Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 258 – 8/31/2023

blessing the space between us

as we journey into great mystery,

the pilgrimage to our one heart

so much space to bless in this intensely mysterious moon that has both flown by at the speed of hummingbird and each day filled to overflowing with the whole spectrum as if a whole turn around the sun has elapsed in the course of a day leaving me feeling i’ve covered thousands of miles metaphorically traveling the seven seas and everywhere in between even if we never left our dwelling place… so much awakening and dreaming, growing and staying still, moving and centering…

so, in this moment of eternity, this awegusto moment, may we shower ourselves and each other with lovingkindness and compassion re-membering we optimize wholeness for all with the smallest of gestures… a SMILE, hugs, thumbs up, deeply listening, taking healing breaks throughout the day, flowers, a cuppa, coming home to the moment with every breath, seeing through the eyes of wonder and awe… like this open hand, being open vessels for life to flow through… every inbreath, inhaling grace, every outbreath, surrendering efforting and striving and pushing against the river… always trusting what is ours to do/be comes to us naturally; we need only listen to our one heart’s song whispering the way of the path with heart for which we all long…

what an awegusto august we have shared, what a blessed space we have inhabited walking each other home in a sacred way through the fires of purification of the planetary portals when waves of union, of communion, sweep energetically across the planet re-minding, re-heartening all our relatives to our true, shared reality of  one source, one body, one heart, one mind, one spirit…

such a potent collective moment of great turning for living the grail quest-ion, what really matters? what breaks your heart? what breaks your heart wide open waking you up each moment to serve?

listen deeply hearing the hum of  our one heart re-joy-sing as we walk this pathless path together coming home to our one heart, summoning the courage each moment of eternity to  simply take one more step into great mystery’s sea of love energy, the ever expanding abunDANCE of a friendly uni-verse…

today, i am re-joy-sing in the knowing that in the chaos, we are birthing a dancing rainbow star, a cosmos of peace and harmony guided by love…will you join me in placing your hand on your heart, our one heart and holding this intention wholeheartedly with every wild molecule in your body, our one body?

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Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 257 – 8/30/2023

welcome and blue moon blessings!

relatives, we are being lovingly invited

to spend this moment, this beautiful moment of eternity

at home in the cave of the heart with beloved community

under this blue super full moon in pisces which amplifies the awakening of our common unity and collective creativity channeled into service for all cosmic relatives, with the symbol for Pisces, being one fish swimming downstream and another swimming upstream, we are invited to enter into the power of integrating duality, incorporating both the inner and the outer realms, the light and the dark, the highs and the lows and to activate the wisdom of polarity (like 2 magnets coming together in their opposite nature), to create something anew / the trinity codes of potential / a “third door” of possibility… and, with the Sun in Virgo (Virgin / High Priestess / Queen), this is a Seeress / Priestess Moon to activate and ground visions and dreams for one and for all giving us a powerful opportunity to consciously beam our unified prayers to bless each other and all our relatives in this sacred moment of eternity in the great turning…

in this moment, may we simply interbe presence of essence coming just as we are, our radiant, astonishing light of being true selves…

endowed with a birthright of inner knowing the oneness we are and delighting in wonder, awe, bliss, compassion, flow, grace, joy, kindness and wisdom

as we drink in the blue moon rays flooding us with divine transfusions of transfiguring love and truth serum counteracting archaic conditioning no longer serving multidimensional beings of harmony consciousness, a dream arises of being in this field out beyond of beloved communion and hearing that our mission is to sing…

are you hearing beloved singing us? listen a little deeper for the cosmic hum as we suspend noise and distraction in this moment, this beautiful moment… are you hearing the whispers of the ancestors flowing through our oceanic body? ah yes, let’s pause here in the stillpoint and align with the rhythm of our one heart…

may earth’s song reach into our deepest and wildest sacred spaces… may we hear the melodic voices of all our relations… may our inhalations inspire re-joy-sing and our exhalations re-sound and re-verberate harmony throughout the watery womb of our one heart…

may we sing wherever we are, a song of compassion blessing all cosmic gardeners as we cultivate and attune with the one body/mind/soul/spirit encircling us all…

