tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68485269542470495272024-03-12T21:18:01.320-05:00Imagine The ShiftAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.comBlogger654125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-13361948332981305712018-05-22T11:38:00.002-05:002018-05-22T11:38:58.982-05:00Trees, Tears, Bees and Berries - Messages from a Walk Near the end of this morning's walk, I glanced down the street to see what I feared was a shrub being uprooted by two landscapers. (This was my first walk in nearly a month. I was so happy I had drug myself out of the house until this.) I copped an attitude toward the homeowner and said something like "It drives me crazy when people do that" as I neared the men.<br />
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Here was a willowy blue-ish evergreen on its side with another or two to be taken down as well. Hijacked by fury, I lost count of how many shrubs were coming down. The house had been built only in the last 3-4 years.<br />
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The landscaper (or possibly homeowner) aware of my distress walked over and shared unfortunately builders don't often plant trees and shrubs far enough away from the foundations of the homes they build.<br />
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I commented that my yard was like a jungle. That I've trees everywhere then I continued walking. My anger shifted to builders as 'fuck builders' went through my mind but not past my lips.<br />
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I walked a bit further as tears welled within me and I got the message I needed.<br />
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Trees, like my dear Mother Earth, are forgiving.<br />
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I smiled grateful I could be angry temporarily because my anger in this instance got me to forgiveness.<br />
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Trees teach me everything I need to know.<br />
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Be rooted and grow. Reach out. Open. Let go. And yes, forgive. When others cut you down, which they will, forgive. <br />
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One of the landscapers then called out, "Have you had strawberries?"<br />
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I forgot I held a green mesh basket like berries often come in.<br />
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I called back, "No, I'm just picking up trash, but I have had strawberries this year and they're good."<br />
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He agreed.<br />
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I had retrieved the basket up from atop a water drain near the beginning of my walk. It held a dead bee I picked up mid-way through walking which I was transporting to the angel in my yard.<br />
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Earth to me is like the basket filled with sweetness and sadness.<br />
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All we need do is Be. And if it feels right for you.....<br />
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Forgive and be grateful you have this opportunity to Live.<br />
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-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 23 May 2018 </div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-53422215322835930822017-09-28T17:27:00.000-05:002017-09-28T18:13:54.601-05:00A (Big)Piece to My Peace If I'm not outside daily, I begin to feel unplugged. Being in Nature is how I thrive, feeling sun permeate my insides as Earth's energy soaks into my soles, hearing chickadees, cardinals and blue jays, even the squirrel just now to whom I throw an acorn fills my soul's tank as I fill her physical tank.<br />
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These small, precious goings-on are vital to me yet I have allowed politics since the election to take a piece of my presence. When I'm outside, there's some peace in my presence.<br />
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(Here's where I share my despair about political events. If you're not open to me in that way, venture down to <b>SO</b>.) I am profoundly troubled by what I hear as the immense hypocrisy in this administration and even more troubled by those who don't hear so much of what's occurring as hypocritical.<br />
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For example most recently (and this has possibly changed already given the cavalcade of instances) it's been revealed that HSS Sec. Tom Price has spent nearly a half million dollars on private planes for trips thus far. One of those trips was to Nashville to see his son and speak to a medical conference for 20 minutes. Over $400,000 of tax payer dollars went toward these trips. He could have made this Music City trip for $150 to $300 on a commercial plane easily.<br />
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Of course, years prior then Sen. Price railed at Hillary Clinton for using private planes for travels.<br />
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I don't understand why Republicans aren't equally outraged over this yet I know I am naive. I still think in relation to things like this "wrong is wrong."<br />
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Then there's her emails for which she was harangued in a modern day inquistion and the mobs still chant, "lock her up." Yet it doesn't seem to matter that six Trump officials (including Jared and Ivanka) have used private email accounts for White House correspondence. Excuse me. This is what you find under the definition of "hypocrisy" in the dictionary.<br />
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The Trump administration thus far seems to be above the law and his followers seem to be okay with this. Many of them feared for eight years that Pres. Obama was coming for their guns and probably still fear this. It's sad and unbelievable.<br />
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<b>SO</b> I return to Nature, to refill, to reflect, to mourn what is being revealed about my fellow Americans, and to listen to Nature's messages and as a means of surviving these times that stir despair in me.<br />
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No, I've not forgotten the big picture. I appreciate that the president and his administration are revealing our shadow through a huge clearing of what's beneath our collective rug for centuries.<br />
