Category: awakening

Spring Equinox 2024–Coming Alive!

Spring has been quietly and not-so-quietly growing since early February in the Pacific Northwest. Spring Equinox marks the middle for us, and for some areas, the beginning of Spring.

In 2024 Spring Equinox falls on March 19th at 8:06 pm Pacific Time. This is a time when the day and night are close to equal, with the days becoming longer and longer until summer solstice is here!

The living earth gives us so many ways to participate in Spring—aligning with the growing light, practicing balancing, making way for the invitation to new leafing and budding and lengthening…

This year, I’m drawn to the invitation to join with the aliveness happening all around us, to enter into the movement, the vibrancy, the joy, even the noise of Spring.

The varied thrush is calling her long high whistle, the peepers are returning to the pond to call to their mates, and the robins and migrating songbirds are showing up to sing. Life is awaking!

Wintertime called us to rest and be quiet so we could be ready for Spring’s energy, and now Spring is here calling us to more!

This poem by the poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer showcases a bird we know well here, the Kingfisher. We are always excited when Kingfisher visits us with their distinctive call!

“Beyond Quiet“
From bare branch to bare branch
kingfishers weave the dry tick
of their call through morning—
as if sticks are rattling,
as if stones are clattering—
and whatever part of me
that is longing for quiet
is invited into the racket.
I say I want peace,
but what the heart really wants
is to know itself
as part of everything,
to belong to the world
of grinding and trilling,
scolding and chattering,
to knit itself into this raucous day,
strident and so alive.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Winter’s rest and peace give way to Spring’s aliveness!

Of course, we need to carry rest with us and still make time for it, but the invitation is always is to knit ourselves into the day, even one that is strident, in order to be so alive!

How will you participate in the invitation of Spring?

How will you knit yourself into Spring’s
fresh, new aliveness?

Winter Solstice 2023–Paradox

Winter Solstice occurs at 7:27 pm Pacific Time on Thursday, December 21st, 2023.

In the US, we usually think of this as the beginning of winter, but in the Celtic tradition, it’s midwinter, the depth of darkness. The winter season begins after Halloween (Samhain) and ends at Imbolc, February 1st, the very beginning of Spring. This way of circling through the seasons aligns well with the Pacific Northwest climate we live in now.

Regardless of when winter begins, we can learn its rhythms and invitations by noticing what the living earth and her creatures are doing and practicing this in our own lives:

  • Go dormant, hibernate, lie fallow.
  • Root, return to ground, compost.
  • Go within, turn inward, introspect.
  • Listen deeply and listen some more.
  • Welcome darkness and night.
  • Slow down, stop, rest.

It’s hard to do this in our go-go culture. And it’s harder yet during December when we have created a light-filled holiday time. It feels like time speeds up between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Parties, Christmas lights, celebrations to drive the dark away… just when the living earth is inviting us to go into a slower, darker, more inward time. It can feel quite paradoxical.

I am practicing with this paradox in a few ways…

Like the collage at the top of this blog, which spirals from Fall to Winter (bottom right, earthwise and ending in the middle), I find the quiet, dark spot in the center of any moment. I take that moment to land, to feel held, to quiet and rest. Even though the 10,000 things are clamoring for my attention (and often succeed in getting it), I practice returning to the darkness, the stopping, the slowness.

I am also practicing the following mantra I learned from Miranda MacPherson. I start by just sensing my body, returning to the moment in this way. Then I slowly recite it inwardly with my breath. This has been a beautiful, restful practice for me. I do it at least once a day and sometimes more, repeating it as many times as I can before moving to the next thing on my plate.

Be nothing.

Do nothing.

Get nothing.

Become nothing.

Seek for nothing.

Relinquish nothing.

Be as you are.

Rest in God. (Sometimes I say, “Rest in the dark.”)

This is the breath practice I am finding nourishing:

  • Inhale: Be nothing.
  • Exhale: Do nothing. Get nothing.
  • Inhale: Become nothing.
  • Exhale: Seek for nothing. Relinquish nothing.
  • Inhale: Be as you are.
  • Exhale: Rest in God (the dark).

