Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 287 – 9/29/2018

Named Sacred 29 Heart Juled

the heart sutra

liberates all suffering

magical mantra

~

imagine how quickly we can heal our cosmos if more of us are singing, dancing, storytelling, resounding poetry and spending time in silence bathing in the forest, swimming in the sea, meeting in the field out beyond especially when we gather together heart to heart to interbe…

today is World Heart Day and the perfect day for the heart of teachings from the Buddhist Wisdom tradition on emptiness, the heart of compassion…

compassion is empathy for suffering arising from the heart’s valorous capacity to recognize universal kinship and belonging, transforming resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into kindness for all beings… compassion mandates that we extend understanding, warmth, sensitivity, and openness to the sorrows of the world in a truthful and genuine way…

the Sanskrit word for heart is hridayam, meaning “that which receives, gives and circulates…”

may we give, receive and radiate lovingkindness and compassion with every breath…

shanti shanti shantihi

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 286 – 9/28/2018

Named Sacred 28 Wisdom Heart Wave.

after yesterday’s perfect storm with the ground moving and shaking us to the core, with nothing to hang onto, i call today to be a global day of stillness, of pregnant pause but today the perfect storm complete with earthquakes and tsunami happens across the globe on an island of Indonesia with their aftershocks and yesterday’s aftershocks still reverberating…

in this space of nothing to hang onto, one hears the prayers to allah and a voice calling for a slowdown on a vote of confirmation and i slow down as well…

may we pause supported by the wings of our better angels and stand tall and true…

namaste’

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 285 – 9/27/2018

Named Sacred 27 MLK Revolution of Values

today is one of those days when i planned on going one way and was carried somewhere totally different… i knew the hearing was going to go on, had not planned to attend but something called me to be there, to listen for myself, to feel the people delivering their testimony, to bear witness, to support a being who was terrified and even more so, was courageous in delivering her testimony of a traumatic experience still echoing in her being and now echoing in our collective being triggering for many individuals and our collective nervous system flashbacks…

and then came the accused who broke down several times, who appeared to believe what he was saying going on about the destruction of his life…

i came to the hearing with an open heart and was surprised at how profoundly the core of my being was moved and shaken… i was reminded of 9-11 and the knowing the world would never be the same… on that day, i prayed our better angels would lead the way; today, i wished with my whole heart for wise leadership and only saw a brief glimpse from the senators on the committee, would that this body could do their duty and hold a day of silence for us all to ponder how we live together with justice for all…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 284 – 9/26/2018

Named Sacred 26 Juliette in Olympic National Rainforest+

today as i contemplate this International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, my reverie turns inward musing on disarming inner nuclear weapons, tending to our one heart in these troubled  and gifted times… 

in the mysterious space of liminality when awakening from resting in the invisible realms, i love being rocked in the lap of grandmother breathing in her boundless love and breathing it out gratefully…

re-membering love is the most powerful medicine, i return and return and return and return again to bathe in these healing waters tending the garden of compassion located in the earth of being…

~

In the name of daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its minors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons of the firefly
and the apple, I will honor all life

—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

~ Diane Ackerman ~

~

let us create a world of peace built on justice and guided by love…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 283 – 9/25/2018

Named Sacred 25 Circle of Friends 1000 AD Utah

Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls, birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round.

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tipis were round like the nests of birds and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.

~Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk)~

one interconnected circle of interbeing, blessed be…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 282 – 9/24/2018

Named Sacred 24 Moon Full in Aries Harvest Moon

thousandfold thanks, sister moon, heart of abundance, horn of plenty for this spell of basking in your bounty, bathing in your light, drinking in balance, flowing in harmony, gathering in your generously streaming of  quintessence and slowly harvesting the fruits in this turn of the wheel calling us to come within to listen to the song of our soul, the pied piper of life…

under this fiery moon of water, what needs burning off and released into the flowing river of life? what seeds of the fruits call for holding, for gestating, for birthing the new?

