Monthly Archives: April 2022

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 115 – 4/10/2022

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Union with the Cosmos

“When dwelling on union with the cosmos . . . you discover that there is a possibility of losing your ground, losing the whole union completely, losing your identity as yourself, and dissolving into an utterly and completely harmonious situation, which is, of course, the experience of luminosity…”

~The Tibetan Book of the Dead~

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and then the day came when they finally stopped looking for the divine elsewhere—in the books, theories, systems, steps; in later, bigger, better; they stopped turning their back to the miracle of their warm breathing body and the intimate, subtle ways the Goddess was guiding them from within…

the body is a portal opening into a luminous tapestry vibrating through time and space, through every atom, cell, forest, mountain and star; with every breath one feels the goddess weaving the divine story of the be longing field of peace; every heartbeat is the Mother drumming us home to knowing, dignity and the sacred space of interconnection…

let us commit in every breath to co-create a cosmic field of harmony…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 114 – 4/9/2022

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yesterday, i began to feel quite ill suddenly and so have been resting in the deep song, el canto hondo which is so easy now that i live on the river… join me in sacred flowing space lulled by the words of Thay,  beloved teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh…

Resting in the River Meditation

“My dear friends, suppose someone is holding a pebble and throws it in the air and the pebble begins to fall down into a river. After the pebble touches the surface of the water, it allows itself to sink slowly into the river.

It will reach the bed of the river without any effort. Once the pebble is at the bottom of the river, it continues to rest. It allows the water to pass by.

I think the pebble reaches the bed of the river by the shortest path because it allows itself to fall without making any effort. During our sitting meditation we can allow ourselves to rest like a pebble. We can allow ourselves to sink naturally without effort to the position of sitting, the position of resting.

The Buddha said, “My practice is the practice of non-practice.” That means a lot. Give up all struggle. Allow yourself to be, to rest.

Let us visualize the waves on the ocean, several waves appearing on the surface of the ocean. Some waves are big, there are those that are small, and each wave seems to have its own life.

…if the wave is able to bend down and touch the water within herself, it will realize that while it is a wave, it is at the same time water. Water is the foundation of the wave. While waves can be high and low, more and less beautiful, the water is free from all these notions. That is why if we are able to touch the foundation of our being, we can release our fear and our suffering.

Touching the foundation of our being means touching nirvana. Our foundation is not subjected to birth and death, being and non-being. A wave can live the life of a wave, but a wave can do much better than that. While living the life of a wave, a wave can live a life of the water. The more our solidity and our freedom grows, the deeper we touch the ground of our own being. That is the door for emancipation, for the greatest relief.”

~

may we all rest in the deep river of peace living the life of water flowing easefully around the obstacles and conflicts in the devocean of interbeing real-eye-sing we all belong to each other…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 113 – 4/8/2022

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today, i am still in the glow of the prophet Martin and his call for peace which moves me right into the prophet, John who was also assassinated while serving the causes of peace and nuclear disarmament… as a child, i was impacted very personally by this being who was calling us into a new consciousness many were not ready for and amazingly, almost sixty years later we still hear so much of last century’s jingoistic, xenophobic cold war rhetoric; to raise my spirits and keep centered on what peace really sounds like, i listen over and over to what i consider his most profound speech… posted below are some of the stirring words of his that are taken from a 1961 address to the United Nations and still ring so true today:

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race – to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved.”

in June of 1963, five months before he was shot, he continued in the same vein in a Commencement Address at American University, where JFK delivered A Strategy for Peace (this speech is sooo important and i will stretch my abilities and try to give a link so you can listen as well):

“…I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived–yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

…I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war–and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament-and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitude–as individuals and as a Nation–for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward–by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable–that mankind is doomed–that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are man made – therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace–based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions–on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace–no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process–a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor–it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it…”

yes, let us persevere and move irresistibly toward peace…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 112 – 4/7/2022

