Category: body

Winter Solstice 2022

Remember…

Sitting around a campfire at night?

The circle of light within a vast ocean of darkness?

Leaving the fire and how the darkness swallowed you up as you felt your way to your tent to drop into the darkness of sleep?

Our bodies were made for darkness just as much as they were made for light.

For the darkness that invites non-doing and rest, slowness and dreaming, waiting and hope.

For the darkness that allows our bodies to heal, to regenerate, and rebalance in sleep.

Before electricity, we lived with, in, and by the dictates of the dark. In addition to fire light, there were candles and grease lamps, but they weren’t abundant, so they were saved for necessary tasks.

In the winter, we slept earlier in the evening and later in the morning, in accordance with the sun’s light.

And outside of our homes, it was dark—no street lights, car headlights, lit-up buildings…

Now, unless you live away from other houses in the country, it’s hard to experience total darkness.

Have you seen those maps of the world showing the light at night? It’s called light pollution and has become a health hazard to our bodies and to the creatures we share this world with.

Sea turtle hatchlings can’t find their way out to sea by the light of the moon because the city lights confuse them. Lack of darkness interrupts the predator/prey relationship, and even frog and toad breeding cycles. Birds that hunt or migrate at night have a hard time following the moon or stars, and seasonal migrations may even get knocked off their regular patterns due to light pollution.

Light pollution has taken away the dark. It has taken away the night sky.

One Secret by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Not the brilliant stars
But the infinite dark
What I wish on

This time of deepening darkness that reaches its peak at the Winter Solstice is an invitation to allow the dark to affect us, but not hold us captive.

It is an invitation to adapt to the living earth like all other creatures.

It is an invitation to allow ourselves to slow down, to dream, to rest.

It is an invitation to let old patterns, polarities, and problems that aren’t serving us dissolve as fresh, new life is rewoven in the growing light.

Holiday parties break up the darkness, bringing us together to feast and share in the coming light.

But then let us return to the darkness. To the unraveling, the unwinding, the making ready for the new.

Let us connect with the living earth and her rhythms to wait and trust that the sun will return again.

And then let the light find its way, day by day, from the midst of the darkness, growing, shining, bringing new life.

This is the promise of Winter Solstice.

In 2022, Winter Solstice arrives at 1:47 pm PT

on Wednesday the 21st of December.

If you’d like to mark this time on your own, I have a few suggestions for rituals in past blogposts here:

If you would like to be in community, I will be guiding an outdoor, earth-based, family-friendly ritual at Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in the courtyard from 7-8 pm on the 21st. Read more.

My winter dreaming is bringing changes…

Since we moved to Port Townsend, Washington in the summer of 2019, life has changed a lot!

My main focus, when I am not working, is tending the land (growing as much edible, medicinal, and native as possible) and tending my family (husband, dog, aging parents, myself). And I am still singing–how could I not?

Because of this, I have not sought to build a coaching practice, even though I do still see clients from time to time. And now, I need to simplify more, so I’m going to let this big website go. I plan to create a blog site, so you will still hear from me from time to time.

Happy Winter Dreaming and Winter Solstice! I wonder what you will dream into?

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?

Summer Solstice 2021

our pond and surrounding gardens

Here, in the Northern Hemisphere, on June 20th

at 8:32 pm PT, we are at Summer Solstice again.

Eairth* has awoken in flowers and flourishing plants and new leaves. She is bearing fruit and food and warmer days filled with light…

Here we are with the longest day inviting us out into the light, and many of us are still experiencing what I’ve heard called “cave syndrome.”

We are more comfortable inside, or at least, at home.

We have been staying home, sheltering from the pandemic. We have, if we are lucky, had the companionship of animals and family, but most of us have led circumscribed, smaller lives. And now this lack of outer contact feels normal… And safe… And secure.

At my last two Chant & Song evenings, we sang a number of songs about surrounding ourselves with protection. One of them was a prayer I set to music  from the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of prayers, songs, and incantations from the Scottish Highlands and Islands.**

Sacred Three
To save, to shield
To surround the hearth
The house, the household
This eve, this night.
O, this eve, this night,
And every night,
Every single night.