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I can hold appreciation and despair simultaneously yet when I feel depleted as these past few months have been for me its harder but I can still do so. I cannot not tune in. For me, that's ignoring which is partially how we arrived at Now.<br />
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As a sensitive, I truly can't fathom someone especially in a position of such importance using the language he's using. SOB!? Going to hell?! But after "grab them by the pussy" was acceptable to many why am I surprised.<br />
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(I think I just made a Freudian highlight. I highlighted the wrong SO because I wish those who disagreed with me could be open and also help me understand how so many things that to me seem not okay to them seem okay.)<br />
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So if I'm going to practice what I write, I drag myself outside to complete this piece and as usual find an epiphany and peace. (I drag myself because I'm recovering from a temporary knock-out punch from a spider and bed bug bites.)<br />
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The double-blooming azaleas overflow with blossoms, more than they've ever had in the last dozen years of calling our temporary spot of earth home.<br />
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I immediately know I'm being shown more of the big picture. <b>I am being shown Souls waking up, here to blossom in this time rooted in Earth and fed by Sun's light.</b><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f0ihnJ4_FKM/Wc1zbl3UMiI/AAAAAAAAEjo/4SVwRScuefkFVTP75NnA877PO2riegVDgCLcBGAs/s1600/azalea%2B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f0ihnJ4_FKM/Wc1zbl3UMiI/AAAAAAAAEjo/4SVwRScuefkFVTP75NnA877PO2riegVDgCLcBGAs/s320/azalea%2B.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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I feel deep satisfaction and joy seeing this and being open to seeing these Sights.<br />
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Being plugged into Nature, allows me to more peacefully navigate being plugged into world events.<br />
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What helps you navigate the present without denying or ignoring the events of the Times?<br />
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-Dawn, The Good News Muse, <a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Imagine the Shift</a></div>
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28 Sept. 2017</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-32179048525052551932017-08-20T23:19:00.001-05:002017-08-20T23:32:03.252-05:00Nature Speaks - Are You Listening? Nature is continually speaking. Are you listening? Do you see?<br />
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While polishing my toenails yesterday, I noticed a speck of lint on my finger. It wouldn't leave as I attempted to brush it aside. Upon closer look I was grateful for its persistence because the fuzzy speck was a yellow-tipped goldfinch feather.<br />
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I was captivated and elated. Immediately I knew I needed to acknowledge the Nature spirits and Nature and ask for assistance in this time of lifting Earth in love. This came to mind but was quickly followed by 'I wish I had another sign.'<br />
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That's when I recalled the thank you card I had just gotten from a neighbor at the front door. I opened it. What was on the card? Gold finches.<br />
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Excuse me. If I typed this as I felt it, gold finches would be more like GOLDFINCHES.<br />
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Still I wanted yet another confirmation, a third sign from gold finch. What?! Why was it not enough to find a wisp of a feather stuck to my finger?<br />
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So the Universe, ever patient with me, concurred. I went to get my camera and there was the plaque from years ago from a friend, a plaque I had set aside because it needed a new nail for hanging. The plaque read: "May the Sun's embrace fall upon this place" and yes there were the requested goldfinches. <br />
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After this, I reached for "Nature Speaks" by Ted Andrews. The message of gold finch was perfect.<br />
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Goldfinch represents awakening to the Nature spirits. The black cap of the gold finch represents awakening to that which is normally hidden from view. They rarely are silent so they teach us that Nature's always speaking to us. Their undulating flight pattern reflects the ability to lead us between the inner and outer realms, the physical and spiritual realms and from the human to the fairy realms.<br />
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Their yellow and black coloring reminded me of tomorrow's solar eclipse as the Moon and Sun embrace. The shadow of that embrace will literally "fall upon this place" as the plaque intimates.<br />
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Nature and her Spirits are at our fingertips here to assist in this time....if only we stay awake, listen, see, and open to feeling the messages as they arrive.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fGNUuSz6MQU/WZpYdci8mMI/AAAAAAAAEjQ/Za0sCEJaiAUy08K7HD5dOtouvsRssC_YwCEwYBhgL/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1533" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fGNUuSz6MQU/WZpYdci8mMI/AAAAAAAAEjQ/Za0sCEJaiAUy08K7HD5dOtouvsRssC_YwCEwYBhgL/s320/FullSizeRender%2B12.jpg" width="306" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look closely to see the wisp of a feather on my finger tip. </td></tr>
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If this Good News resonates with you, acknowledge the Nature Spirits, acknowledge the Trees, the plant world, the rocks, the birds and all Creation. Ask forgiveness for our negligence. Rejoice in Creation's presence and ask that each assist us in this Time.<br />
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-Dawn, The Good News Muse at <a href="http://imaginetheshift.com/">Imagine the Shift</a></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
20 August 2017</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-27510804652400656772017-08-20T18:45:00.000-05:002017-08-20T18:45:16.657-05:00Of Bullets, Butts, Beauty, and Brevity - A Story for Today's Shadow Inspired by Blossoms and a Bag<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal;">