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Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 256 – 8/29/2023

i am so grateful for this day of sweet surrender,

this day of being one with the tides of life…

seeing from vast ocean’s vantage point

the intricate web grandmother delicately weaves

connecting dots that on first glance appear unrelated

until one looks homeward with angelic eyes of the heart

discerning now the divine design patiently waiting in the wings for the blind to see…

thousand fold thanks for this moment, this beautiful moment of luminescence…

yes, it’s another moment of eternity of soulitude with one of my favorite ancient stories said to come from China flowing in on the high tide… ah so, maybe:

once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away… that evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate saying, “we are so sorry to hear your horse has run away, this is most unfortunate,” to which the old farmer replied, “ah so, maybe...” the next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with him and in the evening everybody came back saying, “oh, isn’t that lucky, what a great turn of events, you now have eight horses!” the farmer again replied, “ah so, maybe..

the following day his son tried to break one of the horses and while riding, he was thrown and broke his leg to which the neighbors then said, “oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “ah so, maybe…” the next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg… again all the neighbors came around and said, “isn’t that great!” again, he said, “ah so, maybe…”

ah so, may we all be as equanimous as this wise man of nature for:

“You never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.”  ~ Alan Watts ~

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Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 255 – 8/28/2023

today we honor the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington… on August 28, 1963, over 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, the historic March on Washington unfolded on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. which had never seen a demonstration of this magnitude with approximately 250,000 people with the shared goal of achieving social justice gathering in the city thanks to the efforts of Civil Rights leaders like A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, John Lewis, James L. Farmer Jr., and Dr. King and organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) united to address the key political, social, and economic concerns facing the African American community at the time, including racial violence, labor exploitation, unemployment, and discrimination… this powerful day included what came to be known as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech after being prompted by his friend the renowned gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, to put down his prepared speech and tell the people of his dream…

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“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

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may our dreams of freedom and peace and justice for all come alive today…

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Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 254 – 8/27/2023

withdrawing from the outer world may seem like capitulation or loss, when, in reality the very act of emptying out and coming into the stillpoint is what engenders creation….

ah, the gift of unplugging and standing in the center of the sacred hoop of life – everywhere i walk today reveals the divine, every step deepens the knowing of the interconnection, the oneness we are, all is love… look into the reflecting pool of life, what do you see? what sees you? may we all take this moment to breathe in our true nature, feel the love and celebrate with wild abandon…

the invitation to go within and listen for the heart song instructing each and every relative to slow down and take it easy for all answers are within always comes through so emphatically after spending the day with a soul new to the planet giving so many moments of eternity to soul study, soulitude, solitude… may we in this moment of great turning all be hollow reeds attuned to the cosmic hum with the divine music of the spheres resounding the frequencies of peace, love, joy, harmony, wisdom, compassion and grace in ever widening circles rippling across the ever expanding cosmos…

offering great thanks to our mother the earth, our father the sky, sister moon,  brother sun and to all our relations for our earth walk, the way of the heart…

as we (s)age into grace we return to where we began… the garden of eden, heaven on earth and we see everything as if for the first time… this present moment, this ordinary moment, this extraordinary moment all one in the same…

when we rest fully in this moment, dwelling in the consciousness of the divine, we embody awe, awakened wonderfilled energy, and radiant light fills our being shining everywhere…

“The world… has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living.  Not all…  are called to be hermits, but all…  need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally.  When that inner voice is not heard, when man cannot attain to the spiritual peace that comes from being perfectly at one with his own true self, his life is always miserable and exhausting.  For he cannot go on happily for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul.  If man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person…  He becomes a kind of automaton, living without joy because he has lost his spontaneity.  He is no longer moved from within, but only from outside himself.”

