September Rains

So much life around us and so much to be grateful for even as we worry about the future. As my yoga teacher says: “Look up there nothing interesting on the floor” and so I translate that to apply to each moment. Yes, as always, there is much to struggle with from the health of this planet and the political place-making machinations to our individual health and welfare. Instead: look up for beauty, and awe, and the life around you.

September brought us the Celebration of the Earth Charter as a United Nations 25-year action dedicated to Earth as a living system. The event at Shelburne Farms was a re-commitment to Love of Earth highlighting The Ark of Hope and her Temenos Books.  Each book artfully, handmade by artists and schoolchildren around the world.  All of this was organized and created by the two dedicated artists Cameron Davis and Sally Linder.  Paul Winter’s ethereal music, the murmurations of starling dancers, and help of friends and family made this a full coming together of ­­community.

As we celebrate the renewal of commitment to the Earth Charter, we also find ourselves in the middle of a renewal to the changing landscape of downtown Burlington.   

The streets are a movable feast of openings and closings, but the buildings are also in a new state of becoming.  I always love this part of change, the liminal edge between demolition and construction—nothing is fixed yet, nothing is final, and so the possibility is still palpable.

Meanwhile who knew that you would ever see the underbelly of the Catholic Church exposed to daylight?  Yet still we await a reclamation of the spirit that once thrived here as a vibrant ethnic neighborhood and a home for the many who live on the edge.

Returning to the lake, Lake Champlain, our grounding plane.  We have never seen so much of her exposed, her shoreline, the sea level apparently at the lowest point in 50 years. We rely on her waters for all we know.  Her health serves as a reminder of our own watery existence through storm, drought, rains, and flood.  We rely on her waters for all we do.  Farms, food systems, water systems, sewage systems, earth and riverine health, animal life, and more… this lake is our watershed and life line.

I remember going to Lake Baykal in Siberia, a cold, inland sea, a stretch of water perhaps comparable to Birdland… where we walked into the waters to be at peace. We walked into the waters to not worry about the human conditions; we walked into the waters to meld with the sky.  Each time I remember That, That which we are.

Be well, be That which you are.

Photos:  Earth Charter Celebration; “No diving” photo of the YMCA demolition’ Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception; and Birdland “Exposed edge”.

August Friends

Friends greet us where we are, bringing life, music, and sometimes even a happy cluck! We are lucky to live this wild time of transformation, but not knowing the future is not the same as not Knowing who we are. The work of being your True Self is why we are here; there is nothing beyond the moment you are in despite the realm of the news.

Guru Poornima - July

The Jupiter moon is a flowering of fullness. Guru awareness expands into beauty. We breathe in the heat and humidity of the summer even as we quiet our bodies in the lake. A foggy stillness descends, engulfs, yet the ripples extend across the water as we move.

LETTERS

Letters, Love Letters, Letters to Self.

Written, sent, saved, read, and reread

shredded, soaked, shaped, burned, and released to the wind and sky

long ago letters, saved stories, reaching out thru a time of expansion, of breathing into the world, a space of exploration into the nature of being, releasing the thoughts that once contained longing, hope, doubt…

into thin air, cold winter air… then shredded into water, pure water, waves into ocean, as clouds across the sky float and form into shapes, transforming into nothingness

a love of life, a time of freedom unattached to the world of becoming, a space of light.

“Songs of the Cotton Grass” - music on video by Hilary Tann www.hilarytann.com

so the darkness shall be the light and the stillness shall be the dancing. t.s. eliot

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you which shall be the darkness of God.

As, in a theatre, the lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed With a hollow rumble of wing, with a movement of darkness on darkness, and we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama and the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations and the conversation rises and slowly fades into the silence and you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about; or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;

There is yet faith, but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

Swirling flowing energy

We sit in our world of human beingness and are mind-boggled at our own destructive machinations, hateful enterprises, and greedy systems, yet despite this we have deep intangible knowledge of beauty and love. We wonder at how the push-pull of Shiva’s destructive and transformative powers surrounds us even as we find ourselves in the Chinese Year of the Snake, a time of deep thinking, patience, and adaptability… I note that, Vasuki, the snake around Shiva’s neck represents the control of fear and ego.

Moving into the center and flowing out, we are surrounded by energetic winds sowing of seeds of change, transforming our being into pure, free, forever. That is all there is. Be well.

"The Iceman Cometh"

"The Iceman Cometh" is one of Eugene O'Neill’s most renowned plays, written in 1939. The play is a tragic exploration of self-delusion, despair, and the human need for illusion in order to cope with life’s harsh realities. The Iceman Cometh delves deep into the psychology of its characters, as they are forced to confront the truth about their lives.

Now, weeks after I started writing this, I am full of sun and snow, full of exuberant and quiet voices, full of life and death. We live in an extraordinary time of life, questioning, doubt, and faith. How spectacular to be here now!

So let the sun shine in!

We dream, we hope, we plan, and sometimes we just breathe… letting whatever might surrounds us take hold. We create life as we breathe and out of that unfolds extraordinary things, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Sometimes the good comes as new life — a flowering winter cactus or a new baby; sometimes we learn the pain of others, along with our own aging bodies; and sometimes the mystery takes us beyond our own heart and body to another dimension of being.

Opening the awareness of being part of an entire universe is beyond imagination, beyond individual existence, beyond knowing. It is not something we can paint or write or describe in any specific way, but it is something we can try to live. It can shape what and how we see our days. It can fill our hearts with light. So let the sun shine in!