Monthly Archives: January 2020

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 46 – 1/31/2020

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welcome to the second day of a season of peace and this last day of journeying january where we bless the space of this moon, this month of dreaming… dreaming a world of peace… being a world of peace in this moment, this wild and precious moment…

on this day of reverencing the journey to our one heart, let us come together and contemplate unity…

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deeply breathing into the belly, the wisdom center, visualize a pillar of light emanating from the galactic central sun, then going through all beings of light inside our Solar System, through brother sun and sister moon and then through your body to the center of our earthmother… deeply breathing again into the belly, visualize another pillar of light rising from the center of earthmother, then up through your body and upwards into the sky towards all beings of light in our solar system and our galaxy and the billions of other galaxies in our ever expanding cosmos… feel you are now sitting in two pillars of light, the light flowing both upwards and downwards simultaneously and keep these pillars of light active for a few minutes…

with another deep belly breath, visualize a soft pink healing divine feminine energy light wave, healing all our relatives of their past traumas, bringing peace, harmony, understanding, abundance and unity… see all of us working in unity for the creation of the new earth… see all relatives celebrating and joyfully participating in the creation of our new reality where everyone can obtain what they need and freely choose to live as they desire for the good of the whole…

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may we celebrate the radiance of  light uplifting the rising tide, the surging flow of divine feminine energy flooding the streets, the town squares and on and on and on…

as we bless this space between us, this one long continuous conversation, being together with truth; this blink of an eye month so potent with transition into the unknown – a great turning within, intimate communion with all that is – flows from the deep wellspring at the center of being… a moment of feeling the earth move under our feet as we make a seismic shift and like the earth, open to what is calling us, what must come forth in us and feel into what we truly love…

as we are pulled by a magnetic force to gather together, to stand together in love, i hear the same conversation echoing again and again…. how are we to be in this pivotal moment, who are we to be… and on this day of the turning of the wheel contemplating what is truly real, asking what are we choosing to birth, for what do we choose to stand?

i return to the courageous, the valorous voices booming from all the standing rocks where they stand as a rock that will not be moved, will not stray from being loving presence and speaking truth to false power…

the stone people the council of ancestors are asking for our prayers, our presence, our profound direct action for the next seven generations… they ask us now to come to stand together…

We Stand for the Earth loving her dearly.
We Stand for the Water for it is life.
We Stand for the Children, the holy vessels of the holy vessel!

standing together being loving presence always…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 45 – 1/30/2020

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“Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into your life. Then, without effort, you are impelled to truth and to perfect contentment.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

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let us now join with and embody the wisdom of the great sage, Howard Zinn…

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“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something, If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however a small way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.“

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in concert with the Season for Nonviolence which begins today on the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination and ends 64 days later on April 4th, the anniversary of King’s assassination,today the pilgrimage begins a season of peace…

let us invoke the beloved peace prayer of St Francis to begin this saunter – this walk on holy ground for this season of peace…

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“….. make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, union;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.”

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may we all begin and end each day with a prayer for peace…  when saying goodbye to people, may we say “May Peace Prevail on Earth…”  may we create space in our lives dedicated to praying for, meditating, singing, dancing, contemplating  and being peace… in this way, creating a cosmos of beauty all around…

“…help me to live this day quietly, peacefully… to lean upon thy great strength trustfully, restfully… to wait for the unfolding of thy will patiently, serenely… to meet others peacefully, joyously…”

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 44 – 1/29/2020

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fifty-seven years ago today, beloved poet, Robert Frost died… he is with me today as i re-member fifty-nine years ago being at the inauguration of JFK where Frost delivered the inaugural poem which was to be “Dedication” only the sun’s glare off of the snow kept him from being able to see the words so he recited another of his poems, “The Gift Outright”….

funny, i would have sworn it was this poem or Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, perhaps because it was such a bitterly cold day in DC following a heavy snowfall so that we had to take a train from Richmond… as with so many people, that day began a lifelong love of his poetry with The Road Less Traveled taking center stage…

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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this meditation on choice, such a touchstone, as we all come to forks in the road where we need to pause and tune in to the silence of the heart… listening… listening… for love’s heartsong which whispers the way…

yes, when it comes down to it as to what is essential and how to best serve the whole, soul answers the call of the wild and saunters along the path of adventure, to traverse a path asking for wholehearted, wholebeing devotion…

with every breath, with every step, may we commit to being present in, trusting and surrendering to divine flow – the stillpoint of our essence of love where the dance of life begins…

take this moment of true refuge as pregnant pause to rest in the gap, the space between formless and form, the silence from which the dancing pours forth to simply be… in this moment, this wild and precious moment…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 43 – 1/28/2020