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while still in the glow of a season of peace and having spent many hours of the last weeks contemplating a peace movement founded on truth and justice, i’ll celebrate once more one of the great human rights leaders of all time who called for a radical re-imagining of society calling forth our better angels to go deeply into the valley of the shadow of militarism, materialism and racism and to act boldly to end these pestilences…

what a holy synchronicity celebratory moment is today that bends toward justice as MLK said with Ketanji Brown Jackson being confirmed as a Justice of the US Supreme Court… not only is she eminently qualified, she is also the 6th woman ever to serve on this court since it was founded in 1789 and of the now 116 Justices, she is the first ever black woman on this court which now begins to reflect the backbone of the USA… how fortunate KBJ comes aboard in this critical moment as the court weighs in on vital issues of gun violence, reproductive and voting rights and more… we are one step closer to fulfilling the promise of liberty and justice for all.

there is no turning back now for now is the moment for us to do as Brother Martin asked…

‘Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.’

here is the MLK Pledge… thank you for joining me in this call to peace and action and for making every moment a moment of peace and justice…

“ ‘Know Justice, Know Peace’
is our rallying cry.

On this day, we, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. call for peace. A peace that is more than the absence of war. We call for a just peace. A peace where all humans have the rights of security, prosperity, good and free education, accessible and plentiful food, clean water and a planet free from disastrous pollution to calamitous climate change.

We call for a just peace. A peace where people are able to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence. A peace committed to understanding, celebrating and learning from difference. A peace grounded in what Dr. King called the Beloved Community.

It takes more than words to bring about peace. It takes action. Action that decreases hostility between people and actions that promote trust so that our words have meaning. Action, must occur within a vision.

We call on ALL people to imagine a world without poverty, hunger and homelessness. Imagine a world where we reject racist ideologies and replace them with an all-inclusive spirit of love for ALL people. Imagine a world where we resolve disputes by peaceful conflict-resolution and true reconciliation. Imagine a world, where love and justice triumph.

‘…Know Justice, Know Peace’
is our rallying cry.

But, it will take more than vision to bring peace. We must face the injustices of the past and acknowledge the injustices of the present no matter how painful. This means we must find a way to talk WITH each other instead of AT each other. It will take all of us searching deep within our own souls, taking what some call the ‘inward journey of self-reflection.’

It will take all of us to name those things we would rather hide-those things that stop us from being our better selves. We must not only name them, but also begin the process of purging those things that stifle our growth and the growth of others. This will lead us to form and develop communities of understanding that will walk, talk and stand with us. It is in this spirit-with humility and mutuality-that we will come together with one another and build a community of peace and goodwill for all humankind.


‘…Know Justice, Know Peace’
is our rallying cry.”

Contributed by:
Assistant Professor Andre E. Johnson,
Department of Communications,
University of Memphis

may we all stand hand in hand in love for love filled with the light of divine grace to peacefully serve the world… may we know justice and peace and build communities of understanding real-eye-sing we belong to each other…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 111 – 4/6/2022

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“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.”

~Milan Kundera~

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Happiest of Turns Around the Sun, Ms Radiance!

yes, my precious grandpuppy, this being of excitement i used to get to spend most every day with, this quintessentially exuberant spirit who always greets me so joyously with the most unconditional love and is the embodiment of the female face of Buddha – Tara rolled into this cute furball of invincibility turns five today while another of my favorite beings, Ram Dass, is on his 91st continuation day…

this sweet little furball clown is also such an amazing spiritual teacher of  being in the moment, of unconditional love, of joie de vivre and fills me with lovingkindness and compassion moment by moment pulling me into the practice and paradise of puppy consciousness where every moment is an adventurous moment of arrival into the new and fresh, a coming home to this moment of presence of interbeing, every sound and smell a compelling curiosity calling us to engage fully in unfolding mystery…

deep bows and boundless love onederfull beings…

and, holy synchronisiddhi! as i re-member this day of april is often a magical day of awakening and radiance long before nia graced our lives…