Thomas Merton ~

let’s close this sacred ceremony in a silent retreat into the watery womb where we nurture our roots, our soulfull essence as we cross over the liminal space, the threshold, to go within for truth of how to dwell in an upended world by stopping the world we have known and living more and more in graceland, in the sacred space beyond words, in the joyous radiance of the silent heart overflowing with compassion… blessed bee…

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Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 253 – 8/26/2023

for this sacred moment of eternity’s astonishing light of being, we also get to celebrate an important day in herstory/history as it’s the day in 1920 of the certification of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting American women the right to vote—a right known as woman suffrage…

it’s a perfect day to celebrate all women of peace, all people of peace making herstory/ourstory with being peace…

yes, today is a lovely moment to honor and celebrate the inspiration, the mother of this journey, someone being this peace pilgrimage every moment…

peace pilgrim, in her late forties, committed to walking the planet being peace and in so doing, she planted and spread peace across the world demonstrating that a life lived trusting in a world of lovingkindness reaps an abundant harvest… never once did she lack for a ride or a meal or a place to sleep finding abundant generosity always surrounding her every step, her every breath…

thank you for joining in the peace pilgrimage and making her story, our story, history…

thank you for the astonishing light of your being, a beacon shining so brightly and helping to guide all of us home…

may we place our hands on our heart sending love to our suffering relations…

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Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 252 – 8/25/2023

“We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.”

~ Henri Nouwen ~

this sacred moment of eternity goes on infinitely on this day of stopping the world, spending this moment in soulitude and seeing inside as i saunter (walk on holy ground) along the rainbow trail, the path with heart, the pilgrimage of the soul, the pathless path for this is not only the 107th birthday of the usa’s national parks; it is also the third year anniversary of my latest close encounter with death…

still i hear the words, as i was coming back to life, of the ICU doctor standing at the threshold of the room they put me in to pass over saying to the nurse it was a miracle she was alive… at first i wondered who they were talking about and then it came back to me that i had been at a gathering with Ram Dass who had died physically 8 months earlier and he asked me if I’d like him to walk me home… i was so excited to get to spend time with this being who’s been so impactful on my life for half a century and told him that i’d gather my things and meet him right back here but when i returned a moment later he had walked on and i understood that i was to come back here to the middle world… it was not the easiest thing to find my way back meandering through vast labyrinthian canyon lands of the other world but here i was hearing this man in white coat talking of someone who’d miraculously come back to life after dying…

so, dear co-hearts of our one heart, still in the glow of the astonishing light of our being and so in awe of grandmother spider and the web of life she weaves, i now want to share this heartfelt message fra angelico sent to his co-hearts 500 years ago which expresses what i say today and everyday and hear all our relatives singing the same tune…

“I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not already, but there is much, very much, which though I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.

Take heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this precious little instant.

Take peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and courage in the darkness could we but see; and to see, we have only to look.

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their coverings, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, and wisdom, and power. Welcome it, greet it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing Presence.

Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims wending through unknown country our way home.”

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Dear Angels, Take Heaven! Take Peace! Take Joy! Take Love! Take Wisdom! Take Courage!

We Are The Eternal Radiance of Loving Presence…

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Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 251 – 8/24/2023

each beautiful thing, each new day awakens in our soul the memory of whom we are, luminous beings, the shining ones… i am re-membering some words on beauty and wonder from Thay that help me to hear the voice of the soul:

“Dear Mother Earth,

Each morning when I wake up you offer me twenty-four brand new hours to cherish and enjoy your beauty. You gave birth to every miraculous form of life. Your children include the clear lake, the green pine, the pink cloud, the snowcapped mountain top, the fragrant forest, the white crane, the golden deer, the extraordinary caterpillar, and every brilliant mathematician, skilled artisan, and gifted architect. You are the greatest mathematician, the most accomplished artisan, and the most talented architect of all. The simple branch of cherry blossoms, the shell of a snail, and the wing of a bat all bear witness to this amazing truth. My deep wish is to live in such a way that I am awake to each of your wonders and nourished by your beauty. I cherish your precious creativity and I smile to this gift of life.