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today’s singing light in the dark pilgrimage is dedicated to Pete Seeger who died 6 years ago today, the father of  folk music and a shepherd extraordinaire still calling us to embody our better angels by singing love and to the crew of Challenger who died 34 years ago on this day…

“It really boils down to this, all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

with every breath and step on the pilgrimage i contemplate how we all best serve the whole… i believe the bedrock of this query is understanding that all our relations prosper only when we realeyes we are part of a greater whole and our survival, our sustainability is intricately linked in the same way we are intricately interconnected to every thread in the web of life. It is, always has been and always will be a story of cooperation. Just as all the 70 trillion cells of my body cooperate to make me work, so must the 70 trillion cells to the 70th trillion power cooperate for the cosmos to expand harmoniously…

yes, Martin saw that the will to connect is our most essential impulse and how what affects one of us, affects everyone of us and how could it not since we are one body-mind-spirit-soul made up of trillions of cells to the infinite power…

since every thought, word and deed affects all our relations, may we all walk in wonder, saunter in awe  as shepherds, as lightkeepers, as sheltering arms, as beloveds all walking each other home to the frequency of right thought, right speech and right action…

i’ll close with the words of another pilgrim on  a journey and  wisdom lover…

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
in the trees in the silence of the fisherman
and the heron, and the trees that keep the land
they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
and how to be here with them. By this knowledge
make the sense you need to make. By it stand
in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.

Speak to your fellow humans as your place
has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
before they had heard a radio. Speak
publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
from the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
by which it speaks for itself and no other.

Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
which is the light of imagination. By it you see
the likeness of people in other places to yourself
in your place. It lights invariably the need for care
toward other people, other creatures, in other places
as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people…

~ Wendell Berry ~

may we wander as shepherds singing light in the dark illuminating a path to our one heart…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 42 – 1/27/2020

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on this day 75 years ago, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Jewish concentration camp of Auschwitz, in Poland… today is the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust… this post is dedicated to all who liberate and to all of us who are liberated…

in keeping with this dedication, i share my journey of the last 1500 plus days of aspiring to walk lightly on the journey home trusting our one heart to guide the way as we saunter in good company, beloved community, with the sangha of letting go, a caravan of re-joy-sing, as we surrender in service to the implicate order awakening to that which cannot be named… quantum leaping into the void (vortex of ineffable dimensionality) whose signposts can only point to where we are wandering as…

hollow reed, drop of dew, bubble floating in a stream

flickering light, phantom of the night, luminous, numinous dream

coming home to true emptiness, place of great silence, ground zero of all being

whirlwind spiraling silently while dancing stars form effortlessly

in open spaciousness of great mystery

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The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~ Wendell Berry ~

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may we all awaken to the inner call of the heart, hear our soul song, let go, let go, let go  to trust in cosmic flow dancing and singing under the iridescent circle of great rainbow mystery …

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 41 – 1/26/2020

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come 
let’s fall 
in love 
again

let’s turn 
all the dirt 
in this world 
to shiny gold 

come 
let’s be 
a new spring 
a love reborn 

find our aroma 
from the essence 
of all who 
emit heavenly fragrance 

like a fresh tree 
bloom and spread 
all the blessings 
right from inside

~Rumi ~

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here we are in the last days of the first moon of this turn around the sun and the new decade, in the moon of dreaming, the moon of stardust, of all there is and it’s the moment to in joy the astonishing light of being… i’m re-minded and re-heartened daily by cascading down like water deeper and deeper into the dream cave to how important awakening to the dream within, the soul song here in the deepest recess of our one heart, to how important this act of creation, of co-creation is for as Thay and Greta and the atomic scientists remind us – our very survival depends on it…

like brother martin, like you, i have a dream of my own personally and for all of us collectively of our being more aware of our unity realizing there is only one of us here and each of our thoughts, words and deeds affects all our thoughts words and deeds and creates, co-creates reality…

i will be silently present with you now being peace while echoing the words of Rumi as we dwell for this moment, the only moment, in dreamtime, the stillpoint of creation, the formless void from whence the light of pure love emanates…

may your dreams come alive today, may our dream come alive today as we fall in love with the earth of our being again…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 40 – 1/25/2020