How do you hold the paradox of light and dark?

How do you find a place of rest
in the midst of the busyness?

If you would like to practice with others and you live locally, I have two opportunities for being in community in these dark times:

Winter Solstice Celebration, December 21st, 7:00-8:00 pm
Outside, in the courtyard at QUUF. Bring a chair and dress for the weather!

Wild Church Port Townsend, December 23rd, 10-11:30 am
At Fort Townsend under the big Doug Fir. Bring a chair and dress for the weather!

For those who live too far away to join in person:

Chant & Song for Community, Healing & Hope will start up again on zoom in January on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays from 7:00 – 8:00 pm PT.

Read more on my Calendar.

Summer Solstice 2023–Fullness & Stillness

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

Breathe this gatha (mindfulness verse) with me.

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

This is a Summer Solstice invitation–to take in the fullness of summer and to rest in the stillness within.

Summer Solstice, a time when the sun seems to stand still in the sky, occurs at 7:57 am PT on Wednesday, June 21st, 2023.

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.

The fullness is all around us.

Flowers blossoming–in our gardens right now: floribunda roses, foxglove, oxeye daisy, euphorbia, rhododendron, native and cultivated bleeding heart, chives, sage, lady’s mantle, California poppies, orange Oriental poppies, valerian, geranium, fringe cups, toad flax, purple bells, peonies…

Leaves in full verdancy–lady, bracken and sword ferns, hazelnut, birch, witch hazel, asian pear, cherry, apple, mountain ash, vine and big-leaf maples, nettle, cleavers, herb robert, violets, kale, cilantro, lettuce…

And so many more that I did not name… Not to mention the birds!

As Gunilla Morris says in A Mystic Garden, you can almost hear the earth humming with growth.

Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

And the stillness?

It’s as if all this verdant and vivid growth is held in the stillness–in the ground of the living earth, in the rays of the sun, in the vast vault of sky.

Without this holding, nothing could grow–without the earth the roots root in, without the light of the sun that creates life, without the air to breathe…

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

Isn’t this so like our lives?

I can get so caught up in the fullness–in answering its call to tend, to enjoy, to jump in–that I forget about the stillness holding me.

Sometimes I can get a visceral sense of the holding by just lying down on the floor to do some somatics or by stepping outside into the living earth or by just sitting with tea. I used to take 5 minute “Do Nothing Breaks,” too.

This summer, let’s savor the fullness–revel in it (not just work!)–and also take time to rest in the stillness. We need both to be whole.

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

Which part of this gatha do you need
to be reminded of most?

How will you practice that?

Spring Equinox 2023–Wilding Church

As I walk out the door, I begin to move and breathe differently. I slow down, notice my body, start noticing what’s around me.

I’m going on a wander, one of the main practices of eco-spirituality workshops I’ve attended and a core part of Wild Church.

I let my feet, not my head, guide me toward the entry I’ll take today into one of our forest paths. As I step in, I cross a threshold and consciously mark it. Sometimes, I say a few words about my intention; sometimes, I ask for guidance; often, I ask just to be present and receive what the living earth wants me to know.

Today, the sunlight is slanting through the forest at just the right angle to catch all the spider webs. I’ve never noticed them before. I see three different active webs with spiders in the middle and lots and lots of old webs in the branches of the cedar. The old ones are collecting things—twigs, moss, fronds, needles, bits and pieces… They look like little hammocks of support. I am surrounded by support and grandmother spiders weaving the world.

The synchronicity of this? Not only is support something I am opening more to these days, but I pulled the Spider Medicine Card this morning!

In my desire to feel like the earth being I am, I have been practicing, wandering, singing, reading, attending eco-spirituality workshops…one of the books I devoured in the last year was by Victoria Loorz called Church of the Wild. This book describes her path from traditional Christianity into Wild Church, a way of meeting in community to practice being and communing with creation, outside in all weather.

