dan-sing winds of change

whirling, swirling through rainbow mists

re-birthing a world of peace

awaken today inspired to stop the everyday world and travel down into ocean depths to swim in resilientsea and find the pearl that shines a light on the path to the buoyantsea… even with the past days of flowing in beauty, i still feel a moment of quaking at today’s call of the wild to defy gravity even more, to break my heart open wider – am i up for this adventure? yes, hell yes, i am made for this, we are made for this alchemizing, this transmuting of our illusion of certainty into flowing with what is… smiling and chanting thank you, thank you, thank you, i dive into the darkness breathing through our one heart in the rhythm of the waves and in the stillness of deep mystery, i embrace what comes… i’m content to dwell here until the way clears… letting go, being flow on the beautyway of the illuminated heart…

may every breath be a blessingway, a blessingway of deepening balance, a flowing with the waters of life in harmony revealing every moment as sacred…

still devastated by the shocking rampage of violence occurring near Atlanta on Tuesday that exposes yet again the deadly consequences of racism, misogyny and xenophobia rooted in white supremacy and a domination worldview, our world continues to grieve… on the heels of a year long rise in Asian hate crimes, we must mourn and speak out against this bigotry….

as Dr. Michelle Au, a physician, Georgia state senator and the first Asian American Georgia state senator said, “Our AAPI community has been living in fear this past year in the shadow of escalating racial discrimination and attacks. This latest series of murders only heightens that terror. … I implore all Georgians, and all Americans, to reach out to your Asian-American neighbors [and] to pledge to stand with them in solidarity.”

sadly, this discrimination and violence against Asians in the United States traces back to their first entry into the country. in 1882 a law passed explicitly barring immigration from China and in WWII, 100;000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps…

we  must address the systemic violence waged against asian communities, black communities, native american communities, muslim communities, jewish communities and on and on and transmute the root causes…

let us all stand together in solidarity with all who are victimized by systemic violence and uproot whatever stands in the way of real-eye-sing we belong to each other, all living beings are one… think/feel cosmically, act locally…

on this day of mourning another tragedy and celebrating and being transported energetically by dolphin pixie spirits to the wild, poetically enchanting, magical emerald isle, who better to hear an echo from than her late, great native son, John O’Donahue…

“Beannacht
(“Blessing”)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.”

(Echoes of Memory)

welcome, well come to day 46 of  a season of peace…

two years ago i wrote about indomitable peace activist and astonishing light of being peace, Frances Crowe who had turned 100 on the ides of march and how her beloved community was celebrating her radical soul… a legend in the Pioneer Valley of  western Massachusetts, she was honored in her beloved community with 100 signs for 100 years… i was curious about how she had celebrated her 102nd continuation day and found out she had died some five and a half months after turning 100…

what a legacy she leaves and the changing of so many lives in her devotion to peace which became her cause following the bombing of Hiroshima… what can one being do to further peace? listen to what a couple of friends say about Frances…

“Frances Crowe called me in the early ‘80s to ask if I would produce “Handy Dandy,” a play by William Gibson at a theater company I was managing in Northampton.  The two-character play tells of the complex exchange — about conscience and the law — between a nun who is arrested for protesting a nuclear power plant in Cambridge and the judge she comes before. Of course, Frances related to the play since she had been —  even then — arrested innumerable times. When asked how many times, she said, “Not enough.” I agreed to produce the play, and that’s how our work together began.

In the almost 40 years I’ve known Frances, these are things I think are true: she does not suffer fools gladly and she can spot hypocrisy from miles away; she is unrelenting (persistent is an understatement); she sees what it will take others years (maybe even decades) to see; she thinks of everything she can do and then she does it. A very partial list includes showing thousands of films, handing out probably millions of leaflets and petitions, committing acts of civil disobedience and being willing to suffer the consequences; using social media like Democracy Now! before there was social media; organizing thousands of protests, public events like the first Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrations and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorations and more. Finally, she enlists everyone she can think of to help carry out the work.”

~Lois Ahrens~

 “Working with Frances, I find that she lives exactly how she believes — leaving a small footprint and living simply so that others may simply live… Daily, I get a hands-on lesson in just how she does it…”

~Carolyn Oates~

“I met Frances Crowe on the street in Northampton before the Iraq war. She gave me that broad smile and probably a flyer. My husband, Bill, and I fell under her spell because what Frances was saying then and what she’s saying now makes sense. It’s pretty simple stuff: stop war and weapons sales; save the children — ours and theirs — from senseless suffering and death.

Bill and I had young children. Imagining planes dropping bombs on other people’s children spurred us into action. We found ourselves on the weekly vigil line, making posters, marching and traveling to protests. Frances affirmed something in me. Seeing how she made her life’s vocation the ending of war changed me. As an artist, my sculptures tended to chronicle my family and friends, but I found myself turning to art with a mission.

I’ve made a number of sculptures and drawings of Frances. She isn’t easy to capture — so much humor and passion rolled into one. One of my pieces celebrates the weekly vigil organized by the Northampton Committee to Lift the Sanctions on Iraq. I sculpted the many individuals who stood on the line, with Frances out in front, speaking to two soldiers. To Frances, everyone is worth attention, deserves respect and is worth convincing.

