Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 264 – 9/6/2021

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today is a trifecta of riches: it’s labor of love day (and in a supreme irony, 35 million usa citizens are losing their unemployment benefits on this very day), new moon in virgo and the celebration of a new year, rosh hashanah, the ancient hebrew tradition inviting us into an inner journey, a conscious pilgrimage into the womb of creation for transformation and rebirth giving us the opportunity to move in deeper and create from consciousness, from the quantum field of infinite possibility…

in this moment of eternity when collectively we are so challenged by uncertainty, may we take a deep dive into the womb of creation and re-member what we can trust in – that we are love, loved and beloved and let us intend under this new moon and year to co-create a world of peace and harmony founded on justice and guided by love…

let us close with an invocation of this moon of venus, of love…

“I Am the Essence of Love. I Am Whole and Holy. I Am Sacred & Sovereign. I Am Enough as I Am now. I Am a vessel uniting Heaven and Earth, walking The Way of Love & Service. I Surrender & Open to Love, dissolving resistance & fear. I Am Safe in my body. I Am Supported and protected to feel pleasure. I Allow Love to flow free from my Womb, Heart & Mind. I Am Rooted to the Earth & the Stars. I Speak my Truth with Integrity and Clarity. I Celebrate how love expresses through me as Compassion and Kindness. My life is a living prayer flowing in a River of Devotion. I Am Open to Receive.I Am Guided by Grace and my Intuition. I Anchor the Frequency of Love through my Sacred Body Temple on Earth now. And so it is.” ~Achintya Devi ~

blessed bee…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 263 – 9/5/2021

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in this moment of eternity when we celebrate the astonishing light of our interbeing with am image that paints this light, here it is and a little bit early for labor day tomorrow, more specifically waged labor in the USA and Canada when we/some of us have a day off from waged work… i find myself  spending some moments this day contemplating the notion of labor and reflecting upon its essence as a labor of love, as the great work of being pregnant with an unknown creation forming within, a seed we water and feed and sing to as we hold space reverentially for the new and gather with others to support the birthing process, to shelter the labor of love, the great work of and for all our relatives…

~

Song of the Builders

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

~ Mary Oliver ~

~

in closing, a few words from Martin Luther King the day after his final speech when the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968… King went to support garbage workers, who were on strike to protest unsafe conditions, abusive supervisors, low wages and to gain recognition for their union…

“I would like to live a long life,” he said. “Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

the way to get there is every day to continue the labor of love and the struggle for human dignity, workers’ rights, living wages, and social justice… to intend and act from an energy of compassion and liberation and light, to align more and more deeply with source, the self organizing intelligence of  the ever regenerating space we call home…

celebrating our labors and laborers of love, especially essential workers – let’s get to work putting real workers of essence, the master builders of our world at the front of the line and give them accolades and discounts for their inestimable service… and, may we all celebrate our laboring, our birthing a onederfilled world of love…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 262 – 9/4/2021

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“A true vocation requires shedding anything that would impede or obscure the call. A true pilgrimage requires letting go of the very things most people try to hold onto. In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow.”
~ Michael Meade ~

as we approach the new moon in virgo, i feel  so strongly the call to plant seeds of intention to align with the master sculpting force that chisels away the stone of illusion and expectation releasing the spirit held within to take flight and dive ever deeper into the peace passing all understanding, the peace found in the center of the medicine wheel…

two years ago today i was to have begun a pilgrimage of peace along the Camino of St Francis, a journey i had spent so much  energy attending to and intending…. this vocation, this calling took a different form leading me to follow Rumi’s dictum to journey within, a dictum i continually follow and emphatically so today… to make space for creation…

we can all be instruments of peace, holy vessels of compassion in every moment and with every breath wherever we are, an energy we all need to cultivate as we meet the waves of turbulence rolling in so intensely… so, i’d love your joining me in seeing through eyes of wonder as we wander wholeheartedly into the world being birthed in this moment… the world of peace built on justice guided by love humming to the frequency of harmony with beauty before us, behind us, below us, above us, surrounding us, within us…

and so it is, blessed bee!

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 261 – 9/3/2021

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“Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars 

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment, 

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders 
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is 

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned 

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side 

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world 

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it 

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.”

these challenging times speak to letting go and to the profound lessons of impermanence, compassion, and grief that can be learned as Mary Oliver muses in her poem quoted above…

may we learn to appreciate both nature’s wrath and beauty, understanding our place in the balance of things…

“Be completely empty. Be perfectly serene.The ten thousand things arise together; in their arising is their return. Now they flower, and flowering sink homeward,returning to the root. The return to the root is peace. Peace: to accept what must be,to know what endures. In that knowledge is wisdom. Without it, ruin, disorder. To know what endures is to be openhearted, magnanimous, regal, blessed, following the Tao, the way that endures forever. The body comes to its ending, but there is nothing to fear.” ~ Verse 16, Tao Te Ching ~

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 260 – 9/2/2021

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welcome to the second day of surrendered into love september where under the tutelage of the sun in virgo, the virgin who is one in the true self, we attune to the all that is with the energy of bhakti, of devotedly opening the heart ever wider and deeper….

re-membering grandmother weaving joyfully

returning to her, we breathe in harmony

our one heart soars with great mystery

buoyantly floating in the vast skysea…

~

may we live in love in the buoyant sea

planting seeds of peace in the fields of rainbow mystery

kindling the inner light eternally

dancing home together joyfully

flowing as one effortlessly…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 259 – 9/1/2021