Others at QUUF, the UU fellowship I belong to, had also found this book and a small group of us met to explore how to bring a live experience of Wild Church to QUUF. Given that this practice feels vital for my soul right now and since I have been leading Winter Solstice rituals for 15 years and am ordained as an Interfaith Minister, it seemed like a good fit for me to get trained to guide. Our first Wild Church was in late February as the earth was turning more toward Spring here in the Northern Hemisphere.

Speaking of turning toward Spring, Spring Equinox is today, Monday, March 20th!

The earth teachings of Spring are about new beginnings, fresh energy, awakening from slumber, new growth. Think of the seed, dormant in the soil, surrounded by earth and other tiny beings, feeling the call to wake up, to use the compost surrounding it to put forth new life.

We’re seeing this all around us here in the Pacific Northwest. If it’s not visible where you live, know that the stirrings are happening under the ground. Life is arising again!

As humans, we can follow earth’s call to fresh awakeness, too. We can clean out, clear up any old, stale habits, energy, or belongings that keep us from awaking, from growing. We can simplify to make room for this new growth.

Of course, Wild Church is not new. It is an opportunity to relearn what native peoples everywhere practice:

Communion with earth
as our primary place of belonging.

If you’re in the Port Townsend area, please join us on 4th Saturdays (next one 3/25/23), and if you’re interested in finding a Wild Church near you, check out the growing list of gatherings.

The other fresh, new work in progress in my life is this new blogsite. I have downsized and simplified my online presence to reflect my simpler, downsized life. Even though I’m still cleaning up blogs that didn’t transfer over perfectly, I’m very happy with the change! You can still find calendar listings and practices, including my real-food recipes. I hope it will serve you as well as it’s serving me!

How will you welcome in the “leaping greenly spirits”*
of Spring into your life?

* From the e.e. cummings poem “i think you God for most this amazing”

Fall Equinox 2022: Asking Toward the Light

Happy Fall Equinox!

I arise facing East,
I am asking toward the light,
I am asking that my day shall be beautiful with light.
I am asking that the place where my feet are shall be light,
That as far as I can see I shall follow it aright.
I am asking for courage to go forward through the shadow,
I am asking toward the light!
~Mary Austin

Normally for Fall Equinox (September 22nd, 2022 at 6:03 pm PT), there is talk of the waning light, but I want to start with this beautiful prayer poem of light.

I have been praying it every morning recently, facing East, asking toward the light.

I love how open this phrase is, asking toward the light.

The prayer poem asks for some general things—for a day beautiful with light, that light will be where I am and that I shall follow it aright, for courage to face the difficulties of the day…

But it’s not asking for specific outcomes, for how my ego thinks the day should turn out.

It’s really more about setting an intention to align myself with the light, no matter how late the dawn comes and how early the dusk arrives, no matter how cloudy or sun-filled the day is, no matter how the day goes…

It’s almost as if I am aligning with what our plant brothers and sisters know how to do naturally. They know how to follow the light, how to bend toward it, how to store it, how to create food and seed and strength with it.

And then as the light becomes less and less, they know how to take that light in and send it into their roots or to release that light and let their bodies fall to the ground.

This is an important teaching of the Fall:

  • we can keep receiving the light,
  • having filled up with light, we can release it like leaves that fall,
  • and we can store the light for nourishment and give it away to others.

So, on this Fall Equinox, may we be asking toward the light and allowing the growing darkness.

May we be asking toward the light and storing it up, not only for ourselves, but for all beings.

Happy Fall Equinox!

Summer Solstice 2022–Becoming an Earth Being

Happy Summer Solstice!

Summer Solstice falls on the 21st of June, 2022 at 2:13 am Pacific Time.

By honoring the solstice, we are participating in earth time, marking the changing of the seasons not by imposed, human-made calendar time, but by following the rhythms and natural changes of the earth as she changes from the new growth and freshness of spring into the full on blooming and vibrant growth of summer.

It’s a time to really lean into and enjoy being embodied, being the animal body that we are, experiencing everything that our bodies enable us to sense, to feel in this amazing and beautiful living earth.