yes, on this day seven turns around the sun ago while on sacred pilgrimage to the heart chakra of  the earth, i awaken at 4:44 on what was then Easter Monday with everyone of my 70 trillion cells vibrating at the most alive frequency re-membering today we head off for sunrise at stonehenge… arriving in the mists, it looks like our magic bus has pulled into an ET Terminal where we get on a Hogwarts trolley to transport us more of the way… disembarking into pea soup, we walk the last steps to the ancient temple… A proper guard informs us not to touch any of the stone people and one of our sherpas reminds us to find our stone…

as we enter through a holy portal, we are teleported into the great beyond… i walk around the stone people as a labyrinth and drink in the most glorious sunrise ever witnessed as the sun transfigures into rainbow dragonfly weaving a web of luminescent light shimmering more brightly with every breath… if this were my last moment, it would be perfect… to just drink in the sun on this holy ground with our ancestors is pure ecstasy… my cup runneth over and flows into dancing and singing in joyous celebration of all our relations…

as we leave the temple, i begin to feel like Harry Potter with a strange throbbing between my eyes, yes, stonehenge is the gift that keeps on giving as my third eye more fully activates and with this expansion and deepening, the ability to see through the veils of illusion and into the invisible realms of radiance opens more and more unfolding and unfolding into this moment, this wild and precious moment of awakening into the radiance of beingness…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 110 – 4/5/2022

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“A GENEROUS HEART IS ALWAYS OPEN, ALWAYS READY TO RECEIVE OUR GOING AND COMING. IN THE MIDST OF SUCH LOVE WE NEED NEVER FEAR ABANDONMENT. THIS IS THE MOST PRECIOUS GIFT TRUE LOVE OFFERS – THE EXPERIENCE OF KNOWING WE ALWAYS BELONG.”

– BELL HOOKS –

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well come, well come, well come to the day of the Golden Rule, a day (truly like all days) for all our relatives, beginning with ourselves, to treat each other as we want to be treated… on this day that the UN has formally declared as an international day of conscience when we are all called to shine the astonishing light of our being and on every day, may we live lovingkindness and compassion…

“A century has passed since the end of World War I, as well as seven decades since the end of World War II; the devastation of war deepens people’s aspirations for peace. Humanity’s pursuit of peace has never stopped, yet the world remains tumultuous.

Interdependent and interconnected, all world citizens are encouraged to face international and national crises with compassion, bravery, and genuine wisdom as they actively seek peace and harmony as well as multi-win plans to benefit Mother Earth and all people.

Love and peace advance the well-being of the people of the world, and they are the most important cornerstones of global sustainability. All world citizens are encouraged to nurture love in their hearts to strike a balance in the enhancement of economic, social, cultural, spiritual, technological, and educational development.

Conscience is the wellspring of love; it is essential to awaken world citizens’ conscience to promote love, tolerance, acceptance, and care among people, thus enhancing friendships, family bonds, and international relationships, which facilitates a united world, where all people work together for the common good.

An excellent culture is the foundation of a quality education, which is essential for sustainable economic development. Countries are encouraged to promote a culture of conscience and incorporate the best aspects of other cultures and education systems to improve national economies.

When the majority of people follow their conscience and dedicate themselves to spreading love, fostering coexistence regardless of differences, using wisdom to resolve conflicts, and inspiring others to act similarly, the world can achieve peace.”

~

in this moment, this wild precious moment of eternity, may we treat others from the spaciousness of a noble heart re-membering:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

~ 1 Corinthian 13:4-8 ~

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treat each other well for we belong to each other all enfolded in our one cosmic heart…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 109– 4/4/2022