This is a prayer based on a practice from earlier times of smooring the fire for the night so that there will still be coals to ignite in the morning.

To smoor, the woman of the house subdued the flame by dividing the coals into 3 piles, one with the blessing, “the God of Life,” one with “the God of Peace,” and one with “the God of Grace” (the sacred three representing the Trinity). Peat was then placed between each pile and ashes on top with a final blessing, “the God of Light.” ***

You can listen and sing along to my recent version with guitar accompaniment, and to the a capella original with harmony and drum on my Welcome Brigid CD.

We reflected as a group that we need these kinds of rituals in our lives to help us connect with not only the safety around us, but also with the inner hearth-flame. And especially now when leaving the cave can feel threatening, consciously or unconsciously.

I particularly like the image of keeping the hearth-fire lit because of the image of hearth as center of the house and household, which it truly was when this prayer was originally uttered. It kept the house and people within warm, protected, and fed.

Hearth—Heart

I can’t help but see this connection even though the words are not related etymologically.

Keeping the hearth warm keeps the heart warm.

The center of the home is the hearth. The center of the human is the heart.

Our hearts also keep us warm and fed. The heart’s capacity to feel, to love, to connect, to create meaning makes this possible.

Since that evening, I’ve been singing this song when I close and lock up the house overnight, feeling the circle of protection here in our home.

And in the morning, when I travel the same circle, opening up, unlocking, I sing a morning welcoming song.

These rituals provide a gentle holding in my life.

They reinforce a sense of sacred center, sacred hearth and heart, held in reverence and respect.

Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron explains the power of ritual in this quote:

Ritual is about joining vision and practicality, heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana. When things are properly understood, one’s whole life is like a ritual or a ceremony.
Then the gestures of life are mudra [sacred gestures]
and all sounds of life are mantra—sacredness is everywhere…
Someone can have an insight, and rather than it’s being lost,
it can stay alive through ritual.
~ from The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 77

I love that wisdom from earlier times can be passed down in this way—through a prayer of protection. I feel more deeply the connection to those who came before and those who continue to live closely with the land and cook and heat with fire.

So, as we find our way out of our caves into the light this summer, it may be helpful to practice or create for yourself some kind of ritual for protection.

In Celtic lands, the Irish call this a lorica and the Scots Gaelic a caim.**** A simple one is just to hold up an index finger and turn around, drawing a circle around your body. You are creating a circle of protection with you at the center. You could also add a song or prayer or mantra to the turning.

From my study with women’s work teacher, Sara Avant Stover, I also love the practice of feeling myself in my protected heart-cave as I move in the outside world.

Then as you leave your house, you take the gentle holding and flame of your heart-cave-home with you as you move out into the world.

Do you already have rituals of protection?

What might you incorporate into your daily life?

* Earth and Air = Eairth
** Alexander Carmichael, editor
*** http://www.tairis.co.uk/daily-practices/smaladh/
**** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorica_(prayer)

Embodying the Transcendent

Image by by Larisa Koshkina on Pixabay

“The purpose of life is not to transcend the body,
but to embody the transcendent.”
~ The Dalai Lama

That’s not what I tried to do most of my life!

I tried to leave my imperfect-in-so-many-ways body to find a place in heaven, where things were perfect, I was told…

I tried born-again Christianity, anorexia, perfectionism, following the ideals of my family, my culture, my partners, and my EnneaType, to name a few big ones!

And none of it transcended me. I had my moments of feeling uplifted, transported, even angelic… but it wasn’t enough.

I still felt caught in a body. Caught in my moods. Caught in my habitual thoughts.

And my striving to always make myself and life better was hard on me and on those around me.

Being introduced to women’s work helped me to start filling out the picture a bit.

I came to realize that there are ideals up there and there is the reality right here. There is the way I want things to be and the way they are—physical, sensate, relational…

Getting into loving relationship with the inner Feminine helped me be here, in this body, in this life, in this relationship, in this Eairth.**

Not always striving for something that my mind had cooked up about the way things should be out there somewhere.