You’ve probably noticed that over the last few years since we moved to the Pacific Northwest, my deep interest is about learning to live with earth, learning to be a responsible, ecological citizen of earth. But this doesn’t quite catch it… there’s also a very deep spiritual yearning to come back to what is my birthright, what is all of our birthright, communion with the living earth.

This blog explorers my journey toward this re-union, and is the current version of the first part of a sermon that I will be giving July 24th, 2022 online for my Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship in Port Townsend, Washington. 

*********

Mom calls me over to see and listen to the yellow grosbeaks that have returned. I notice them, but I’m not really touched. I have other things on my mind.

My sister follows the call at an early age to spend as much time as she can outdoors, to explore and eventually take up outdoor sports and camping, even training to guide others. It all seems like so much work to me, and expensive, and dirty. I have other things on my mind.

It took me many years to begin to understand the importance of reconnecting to earth and to find my own ways of coming home. It’s not that I didn’t have moments of deep connection, but I didn’t prioritize them, and I’ve lived my life in my head a lot.

  • In my teen years, I spent a lot of time believing and being a good born-again Christian.
  • As an adult I studied a lot and traveled abroad, learning German and Swedish.
  • I was always singing, and trying to be a better singer.
  • I’ve read a lot of books about how to heal and grow and develop myself, and coached and taught others about this.

But living my life in my head, even though I studied and taught helpful, spiritual things, hasn’t been enough.

Though I have often found solace and beauty in nature, it was almost as if I have expected nature to be there for me when I needed her. I didn’t realize that there could be some kind of reciprocal relationship.

As Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us—the land is not broken. It is our relationship to it that is broken.

It’s hard to have a relationship with the land when we as a culture move around so much. The average American moves every 5 years—that certainly makes it hard to have a sense of belonging to the land… Instead of a sense of belonging to the earth, we move to a new place and bring our belongings with us.

We experience nature as a thing, something outside of us, an object that we can use—a resource to use to grow our food, for water to drink, for building materials to make homes and shelters, for fuel to drive our cars and fly to see our friends and family and visit new places, etc.

In his book Biology of Wonder, Andreas Weber invites us to swap out the word “nature” with the phrase “the living earth.” You probably noticed that I introduced the blog with this language. This reminds us that we can enter into a living relationship with earth rather than a one-sided for-human-enjoyment-only experience.

Take a moment with me:
Close your eyes and take a few breaths. And then just open your awareness to your body, noticing any sensation, any aches, any pains, any tingly, bubbly, electrical, flowy, or other sensations. Any warmth, any ease, any relaxation… Just notice this aliveness in your body.

And if you’re having trouble feeling anything, try shaking one hand for a minute and then stop and sense that hand compared to the other one, noticing the extra aliveness.

Andreas Weber suggests that this inner aliveness you feel, this is the same aliveness, the livingness that is in the living earth. This aliveness is the center of our being and is our direct connection with the living earth. Feeling it reconnects us with our bodies, made of earth’s body.

Andreas Weber again: “Nature is about beauty because beauty is our way to experience aliveness as inwardness. Beauty is aliveness felt…”

No wonder beauty calls to us! The beauty we celebrate in the living earth, that we snap photos of, send postcards of, look at picture books of, travel for and long to take in… this outward expression of aliveness reminds us of our own inner aliveness, of our own connection with the living earth.

And we need these reminders desperately since our culture has created a lot of deadness.

At least since settled agricultural life, we have steadily and cruelly enforced a worldview of pillage and domination over the land and any beings—peoples, creatures, other-than-human beings—who stood in our way.

Whether we and our direct ancestors were involved in this or not, our bodies and our relationship with the earth bear the burden of this colonization. In fact, Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands, speaks eloquently of how white folk carry the trauma of being perpetrators in our bodies. In addition, most white folk are descendants of people who were treated cruelly in the countries we originally immigrated from. We also carry this trauma of being victims in our bodies.

Because we no longer can sense and feel our inner aliveness and that of the living earth, we overdo to try to get back in touch with it. Too much screen time, too much coffee or caffeine in any form, too much sugar, too much alcohol, too many drugs, too much work, too much play… And not enough contact with the living earth.