Early last summer, these blossoms and I began an ongoing relationship. I first noticed them at the street’s edge during a morning walk in late June. Their pastel purple and hot pink got my attention. </div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I picked one up to study its beauty. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Unfurled, a few steps away a cluster of blossoms caught my eye. I bent down to get them only to realize the pink that I thought was part of the flower was actually pink bone shapes on a bag of dog poop someone had left among the blossoms.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span><br />
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How perfect. We are all one.’ was my first thought. This was quickly followed by ‘Huh? This bag is unnatural. How can plastic be part of the one?’ </div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I picked up a blossom and the bag and walked home pondering how it is we’ve unconsciously turned Earth into a dump for inventions, like plastic, whose long-term consequences haven’t been fully considered. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ironically our physical bodies will decompose long before the remains of our unconscious behavior. At times I fear we are creating an earth that’s artificial and unreal. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I walked and experienced the beauty of this blossom that had entered a new phase, a phase many would label dead. Maybe it held a clue to some of the challenges presented here in Earth School.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I wanted to listen further to my finds so upon arriving home, I left them outside and got ready for work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The next morning, I mindfully held the blossom. Overnight it had changed ever so slightly, still</span> it was beautiful fading and withering into a new texture, color, and shape. It was departing to eventually live as memory.</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">To make peace with departure - change, loss, declines, good-byes, and ultimately death - is one of the most necessary (and for me challenging) lessons in this journey. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Suddenly I wondered if on an unconscious level plastics were made as a means to create beauty that would not depart. A plastic blossom or bouquet outlasts the nature-made yet doesn’t hold the energy this parting one did. Cupped in my palm, I felt the blossoms subtle energy as it shared its presence with me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My momentary meditation concluded but I could not relinquish the blossom. I continued to be drawn to it even in this parting phase. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The next day enroute to a meeting, I intentionally drove past the site where the blossoms lay. To my surprise, more had fallen overnight. Their cylindrical bodies scattered about reminded me of cigarette butts and bullets. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What might happen if someone had to hold a blossom before taking a drag or taking a life? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m serious. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What might shift in a person’s experience, their heart, body, soul, and mind, if they first had to hold a blossom in their palm? What space might open up inside if before taking another’s life or numbing one’s own experience, a person studied the lines, colors,and textures of a blossom or considered its wisdom? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Could a blossom’s beauty be an antidote for violence and its brevity a wake-up call from numbing behaviors and sleepwalking through life?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I took another blossom as a reminder of this encounter. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Several days passed. I had not walked or held the blossoms nor had I revisited the plastic bag in the mulch where I initially placed it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I set off on my morning walk but this time went in the opposite direction. At the turning point, the blossom crossed my mind. I circled a pile of roadside brush awaiting the quarterly Metro pick-up crew and looked down to see, yes, another blossom. Its petals, not yet curled inward, held moisture from the overnight rain. Its veins resembled a miniature lilac forest. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I walked with this damp open blossom while pondering the importance of not becoming dry. I can easily slip into conditions leading to dryness when I experience life as a burden instead of a gift or when I live from “have to” rather than “get to,” when I tire of tears and close my heart or allow fear from current events to give rise to despair. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Upon arriving home, this blossom joined the other two reminiscent of papery, Monet scrolls now residing on a bookshelf. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Still I ignored the plastic bag. Thinking of it created an inner tension. It reminded me of my concerns for Earth. It stirred my frustration toward people who seem oblivious to increasing the plastic quotient on the planet. And it touched my personal despair related to the plastic I see flowing through my own life in the recycling bin each week. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Weeks passed, before I finally retrieved the bag. In that time, our collective shadow was in the spotlight as black men were killed by police officers in Minnesota, Texas and Louisiana followed by the republican and democratic conventions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When I finally went to get the bag, I discovered the beauty in it as well as the profoundness of where I previously placed it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nearly twenty years ago, we laid sod in our back yard. That sod never flourished. At the time, I didn’t realize each square was<b> </b>held together by green mesh (plastic of course) which over time began to reveal itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’ve associated this mesh with a grid of Love as green is the color of the heart center. This time I realize I’m being shown the grid of Love and compassion rising in this time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is perfect that the bag of neglected dog waste (a symbol of our material trash and the stuff of our unconscious which drives our unexamined behaviors and attitudes) lay on the green grid rising from the underworld of my yard. The green mesh is a symbol of Mother Earth rising to love each of us despite our trash and our shadow. