today marks the closing of the season of peace; just as the season opened on the day Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, we close on the day Martin Luther King was killed, so, today is dedicated to peacemakers, to earth angels… today is an auspicious portal day of 4-4 called the great awakening and may it be so… so much to share on this day so i invite us to take this moment to celebrate light and love and rebirth and liberation and justice and crystalize these energies into our being peace in this moment of eternity, in every moment of eternity…

fifty-five years ago today and exactly one year before his murder, the prophet and poet, Martin Luther King, Jr delivered a rousing call to action in a speech entitled, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, to an overflow crowd at Riverside Church in New York City… Dr King’s challenge to engage in a radical revolution of values holds as true now as it did then and is so in keeping with our coming together today and the call we each need to answer, let us breathe in his words and then walk this talk with our every step, thought, word and deed…

“I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin, we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message—of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment do decide,
In the strife of truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

in this moment of eternity – the 108th day of the 9th year of daily ppp crystals and the 64th day of a season of peace and the 18th moon anniversary of a special being – i want to share one of Thay’s love letters to the earth, one i love engaging with daily and reading as a goodnight story to that aforementioned special being… injoy this praise song of earth…

~

Our Journey of Eons

“Dear Mother Earth,

Do you remember when you and Father Sun first formed from the dust of exploded stars and interstellar gas? You didn’t yet wear the silken cloak of freshness that you do today. At that time, Mother, more than four and half billion years ago, your robe was made of molten rock. Soon it cooled to form a hard crust. Although Father’s light was far less than it is today, your thin atmosphere captured the heat and kept your oceans from freezing. In those first few hundred million years, you overcame many great difficulties to create an environment capable of sustaining life. You released great heat, fires, and gases from your volcanoes. Steam was expelled from your crust to become vapor in your atmosphere and the water in your great oceans. Your gravity helped anchor the life-sustaining sky, and your magnetic field prevented it from being stripped away by solar winds and cosmic rays.

But even before forming the atmosphere, you endured a collision with a great heavenly body, almost the size of Mars. Part of the impacting planet became you; the rest of it, along with some of your mantle and crust, became the moon. Dear Mother, the moon is a part of you, as beautiful as an angel. She is a kind sister to you, always following you, helping you slow down and keep your balance, and creating tidal rhythms on your body.

Our entire solar system is one family, revolving around Father Sun in a joyful and harmonious dance. First there is Mercury, metallic and cratered, closest to the sun. Next is Venus with her intense heat, high-pressure atmosphere, and volcanoes. Then there is you, beloved Mother Earth, the most beautiful of all. Beyond us orbits the Red Planet, cold and desolate Mars; and after the asteroid belt there comes the gas giant Jupiter, by far the largest planet of all, attended by an assembly of diverse moons. Beyond Jupiter orbits Saturn, the spectacularly ringed planet, followed by Uranus, tilted on his side after a collision, and, finally, distant blue Neptune with his turbulent storms and high winds.

Contemplating this splendor, I can see that you, Mother Earth, are the most precious flower in our solar system, a true jewel of the cosmos.

It took you a billion years to begin to manifest the first living beings. Complex molecules, perhaps brought to you from outer space, started to come together in self-replicating structures, slowly becoming more and more like living cells. Light particles from distant stars, millions of light years away, came to visit and stay a while. Small cells gradually became larger cells; unicellular organisms evolved into multicellular organisms. Life developed from deep within the oceans, multiplying and prospering, steadily improving the atmosphere. Slowly, the ozone layer could form, preventing harmful radiation from reaching your surface, and allowing life on land to prosper. It was only then, as the miracle of photosynthesis unfurled, that you began to wear the exquisite green mantle you do today.