So what do we do about this?

How do we become an earth being?


Stay tuned for Part II of this blog at Lughnasadh/Lammas or Fall Equinox in which I share more of my exploration or watch the service on July 24th or after.

Spoiler Alert: I don’t have the answers, just some experience and hopefully, some inspiration! 🙂

In the meantime, though, I’d LOVE to hear about your experience!

What does it mean to you to become an earth being?

Spring Equinox 2022–Life Again!

Spring Equinox, the cusp of even more light.

No matter how dark it is—the war in Ukraine, the fight for democracy in the US, the pandemic that never ends, the climate catastrophe… the living earth reminds us that there is always this:

And this:

And this:

The living earth reminds us again and again and again how to come back to life after the dark, how to send up new shoots and leaves, how to green, how to flower, how to take in and breathe out life.

Drink in the beauty, the fresh growth, the continuing

outpouring and wonder of the living earth!

If you’d like some practice inspiration, here are some ideas from past posts:

This Spring* and always, may the growing light
brighten your body, heart, and mind
and make you more kind
to yourself, to others, and to all beings.

Sing along with me to Laurence Cole’s Equinox round here.

 

Find more ways to practice with me.

* Spring Equinox 2022 is Sunday, March 20th at 8:33 am Pacific Time in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Call of Autumn Equinox

 

Autumn Equinox occurs on Tuesday, September 22nd

at 6:30 am Pacific Time this year.

While Solstices give us an experience of full-on light or dark, Equinoxes invite us into a threshold of changing light. Because of this, there is an uncertainty, a not knowing as we move into the turning.

This is especially true now in the USA, in such a time of unknowns, changes, and uncertainty:

  • Our white supremacist culture is being rightfully challenged causing upset and confusion, amidst even more loss of Black life, but hopefully turning us toward justice;
  • Climate change is causing unprecedented wildfires in the West with huge loss of life, home, and wilderness, while more hurricanes threaten the south, winters are colder and snowier in the East, more frequent tornadoes and high winds erupt in the Midwest, and everywhere, temperatures continue to rise;
  • Covid-19 continues to not be contained thanks to an inept president, causing death and pain of disconnection from family and friends; and
  • We head into a very contentious election with threats of violence if the current president does not get his way…

As we move through the threshold into Autumn Equinox and live with all of these uncertainties, we move toward more darkness. But this is not all bad…

Darkness has its own logic, its own holding, its own invitation.

To rest. To slow down. To pay attention inwardly. To listen. To stop doing.

Wendell Berry says it this way:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

We need to enter in to find the gifts of the dark, the blooms and songs…

We can’t find the gifts of the dark in the light.

We can’t find the gifts of uncertainty and unknownness when we think we know.

We have to be open to something new.

 

As we cross the threshold from light into deepening dark,

Autumn Equinox calls us to reassess our lives.

What’s working? What’s not? What changes are needed so that we can enter, so that we can allow something unknown and new to unfold?

A few things sing to me:

We can choose to make changes that allow us to walk in beauty more in our lives. No matter how uncertain, how much dark, how much confusion, each step we take can be done in beauty. (Read new blogpost.)

We can choose to create ceremony / living ritual to reconnect with Eairth’s autumnal rhythms.

In these complicated and uncertain times, with the darkness all around and growing, may you find support in the threshold, in the knowing that this turning toward dark is a natural expression of life here on Eairth.

With the seasons, we turn in, deep into dark, then back out again and deep into light. Perhaps this particular Autumn Equinox turning is exactly what is needed.

If you would like to join voices during these times, please join me for 1st and 3rd Thursday Chanting for Community, Healing & Hope or consider an in-person, outdoor contemplative Evensong service on 1st Sundays.

In the meantime, allow the dark.

Go dark. And trust the dark song, the dark feet, the dark wings…

Walk in Beauty

This blogpost was originally a sermon for a service I put together
for Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on August 16, 2020.
You can watch the whole service and find the readings that accompany it.