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here we are… children of the earth, citizens of the cosmos, all  gathered in the quantum field of unity where we speak truth to power and stand for peace and justice and  love and compassion…

“Just as compassion is the wish that all sentient beings be free of suffering, loving-kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness. As with compassion, when cultivating loving-kindness it is important to start by taking a specific individual as a focus of our meditation, and we then extend the scope of our concern further and further, to eventually encompass and embrace all sentient beings. Again, we begin by taking a neutral person, a person who inspires no strong feelings in us, as our object of meditation. We then extend this meditation to individual friends and family members and, ultimately, our particular enemies.
We must use a real individual as the focus of our meditation, and then enhance our compassion and loving-kindness toward that person so that we can really experience compassion and loving-kindness toward others. We work on one person at a time.”
~ The Dalai Lama ~

yes, may we all work on one person at a time re- membering Love Trumps Hate, many hands make Light work and it’s light and only light that drives out darkness…

standing in solidarity for love as we open and walk through the Imbolc portal welcoming the new light and life germinating from our resting in the deep earth of being…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 39 – 1/24/2020

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deepest bows to grandmother spider… always weaving a web of such amazing, intricate interconnectedness demonstrating beyond the shadow of a doubt that we live in a cosmos of implicate order, great mystery unfolding, yes, below the deep river of suffering is another river always bubbling and whispering all is well…

today is the 2230th day of posting about walking this spirit path along the rainbow trail, a day celebrating a long held dream’s flowering, a day of celebrating dreamers’ solidarity and courage, a day of re-membering a lucid dream of four years ago on this very day, a potent dream of grace, so perfect for this first new moon of the decade of destiny when we are called to listen, listen, listen to the heartsong of the council of ancestors – rainbow sky, the stone people, brother sun, sister moon, floating clouds, mother waters…

 i’m in a car and we’re winding around a mountain road when i real-eyes no one is driving the car… i look around and feel the presence of pure love auto piloting the vehicle and in that moment i know i can relax and trust this journey… looking out to the left, i see beloved ocean below flowing in and out and i am filled with peace, love and joy as we continue our spiraling trek around the mountain into the land of rainbow sky where i breathe this moment of awe and rest on the trail of wandering in wonder knowing everything is grace, especially important on a day like today to be reminded and to hear the lost falls’ echoes rising from the river below the river whispering… be here now standing in the center one with cosmic flow…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 38 – 1/23/2020

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Dear Siddhizens of the Cosmos,

the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced today the moving the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever before, thanks to the mortal perils of climate crisis and nuclear weapons… created in the wake of World War II to measure the most dire threats to humanity, the clock is now at 100 seconds to midnight…

 “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.”

shaking us to our core, may this announcement jolt us into being aware and taking action… the world-renowned scientists plead for nuclear disarmament, multilateral diplomacy, and a full-on confrontation of the climate emergency…

we are the ones we are waiting for… it will take grassroots efforts, the work of existing campaigners and the re-enlistment of traditional allies, like religious institutions, as well as the engagement of the next generation of activists… as Bernard Lown noted in 1995, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the only hope for change is an informed and insistent public compelling leadership to change the course we are on…

2020 marks 75 years since we entered the nuclear age with the Bomb…. as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty comes up for review at the United Nations in April-May and the anniversaries of the Bomb are marked in July and August, the eyes and ears of the world will be drawn to the issue of nuclear weapons once again… what a window of opportunity for us to join with those who witnessed the Bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the hibakusha, survivors, whose voices are becoming fewer but not weaker as they demand the world pursue the only possible course guaranteeing “Never Again,” – the abolition of nuclear weapons…

yes, it is time on the clock of the world for us to re-member we belong to each other, we are one and we must be there for each other…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 37 – 1/22/2020

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today, i learn that this week in january is known as the saddest week in the year – are you feeling this wave? simultaneously, there is another wave arising; instead of succumbing to the wave of despair, we can choose to ride the wave of creativity, of coming together, showing the strength of our numbers, standing together speaking truth to power from a place of love, alchemizing the call for justice with weaving a world that works for all… let us invoke the goddess maya for our movement poem…

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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

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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 and guided by love…