Meeting the Enneagram also helped because I got to see nine different ways of being in the world, and the myriad of individual expression within each. It broke open my idea that there was one perfect way (the ideal of my type, type One).

So, you might ask,
HOW do we embody the transcendent?

By doing our work to become a clear, open channel.

We can’t embody it if we are not living, sensing, feeling, touching, breathing, moving, resting, loving, … being in our bodies.

So, it starts with opening that channel—with releasing tension and habit that keeps us from sensing ourselves as human creatures, with learning to ground so we can feel our belonging in Eairth.

As continuum teacher Susan Harper offers,

“Gravity is a spiritual force of belonging that says I have a place for you and it is right here!”

Our place is right here, in this body, in this Eairth. Embodied (In-body).

Usually we have to work a lot with our constrictions of heart and mind, too, in order to become more embodied. We have habitual ways of feeling and thinking. Perhaps we worry or plan or emote or get frustrated or give up—these patterns block our ability to be present, to be an open channel.

As we become more embodied, we can offer a home to the transcendent, right here, in this beautiful bodysoul, expressing through us. It is here that heaven can find a place to live in us.

For as Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells us in Women Who Run with the Wolves, “Our work is to show we have been breathed upon—to show it, give it out, sing it out, to live out in the topside world what we have received through our sudden knowings, from body, from dreams and journeys of all sorts.” (p. 29)

The way I most experience embodying the transcendent is when I sing. I feel as if I am taking beauty and inspiration and giving it physical form through and in me.

Artists of all kinds do this most clearly, but so do animals and plants and everything that lives, to the extent that it is embodied.

For what better purpose for a life than to marry heaven and Eairth and so to live fully alive, fully inspired, fully present in this precious time we have here in Eairth?

What practices support you in embodying the transcendent?

** Eairth = Earth and Air

Habitual or Ritual?

It’s the New Year,
and with the turning of the year,
comes an invitation to create
some new healthy habits!

Putting habits in place means not having to think so hard—we can just do the things we need to do on autopilot.

Perhaps you want to jump out of bed and get to the gym first thing as a habit.

Or to meditate, do yoga, or stretch.

Maybe you want to go for a walk in the early morning.

Or to cuddle with your kids or your pet or your honey.

The word on the street is that it takes 21 days to set a simple habit in place. But Phillipa Lally found that on average, it takes 66 days, but could range from as little as 18 to as many as 254!!

We probably all have some very basic habits in place that our family and society brought us up with:

  • Brushing and flossing your teeth.
  • Driving on the correct side of the road.
  • Taking your vitamins.
  • Taking care of your plants or pet.

And you’ve probably grown specialized habits:

  • Practicing to play an instrument.
  • Working with certain tools of the trade, craft, or hobby you are involved with.
  • Doing an exercise routine.
  • Learning dance steps.

It feels good to fall back into a habit well-learned, to flow and glide, and not have to think too much…

But are you really there
when you are in habit?

I just facilitated the Winter Solstice Ritual at my Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. It was the first time to bring it to my new church since moving to the Pacific Northwest. I found myself needing to explain to people that it was not a “service”—it was not reading and saying certain things or listening from the pews. There would be no introductions or announcements. It was a RITUAL.

 was grasping to capture something ineffable in words, something you can only really experience by attending and fully experiencing, fully participating… with body, heart, mind, and soul, with bodysoul. And in that full participation, allowing yourself to be touched by life, to feel more meaning and belonging, to sense yourself deeply in place, to receive.

We don’t have to wait for special rituals
or moments of grace to allow ourselves
to be touched deeply and feel fully alive.

We can create these moments by consciously bringing more of ourselves, by bringing our presence to our actual lived lives.

We can create rituals instead of habits.

One way to start is with those habits you already have in place, or any new ones you’re already working on.

Next time you find yourself in some simple habit, see if you can become aware of what is happening. Where is your attention? Where is your heart/your feeling sense? Can you sense your body? Gently bring your awareness back to your bodysoul. What is here right now?

