and the water that is within you.

Thank water for your life.

~

on this day of sharing the astonishing light of being, there is another to be honored for sixty-four years ago today, Rosa Parks, another wise and adventurous rebellious spirit stood in the state i stand today and acted from a stance of quantum love holding nothing back when she refused to move to the back of the bus, an action which galvanized a yearlong community boycott and ushered in a new chapter on the freedom road…

courageously asserting and honoring all peoples’ inalienable rights, Rosa was not the first to be arrested on a bus nor was it her first act of resistance against second-class citizenship; Rosa symbolized the black community’s refusal to be pushed around. Her aim was both local and global – to end all oppression. 382 days later, Montgomery buses were integrated and a young Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr would emerge as the leader of the civil rights movement inspiring us to keep moving forward and reminding us that only light drives out darkness and only love drives out hate… oh, for these words to be imprinted on our one heart and in every action…

and, so it is…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 349 – 11/30/2019

on this day of sanctity, in this moment, this moon, this pilgrimage, this life of being in the unknowable, let us bless this space between us, this numinous space, this sacred space of openness where the spirit of all that is always flows through us, where we are one heart always being love…

blessing this space, this unified field of the divine, this pilgrimage of awakening with one small step and another and another, this journey of healing becoming more and more whole as we transmute the holes into the holy, the wholeness we are…

thanks be for it all for everything is the teacher bringing us to this moment of peace, of love, of joy… thanks be for you and your amazing gifts of kindling fire, the inner flame of spirit, of inspiration, of breath, of our breathing together through our one heart…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 348 – 11/29/2019

hallelujah! ha ha, hey hey, it’s dolphin dancing day! the moment of ringing a bell of peace and everyone’s soul entrains to the sound which resounds as an echo of hope and faith and trust in the divine unfolding of our ever expanding cosmos…

~

joyful in this moment

being true refuge here and now

coming home to peace

~

trusting in the waves

to bring us home with every breath

deepening and widening the arc of our one heart

from me to thee to we

as we dance the pathless path of great mystery

~

may we all be filled with lovingkindness

may we all feel peaceful and at ease

may we all welcome ourselves just as we are

may we all be free

~

thanks be for this moment of resonance, this portal of peace where all our relations, one by one, are ringing bells of love creating a wave of our one heart dolphin dancing supporting earth mother supporting us… one cosmos, many stars, expansive roots, all belonging to each other woven together with invisible iridescent threads dancing rainbow mystery…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 6 – Day 347 – 11/28/2019

today is thanksgiving day in the usa and i’m having a difficult time writing this peace… on the one hand, every day is a day of thanksgiving and on the other hand, this is a day of mourning for native americans and on another hand, given the troubling events all over the planet, it is so very important to take a day to give thanks to the cosmos for the good that sustains us… my quandary is how to do this while remaining in integrity with our concerns about the wellbeing of Earth and the wellbeing of all our relatives…

for thanksgiving to truly be about the giving of thanks, settlers and their descendants have to first reckon with our ruthless disregard for native life… this colonial holiday based on the erasure of Indigenous peoples promotes a false vision of peaceful cooperation between nations… settler colonialism depended on the taking of land and the displacement of Indigenous peoples… accumulation and ownership of land are antithetical to how most Indigenous peoples understand relationships with people, the natural and spiritual worlds, and other-than-human beings.

“My Ancestors didn’t accumulate capital, they accumulated networks of meaningful, deep, fluid, intimate collective and individual relationships of trust.” We see relationships rather than capital as the key to our futures. We see the world this way because this is what has always sustained us. We have always understood the giving of thanks to be part of our everyday existence, part of how we maintain balance, part of how we think about the next seven generations, not just ourselves.

~Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, who is Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg and a member of the Alderville First Nation~

being in good relations is a central ethical concept for many Indigenous nations meaning recognizing the mutual interdependence of human and other-than-human beings and engaging with others in a consensual, nonhierarchical way… it is about taking actions in the present that are based in the historical and spiritual traditions of communities, actions that promote the proper balance and reciprocity of the whole community…

today as i reckon with where i/we fall short, i offer this meditation from Rabbi Michael Lerner for me/us to come into right relationsip on this day of thanksgrieving/thanks giving/thankshaving/thanksbeing…

“Today we give thanks to this incredible universe for all the beauty, the goodness and the miracles that surround us every day and to which we have given too little conscious attention. And we celebrate the ability to be with friends, neighbors, family or others on this holy day of joyful appreciation of all the good in our lives.

Our beautiful and life-sustaining planet is in danger, so on this Thanksgiving we recommit ourselves to taking all steps necessary to reverse the processes that threaten the life-support systems of the planet, and to preserve the rich diversity of life forms and of beauty that we experience daily on planet earth. We are part of the unity of all being, a manifestation of God’s or Goddesses’ love, or of the loving energy of the universe that brought together our parents to bring us into life. While we are alive, we recommit ourselves to making every day a mini thanksgiving in which we take time to celebrate the grandeur and mystery of being itself.

This is the right moment, then, for us to also put forward our prayers or intentions for a world of peace, justice and environmental sanity. We who recognize that our ability to live today enjoying all the benefits of North America was achieved in part through a genocidal struggle against the native peoples of this land are not willing to live through another period in which other peoples may be losing their lands to settlers or oppressive colonization or through brutal wars...

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we affirm our dedication to being “unrealistic” for peace, social justice, environmental sanity, and a world based on love, caring, kindness and generosity.  In so doing, we will make realistic what at first seemed to be unrealistic. And so it is. Amen.