Frances’ passion simply washes away other concerns. She’s not bothered or constrained by her physical size, her sex or her age. Sometimes I think our instinct is to minimize these things, along with race, social class and stridency, in order to fit in. This may very well keep us from our most forceful action. But Frances uses every part of herself to advance her cause. And this is some of what it takes to make a good piece of expressionist art. A recognition that our voice and our message is more important … well, than anything. It’s nearly an act of faith that in getting the message into the world our shortcomings will actually be transformed into assets.

How is it that Frances’ welcoming, challenging message has sunk so deeply into our psyches? Every day I think we borrow a piece of her courage and conviction, the conviction that there can be a better place and a better way. For now, it may only be a place held in the mind’s eye, yet it feels real, this place of No War.”

~Harriett Diamond~

may we all journey along the path with heart deepening our connection to source and our being one with beloved in this moment, this beautiful moment…

welcome, welcome to day 45 of a season of peace, the perfect day to once again celebrate IWD with its theme this year of choosing to challenge ourselves, challenge ourselves to change the world and one of the best ways to do that is to change ourselves, to be the love, peace, joy, wisdom, generosity we want to see in the world by:

recognizing the oneness we are in an intricately interconnected web of life

challenging conscious and unconscious bias

calling for gender-balanced leadership

valuing all contributions equally

creating inclusive flexible cultures

challenging inequality

championing wholistic education

campaigning for and waging peace

~

in this moment of eternity, as we rise we are a great wave rippling across the cosmos celebrating the divine feminine, in all genders, in her quest for equality, freedom and harmony… coming together in sacred circle drawing down the energy of the waxing moon, we pause across the planet to gather in peace and be the rising tide singing our soul song… let’s focus the healing power of love within our hearts on all our relations and our beautiful cosmos aligning with the energies of:

• stepping into a new capacity to keep pace with sudden and complete change
• opening to our spirit dropping deeply into our physical bodies and our mundane reality
• discovering our higher purpose hidden within the seed of our personal ambition
• consciously moving into relationships that are based on love, caring and affection rather than being compelled to play out our old relationship stories
• learning obedience to cosmic laws
• finding the support and connections we need to step out of survival based relationships
• staying within ourselves and allowing the universe to co-create with us, rather than going outside ourselves and pushing to make things happen

congratulations to us all as our first native american became the secretary of the interior in the usa – Deb Haaland is a fierce protector of our earthmother and will serve us well which reminds me of another fierce defender – RBG whose birthday is today – rest in peace…

welcome, well come to auspicious day 44 of a season of peace and to peace pi day,the infinitely nonrepeating numbers containing the answers to everything and the infinite number of ways they whisper to us about how it all boils down to the shero’s journey of transformation – from the illusion of a separated small self to  the reality of the one true SELF and welcome to day 88 (infinity,infinity) in the eighth year of writing the walk of the poetic peace pilgrimage and welcome to this moment of eternity where we celebrate the astonishing light of being…

today is further such a stellar day as it also marks the third anniversary of Stephan Hawking’s transmutation… born auspiciously on the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death, Professor Hawking also died auspiciously on Albert Einstein’s birthday…  i love this star going into the cosmos to travel into infinity in such synchronicity and imagining their spirits circling the cosmos together…

let us take this moment to listen to this freespirit…

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.
It matters that you don’t just give up…

The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. … Time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed. Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything…

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded…”

let us close with some beautiful words from Albert…

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”

welcome, well come to day 43 of a season of peace, to the last new moon of the astrological year of vision 2020 and to a day of re-membering Breonna Taylor on the year anniversary of her death when we still say the chant, “say her name” in support of her family whose grief is amplified by their being a lack of responsability for her tragic shooting…

let us dedicate the planting of seeds of this powerful moon to all the innocents murdered in the spirit of this piscean new moon of the universal heart, of the soul realm with the sabian symbol of a medium conducting a seance suggesting we have the power to create reality… and so it is ours to enact – a world where we real-eyes we are one and when one cell of our one body is harmed, we are all harmed…

so let us take this moment of eternity to swim in the watery womb and conspire, breathe together/to get her that even more beautiful world with a deep inhale from our earthmother of a mother’s unconditional love and a father’s absolute protection and then releasing it to flow into all cells of our one cosmic body…

now is the moment of eternity to open to the wisdom of el canto hondo singing us home to the core of interbeing trusting in spirit to nourish us with inspiration as we swim with the merrymaids and leap with the dolphins resting in the bellies of the whales who hold the memory of where we came from and who we truly are…. blessed be….