let’s take this moment to conspire, to breathe together in gratitude gathering the quintessence re-membering who we truly are… loving sparks of light…

I am not these eyes and what they see, I am the soul of loving awareness quintessentially…

settle into spacious awareness saying… I am not these ears and what they hear, I am the soul of loving awareness quintessentially…

breathing in and out and simply being saying… I am not this mouth and what it tastes, I am the soul of loving awareness quintessentially… I am not these hands and what they touch, I am the soul of loving awareness quintessentially… I am not this nose and what it smells, I am the soul of loving awareness quintessentially…

now noticing thoughts arising and memories saying… I am not these thoughts, I am the soul of loving awareness quintessentially… I am not these memories, I am the soul of loving awareness quintessentially…

now seeing the whole body and feeling the body from within the body saying… I am not this body, I am the soul of loving awareness quintessentially…

breathing in feeling simply loving awareness… breathing out letting go of everything except resting in the soul of loving awareness quintessentially…

thank you for filling us with lovingkindness

thank you for supporting us in everything

thank you for holding us in peace and ease

shanti, shanti, shantihi…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 281 – 9/23/2018

Named Sacred 23 Pachamama, Sage of Beautyway

for today’s installment of  showing you the astonishing light of being, i share once again a favorite image of the old woman who weaves the worlds as a beautiful tapestry which unravels and rather than melting down, she picks up one of the loose threads and begins weaving the more beautiful world we can all imagine and weave into reality…

~

Halleluiah

Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I’m not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.

~ Mary Oliver ~

~

This is what you should do:
Love the earth and sun and animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people…
reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your very soul,
and your flesh shall become a great poem.

~ Walt Whitman ~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 280 – 9/22/2018

Named Sacred 22 Balance Blessingway Whale Watcing 2016 Cape Disappointment 019

equinox mission:

balance the opposites

transmuting either/or into both/and

celebrating unity’s harmony…

breathing in this moment of balance… being balance… reflecting yin/yang above/below, light/dark, spirit/matter as one… being one… creating a new vibration of integration… fusing all paths into one golden path dancing the way to the new world of harmony where we breathe in the rhythm of our one heart…

on this day of equinox, we move deeper into the mystery of balancing dark and light in the in between seasons’ space of summer and winter, of inner harvests and planting new seeds, we pause in the balance as the new world is breathing herself alive…

on this day energized by being equinox, i contemplate balance… on this holy day, this day of at one ment, i reap an inner harvest and appreciate a cornucopia of blessings… today i am gratitude embodied for all that is…

O Gracious Goddess of all Fertility, we have sown and
reaped the fruits of our actions….
Grant us the courage to plant seeds of joy and love in
the coming year… Teach us and show us the secrets
of wise cosmic existence..,
O luminous one of the night!

let us close this equinox ceremony with first peoples’ wisdom…

Chinook Blessing

We call upon the earth, our planet home, with its beautiful depths and soaring heights,

its vitality and abundance of life, and together we ask that it

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the mountains, Saddle mountain and Wahkiakum mountain, the Willapa Hills, the summits of intense silence, and we ask that they:

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the waters that rim the earth, the waters of

Our great river the I-a-gayte-imas, the waters of Willapa Bay,

And all of the waters the flowing [sic] our rivers and streams, the water that falls

Upon us, and we ask that they

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the land which grows our food, the nurturing

Soil that sustains our lives, we ask that they

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the forests, the great cedar trees reaching

Strongly to the sky  with earth in their roots and the heavens in their

Branches, cedar tree is the keeper of all

Knowledge, and we ask them to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the creatures of the fields and forests and the

Seas, our brothers and sisters Lilu the Wolf, Emulak the elk,

And Mauich the Deer, Chak-cahk the Eagle, the great

Whales and the Sturgeon, and the Salmon people who share

Our Chinook waters

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon all those who have lived on this earth, our

Ancestors and our friends, who dreamed the best for future

Generations, and upon whose lives our lives are built, and

With thanksgiving, we call upon them to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

