2016

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Jo Beall

In his own words…

Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.

May we all breathe his Blessing of Peace deeply through our one heart.

His parting words leaving Portland:

“I’m always mentioning that mentally, emotionally and physically we are the same human being. So the potential which I have and that I use – you also have that same potential. You must realize that potential and utilize that potential as much as you can. Then you will be a happy person and live a meaningful life.”

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 202 – 7/5/2016

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Jo Beall

in each and every sacred moment, may we reverence the mystery of cosmic flow and be fully present to whatever may come and go trusting in the web of infinite, interconnected threads woven by creatrix, source of all that is…

may we be still in the muddy waters resting gently in the ebbtide until the waters clear and the seeds begin to sprout while lotus blossoms one petal at a time and wings unfold as they dry in slow motion…

may we all befriend the pregnant pause, the space of stillpoint where we dream in the rhythm of the waves as we mother peace and birth dancing stars…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 201 – 7/4/2016

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Jo Beall

Happy Interdependence!

under this new moon falling synchronistically on the USA’s birthday, a day of seeding new stories, as i dig into inner earth, i re-member back to undergraduate days in the late sixties and early seventies when life was a running consciousness conversation with interdependence as one of our favorite musings… we were feeling the energy of oneness and interconnection, of ubuntu, a term appearing in South African sources back in the mid-nineteenth century…

i love the beautifully illustrative story of the anthropologist proposing a game to some children in an African tribe where he puts a basket of fruit near a tree telling them whoever gets there first wins the sweet fruits… so, he gives the signal to run and they all take each others hands and run together and then sit in a circle enjoying the treats… when questioned as to why they chose to run as a group, out of the mouths of babes poured wisdom… ubuntu, how can one of us be happy if all the rest are sad?

may we all live ubuntu… I AM because WE ARE…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 200 – 7/3/2016

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Jo Beall

yes, today is a perfect day to plant new seeds, to mother new seeds under this new moon in cancer, this joyous july, this goddess who shakes things up moon, this night light giving us the chance to re-birth our emotional body under this weaver of life stories moon… imagine this moon as a vessel of water blessing us with creativity and abundance, the source of being and becoming… showering us with seeds for our inner cultivation… lovingkindness, compassion, gentleness, generosity, harmony, joy, justice peace, strength, simplicity, truth and wisdom… it is under the dark of the moon that the Sun and the Moon unite to birth the new and so let us close with a prayer from the Gaiafield Earth Treasure project for the United States’ re-birthday under this regenerative moon…

We the people,

Call forth the deepest Wisdom,

The greatest Joy,

And the highest Compassion

From the heart and soul of America

For the benefit of all life on Earth

And the next seven generations

May Wisdom prevail in the United States of America

May Peace prevail on Earth

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 199 – 7/2/2016

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Jo Beall

i awaken today with the feeling of tears, of loss, of letting go and witness these clouds as a natural flow and a cue to tune into the mystery of trust by being thanksgiving for whatever is here… many metaphorical miles and hours later, i hear of the death of Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz survivor, eloquent witness, messenger of the oppressed, messenger for dignity and atonement and peace, Nobel laureate for peace who implored each of us to see ourselves in each other and make real the vow of “never again”…

to honor this being of peace, listen to some excerpts from a prayer he published in 1997…

A Prayer for the Days of Awe

Master of the Universe, let us make up. It is time. How long can we go on being angry?

More than 50 years have passed since the nightmare was lifted. Many things, good and less good, have since happened to those who survived it. They learned to build on ruins. Family life was re-created. Children were born, friendships struck. They learned to have faith in their surroundings, even in their fellow men and women. Gratitude has replaced bitterness in their hearts. No one is as capable of thankfulness as they are. Thankful to anyone willing to hear their tales and become their ally in the battle against apathy and forgetfulness. For them every moment is grace…

Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven’t you also suffered?