Maybe it’s as simple as brushing your teeth. Try really focusing in on all the felt sensations of this—how you are standing/sitting, the feeling of the brush in your hand, the feeling of bristles and wetness in your mouth and on your teeth and gums, the taste of the toothpaste, the sound of brushing. How does it feel to be taking care of your body in this way? To be companioning your teeth in health?

And as you create something new this New Year, consider making it a ritual in addition to being a healthy habit. Bring your mindfulness, your sincere heart, your willing body to the process.

  • To have any chance of success, you need to really want this new thing in your life. Find desire. Feel the gratitude for being able to practice welcoming this new way of living in.
  • From this place of desire, create an entry point—how will you remember to enter this ritual? What touchstone will invite you in? Perhaps it’s whenever the phone rings. Or you leave yourself a note to remember. Or going through a doorway is your reminder.
  • Enter with awareness of your bodysoul. Engage all your senses—seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, with the intention to be good to yourself. Carry out this sacred act with your full presence.

One thing that helps me is giving my mind something active to do to keep its attention. Carefully-chosen words can be very helpful here.

Thich Nhat Hanh has many gathas (mindfulness verses) to bring more presence to an action. You can also create ritual language simply using the sentence stems:

Breathing in, I _______.
Breathing out, I _______.

My blog Breathing in the Morning has a bunch of examples of this.

You might try things like:

  • Relaxation practice: Breathing in, I know I am here. Breathing out, I relax.
  • Loving practice: Breathing in, I feel grounded. Breathing out, I choose love.
  • Healthy food practice: Breathing in, I feel my hunger. Breathing out, I choose food mindfully.
  • Gratitude practice: Breathing in, I smile. Breathing out, I feel grateful.

You’ll notice that practicing ritual rather than habit slows you down a bit and helps land you in the moment. That makes it easier to be in touch with yourself, others, and with life.

And I bet that it doesn’t take as long to successfully create a new habit when you approach it from this place of ritual! Because you are more fully engaged—more of you is participating in the new way of being, more of you is affected by your practice!

If you’d like more ideas for how to create simple ritual in your life, see my blog posts and check out my ebook, Welcoming the Sacred.

May ritual help you to live
more fully into the blessing
of your life and your presence
in this New Year!

Breathing in the Morning

Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.

I’ve been practicing with one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s breathing gathas* every morning lately. It feels good to have a quiet morning practice that is about connecting with my bodysoul (body, heart, mind, soul) first thing in the morning.

Breathing in, my breath grows slow.
Breathing out, my breath goes deep.

I follow my breath down through nose, throat, chest, abdomen, pelvis, pelvic floor, sitz bones. Through head, heart, belly, into ground. Through softening face, breasts, belly, yoni, into earth.

Reciting each couplet inwardly with the breath 5-10x each, I align my body and soul.

Aware of my body, I breathe in.
Relaxing my body, I breathe out.

Good morning, I see you, tension in my jaw, tickle in my right forearm, ache in my left sacrum, pulsation in my left calf. I greet you, body’s intelligence. I welcome you, all of your sensations, just as you are.

Calming my body, I breathe in.
Caring for my body, I breathe out.

Just sitting here and breathing is caring for my body. Just my loving, interested attention for what is happening right now in my bodysoul. What a simple gift I can give myself of calm, ease, and care.

Smiling to my body, I breathe in.
Easing my body, I breathe out.

Smiling to my body, I breathe in.
Releasing tension in my body, I breathe out.

A half-smile on my face, I feel the ease of acceptance and welcome reverberate through my bodysoul. I smile to people to show my warmth and so also to my bodysoul, who responds with a warm easing of held places, a melting into this loving holding.

Feeling joyful to be alive, I breathe in.
Feeling happy, I breathe out.

There is a simple joy in just sitting here. Just breathing. Just being with my bodysoul. A subtle, deep happiness might visit me, deep in my bones, in my flesh, in my bodysoul. What a precious gift it is to be alive right here, right now!