When Heidi (the musician I was working with) and I were rehearsing for this service, she asked me what the focus would be for my sermon. And as I answered, I realized that really, all of my work—paid, unpaid, personal or business, has been about this—about walking in beauty. No wonder I wanted to try to put it into words!

The titles I hold—Interfaith Minister, Sacred Musician, Spiritual & Life Coach, Yoga Teacher, and more—they are all different ways that I help myself and others walk in beauty.

For when we walk in beauty, our lives are more whole.

We love our lives.

We are kind to others and to ourselves.

We live a good life that is good for all beings, including Eairth.*

John O’Donohue says Beauty points beyond itself to the circle of belonging that holds everything together. When we experience it, we feel at home in ourselves and in the world.

This reminds me of a story I read in Trebbe Johnson’s book Radical Joy for Hard Times. David Powless, a scientist and member of the Oneida nation, was given a grant by the National Science Foundation to develop a process for recycling steel waste. His initial impulse was to go out and conquer the problem—to force the waste into a new form, but when he arrived at the waste pile to get a few bucketfuls, he felt something else.

From his years of ceremony, in which all beings are honored as part of the sacred circle of life, David had an epiphany that this waste was not something that needed to be forced into a new and better shape. It was an orphan that needed to be brought back into the circle of life. It wasn’t just an ugly manifestation of industrialism wreaking havoc on Eairth, but a rejected part of life that needed support to be brought back into the Circle.

The circle of life holds everything together.

This is a way of living and knowing our belonging that many indigenous peoples before us practiced and still practice today.

We are invited into this deeper experience of participation with all beings if we are to walk in beauty. When we are part of the circle, no-one, no creature, no part of the natural world, no part of ourselves, no earth processes, nothing is left out. We realize that we all have our place and each one is needed. When the circle is broken, we must do what it takes to re-home the orphans and make the circle whole again.

How do we do this?

The Diné or Navajo Nation walked the Beauty Way Path. Patricia Anne Davis of the Navajo Nation Justice Department says walking in beauty means to consciously live in and with the natural order of life—finding meaning and sustenance in contact:

  • with the Directions: East, South, West, North
  • with the Elements of Eairth: air, fire, water, earth
  • with the seasonal energies: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter
  • with our maturing: through the life stages from child to youth to parent to grandparent.

All held by the Center representing the hearth of home, the spiritual family love.

Finding beauty, seeing beauty, making beauty, walking in beauty not only maintains the circle of life, but makes sure we keep our place in it.

From our Western tradition, the poet Keats said it this way: “Beauty is Truth and Truth is Beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”

When we walk the Beauty Way Path, we have a much greater chance of knowing this on Eairth; when we do not, we might miss it.

Let’s consider Keats’ words for a moment: Beauty is Truth and Truth is Beauty.

How amazing is that? I immediately go cosmic and think of the beauty and truth of the Universe—of the incredible, unfolding powers that created our solar system and planet Eairth and make life possible, even now as things are collapsing.

I think of the Beauty of words and thoughts from the Truth of one’s experience, spoken and written. Of the Beauty and Truth expressed in music, in art. Of the Beauty and Truth in each action and moment if we only have eyes to see it…

 

And, indeed, Beauty comes down to how we see life.

Do we see it, as I still sometimes do, through our personality-clouded eyes? Or do we see clearly through the eyes of the heart?

As an Enneagram type One, my habitual, less awake way of seeing is about seeing what’s wrong, not what’s beautiful. I like to fix things, make them better, help return them to Beauty. (Not always in skillful ways, though—my husband doesn’t usually want to know when he has put something in the wrong, unbeautiful place.)

There are many ways we see without seeing Beauty:

  • Perhaps with too-busy or distracted eyes that don’t take the time to land and take it in,
  • Or maybe with pre-occupied eyes, that look but don’t really see,
  • Or perhaps with inner-turned eyes, dwelling on some deep thought or inner sadness, frustration, or fear…

If we had a Beauty Way tradition like the Diné—of ceremony, prayer, and intimate participation with Eairth—we might not find it so difficult to feel Beauty’s loving embrace.