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a heartmind like the sky

emptiness as vast as space

witnesses wonder

the sanskrit word for emptiness is shunyata while the chinese character is sky… both representations plus the image of hang gliding convey some of the experience of our true nature of emptiness…  the joyful freedom and liberation when we are empty of separation, weightiness, burdens and limitation… a state empty of suffering while grounded in boundless compassion for all relatives, a state sans borders and boundaries, as vast and expansive as the deep peace of the running wave flowing through the all that is… a state of flying into the great unknown, syncing/sinking/surrendering into emptiness which can feel disorienting especially when done wholeheartedly and it is that same whole-heartedness that saves, that orients, that aligns us with source…

welcome to surrendered into boundless love september where we align with the master sculpting force that chisels away the stone of illusion and expectation releasing the spirit held within to take flight and dive ever deeper into the peace passing all understanding, the peace found in the center of the medicine wheel…

re-member open sky

return to her, breathe and fly

our one heart soars high

listen with me now as we surrender to boundless love to the Love Prayer the inimitable Charlie Chaplin heard singing him on his 70th birthday…

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”. As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody as I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it and even though this person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT”. As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it “MATURITY”. As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time,and everything happens at the exactly right moment. So I could be calm. Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE”. As I began to love myself I quit steeling my own time and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do and that make my heart cheer and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it “SIMPLICITY”. As I began to love myself I freed myself of any thing that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations,and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”. As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right and ever since I was wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “MODESTY”. As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worry about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT”. As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally.Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.

may we all walk in a surrendered way today and every day with each breath a new beginning, each moment of eternity a walk in beauty with all our relatives traveling as one along the rainbow trail deeper into great mystery’s sacred web of life everlasting…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 258 – 8/31/2021

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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 astonishing 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 trancing, growing and staying still, moving and grounding…

so,in this moment of eternity, this astonishing light 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 astonishing 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 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 path together coming home to our one heart, summoning the courage each moment 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 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 cell in your body, our one body?

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 257 – 8/30/2021

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i awaken today on this next to last day of astonishing light august with two words playing through me… maitri and karuna… lovingkindness and compassion… how much i/we need these nutrients of sunlight… how much i/we all require these most essential nutrients as we meet each moment of eternity fully, as we meet moments as friends…

the more turbulence in the world, the more we are called to be lovingkindness and compassion for ourselves and all others… today’s turbulence and ruptures also whisper of letting go, of traveling lightly between the worlds of here and now and the great beyond… deeper and deeper into the mystery of the cave of the heart, into the sacred space of silence beyond all words…

i’d love for you to join me now in the lovingkindness field of compassion, the bodhisattva field, the field of liberation, the field of infinite openness… and, in this sacred space, let us join in the most essential practice for cultivating lovingkindness and compassion, the practice of tonglen, of giving and taking…

truth is we all have an endless supply of these nutrients available to flow into us through the umbilical cord of our one heart…

we begin with ourselves by coming into our essence… unconditional love and imagining all limiting forces condensing into a black ball of smoke and coming out of our stomach to be received into the sacred heart of compassion… now witness the black ball dissolving and smile feeling yourself as love, joy, wisdom and liberation…

now, let’s move onto someone we love who’s suffering and witness all their pain coming out of their stomach and coming into the divine heart of boundless compassion… smile at seeing them transfigured…

now, we move onto someone who’s betrayed us terribly seeing all the forces that created their pain condensing into a black ball of smoke that dissolves as it enters the divine heart of compassion…

finally, we see a group of dangerous people and the pain that caused their views condensing into a black ball of smoke and dissolving as it enters the sacred heart of compassion… smile as you witness this group’s transformation…

now, take a deep breath from the sacred heart of compassion savoring this moment’s beingness of bliss…

  may we take this moment to open our eyes and real-eyes the awesomeness of the cosmos when we wander in wonder dancing gracefully in rhythm with the great mystery of the all that is…

“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

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 256 – 8/29/2021

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“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”

~Hafiz of Shiraz~

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

~Albert Schweitzer~

it’s our moment in eternity to celebrate the astonishing light of our being on this day when the state of Louisiana in the USA is being pummelled by Hurricane Ida just as Houston was on this day four years ago… it’s also another day in afghanistan when beautiful children, like the one in this picture, are being killed in afghanistan and yemen and somalia and on and on with adults in leadership misusing their power by not putting the welfare of the children first, by not being mindful of the seven generations…

so, let’s join hands feeling the energy of love we are passing from one to another to another to another and with each passing around the unbroken circle, the vibration of the divine light of love geometrically progresses as we re-member who we truly are and how we are to be…

may the eternal flame of your inner light be constantly kindled both from within and by other relatives throughout the cosmos who love, serve and re-member…

Poetic Peace Pilgrimage – Year 8 – Day 255 – 8/28/2021

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today is the quintessential dreamy day as thousands converged on the nation’s capital to demand the protection of voting rights walking in the footsteps of the 250,000 people who rallied in the historic March on Washington 58 years before and heard the iconic ” I Have A Dream” speech that Martin Luther King gave after being prompted by Mahalia Jackson to put down his prepared speech and tell the people of his dream…

~

“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!”

~

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