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today marks the closing of the season of peace; just as the season opened on the day Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, we close on the day Martin Luther King was killed, so, today is dedicated to peacemakers, to earth angels… today is an auspicious portal day of 4-4 called the great awakening and may it be so… so much to share on this day so i invite us to take this moment to celebrate light and love and rebirth and liberation and justice and crystalize these energies into our being peace in this moment of eternity, in every moment of eternity…

fifty-five years ago today and exactly one year before his murder, the prophet and poet, Martin Luther King, Jr delivered a rousing call to action in a speech entitled, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, to an overflow crowd at Riverside Church in New York City… Dr King’s challenge to engage in a radical revolution of values holds as true now as it did then and is so in keeping with our coming together today and the call we each need to answer, let us breathe in his words and then walk this talk with our every step, thought, word and deed…

“I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin, we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message—of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment do decide,
In the strife of truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 108– 4/3/2022

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in this moment of eternity – the 108th day of the 9th year of daily ppp crystals and the 64th day of a season of peace and the 18th moon anniversary of a special being – i want to share one of Thay’s love letters to the earth, one i love engaging with daily and reading as a goodnight story to that aforementioned special being… injoy this praise song of earth…

~

Our Journey of Eons

“Dear Mother Earth,

Do you remember when you and Father Sun first formed from the dust of exploded stars and interstellar gas? You didn’t yet wear the silken cloak of freshness that you do today. At that time, Mother, more than four and half billion years ago, your robe was made of molten rock. Soon it cooled to form a hard crust. Although Father’s light was far less than it is today, your thin atmosphere captured the heat and kept your oceans from freezing. In those first few hundred million years, you overcame many great difficulties to create an environment capable of sustaining life. You released great heat, fires, and gases from your volcanoes. Steam was expelled from your crust to become vapor in your atmosphere and the water in your great oceans. Your gravity helped anchor the life-sustaining sky, and your magnetic field prevented it from being stripped away by solar winds and cosmic rays.

But even before forming the atmosphere, you endured a collision with a great heavenly body, almost the size of Mars. Part of the impacting planet became you; the rest of it, along with some of your mantle and crust, became the moon. Dear Mother, the moon is a part of you, as beautiful as an angel. She is a kind sister to you, always following you, helping you slow down and keep your balance, and creating tidal rhythms on your body.

Our entire solar system is one family, revolving around Father Sun in a joyful and harmonious dance. First there is Mercury, metallic and cratered, closest to the sun. Next is Venus with her intense heat, high-pressure atmosphere, and volcanoes. Then there is you, beloved Mother Earth, the most beautiful of all. Beyond us orbits the Red Planet, cold and desolate Mars; and after the asteroid belt there comes the gas giant Jupiter, by far the largest planet of all, attended by an assembly of diverse moons. Beyond Jupiter orbits Saturn, the spectacularly ringed planet, followed by Uranus, tilted on his side after a collision, and, finally, distant blue Neptune with his turbulent storms and high winds.

Contemplating this splendor, I can see that you, Mother Earth, are the most precious flower in our solar system, a true jewel of the cosmos.

It took you a billion years to begin to manifest the first living beings. Complex molecules, perhaps brought to you from outer space, started to come together in self-replicating structures, slowly becoming more and more like living cells. Light particles from distant stars, millions of light years away, came to visit and stay a while. Small cells gradually became larger cells; unicellular organisms evolved into multicellular organisms. Life developed from deep within the oceans, multiplying and prospering, steadily improving the atmosphere. Slowly, the ozone layer could form, preventing harmful radiation from reaching your surface, and allowing life on land to prosper. It was only then, as the miracle of photosynthesis unfurled, that you began to wear the exquisite green mantle you do today.

But all phenomena are impermanent and ever-changing. Life over vast areas of the Earth has already been destroyed more than five times, including sixty-five million years ago, when the impact of a giant asteroid caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs and three quarters of all other species. Dear Mother, I am in awe of your capacity to be patient and creative, despite all the harsh conditions you have endured. I promise to remember our extraordinary journey of eons and to live my days with the awareness that we are all your children, and that we are all made of stars. I promise to do my part, contributing my own energy of joy and harmony to the glorious symphony of life.”

let us all do our part by generously contributing our energy of joy and harmony to the astonishing light symphony of life…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 107– 4/2/2022

