Monthly Archives: September 2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 268 – 9/10/2017

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Named Sacred September 10 Astonishing Light of Being 9-10-17

what an honor to celebrate grandmother wisdom for this week’s edition of the astonishing light of being and that today is the fourth anniversary of the first official outer poetic peace pilgrimage is icing on the cake…

the grandmothers, women of wisdom, white-hairs, moon-pause relatives have always been tasked with nurturing the spirit of all the children of the cosmos…

may we all deeply listen and receive the blessing of the divine mother…

“May you find in me the Mother of the World.  
May my heart be a mother’s heart, my hands be a mother’s hands.  
May my response to your suffering be a mother’s response to your suffering.  
May I sit with you in the dark, like a mother sits in the dark.  
May you know through our relationship that there is something in this world that can be trusted.”

May we all know how completely we belong in the sacred web of life, in the great cosmic field of mystery…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 267 – 9/9/2017

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Named Sacred September 9 Rumi Living Poetry 042

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions… For the god
wants to know himself in you.

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 266 – 9/8/2017

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Named Sacred September 8 Wendell Berry I have been led.

in the midst of all the suffering that is so visibly, viscerally with us, i, too, feel led and held in the deep peace at the eye of the storm…

thank you to farmer of the heart and of the land, Wendell Berry, for so aptly describing the experience of walking this pathless path… the moments when the rubber touches the road and we are given the opportunity to walk our talk, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to walk in light, to walk in love, to listen deeply within for which way to go, to trust we are being pulled along the path with heart…

thank you to the cosmic hum for singing our soul song through our bones, for leading us along the spirit path…

may we all love beyond measure, understanding and conditions re-membering our true nature as a communion of compassionate cooperatives dwelling in a responsive cosmos cross-pollinated with every breath’s love and light…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 265 – 9/7/2017

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Named Sacred September 7 Eclipse Totality at Smith Rock

“A true vocation requires shedding anything that would impede or obscure the call. A true pilgrimage requires letting go of the very things most people try to hold onto. In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow. As the old proverb says, “Before you begin the journey, you own the journey. Once you have begun, the journey owns you.” After all, what good is a dream that doesn’t test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn’t carry us to the edge and then beyond that place? A true calling involves a great exposure before it can become a genuine refuge.”
– Michael Meade –

~

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.

~ David Whyte ~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 264 – 9/6/2017

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Named Sacred September 6 Moon Full Harvest.

today, under the abundance of the pisces full moon, i rest in and harvest compassionate abiding waiting patiently for the new, the transformation promised by the soular eclipse… as i harvest the fruits, i reflect on what’s to come – a planet of peace guided by love…

~

We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but on the positive affirmation of peace.

We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow, we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race, which no one can win, to a positive contest to harness humanity’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race.

If we have a will – and determination – to mount such a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto tightly sealed doors of hope and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 263 – 9/5/2017

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Named Sacred September 5 Eagle Creek Fire

i’ve been dreaming of fires for a couple of moons, our world going up in smoke, fires in the streets…

today, i wake up to acrid smoke enveloping the atmosphere with ash falling like snow across an apocalyptic landscape…

as thousands of acres continue to burn in the beloved Columbia Gorge, we grieve the loss of so much natural beauty that inspires and uplifts connecting us to our better angels, deepest sacred space of earth being….

today’s peace, so i imagined, would center on the full moon and then i walked outside and tuned into local news and knew today must be devoted to the all encompassing grief for all the storms and floods and wildfires and bombings raging across the earth…

please join me in sacred silence of the deep peace of the running wave as we breathe down into the belly of the earth being instruments of peace and vessels of compassion as we call forth healing…

singing as one… where there is suffering, let there be grace; where there is imbalance, let balance be restored; where there is homelessness, shelter; where there is thirst, water; where thee is hunger, nourishment; where there is despair, hope; where there is destruction, creation; where there is war, peace…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 262 – 9/4/2017

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Named Sacred September 4 Light Hands Laborers of Love

for labor day…

Song of the Builders

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

~ Mary Oliver ~

~

Top 7 Pieces of Rare Good News for US Workers on Labor Day

1. The Christian Science Monitor says that in 2016, US solar businesses employed 260,077 workers – up 25 percent from 2015.