As we Jews now enter the High Holidays again, preparing ourselves to pray for a year of peace and happiness for our people and all people, let us make up, Master of the Universe. In spite of everything that happened? Yes, in spite. Let us make up: for the child in me, it is unbearable to be divorced from you so long.

saluting the source flowing through all our relations, may we join together as the one heart we are in the stillness of love and the silence of peace

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 198 – 7/1/2016

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Jo Beall

new beginning, new breath, new moment, new month, new moon right around the corner, new day, new journey, newly standing on the brink of a new world pausing with all the pregnant possibilities alive in such a confluence, quickening, fluttering, our one heart knows we are poised to take flight, to wing our way on unknown migratory routes trusting our one heart knows the way… as we open to this new beginning, let’s re-member how to awaken in this moment, this beautiful moment…

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

~ David Whyte ~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 197 – 6/30/2016

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Jo Beall

in this moment of pregnant pause, i see us standing still on a high dune blessing this space we share… this, on the brink of a new world, space where we realize there is no separation… this stillpoint at the center of our circle, the hub of the wheel where all that is, is still, where everything is oh so real, where the peace that passeth all understanding is palpable calling us into deep silence…. listen, listen to the cosmic hum… listen, listen to our heartbeat’s drum… listen, listen for the sound of the bell syncing our breathing to the mantra, all is well… deep peace of the running wave to you, deep peace, deep peace, deep peace…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 196 – 6/29/2016

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Jo Beall

today marks the close of a yearlong journey and the opening of a new journey… of course the same could be said with every breath that comes in and goes out, we are all on an endless voyage deeper and deeper into the great unknown and so let’s pause in this beautiful moment to honor our sacred pilgrimage of the heart

For the Traveler

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

~ John O’Donohue ~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 195 – 6/28/2016

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Jo Beall

today, i awaken with a start… realeyesing our year of daily practice of invoking grace has leap day in it, i understand today is not the final day of this cycle, we have an additional day to surrender all to divine grace, another day to offer up the wounds of humanity for the healing of the whole, another day to envision all our relations offering up the sacred wounds of the cosmos and thus unlocking the hidden treasures of compassion and grace…

so, i travel beyond space and time to the isle of avalon to spend this day sitting by the well in the peace garden enjoying some silent moments contemplating just as i have every day over the past thirteen moons, a practice that teaches one how to see holistically, to see through the eyes of great mystery flowing through you, flowing through me…

re-membering… this cycle of beautiful magical mystery tour that actually began some seven moons before the last thirteen moons of committed practice with my move into a cell at the convent of the good shepherd… to be clear, the convent is now repurposed as affordable housing, i simply love being the energy of contemplation that indwells here to this day…and, i love the gift of contemplation, making the unconscious, conscious, the invisible, visible… and, i love that i answered the call that had been bleeping across the radar screen to get thee to a nunnery… yes, i love how the cosmos conspires…

deepest bows to the Beloved, the all flowing source of love, wisdom and truth and to my beloved contemplative partner whose steadfast love brings us to this moment and to all transmitters and receivers populating our one cosmic sea of love energy…

thanks be, thanks be, thanks be…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 3 – Day 194 – 6/27/2016

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Jo Beall

at 21, i was given heirloom seeds of devotion… at 42, i planted the seeds saying a mantra over them daily about being a midwife of heart consciousness… at 63, i began devotedly tending, caring for, watering, chanting over these seeds in co-llaboration with Beloved and an earth angel… we are coming to the close of a year of daily practice, a year of surrendering, melting into the divine, a year of outer seeing diminishment and inner seeing enhancement… truly, a year of magic which i define as change in consciousness, a year of being in an altered state more and more and more… a year of grace, a year of deep descent, a year of stretching, a year of being still… one wild turn around the sun of planting the seeds of devotion, of being a farmer of the heart…

thousandfold thanks for joining us in this practice, yes, we are all involved for we all live in the same field and are all breathed into life by the same spirit… deep, deep bows, beloveds…

Abundance Created Together (ACT)

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess. – Rainer Maria Rilke –

Author Archives: Jo Beall