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living from the one heart

with every step a thanksgiving

and each breath a prayer

~

welcome, well come to day 63 of a season of  peace and to another day of dreamweaving crystalline peaces for this phase of the journey… we are still in the portal of the first new moon of this turn ’round the sun, the moon of spiritual guardians humming to the sacred frequency of the angels, a moment of eternity to gather across the cosmos and together breathe in, conspire the new… join me now in perfuming the field…

Invoking the Light of Grace

in the name of the Great Mother, we invoke benevolent streams of universal light to come and enfold us in a soft cocoon of love’s transforming grace… COME COME COME… we invoke subtle realms of more expansive and deeper vibration to infuse this coalescing energetic matrix with the purest frequencies of harmony, balance and stability aligned with the field of redeeming grace which we weave, ever so gently, in, through and around us now and to bless us with qualities of enduring strength and resilience… we now invite the Holy Spirit to enter into the deepest regions of our thoughts and feelings, assumptions and beliefs where we offer up all of our resistances, attachments, pains, stress, anxiety and suffering to our indwelling Divine Presence… Holy Spirit, please help us to see our personal circumstances through the eyes of our soul… shift our perceptions into right understanding so that we pass through our difficult times with more poise and equanimity dwelling in the deep and abiding comfort that comes from re-membering who we really are… embodied expressions of divinity… thousand fold thanks for the love and support flowing through the river of great mystery into every cell of the one body, every thread of the web of life…

thanks be for our hearts being softened, our minds being purified, our words being more tenderly spoken, our thoughts extending love to every living thing, our actions being a blessing unto the world, our souls shining throughout our expression and our being continually humbled, aligned with the earth of our being… Beloved of all life, please saturate us with wave after wave of transforming love and grace bringing greater comfort and understanding to every soul who desires it moving us more deeply into your embrace now so that we may be consoled as one… thanks be for Divine Light and its containing matrix being imperishable, eternally sustained, all powerfully active and ever expanding and unfolding… we seal this invocation in Cosmic Peace…

~

hover over us, beloved, center us in grace…

deep bows and thousand thousand fold thanks…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 9 – Day 106– 4/1/2022

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welcome, well come to day 62 of a season of peace and to the first day of adventurous april and to the day of celebrating the holy fool in us all setting off on a new turn around the sun of the adventure of life…

traditionally, the fool card in the tarot is associated with the numbers, 0 and 22… at 0, the fool symbolizes life force before manifestation; at 22, the fool has sauntered the 21 keys of the major arcana completing a full cycle of awareness and experience and now steps beyond into a new dimension of limitless potential as a free and easy wanderer, an awakened and adventurous pilgrim/poet on a journey…

so, on this first day of April, as we celebrate the ultimate pilgrim, the holy fool, let us bless this new beginning of a moonth of adventure, of coming home to the present moment by contemplating what’s been quietly forming in the background, what’s emerging now…

for me, the pathless path continues to be more and more mysterious in proportion with letting go to flow… this living more and more in the now takes heart, courage, it is a defying of gravity and moving into levitating… i’m trusting in Beloved and the power of love as iterated below by the incomparable Rumi…

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”

speaking of flying, seven years ago on this fool’s day (which seems like several lifetimes ago in this moment of eternity), i flew off on quite an adventure to gather holy water from the chalice well arriving the next day on the isle of avalon, sacred space of the goddess where i joined with a beloved community of thirteen in the breaking of bread and drinking of holy water and clean-sing (cleansing), as in the washing of feet, of our soles who kiss the earth and ground us into embodied presence as it was the day in the christian calendar known as maunday thursday, the last supper…

in this moment of eternity, in every moment of eternity, we offer thanks for our last breath/first breath, our always flowing in the rhythm of dying/rebirthing, ebbing/flowing, breathing in/breathing out always being love, always becoming love… it is thanksgiving that transports us into the quantum realm of the unitive field where our heartmind is one…

thousand fold thanks for sharing this journey of adventure under the new moon of aries calling us into a deep dive into true nature…