Dwelling in the present moment, I breathe in.
Enjoying the present moment, I breathe out.

I am here. Dwelling in now. Abiding in whatever arises in my bodysoul, in my life, in my breath. I dwell here now. “What shall we eat for breakfast?” my mind pipes up. That’s for later. Now I return. Now I breathe in the nourishment of this present moment. Abiding here. Abiding.

Aware of my stable position, I breathe in.
Enjoying the stability, I breathe out.

I am aware of my deep stability in Eairth. I know, feel, sense how Mother Eairth is holding me close to her, hugging me with gravity into her core, her groundedness. Her ground is my ground. Her stability is my stability. I am cradled, supported, held, centered here.

I bow, ending my practice, one hand on heart, one on belly.

As we move with Eairth toward winter, we can align with winter’s slower rhythm by taking up practices that help the bodysoul embrace quietness and feel the stability and support of ground.

Starting your day this way sets you up to carry the quiet support with you so that you stay centered and able to meet what arises in the day with ease. Even 5-10 minutes in the morning can help.

What morning practices
support you in this way?

*  Breathing Meditation: versions from from Thich Nhat Hanh’s books Planting Seeds and Blooming Lotus.

**  Eairth = Earth and Air

presence-full time

Stepping outside with a task in mind,
I move with intention toward its completion.
Subtly and completely, my perception shifts,
and instead of allowing my mind to dictate the doing,
my body opens—to the front and sides and back—
adding a fullness and a wholeness into my doing.

My perception of time slows.

I am here, still moving, doing, completing, focused on task, but not so intensely. I take in the day, the garden, the birds, the light, the air. Perhaps I move a bit more slowly, more body-fully.

I still move with intention. My body, heart, and mind participating in a sense of embodied presence as I continue my task.

This experience is not time-stopping or mystical. It’s utterly ordinary—and different from my normal way of moving headlong into task.

It’s a moment of being in touch
with timelessness.

The timelessness of our inner experience.

The timelessness of Eairth.

The timelessness of the cosmos.

The timelessness of the Divine, of True Nature,
of the Goddess.

We don’t have to search for this in books, in classes or retreats or teachers… The portal is always NOW, in our precious bodysoul.

To the degree that we are present, there is only now. Yes, things still need to be done, but they occur in this timelessness moment, in presence, in touch with a truer, deeper, wholer sense of self.

This reminds me of a beautiful, simple song by Annie Zylstra, Weaving the Day. If you are a member of the facebook group Village Fire, you can listen to it here.

Weaving the day, weaving the day
The river will run and find its way
All is well. All is well.

The river isn’t rushing along to join the ocean. It’s finding its way as it flows. So can we move through our days, finding our way in presence.

Dropping the head into the heart and body, and opening to the flowing, full, timelessness of now.

From this place we can be in touch with “a sense of the natural unfolding of a day, of a season, of a year, of a life.”*

The presence practices I offer in my free e-book Welcoming the Sacred are about this—suggestions for how to meet the moment and enter it with more than head-centered intention so you can be more present throughout your day, whatever it brings.

Consciously aligning with the seasons, as we will practice in my upcoming Fall women’s mini-retreat, connects us with the natural unfolding of Mother Eairth through her changes over the year.

So, the more presence we weave into each day of each season, the more presence we weave into our whole lives. We find our flow, opening more and more deeply to a bodyful and mindful life.

How do you weave presence
into your day?

From Inviting Silence by Gunilla Norris, p. 90.

Welcoming Fall

Autumn Equinox was
last Monday, September 23rd
at 12:50 am PT.

This is the time when the dark and light hours are approximately even and marks the turning into more darkness as we head toward the Winter Solstice.

Why mark this transition at all? In a busy life, it can seem like just one more thing to remember, one more thing to do, to fit in…

But since taking on the practice of living with the seasons, I find myself more in touch with life, more in touch with Soul, with True Nature (God / Goddess / Great Spirit / Higher Power / Truth / Love), and more in touch with Eairth (Earth + Air = Eairth).