But we don’t. In our evolution into “modern” humans, we thought we had to leave that behind in order to develop an objective science. We wanted to find and know our place in the universe, but we plundered Eairth and her other living beings to do this. Because of this, we “moderns” don’t understand how to live in the natural order of Eairth’s ways anymore.

We have learned to think that Beauty is not here with us, but out there somehere:

  • Created and performed by artists
  • Hung in museums, found in magnificent structures, idealized in models, celebrities, and beautiful people
  • Or in a perfect view of nature
    • The Salish Sea with Mount Baker rising behind
    • The stunning layered landscape from the top of a mountain
    • The giant cedars, doug fir and hemlock of old growth forests.

While that kind of Beauty is real and nourishes us, I’m interested in cultivating ways we modern humans can participate in Beauty every day.

One of my favorite practices that have shared with clients over the years is called “Beauty sees Beauty.” When I first started practicing it, I would take a slow walk and everything I saw, I would say “Beauty sees Beauty.” Over time, I incorporated this practice into my life, including other senses as well: Beauty sees Beauty, Beauty touches Beauty, Beauty tastes/hears/smells Beauty…

Try it on right now with me.

Just look around wherever you are and let your eyes alight on something—even something that you would not necessarily call “beautiful” and slowly say out loud or internally “Beauty sees Beauty.” “Beauty sees Beauty.”

What happens inside of you?

For me, my heart leaps, lights up, comes alive, a smile comes on my face, warmth infuses me. I receive the Beauty of what I have seen and I receive my own Beauty, of Beauty seeing Beauty.

As O’Donohue says, “The human soul is hungry for beauty: we seek it everywhere…” Why not land in the present moment and be with Beauty right now?

This practice returns us to the Beauty Way Path. For when we receive Beauty in ourselves and all around us, we want to walk in it. We want to live its natural order, we want to make choices that continue the circle of life, of Truth, of Beauty.

The other wonderful part of this practice is that it reaffirms that not only what we are sensing is beautiful, but that we, too, are part of this Beauty.

Beauty recognizes Beauty.

Our unique and individual Beauty is a necessary and vital part of the circle. “Though sometimes ,” as Galway Kinnell reminds us, “it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness…”**

Many of us come to our adulthoods with wounds, with broken places from not being seen or understood, from intentional or unintentional abuse. We need to be retaught that our lives, our thoughts, our feelings, our being is beautiful and part of the circle.

We are that orphan that needs to be welcomed home. My own inner work and my work with clients always involves this.

David Powell saw this in the steel waste pile. St. Francis in the sow.

And Trebbe Johnson invites us to see the beauty in broken or wounded places.

An environmentalist, Trebbe’s work focuses on how we can be in relationship with places on earth that have been devastated by human abuse.

It’s all about allowing the place to touch us, to see with the eyes of the heart and open to the Beauty that is still there. Yes, I may be scrambling through a clear cut, but just look at those foxgloves standing tall and waving on the slope! And here’s what looks like an entry to an animal’s shelter tucked under that stump. And everywhere, new growth shooting up.

 

Beauty sees Beauty.

Yes, the heart aches with the loss, the grief, the fear, the anger—and suddenly, something amazing happens, a threshold is crossed and Beauty arises—we are able to perceive the Beauty that is already here, everywhere.

This is not something we can make happen, but we can practice. We can show up, open up, soften up, and be available to the moment. One of my teachers calls this making ourselves “accident prone to grace.” For only in this moment, in presence, is Truth and Beauty.

People tend to want black-and-white Beauty—to evaluate the standards of Beauty and judge how beautiful a thing is. To judge like this is to step out of the circle and see ourselves or someone/something else as “other.”

If we soften our gaze, and allow our hearts to open… If we sustain our gaze and wait and practice, even in the most devastated places and people, Beauty sees Beauty.

Beauty is big enough, inclusive enough, vital enough to include everything, even the broken, wounded, abandoned places. In fact, it is often in the wound, in the vulnerability that we find a deeper meaning, a richer experience of Beauty. We move from “view-finder” prettiness to a Beauty that touches and opens our hearts.