We humans have talented artists, but how can our paintings compare to your masterpiece of the four seasons? How could we ever paint such a compelling dawn or create a more radiant dusk? We have great composers, but how can our music compare to your celestial harmony with the sun and planets—or to the sound of the rising tide? We have great heroes and heroines who have endured wars, hardship, and dangerous voyages, but how can their bravery compare to your great forbearance and patience along your hazardous journey of eons? We have many great love stories, but who among us has love as immense as your own, embracing all beings without discrimination?

Dear Mother, you have given birth to countless buddhas, saints, and enlightened beings. Shakyamuni Buddha is a child of yours. Jesus Christ is the son of God, and yet he is also the son of Man, a child of the Earth, your child. Mother Mary is also a daughter of the Earth. The Prophet Mohammed is also your child. Moses is your child. So too are all the bodhisattvas. You are also mother to eminent thinkers and scientists who have made great discoveries, investigating and understanding not only our own solar system and Milky Way, but even the most distant galaxies. It’s through these talented children that you are deepening your communication with the cosmos. Knowing that you have given birth to so many great beings, I know that you aren’t mere inert matter, but living spirit. It’s because you’re endowed with the capacity of awakening that all your children are too. Each one of us carries within ourself the seed of awakening, the ability to live in harmony with our deepest wisdom—the wisdom of interbeing.

But there are times when we have not done so well. There are times when we have not loved you enough; times when we have forgotten your true nature; and times when we have discriminated and treated you as something other than ourself. There have even been times when, through ignorance and unskillfulness, we have underestimated, exploited, wounded, and polluted you. That is why I make the deep vow today, with gratitude and love in my heart, to cherish and protect your beauty, and to embody your wondrous consciousness in my own life. I vow to follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before me, to live with awakening and compassion, and so be worthy of calling myself your child.”

acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a wondrous way to walk in beauty…

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Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 10 – Day 249 – 8/22/2023

“He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self.”

~ Bhagavad Gita ~

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“Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth…”

~ John O’Donohue ~

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Welcome Home!

relatives, we are lovingly invited

to spend this moment, this beautiful moment

at home with Beloved…

simply being presence of essence…

come as you are, your radiant Self,

for this moment of

wonder, awe, bliss, compassion, flow, grace, joy, kindness

to drink in the gamma rays flooding the cosmos with a divine transfusion of transfiguring love…

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i am having a dreamy time as i write these words as they bring back so many memories because the image and the welcome home words posted here today are what i posted three years ago and after that posting it would be a full moon before i would post again,.. a moon spent in the icu as i returned slowly from the jaws of death… in hindsight, it’s astonishing to see i was writing of the dream of the cosmos as i was about to enter the void and live the dream, a dream of being in a field where the Beloved Communion dwells and hearing that our mission is to sing and listen for that song of the soul that knows the geography and map of our destiny and takes us there in unimaginable ways… now the dream returns saying it is the moment of eternity to be about this business of singing in the wake of the ever quickening transformational initiation we are all undergoing…

today, i want to riff a little more on that singing field of the beloved community where the sea of love energy flows through all the molecules of our one cosmic body… as i merge more deeply with this dream, i heart that we are one interbeing reverberating, resounding, frequencing the lost chords of harmony as we more and more profoundly tune into great mystery on our walk of infinity which is undeniably intended to be the dream of the ever-expanding cosmos manifested by our being a world of peace built on justice guided by love and sung in joy…

are you hearing beloved singing you? listen a little deeper for the cosmic hum as you suspend noise and distraction in this moment, this beautiful moment… are you hearing the whispers of the ancestors flowing through our oceanic body? ah yes, let’s pause here in the stillpoint and align with the rhythm of our one heart… may earth’s song reach into our deepest and wildest sacred spaces… may we hear the melodic voices of all our relations… may our inhalations inspire re-joy-sing and our exhalations re-sound and re-verberate harmony throughout the watery womb of our one heart…

we are the caravan of re-joy-sing being dreamed and weaved and breathed and walked and sung to the tune of thank you, thank you, thank you… and so it is… blessed bee…

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