But all phenomena are impermanent and ever-changing. Life over vast areas of the Earth has already been destroyed more than five times, including sixty-five million years ago, when the impact of a giant asteroid caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs and three quarters of all other species. Dear Mother, I am in awe of your capacity to be patient and creative, despite all the harsh conditions you have endured. I promise to remember our extraordinary journey of eons and to live my days with the awareness that we are all your children, and that we are all made of stars. I promise to do my part, contributing my own energy of joy and harmony to the glorious symphony of life.”

let us all do our part by generously contributing our energy of joy and harmony to the astonishing light symphony of life…

living from the one heart

with every step a thanksgiving

and each breath a prayer

~

welcome, well come to day 63 of a season of  peace and to another day of dreamweaving crystalline peaces for this phase of the journey… we are still in the portal of the first new moon of this turn ’round the sun, the moon of spiritual guardians humming to the sacred frequency of the angels, a moment of eternity to gather across the cosmos and together breathe in, conspire the new… join me now in perfuming the field…

Invoking the Light of Grace

in the name of the Great Mother, we invoke benevolent streams of universal light to come and enfold us in a soft cocoon of love’s transforming grace… COME COME COME… we invoke subtle realms of more expansive and deeper vibration to infuse this coalescing energetic matrix with the purest frequencies of harmony, balance and stability aligned with the field of redeeming grace which we weave, ever so gently, in, through and around us now and to bless us with qualities of enduring strength and resilience… we now invite the Holy Spirit to enter into the deepest regions of our thoughts and feelings, assumptions and beliefs where we offer up all of our resistances, attachments, pains, stress, anxiety and suffering to our indwelling Divine Presence… Holy Spirit, please help us to see our personal circumstances through the eyes of our soul… shift our perceptions into right understanding so that we pass through our difficult times with more poise and equanimity dwelling in the deep and abiding comfort that comes from re-membering who we really are… embodied expressions of divinity… thousand fold thanks for the love and support flowing through the river of great mystery into every cell of the one body, every thread of the web of life…

thanks be for our hearts being softened, our minds being purified, our words being more tenderly spoken, our thoughts extending love to every living thing, our actions being a blessing unto the world, our souls shining throughout our expression and our being continually humbled, aligned with the earth of our being… Beloved of all life, please saturate us with wave after wave of transforming love and grace bringing greater comfort and understanding to every soul who desires it moving us more deeply into your embrace now so that we may be consoled as one… thanks be for Divine Light and its containing matrix being imperishable, eternally sustained, all powerfully active and ever expanding and unfolding… we seal this invocation in Cosmic Peace…

~

hover over us, beloved, center us in grace…

deep bows and thousand thousand fold thanks…

welcome, well come to day 62 of a season of peace and to the first day of adventurous april and to the day of celebrating the holy fool in us all setting off on a new turn around the sun of the adventure of life…

traditionally, the fool card in the tarot is associated with the numbers, 0 and 22… at 0, the fool symbolizes life force before manifestation; at 22, the fool has sauntered the 21 keys of the major arcana completing a full cycle of awareness and experience and now steps beyond into a new dimension of limitless potential as a free and easy wanderer, an awakened and adventurous pilgrim/poet on a journey…

so, on this first day of April, as we celebrate the ultimate pilgrim, the holy fool, let us bless this new beginning of a moonth of adventure, of coming home to the present moment by contemplating what’s been quietly forming in the background, what’s emerging now…

for me, the pathless path continues to be more and more mysterious in proportion with letting go to flow… this living more and more in the now takes heart, courage, it is a defying of gravity and moving into levitating… i’m trusting in Beloved and the power of love as iterated below by the incomparable Rumi…

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”

speaking of flying, seven years ago on this fool’s day (which seems like several lifetimes ago in this moment of eternity), i flew off on quite an adventure to gather holy water from the chalice well arriving the next day on the isle of avalon, sacred space of the goddess where i joined with a beloved community of thirteen in the breaking of bread and drinking of holy water and clean-sing (cleansing), as in the washing of feet, of our soles who kiss the earth and ground us into embodied presence as it was the day in the christian calendar known as maunday thursday, the last supper…

in this moment of eternity, in every moment of eternity, we offer thanks for our last breath/first breath, our always flowing in the rhythm of dying/rebirthing, ebbing/flowing, breathing in/breathing out always being love, always becoming love… it is thanksgiving that transports us into the quantum realm of the unitive field where our heartmind is one…

thousand fold thanks for sharing this journey of adventure under the new moon of aries calling us into a deep dive into true nature…