John O’Donohue says “to participate in beauty is to come into the presence of the Holy.”

That is what it feels like. As Beauty opens—or our eyes awaken to it—we perceive that everything is sacred, everything is whole, everything is included in that wide embrace.

I created an e-book for my clients called Welcoming the Sacred. It’s packed full of simple practices we can do in our everyday lives to bring us into the moment and welcome the sacred, the True, the Beautiful.

Trebbe Johnson finds this sense of sacredness when she practices what she calls “Guerilla Beauty.” After spending time gazing, seeing the Beauty in wounded places, she gives a spontaneous gift of Beauty, created from whatever materials are available. It may be stones piled into a cairn, sticks, leaves, and flowers in a mandala, root sculptures, a story or a song… But giving this beauty to the wounded place moves her past feeling separate into relationship with the place—as she says, “to give beauty is to marry the world, outside and within.”

For, when we do this, we take our place in the circle of life. We perceive ourselves, our lives, the wounded places as full of Beauty. And if we perceive this Beauty, we will walk in Beauty with each other, living a good life in a wide Circle that includes not only all humans, but Eairth and all her creatures as well.

May you walk in beauty,

May we walk in beauty.

* Eairth = Earth and Air
** from his poem St. Francis and the Sow

Summer Solstice 2020: Letting Go into Light

It’s Summer!

We are celebrating more light, more warmth, and more time outside (for those of us with Covid restrictions lifting).

But really, the Summer Solstice (June 20, 2:43 pm PT) represents not only a time of peak light, but the beginning of the turn toward peak darkness again...

Light will start to fade as the wheel of the year begins to turn from full Summer toward Fall, and eventually Winter…

Most of us don’t want to think about that. We want to enjoy Summer’s bright, long days of warmth.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, where Dave and I moved last year, this is our first June and we have now been initiated into “Junuary”—beautiful growing light and flower-filled days mixed with grey and chilly rainy days. Not at all like St. Paul, MN where we moved here from, where June meant full-on Summer with ever-growing heat. In some ways, this mixed weather helps me not get too attached to the idea of never-ending Summer weather… 

So, if the darkness is going to start growing again, how

about we take the time to let go into light right now?

The light is here, now, fully.

How can we be here, now, fully, in the light?

How can we see clearly in the full-on light?

How can we embrace it, live it, be it?

How can we revel in this season of light AND at the same time know that it is fading again?

That is part of what makes summer precious—what makes us value the light all the more. We know it will fade. We will move back into the darkness…

This reminds me of a practice I’ve just started from a book called The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young. He calls it “Just Note Gone.”

To practice, you pay attention fully to anything arising with one of your senses. And you keep concentrating on it until it is gone. Then you notice, in its absence, what is there.

Thursday morning, one of the times I practiced, I was listening to the water filling the carafe. When I turned it off, I paid attention and listened to it as it slowly stopped dripping.

When it stopped, I had the distinct and calming sense that in the stopping of the sound, the return to momentary silence, that there was a return to something deeper, bigger, a holding container of sorts. In the cessation, there was a returning to Source.

Then in the evening I was leading my Chanting for Community, Healing & Hope and during a pause after a song, I felt it again. A sense of returning to a vastness out of which the next song would arise. I felt at home, safe, at rest, content.

Shinzen describes this return as a reunion with the womb of creation, with the Unborn. There is contact with something that is not a thing, that has no form, out of which all things come into being.

So, as you let go into the light, what would it be like to Just Note Gone?

With senses wide open, take in this beauty, this light,

this delightful season of Summer, and stay with

each moment until what you are sensing is Gone.

Feel what remains when it’s gone. Relax into that.

Let go into the light and receive the support of God, of True Nature, of the Universe that is always holding, that is always supporting us.

How do you let go into this ever-present support?

Image by by Larisa Koshkina on Pixabay

New chances to sing with me–in person and virtual!

Chanting for Community, Healing & Hope, 1st & 3rd Thursdays via Zoom!

Evensong, July 5th at Chetzemoka Park, Port Townsend