The seasons reflect not only the changing light and weather, but also the plants that grow, and the felt, energetic sense of life. Fall feels different from Spring or  Summer or Winter. There’s no getting around it, even in places without dramatic seasonal changes!

This amazing, shimmering, fierce, luminous, creative, mysterious Eairth has been developing over billions of years, creating more and more complex forms of life and consciousness. Its precise seasonal rhythms are simply one more expression of the universe’s creativity in earthly form.

These days, I can’t distinguish True Nature from Eairth.

And I love that this way of naming the Divine includes nature. Our nature is True. Nature is True. We are of God/dess, Love, Great Spirit, Higher Power. We are of Eairth. That is True Nature.

The creative unfolding of the mystery is One, experienced here in physical and energetic form as Eairth. And as such, it, and we, are sacred.

We humans embody the flowering of Eairth’s consciousness. As we are an expression of this consciousness, so are we intimately connected with the seasons. Why would we not want to align with Eairth’s seasons as they are also our seasons, affecting us energetically whether we know it or not?

So how do we align with
the season of Autumn?

What does this season invite us into?

On the physical-energetic level, plants and animals (have) come to fruition as we enter this season—they fruit/flower and seed. And then they prepare their dens for hibernation, conserve their energy, or die back, moving toward Winter. All of Eairth’s inhabitants partake of Summer’s abundance in Fall, completing their maturation, coming to fulfillment, harvesting food and putting it away for leaner days. And we get to celebrate this harvest! It is a time of gathering in and feasting, in preparation for leaner and darker times.

On the psycho-spiritual level, we also assess and feast on our interior harvest as we transition from Summer’s light to Winter’s dark. We slow down to contemplate, to truly face and embrace the outcomes of our lives. Did projects, plans, practices, desires come to fruition? If so, we acknowledge, appreciate, and celebrate. If not, we look with clear eyes and warm heart to understand what happened. Perhaps we need to grieve and/or re-calibrate, releasing hopes to make space for something new. Or perhaps simplification and re-prioritization is necessary before taking our next steps.

While nature’s season of Autumn comes predictably once a year, I learned from The Way of the Happy Woman work that we move through the seasons regularly in our lives, not always in alignment with Eairth’s seasons.

Women have a chance monthly with their hormonal cycles. The moon moves through every 29 days. We all move through the seasons of our lives from youth to elder. And each project we take on, in its wholeness, takes part in each of the seasons as well.

In Dave’s and my big project to move
to the Pacific NorthWest,
you can see all the stages clearly:

We first had the idea of moving here, talking with my parents about their next steps as the house got too big for them to manage easily. And we thought about it, planned, got the soil ready for new things for a few years. (Spring—new beginnings, new ideas, freshness.)

Then for a good year, we moved into an ever more intense Summer mode of doing the work, of accomplishing—renovating, packing, working hard to meet our goals and deadlines for house sale and move.

After landing in mid-July, with boxes in the basement and a temporary home in the guest room, we entered into the Fall season of our big project. We are here, enjoying the fruits of our labor, noticing regrets—loss of friends, place, community—and celebrating being in this beautiful, new home. We are also in the midst of this huge transition. How will we make this our home—find new community and friends and place? How will we make our livelihood? How will this be to accompany my parents as they age? What do we need to prioritize now? How do we need to adjust our plans to meet this reality?

Once we get more settled, Winter ‘s invitation to slow way down, to go within, to dream, and vision will give us plenty of time to live with and dream with all of these questions, to be ready for a new Spring, which may or may not coincide with Eairth’s season of Spring.

This way of aligning with the seasons gives hope!

So far, as Eairth’s seasons continue to model for us, after Winter always comes Spring. We can rely on this orderly and integral progression, plan for it, and be ready when our Spring arrives, just as we are ready to plant and be outside and welcome Eairth’s Spring.