“Journeys bring power and love back into you. If you can’t go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self. They are like shafts of light, always changing, and you change when you explore them.”
~ Rumi ~

welcome, well come to day 61 of a season of peace, this day of closing the circle on merging march, a day of reverie reverencing this wild and woolly moonth of transformation as we draw down the powerful enegies of this new moon in aries starting the astrological new year calling us into a deep dive in a journey of adventure, a pilgrimage into great rainbow mystery…

as always with a new moon and amplified with this one initiating a new turn around the sun, we have the opportunity to tap into the field of new beginnings and plant seeds of intention in the fertile ground for this new moment, this new day, this new cycle, this new year… so, let’s breathe in the clarity radiating from this dark moon representing both inner and outer love, universal love… yes, feel the awakening, the enlivening energy of this fire moon inspiring creative action and the real-eye-sing of long held dreams to live life as a great adventure where you are the shining star… with a theme of rebirth present, it is the moment of eternity to fan the flames of fiery aries that catalyze renewal… invoking the medicine of this new moon:

“I bow to you, Great Fire.
You who calls me to come and sit, to rest and listen. As the fires blaze orange to red to blue and to white,
My vision begins to blur and I am pulled into your depths.
Here, I lose my ego self and enter the realms of Soul Ignition. With the crackle of your flames, I experience oneness.
And revel in your power and glory.
Your ability to unite.
Your gift of cleansing and purification. Into your embrace, I cast my worries.
{PLEASE SPEAK THEM ALOUD}
I toss my fears. 
{PLEASE SPEAK THEM ALOUD}
I incinerate uncertainty.
{PLEASE SPEAK THEM ALOUD}

Thank you, Great Fire.
Through your Love, I regenerate.
We all regenerate.
And we thrive.”

and so it is… blessed bee…

on this 60th day of a season of peace, as we come to the eve of the moment of blessing the space between us and close this moon of the lion and lamb of march, i reflect on the space we have traversed, the space we have silently dwelt in, the space we honor and celebrate, the space of journey, of walking each other home, the space of awakening and deepening, of being fully present, of curiosity, of imagination, of courage in the face of chaos, of trust, of letting go, of breathing in and breathing out, of ebb and flow, of being lovingkindness, of standing in love for love, of being a space of peace built on justice and guided by love on this 29th day of devotedly dwelling in the peace hut as rainbowmaker…

so, blessings and blissings and welcome, well come to day 60 of a season of peace, another day of embarking on a pilgrimage of hearing gaia’s call to be a healing vessel, a temple of love which has been forming forever, a day to celebrate the astonishing lightness of being and this day of not knowing, surrendering to and trusting in the whirlwind to lead the way as i devotedly tend soil as my ancestors have over the millenia…

 in the very instant of surrendering to the whirlwind, we are transmuted into whirling rhythm… and in that moment,that long drawn-out moment, the world cracks wide open as we return to being farmers of the heart caring for the holy vessel we interare…

may we all awaken to earth’s energy re-membering we are one heart…
may we all awaken to earth’s oceans as our clean-sing tears…
may we all awaken to earth’s wind as our enlivening breath…
may we all awaken to earth’s landscape as our one body…

may our one heart open dormant seeds
may our tears fill rain clouds
may our breath give flight to migrating birds
may our body be an island of refuge

 may earth mother open dormant seeds
may earth mother fill rain clouds
may earth mother give flight to migrating birds
may earth mother nurture islands of refuge

and, may the cycles of life flow unceasingly…

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” 

~ Marcel Proust ~

welcome, well come to day 59 of a season of peace…

~

take heart, pilgrim!

