…first return to Bare Ground

June 6, 2010.  A few weeks ago, this bare patch of ground was filled with weeds up to my thighs.  Today we’re preparing to plant some seeds.  Tomorrow we’ll water, and with a little bit of conscious gardening over the next few months will harvest an abundance of nourishing food from this little patch of bare soil.

Yes, the weeds will return…and if we don’t keep them cleared almost daily, they may even choke out the new seedlings.  So we’ll patiently pull and till the soil while waiting for the new seeds to take root, to grow into strong plants, and finally to bear fruit (& vegis)!

This spring I’ve been pulling a lot of weeds from my inner garden too.  My year started with such a flood of creative inspiration and readiness to plant myself fully in service.  Then all of a sudden I was drowning in too much…too fast…a whirlpool that took me down down down into a dark hole that I couldn’t seem to escape.

So I did what any good swimmer is trained to do: I surrendered to the flow.

(3 week flow break…it’s now June 25!)
It’s not easy to admit, or even to find a way back into a post that is partly written, but here I am to finish by simply revealing that Returning to Bare Ground is not a simple thing. While I was in the middle of it all…stuck in the mud…it wasn’t so pretty (it may seem like I’m mixing metaphors, but mud IS a mixture of both dirt & water!  Now that I’ve cleared the most distracting weeds,  I’m quite sure that I’m being returned to the Bare Ground of Simple Being for a reason. (Turns out my hormones & thyroid were causing a significant part of the muckiness, but even when physically triggered, the mental-emotional clearing always feels good…once it’s done)

So…I’m taking a “Simplification Sabbatical” this summer! I’ve decided to give myself over to this deep yearning to simplify, to nourish myself & my significant relationships, to spend time listening to God, to allow all actions to blossom from a place of enthusiasm and clarity.  It will have a few guidelines, a few possibilities, and mostly open space to RENEW & RE-CREATE.  I may (or may not) write as I go, and at the moment I’m leaning toward writing.  It seems many of us are being pulled to simplify, and perhaps sharing my journey might help someone else gain perspective.

And now I’m going to close this post that has taken longer than anything I’ve ever written.  But then our garden took longer to plant this year than ever before too!

P.S. In spite of several family emergencies and a bunch of rainstorms, the garden is finally planted.  It’s great to see those seeds turning into vibrant plants.  I’m sure some of the seeds God is planting in this new bare ground in ME will be sprouting soon.  Stay tuned for one of those to blossom forth this next month in celebration of my coming birthday!

Tags: balance, simple abundance

…let’s create an Arc of Love

As 2009 turned to 2010, I set an intention to be fully alive and more in service than ever before.  So far, the world has presented many opportunities to step into a fast-flowing current of doing.  In some ways, the needs of the world seem overwhelming, and it’s easy to get pulled into over-doing and giving until we’re exhausted.  For me, ‘riding the YES current’ is a reminder to rise from joyful inspiration in everything I do … to follow my passion, allowing natural exuberance to help choose where I give my time & talents … to remember that my body is simply a vessel.  When I allow the divine current to flow through me, I stay renewed & ready for whatever comes.

There are abundant opportunities to give, and many of them are right next door. I love that so many are called to help the people of Haiti, but I’d really prefer us to find ways to build infrastructures that will allow that support to be more ongoing.  Natural disasters will continue to happen, and there will likely always be people around the need extra support.  In the end, that’s probably why we’re here: to learn to give what we have to give, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to open to receive the giving & the loving so that it expands.  Perhaps what we’re being asked to build together NOW is an expansive Arc of Love that will move us into a new phase of humanity.

Tags: activation, inspired service, sacred activism, we are the ones

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one …
I am of the opinion that my life belongs
to the whole community and as long as I live it
is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die,
for the harder I work, the more I live.
I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible
before handing it on to future generations.”
~George Bernard Shaw

Amen. This is one of my very favorite quotes, even though I sometimes feel unworthy when I read it, like I haven’t quite got the torch burning brightly enough. Still, it brings tears of recognition, and I know that I am doing what I can with the moments I have. More often now, I recognize that the brightest burning comes from the stringing of moments, one bright bead of time after another, so that they all come together to create this splendid torch I call my life.

Consider how you are stringing your beads of time, and whether your torch is glowing as brightly as you’d like. So many of our moments are simply lost to the inevitable ‘to do’ list or in emotional response to past stories or future inventions. When we live fully alive to the gift of the moment (the ‘present’ ;-), we are creating a worthy torch to pass on to future generations.

It’s easy to be consumed by the negativity that surrounds us in the media and sometimes in our daily circumstances. It takes great compassion to live in a world where many are still homeless and hungry, while others live with more than we really need. In at least one way, those with excess have the bigger challenge: how do we choose where to focus our resources when the needs seem so much larger than any one person can fill?

Have you ever noticed how the very heart of compassion, the simple caring for others, is PASSION. It takes extreme passion to live in this world for the good of the whole, and to show up day after day after day doing what is needed to care for the less glamorous parts of our world.

It’s humbling to see the work that is already being done all around the world … people joining together to build bridges of hope, sustainability, and transformation. So many acts of simple giving become life-evolving, and we each hold the key to unlock a prison door for someone less fortunate than ourselves.

Andrew Harvey, sacred activist extraordinaire, guides us to follow our heartbreak…to choose one thing that hurts most and find a way to give to that. It doesn’t need to be a life-altering giving, although most of us know that when we give to that which is breaking our hearts, our lives are always changed. And this is a good thing.

Last month, I wrote about co-creative alchemy, and today I feel more passionate than ever before about the need for us to ACT TOGETHER in co-creation. This is a time of great change, and as visionary-futurist Barbara Marx-Hubbard so elegantly tells us, “collapse is an inevitable seed within the natural process of evolution.” We are the imaginal cels that are birthing a new way of being, and this is a powerful choice point for how we are to Serve this awakening society. (If you want the full juicy story about ‘imaginal cels’ watch Barbara’s enlightening video, ‘Humanity Ascending’.)

So … what is your heartbreak?  Where is your passion? What bright or subtle burning will light your torch even more brightly?

And how might we come together to create a truly Splendid Torch to pass along to the next generation?

I celebrate the Light within each of you.
~Shining Sor’a

Tags: activation, Add new tag, awakening, enlightenment, inspired service, sacred activism