How do you align with
the season of Autumn?

exploring wildness

Wildness

“the spontaneities of life”*

“the ultimate creative reality of earthly being”**

“a subjectivity that is aware of its vibrant place in ecosystems and human community”*

What is it to allow the truly wild creative impulse that exists deep within us, deep within all beings, that is, in fact, the creativity of the universe expressing through us?

How do we allow “the spontaneities of life” to express through us and not be distorted by our personality structures, many of which were set in place to keep them and this in control (and safe)?

We learned to ignore our body to get work down, or to over-cater to every ache and pain. Maybe we sit or stand too long…. Rather than follow the intelligence of the body that knows how to listen to and follow her/his needs in the moment.

We cover up our feelings with screens, books, experiences, and intellectual pursuits, or we indulge them and get confused and over-whelmed…  Rather than letting them inform and move through us.

We use our minds to rationalize, analyze, ruminate, daydream, plan, and fantasize, which gives us a sense of being in control of our lives, but fills our minds up all the time… Rather than allowing the mind to be refreshed by quiet, contemplation, prayer, or meditation.

“We misconceive our role [as humans]
if we consider that
our historical mission is to ‘civilize’
or to ‘domesticate’ the planet…” **

When my parents moved back to the West Coast 19 years ago from the East Coast where I grew up, I was struck by the grandeur and beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

But my domesticated senses also registered what looked like mess and chaos.

Brambles covering everything, thickets so thick that getting into the woods proved almost dangerous, and when you did make it in, nettles ready to sting, and thimbleberry and blackberry thorns to grab you. Not to mention the thistles that pop up everywhere the forest is not.

Wildness.

I was not sure what to do
with this wildness,
how to be with this wildness.

Wildness, too, is the energy of the cosmos, elaborated as Eairth, and expressing through the genetic coding of all beings, through those very spontaneities, through this Pacific Northwest expression.

These native plants follow their genetic coding without question—they seek sustenance to survive; they propagate, flower, and fruit; they form mutually nourishing connections, growing together. Their wildness directs their authentic expression.

What if we, human beings, considered to be the highest expression of the consciousness of the cosmos, could also follow our natural, wild impulses to flourish?

What if we returned to listening to our true bodily needs—for rest and movement, for food and drink, for following what makes us come alive, for inter-connection with others?

This sounds like the healthy, unfettered and natural expression of what we call the Instincts in the Enneagram world. Part of our genetic coding, the Instincts connect us to all beings—animals most directly, but also to the Green Ones and to the entire Eairth!

In the Enneagram world, we divide the expression of wildness into Self-Preservation, Sexual, and Social Instincts. The creative impulse of all beings includes these three—the desire to survive physically, to reproduce, flower, and fruit, and to connect with others.

As I now live here in the Pacific Northwest and interact with the wilderness ongoingly, I find myself in creative tension with following and allowing the spontaneities of life, and wanting to shape, corral, and domesticate these very energies—both within and without…

In terms of the environment I find myself in, I strive to allow the forest its wildness, leaving little impact other than a narrow path or a place for the faeries.

path and fairy walk--500x

In the gardens my parents carved out of the forest, it is a different matter! The wild perimeter stays and provides habitat for native plants and shelter for animals, but the plants that cannot exist without more space around them get my support in trimming, clipping, and even pulling the native wildness.

I am finding a place of balancing.

Asking myself how to live creatively
with the inner, wild and creative
instinctual desire of Eairth

and with my Western
“civilized” version
of being human.

Can I cultivate and tend without domesticating—both inside myself and outside in the garden?

Can I allow the wild spontaneities of Eairth to in-form how I live, garden, and relate to human and more-than-human life?

Can I be truly wild and fully human, not distorting these wild instincts with personality contractions of body, heart, and mind?

Asking questions like these invites me into ever-evolving exploration without a definitive answer.

So, I practice asking, living, balancing, listening, and am grateful for the support of the Tao, ever guiding:

“what works reliably
is to know the raw silk,
hold the uncut wood.
Need little, want less.
Forget the rules.
Be untroubled.”

~ Lao Tzu, from Tao Te Ching, #19,
interpretation by Ursula K. Le Guin

How about you?