you were born for this:

to leap into the void and real-eyes how to sprout wings and fly…

~

feeling tender in the turbulence as i write tonight, so, i shall let  Pema’s words on the deepening interior journey we are all traversing speak for me…

“On the journey of the bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is our heart—our wounded, softened heart. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings.“

yes, take heart…

welcome, well come to day 58 of a season of peace, another day of being invited to leap into the void of oceanic being trusting in the soul to know the way along the pathless path merging us into cosmic union…

wondering if you too are hearing a call for a sacred pause in the midst of the outer turbulence and if so, how is this pause going for you? i’m re-membering how as a wee child, i was instructed in the wisdom of pausing when things are getting overwhelming… years later i would hear of the wisdom of incorporating this practice of pausing throughout the day according to our ultradian healing rhythm cycling throughout our body every ninety minutes or so… honoring this cycle sustains the natural healing program of  our body temples and entrains the new rhythm we are all called to dance…

so, right now, in this moment of eternity, let’s tune in together to the transformational frequency of loving presence and experience one of the most important actions we can do this moment, this day, this life…

Pause

Breathe

Rest in the Gap

Slow Down

Relax

Witness the Beauty

Listen

Offer Thanksgiving

Bless this Space

on our collective sojourn of pause, may we each be present in a deeper way trusting more profoundly whilst listening to the whispers from our one heart calling us to align with cosmic wisdom and flow in beauty being the soul of the space wherever we are…

welcome, well come to day 57 of a season of peace, a day of celebrating the astonishing light of our being by leaping into the void of oceanic being trusting in the soul to flow in concert with the magnetic waves of spaciousness, trusting in the waves to bring us home to the one heart to dance in harmony with great mystery gracefully…

for so,so many moons, perhaps you too have felt as i have felt this calling to let go of all save the essential sensing deep in my bones a tidal wave building that would sweep away everything in its path leaving us to take refuge in the tiny space of the heart resting in the deep song and peace of the running wave where we are flanked by and hold paws with our sea otter tribe ensuring we all stay connected and do not drift away from each other during the dark night…

in this deep earth space of an unprecedented chaos cycle enveloping the cosmos, we share the tunnel, the birth canal and living the questions of what’s to come…

~

“First the animals began dying, going extinct, and we did not stop
what we were doing because we are not animals.
Then the glaciers started melting and we did not stop
what we were doing because we thought we could do without them.
Then the forests were disappearing and we did not stop
cutting down the trees
because we could not imagine being unable to breathe.
Then the virus [of fear] came and there was no one to stop us
but ourselves.” ~ Deena Metzger ~

~

in this liminal space where existence is at stake, we don’t have the indulgence of lies and pretense, we must ground ourselves in love and face courageously the questions of how to meet the challenges, how to live; we must dig deeply into the roots and listen for their radical (rooted) answers, answers we may not have come up with on our own… yes, we are dying, not one of us will get out of here alive; while we are here, may we use this dark night for the benefit of all and learn how to truly live harmoniously with all our relatives as the dancing stars of luminous light we are…

welcome, welcome to day 56 of a season of peace and day 100 of this ninth turn around the sun on the poetic peace pilgrimage…

in the midst of all the whirling energies, i am reminded of falling in love with paths and pilgrimages as a child; i loved the annual spring ritual of watching The Wizard of Oz and dancing merrily down the yellow brick road with Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion… march winds and turbulent energy flows are taking me back to the whirlwind that began the journey of awakening for Dorothy, for me, for you…

in the midst of the tornado, everything known and stable is deconstructed to be built anew and so we must start fresh with a child’s vision of wonder and trust as we travel the yellow brick road, the golden path, the SHERO Journey to SELF™ where we re-member, like Dorothy, that we had the power all along, we are the power, we always have the ability to come home, we are always home for, after all, home is where the heart is…

~

on this pilgrimage home, I AM surrendering more completely…

re-membering we are love and that’s all that there is

living from the heart in thought word and deed

real-eye-sing we are rainbow clouds

flowing into great mystery