Category: mindfulness

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?

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?

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.

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)

Spring Equinox–Balancing

Spring Equinox, falling on March 20th at 2:37 am PT in 2021, is a great time to revisit what it means to balance. It marks a time when the days and nights are approximately equal, in the midst of the changing from dark to growing light.

Equinox Round by Laurence Cole

What does it mean to walk in balance?

We idealize the concept of finding balance. It seems like such a good idea… even though I rarely seem to find a static place I can stay in for very long…

That’s one of the problems of our culture, of colonizing cultures in general: We set up ideals that don’t match reality and then try to live up to them (and force others to).

No wonder we always feel like we have to keep working, trying, fixing, reaching, striving…

What would it be like, instead, to meet the moment as it is?

This is what Eairth* and her more-than-human beings are always doing.

If there’s a windstorm, the cedars outside my window don’t say “No, I’m going to stay straight and calm like a tree should be.” They respond to the moment by swaying and moving with the wind, by balancing, not resisting to try to stay straight and unmoved.

When we humans release too much carbon into the air, Eairth doesn’t refuse to change, but finds more and more ways to manage it—to store in the soil and rocks, in the breathing in of trees and green plants. Eairth responds to the moment by balancing.

When plants don’t get enough sunlight, they don’t refuse to live, but take the energy they do receive and live as best they can, perhaps sending less to flower or fruit and more to leaf and root. They are balancing with what life presents.

What if, like Eairth, I could accept that there is no ideal way to find balance?

Could I, like Eairth, just respond in the moment to what presents itself as needed without trying to find balance?

This is what I call the practice of balance-ING. A client once wrote it out like this to emphasize how it is an ongoing meeting of the moment, a shifting to meet reality as it is now, not a hunt for an ever-elusive and unattainable “balance.” (Thanks, Meg!)

Take work-life balance—an ever-present “issue” for me.

The pandemic brought more work into my life. This was at a time when I was learning to say “No” and not take on more. So, for months, I told myself I needed to find the right balance. I needed to work less to do that. I kept telling myself it wasn’t right that I had to work more, that I shouldn’t have to, that I didn’t like it…

But I was just fighting with reality. I chose to do the work, so why keep making myself unhappy about it?

When I held up the ideal of work-life balance, the situation didn’t look good, and I kept striving for that elusive ideal of more balance. I was holding up finding balance as the ideal and could see no way to make it happen. This kept me stuck.

Over time, I realized that I could practice meeting each day differently—I could see what was needed, accept that, and see what bit of balance-ING I could bring in. So, instead of, “I need more work-life balance,”

  • One day, I stopped early and spent some time playing music.
  • Another day, I went into the garden on my break.
  • Or I made time for the dog walk in the middle of the day.
  • Or I rolled around on the floor, listening to my body’s needs and playing with our dog Sammy for a few minutes.

I couldn’t change the objective need I had stepped into, but I could change my experience and open to meeting the moment in these small ways.

And slowly but surely, I stopped feeling so stressed about overworking. I still work more than I want to, and am actively looking for ways to cut back, but the fact that I am practicing balance-ING makes it all OK again. I don’t feel stuck. I mostly (😊) don’t get upset about it…

Seeking balance is yet another ideal that

we set ourselves up against and measure ourselves by.

Even the Spring Equinox is not really a moment of balance—it’s just a time in the middle of the tilting of Eairth on her axis when the amount of dark and light is relatively equal. But it’s not a stopping point. If it did stop, we wouldn’t have the seasons!

Let’s drop the seeking, the measuring, the trying to find balance.

Let’s practice, instead, meeting the moment and not arguing with reality.

Let’s practice balance-ING.

* Eairth = earth and air together

Honoring the Dark–Winter Solstice 2020

Image by Anja🤗#helpinghands #solidarity#stays healthy🙏

We live in a culture of polarities that encourages us to construct polarities in our lives: good vs. bad, what I like vs. what I dislike, warm vs. cold, comfortable vs. uncomfortable, relaxation vs. work, etc.

One polarity that arises this time of year is dreading the arrival of the cold, dark days of the year, and the yearning for a climate of perpetual warmth and light.

Eairth’s* seasons invite us into a deeper understanding of these darker, colder days and offer us a template for living a beautiful, whole life.

Winter Solstice marks the depth of darkness, the moment when Winter begins and at the same time, gives way to the growing light. On the longest night, the light is reborn—the circle of the seasons already gestating Spring.

This year, Winter Solstice occurs at 2:02 am PT on Monday, December 21st.

We can we learn to honor the cold and darkness by living into Eairth’s seasonal rhythm of light and dark.

Winter invites us to slow down and rest.

Animals and plants know how to do this. They hibernate, slow down, return to the earth, so that they will be ready for the call of growing light and fresh energy in the Spring. So, too, can we take more time to rest, to do less, to turn our attention inward and tend to our inner lives.

Winter teaches us that honoring the darkness includes honoring the darker places within us.

The darkness is often where we put difficult experiences and emotions—we tend to turn away from them and try to focus on the light instead… But all that is contained in the darkness yeans to be welcomed—even the feelings and thoughts we wish we did not have—because from these we can learn and grow.

The darkness invites us into more wholeness.

It is in the bright light of day that we see sharp distinctions, that we see and feel our separateness and perceive “otherness.” The darkness holds all things—like the primordial darkness of the universe or the mother’s womb. We can rest into a primal holding and interconnectedness in the darkness.

Winter invites us to surrender.

We can’t make Eairth change into Summer before it is time. We can light candles and keep our home and body warm, but the cold and dark are here. We can’t change that. So, can we let go of resistance to this and to the way our lives are unfolding? Can we surrender how we think life should be and be with life as it is? Even when life right now is so hemmed in by Covid? Especially now.

The darkness is also a time of dreaming for the year to come.

We can spend time journaling, crafting New Year’s intentions, and listening to dreams that visit us by night. Perhaps we will gain insight about our lives. Perhaps, as Thomas Berry suggests, Eairth can dream through us…

One of the biggest lessons of the seasons for me has been to align with Eairth’s circle of life.

The darkness comes and gives way to the light, the light goes and gives way to the darkness… One always leads into the next… This is a truth of Eairth, of life, of our inner lives as well.

Light and dark are not two poles, one to be sought after and the other avoided.

Both are necessary for wholeness and both are always present. Can we honor both? Learn from both? Re-member both?

We gather to honor both at our annual Winter Solstice Celebration.

This year, due to Covid, we will meet on Zoom for a contemplative, Earth-centered, Celtic-inspired ritual to mark the turning of the year as the darkness gives way to the growing light. This participatory ritual will include calling in the Directions, chanting & singing, meditation, candle-lighting, and deep connection with this seasonal turning of the year. I hope you will join us. Read more. 

If you can’t join us, but would like do mark the Winter Solstice in an intentional way, you can find some ideas for rituals from past blogs:

You might also find nourishment in joining the Thursday, December 17th Chant & Song for Community, Healing & Hope which will have a dark and light Solstice theme this week.

What polarities in you are calling to be held, healed, wholed this Winter Solstice?

* Eairth = Earth and Air, a spelling for Earth I think I learned from Thomas Berry

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