2017

Posted on October 2, 2017 by Jo Beall

“As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance,
may your imagination continue to evoke horizons.”

~ John O’Donohue ~

the unspeakable tragedy of yesterday magnifies the wholehearted commitment to every day of this openhearted moon being devoted to cultivating a heart of compassion breaking wider open with every suffering, every travail, every loss…

on a day such as this, may we all come together reaching out our hands to feel the love we are passing through from one to another to another as we stand together in love for love seeing the world as a peaceable kingdom, being a culture of peacemakers…

let us return to the deep celtic wisdom of Brother John echoing from the depths of the eternal sea…

“Either we are in the universe to inhabit the eternity of our souls and grow real, or else we might as well dedicate our days to shopping and kill time watching talk-shows… Let’s not let our days fall away like empty shells and miss all the treasure… The sacred duty of being an individual is to gradually learn how to live so as to awaken the eternal within you.”

may we awaken…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 289– 10/1/2017

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Jo Beall

welcome, openhearted october, a moon where every day the pilgrimage is a devotion to cultivating the green bough, the open heart of flowing love, peace and joy! i pray you awake today, with a child’s open heart and a beginner’s mind somewhere aware that this beautiful moment of sharing the astonishing light of being has been quietly forming and waiting for the perfect moment to present, to presence….

thanks be for courage kindling our one sweet heart to open to what is and to trust the destination is the journey… we don’t have to know where we are going, how could we in this river of life that’s fluid and dynamic, moving from moment to moment only asking that we simply be open, one with the tides of life…

today we travel along the mighty Columbia witnessing the devastation of a fire started by human hands and celebrating the beauty of the green boughs still alive in the gorgeous gorge…

deep bow to green tara, goddess of enlightenment and compassion, for revealing this moment of surrendering suffering to the river of joy always flowing…

may we all open our one heart as wide as the sky, as deep as the ocean and smile at this revelation of new life… the green bough promising all is well…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 288– 9/30/2017

Posted on September 30, 2017 by Jo Beall

today is such a special blessing the space moment as we close this sacred moon of september, a moon of being silently drawn by the pull of love – thank you, dear Rumi, and happiest of turns around the sun…

blessing the space of a moon of our witnessing the world turned upside down on both inner and outer planes, one long moon moment of resetting…

join me now on this high sand dune with panoramic water views to celebrate the fire dissolving into water, to savor the harvests of the trials faced, the suffering now seen as the grace of awakening, the bittersweet letting go of the small protective self in service to the higher purpose of the all that is…

thank you for sitting with the council of elders around the central sun as we reflect upon and share the full filling moments that live forever…

A Brave And Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

~ Maya Angelou ~

may we all awaken today…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 287 – 9/29/2017

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Jo Beall

the heart sutra

liberates all suffering

magical mantra

~

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 al 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 radiate lovingkindness and compassion every breath…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 286 – 9/28/2017

Posted on September 28, 2017 by Jo Beall

Holy Synchronisiddhi!

it’s been that kind of day… a day of deep peace of the running wave, a day of mysterious wisdom of the stilling wave, a day of dancing in the stillpoint witnessing rainbow bubbles…

riding the wave of heart wisdom right into the center, the temple of emptiness

where….

there’s nothing to hold onto…

~

This is the picture I prefer: In the middle of the river, with the shoreline out of view, the raft begins to disintegrate. We find ourselves with absolutely nothing to hold on to. From our conventional standpoint, this is scary and dangerous. However, one small shift of perspective will tell us that having nothing to hold on to is liberating. We could have faith that we won’t drown. Holding on to nothing means we can relax with this fluid, dynamic world.

~ Pema Chödrön ~

~

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 285 – 9/27/2017

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Jo Beall

each moment, well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and tomorrow a vision of hope… so, look to this moment for it and it alone is life…

what a deep sea journey the last seventeen days are, the last eight days and how perfect today, this moment to rest in the shifting tides in this moment of great turning…

floating in the sea of equanimity, deep in the recesses of our one heart, i carry you with me in our one heart, we are all carried as one in the sea of boundless love energy…

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 284 – 9/26/2017

Posted on September 26, 2017 by Jo Beall

today is one beautiful moment of amazing grace, all the sweeter for the long and winding road that the stars guided by pulling the thread of fate, the invisible nourishing cord attached to the soul long before the umbilical cord appears…

today is one beautiful moment of amazing grace, all the sweeter for returning to this sacred dream space of reflection to contemplate this deep passage of surrendering into love, of coming home to the mystery of interbeing… yesterday, i lived the quest of to be or not to be until re-membering flowed… we live in the multidimensional paradox of both/and, to be and not to be, to interbe…

thousandfold thanks for the crisis of sight with the concurrent danger of blindness and the opportunity of all seeing and thousandfold thanks for moving my feet one more step and one more step and thousandfold thanks for opening the heart a little wider giving a lens to see the quintessential purity of everything…

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 283 – 9/25/2017

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Jo Beall

as a child, i began hearing this little ditty flowing through…

my life is the poem i would have writ

but i could not both write and live it

were i to have a tombstone, these are words i’d love carved into the stone… the words are so perfect for today, for this deep passage into surrender, surrendering to the moment, surrendering to love, to beauty…

~

in the poem below, some ideas about how to be living poetry, how to be fire of creativity…

~

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 4 – Day 282 – 9/24/2017

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Jo Beall

one year ago for the weekly edition of sharing the amazing light of being with you, i used this powerful image of the women of peace of standing rock… it seems so appropriate to share a year later on this fourth night celebrating Navaratri, the festival of the Divine Feminine and the very day that the Divine Women Waging Peace begin their journey at the border of Palestine and Israel with humble hearts of forgiveness, carrying prayers for peace… marching together down a long hill and gathering at the Jordan River, the echoes of thousands of mothers, sisters, and daughters can be heard for miles, as they passionately cry out for a better future, for another way, for an end to violence, bloodshed, and terror… as they raise their voices in Arabic, Hebrew and English, singing a song of peace, may we all across the cosmos join our hands, hearts, and voices together…

From the North to the South
From the West to the East
Hear the prayer of the mothers
Bring them peace
Bring them peace

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 281 – 9/23/2017

Posted on September 23, 2017 by Jo Beall

as we walk the pathless path of peace deeper into cosmic unity, we re- member a lost chord of the celestial symphony… we are beloved community belonging to each other eternally in the deep peace of of our one heart…

we all be longing to come home to our one heart

to awaken and re-member our original space of belonging

where mother waters sing to us of our true nature

one body, one mind, one heartbeat, one love

welcome home to our belonging circle

welcome home to our ocean of love

~

may we all affirm with our whole being to seek true refuge for all our relatives…

namaste

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 –

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 290– 10/2/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 289– 10/1/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 288– 9/30/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 287 – 9/29/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 286 – 9/28/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 285 – 9/27/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 284 – 9/26/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 283 – 9/25/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 282 – 9/24/2017

Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 4 – Day 281 – 9/23/2017