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.  ~ Marcel Proust ~

today is a day of soulitude, a day of soul study, a day of listening to the silence… a day of radical presence, of being the new operating system programmed with a spacious consciousness of nowhere to go and nothing to do but simply wait patiently for the soul song to flow…

i’m in good company in this moment of eternity…  my old dolphin guides, Adolpho and Adelphi/Philo and Sophy, free and easy wanderers of the great beyond, come out to celebrate our ever widening circles of courageous souls letting go of caterpillar identity to dissolve in the cosmic stew reborn as imaginal cell open (organically present & emptied now) to the natural flow of oceanic consciousness…

these wise sages of liminal space, guides at the threshold whisper words of grace… “re-member, it is the impeded stream that sings” and so i venture with them to the stillpoint to listen… here i see grandmother spider dancing creation and weaving a new web of life, carbon turned into crystals of light, a thousand dancing diamonds twinkling in the night, imbuing the all with powerful sight of the world being breathed into life again, unfolding mystery of the knowledge within… here in great silence we listen deeply to our one cosmic heart, dancing the love song we are called now to impart…

come on over and sit by the waters with me and let’s journey together back into the cosmic womb, the dark sacred space of origin…. breathe in the flowing mother waters… feel the flowing waters, be flowing water…. now, breathe deeply in the rhythm of the waves diving deeper and deeper into the stillpoint… re-member who we really are – water -we are the eternal radiance…

now, blessing the waters within and without, breathe them in, feeling the radiance you are, an illuminated being of great heart… in this wellspring, water reminds us of our purpose, we are original source, creation creating creation in the belly of the earth where all rivers converge into one rainbow stream of radiance, one cosmic circle birthing the divine…

let’s sit here silently for awhile radically present in life’s flow, trusting in the beauty of pachamama and the blessings of  great mystery and the knowing of the true bottom line – all is well and all is well and all matter of things shall be well…

rising from the tsunami

on March 11, 2011, a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami devastated the coast of northeast Japan, claiming an estimated 20,000 lives… today is the ten-year anniversary of the disaster and marks a decade of mourning, recovery, and rebuilding for those who lost loved ones and whose homes and villages were destroyed…

  for those who survived the tsunami, the spirits of the dead are still very much alive with some survivors saying that the tragic event tore a hole in the veil between the living and dead… many have reported seeing the wandering souls of the victims whose bodies were never found…

as Japan fell quiet at 2:46 p.m. today to mark the minute that the earthquake began 10 years ago, many walked to the seaside or visited graves to pray for relatives and friends washed away by the water… Emperor Naruhito and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga were among those observing a moment of silence at a memorial in Tokyo…

the days following the quake were terrifying for many in Japan and farther afield, as hydrogen explosions released radiation into the air and technicians worked furiously to try to cool the plant’s nuclear fuel by pumping in seawater… in addition to the more than 20,000 people who died mostly in the tsunami, nearly half a million people were displaced and more than 40,000 are still unable to return home…

as rising from the tsunami progresses with rebuilding, recovery of the survivors’ hearts is slower with the cries of the children, the elderly and those in the prime of life still echoing as the tides roll in and out… may peace and solace deepen in our one heart…

our liberation is bound up with all others,

let us work together for freedom for all

~

welcome, well come to day 40 of a season of peace where i’ve been sauntering these 40 days in the desert of the heart patiently waiting to celebrate a supreme shero and queen of liberation – Harriette Tubman – and Holy Synchronicity! find that today is the 108th anniversary of  her death…

i shall now turn this platform over to the poem of Sonia Sanchez to bring light to the life of this extraordinary being…

1

Picture a woman riding thunder on the legs of slavery    …

2

Picture her kissing our spines saying no to the eyes of slavery    …

3

Picture her rotating the earth into a shape of lives becoming    …

4

Picture her leaning into the eyes of our birth clouds   …

5

Picture this woman saying no to the constant yes of slavery  …

6

Picture a woman jumping rivers her legs inhaling moons  …

7

Picture her ripe with seasons of legs    …   running    …

8

Picture her tasting the secret corners of woods    …

9

Picture her saying: You have within you the strength,
the patience, and the passion
to reach for the stars,
to change the world    …

10

Imagine her words: Every great dream begins
with a dreamer  …

11

Imagine her saying: I freed a thousand slaves,
could have freed
a thousand more if they
only knew they were slaves    …

12

Imagine her humming: How many days we got
fore we taste freedom    …

13

Imagine a woman asking: How many workers
for this freedom quilt   …

14

Picture her saying: A live runaway could do
great harm by going back
but a dead runaway
could tell no secrets    …

15

Picture the daylight bringing her to woods full of birth moons …

16

Picture John Brown shaking her hands three times saying: General Tubman. General Tubman. General Tubman.

17

Picture her words: There’s two things I got a
right to: death or liberty …

18

Picture her saying no to a play called Uncle Tom’s Cabin: I am the real thing  …

19

Picture a Black woman: could not read or write trailing freedom refrains   …

20

Picture her face turning southward walking down a Southern road   …

21

Picture this woman freedom bound    …    tasting a people’s preserved breath…

22

Picture this woman of royalty   …    wearing a crown of morning air   …

23

Picture her walking, running, reviving a country’s breath    …

24

Picture black voices leaving behind lost tongues  …

~

may we continue her underground railroad mission as an aboveground movement of liberation from the inside out…