And lastly, we call upon all that we hold most sacred, the

Presence and power of the Great Spirit

Which flows through all the Universe, to be with us to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

Delivered by Chinook Tribal Chief Gary Johnson in Chinook homelands

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 279 – 9/21/2018

Named Sacred 21 PEACE Flight

“Empty yourself of everything.  Let the mind rest at peace.  The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.  They grow and flourish and then return to the Source.  Returning to the Source is stillness, which is the way of Nature.  The way of Nature is unchanging.”  ~Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

what an extraordinary/ordinary anniversary day marking the 45th moment of sun gazing on the 279th day of the poetic peace pilgrimage in the 9th moon on my mother’s 94th birthday which falls on the International Day of Peace – such a wealth of riches… the energy of 9 is reverberating and echoing and cascading today… harvesting, completion, letting go… a moment of saluting endings/beginnings, evolving into light, expanding into love… embodying 9’s energy as Hermit, Hermes with the lamp radiating wisdom for all to share, riding a peace wave of superabundance flowing in the blessingway of unconditional infinite love and gratitude… may we all rest peacefully in the lap of the divine mother warmed by the embrace of the central sun…

and, may this celebration of peace take flight around the world with every breath, in every moment, on every day… may we be peace now and now and now…

~

Chinook Blessing

We call upon the earth, our planet home, with its beautiful depths and soaring heights,

its vitality and abundance of life, and together we ask that it

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the mountains, Saddle mountain and Wahkiakum mountain, the Willapa Hills, the summits of intense silence, and we ask that they:

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the waters that rim the earth, the waters of

Our great river the I-a-gayte-imas, the waters of Willapa Bay,

And all of the waters the flowing [sic] our rivers and streams, the water that falls

Upon us, and we ask that they

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the land which grows our food, the nurturing

Soil that sustains our lives, we ask that they

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the forests, the great cedar trees reaching

Strongly to the sky  with earth in their roots and the heavens in their

Branches, cedar tree is the keeper of all

Knowledge, and we ask them to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the creatures of the fields and forests and the

Seas, our brothers and sisters Lilu the Wolf, Emulak the elk,

And Mauich the Deer, Chak-cahk the Eagle, the great

Whales and the Sturgeon, and the Salmon people who share

Our Chinook waters

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon all those who have lived on this earth, our

Ancestors and our friends, who dreamed the best for future

Generations, and upon whose lives our lives are built, and

With thanksgiving, we call upon them to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

And lastly, we call upon all that we hold most sacred, the

Presence and power of the Great Spirit

Which flows through all the Universe, to be with us to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

Delivered by Chinook Tribal Chief Gary Johnson in Chinook homelands, November 18, 2005.

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 5 – Day 278 – 9/20/2018

Named Sacred 20 Lovingkindness Wedding Trip Pilgrimage 047 Oceanside Cape Meares

today is the eve of the International Day of Peace, a day where thousands will create, are already creating a huge wave of peace flowing across the planet… to honor this wave of peace pouring onto the cosmos…

I offer you peace.
I offer you love.
I offer you friendship.
I see beauty.
I hear your need.
I feel your feelings.
My wisdom flows from the Highest Source.
I salute the Source in you.
Let us work together for unity and love.
~Gandhi’s Prayer for Peace~

Peace to all beings
Whether near or far
Known or unknown
Real or imaginary
Visible or invisible
Born or yet to be born.
May all beings
Be well and happy
And free from fear.
Peace to all beings
Within and beyond the imagination
In the world of ideas
In the world of memories
And in the world of dreams.
May all beings
Be well and happy
And free from fear.
Peace in all elements
Of earth, air, fire and water
Fulfilled in space
Peace.
Peace in all universes
From the smallest cells in our bodies
To the greatest galaxies in space
Peace
And light rising
Peace to all beings
Within each being here
To those beings that have been in the past
And to those beings that are yet to be in the future
May all beings
Within each being here
Be well and happy
And free from fear.

~Buddhist Prayer~