How do you relate to wildness?

* from The Selected Writings of Thomas Berry, p. 135

** from The Selected Writings of Thomas Berry, p. 140

creating sacred space

Turn as the earth and move, turn,
Circling what [you] love.
Whatever circles comes from the center.
~ Rumi

Your sacred center.

What does that phrase evoke in you?

Your sacred center.

Where is it?

Is it some place in your body?

With a certain person?

In some belief you hold dear?

In some special place you go to in order to return to yourself?

Asian cultures tend to point to the hara or lower dantien as their sacred center. It’s the energy center just below the belly button, also known as the 2nd chakra, the place from which we sense our ground, our rootedness.

Hinduism, Sufism, and many Western traditions identify the heart as the sacred center, that place from which we feel our connection to the Divine / Love / the Beloved.

What about the mind? That is, afterall, what is thought to distinguish us as humans from other animals. Is it not sacred?

Among others, Buddhism, the Diamond Approach, and philosophical and scientific traditions highly value the qualities of vast, open, spacious mind, which can creatively perceive and receive understanding and knowing.

4th Way teacher, G.I. Gurdjieff, one of the grandfathers of the Enneagram, taught that we are 3-centered beings, so it make sense that each Center would have its own way of perceiving the sacred as it has its own way of experiencing life.

Sacred Center…

The Celts believed that trees recognize sacred ground and step back from it to create a clearing of sacred space (a nemeton), where earth and heaven join. Here, in the sacred center, Druids and others gathered to deepen their connection to Source.

People worldwide create places of worship—temples, mosques, churches, cathedrals—to demarcate sacred space. Often, it is found that under these buildings lie magnetic earth currents, called ley lines or even holy lines.

And, of course, the circle is a symbol of unity, a demarcation of the sacred connection of all things.

Consider the circle of your in- and out-breath.

Consider the circle of the day or the seasons.

Consider the circle of your life, born of eairth* and returning to eairth.

Consider the cycle of nourishment from earth, sun, and rain that grows seeds into plants that we harvest and eat.

This cycle sounds like one of nature giving to us. How do we complete the circle? We must give back something to eairth. We give back our breath, the CO2, to nourish the Green Ones (but they also give us their O2 to breathe).

How else can we play our part in the circle of nourishment? We can tend and care for eairth—by not polluting her, not trashing our source of nourishment. We can sing to her, praise her, celebrate her.

You can create sacred space anytime.

You don’t need to find a nemeton or a particular sacred building or space. It’s more about how you perceive your life.

We are each at the center of the circle of sacred space.

Not in a selfish way, but in the sense that all of our experience starts here, within us, in touch with body, heart, and mind, all three Centers, which opens us to Spirit and Soul.

At any time, you can perceive the circle of sacred space you are in by landing in your body to reconnect with yourself and eairth. Open your senses—what do you see, smell, taste, hear, touch/sense?

Notice your heart—how does what you are sensing affect you? How do you feel? Hint: It doesn’t have to be “good”—all feelings are welcome. Open your heart and let them flow through you, touching you.

Witness your mind. Thoughts will be there—observe them and allow them to pass through, like clouds that clear away to reveal a vast, open sky. Experience the immensity of the mind.

By engaging all three Centers openly, you open to contact with more life. Instead of staying caught in your thoughts, feelings, or body sensations or ignoring one or all of them, you are right here, right now, with all of it.

This, too, is nourishment. There is no forcing or dominating of yourself, others, or nature. You are simply here, present with what is, offering yourself to life, letting life move through you and affect you, participating in the sacred circle.

One of my current practices for creating sacred space is a breathing pattern I learned from Chameli Ardagh. These days, I practice it outside every morning. It helps me reconnect with earth and heaven, with soul and spirit, with all living beings. Try it on: (audio file coming).

Turn as the earth.
Circle what you love.
Come from the center.

Here is Libana singing the Rumi poem from the top.

* I use “earth” to refer the ground, the soil, and “eairth” to refer to the living, evolving planet we live in, composed of earth and air.