2. That is, the solar energy sector alone employs more people than Apple, Google, and Facebook combined!

3. Solar also employs more people in US electricity generation than oil, gas and coal combined!

4. Solar energy sector jobs grew at a rate 17 times faster than the economy in 2016.

5. SC Times reports that wind jobs grew 9 times faster than the economy as a whole in 2016 and adds,

6. “wind turbine technician is the fastest-growing job in the country.”

7. Each day, US workers erect 10 new wind turbines around America. Each creates 44 years of full-time employment. So at an average of 30 years per worker, that is the equivalent of generating over 200,000 full time jobs that last for a lifetime every year.

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

~

the day after his final speech, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968… King went to support garbage workers, who were on strike to protest unsafe conditions, abusive supervisors, low wages and to gain recognition for their union…

“I would like to live a long life,” he said. “Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr ~

~

the best way to get there is every day to continue the struggle for human dignity, workers’ rights, living wages, and social justice…

and, may we all celebrate our laboring, our birthing a onederful world of love…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 261 – 9/3/2017

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Named Sacred September 3 Rumi Eagle Cloud Beauty+

O, Heart, What A Wonderful Bird You Are…

~ Rumi ~

for this week’s edition of the astonishing light of being, the voice of Beloved sings through Great Spirit shapeshifted as eagle cloud of unknowing… in a lovely synchronicity, today marks the last of 27 days of celebrating the total soular eclipse… below is a poem capturing that moment of totality tho written a century earlier in another land… thank you to the angels for sending this song describing exquisitely the beautiful moment of creation… stillness birthing dance…

~

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away … O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
~ Siegfried Sassoon ~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 260 – 9/2/2017

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Named Sacred September 2 Nags Head 2014 2 011

a mind like the sky

emptiness as vast as space

witnessing wonder

~

the sanskrit word for emptiness is shunyata while the chinese character is sky… both representations plus the image of hang gliding convey some of the experience of our true nature of emptiness…  the joyful freedom and liberation when empty of separation, weightiness, burdens and limitation… a state empty of suffering while grounded in boundless compassion for all relatives, a state sans borders and boundaries, as vast and expansive as the deep peace of the running wave flowing through the all that is…

re-member open sky

return to her, breathe and fly

our one heart soars high

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 259 – 9/1/2017

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Named Sacred September 1 Tahoma Equinox

welcome to this new moon (month) of sacred september, this new beginning falling under virgo’s tutelage, to be virgin, one-in-her(him)self, more fully an expression of our birthright, more fully committed to serving the whole, we are, all our relations…

my intention is to align with the master sculpting force that chisels away the stone of illusion and expectation releasing the spirit held within to take flight and dive ever deeper into the peace passing all understanding, the peace found in the center of the medicine wheel…

and as you listen to the song singing you, what do you hear?

listen with me now to what the inimitable Charlie Chaplin heard singing him on his 70th birthday…

Love Prayer

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering
are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”.
As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody
as I try to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I call it “RESPECT”.
As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life,
and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow.
Today I call it “MATURITY”.
As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance,
I am in the right place at the right time,
and everything happens at the exactly right moment.
So I could be calm.
Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE”.
As I began to love myself I quit steeling my own time,
and I stopped designing huge projects for the future.
Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness,
things I love to do and that make my heart cheer,
and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm.
Today I call it “SIMPLICITY”.
As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything
that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations,
and everything the drew me down and away from myself.
At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism.
Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”.
As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right,
and ever since I was wrong less of the time.
Today I discovered that is “MODESTY”.
As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past
and worry about the future.
Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING is happening.
Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT”.
As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me
and it can make me sick.
But As I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally.
Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.
~
may we all walk in a sacred way today and every day with each breath a new beginning, each moment a walk in beauty with all our relatives traveling as one along the rainbow trail deeper into great mystery’s sacred web…