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is also perfect the bag is covered in pink bones for in this I see the pink bones of the Divine Feminine rising on the grid of Love holding us and all our shit and shadow just like the bag holds the dog waste. These pink bones rise to say, “Give me your weary ways. Let me have your have-to’s, your burdens, all the experiences that have led to your dryness, your heavy heart, your fears, your personal and your ancestral traumas, America’s sufferings and the world’s sufferings. My pink bones know suffering. My pink bones have been used, abused, violated, and raped. And my pink bones are rising in this time.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Remember how that first blossom prompted me to consider how at death we physically decompose? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Love is the great decomposer. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Love is rising to lay to rest our disconnects internally and externally. If we choose, we each have the ability to hold the blossom of our body and feel its energy, hear its truths and reflect before pulling the trigger of reactivity, judgement, and condemnation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This love is not the love of stuff and material goods or love that is temperamental and based in momentary positive feeling.This is Big LOVE, the Love embodied and lived out by Jesus, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc and millions of unnamed souls throughout time who have held the vibration of compassion in the face of profound judgment, torture and hate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This Love dismantles the old forms societally and within us. This Love is needed now more than ever as we witness the breaking down of systems that for eons have used power improperly to abuse and control. Yes, it’s messy, chaotic and violent at times as fear prompts reactivity rather than reflection and as the patriarchy clings to diminishing power. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yet Love is rising like the green grid in my yard to lay the dying patriarchy to rest as a healthy masculine emerges to dance with a healthy feminine in us all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Love is the great composer orchestrating this new dance and love is the great decomposer breaking down our disconnects within and without. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Months passed since that first encounter with the blossoms. In that time, I allowed my awareness and focus to be hijacked by my own shadow. My reaction to more shootings of black men by police officers as well as officers being shot, the presidential election and the neglect of Mother Earth stirred my fear and created profound inner tension for me. At times I’ve been paralyzed by rage and have wanted to beg Earth to destroy us all. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I temporarily lost heart. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Then I finally revisited the bag of dog waste. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A critter had moved the bag from beside the chair that is my morning sitting place to beneath the Japanese maple surrounded by ferns not far away. The bag had been placed in what I consider the sacred resting place of my yard where I lay dead animals that I find or that find me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">To my surprise, when I retrieved the bag the waste inside was gone, not emptied, but decomposed, gone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A squirrel or a Nature Spirit had done for my shadow what I usually do for the animals. It had laid to rest my need to control out of fear and mistrust. It had laid to rest my self-negligence, my ignoring, my anger, my grief. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is the beauty of grace to me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Love is the great decomposer. Love is the great composer. And life on earth is a never ending love story of joy, pleasure, heartbreak, and pain. </span></div>
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We are each departing, just as the old ways are departing, like the blossoms. If we can only realize Earth is this amazing home offering herself to us for this oh-so brief time maybe just maybe Earth wouldn’t be a dump for plastic or for the unconscious violence we cause to ourselves and others. <span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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Since last November, I have kept the parts of this story on a nearby table. I’ve avoided completing the story though I have literally from time to time held the parts -dried blossoms,green netting, and a pink bone covered bag. <span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This week I shared with someone how my cats have different ways of sharing their messages with me. Redbud for example within one month of being in my home found a Grand Canyon National Park newspaper which he left in the middle of the floor. He had pulled it from a file folder I forgot I even had just as I was debating whether to cancel an Autumn Equinox trip to the Grand Canyon. Four years ago, I heeded Redbud’s message. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I told my client that at times when I allowed Redbud into my office he left things in the middle of the rug as well. I was mindful as I spoke these words that he hadn’t done so in a long time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That evening, I found in the center of the office rug the green netting that is integral to this story. In the netting was a dried green leaf from one of the blossoms. I was being reminded Love was rising to embrace me and my heart’s dryness so I could ultimately “leave” this self-inflicted dry period. Redbud was also telling me it is time to share this message of Love’s Rising. </span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fEZ6pl6QnKw/WZoAkZPViII/AAAAAAAAEig/-UR3mg9x06Qq98cZCfe_yvMcpFRzsDXFQCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_3298.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fEZ6pl6QnKw/WZoAkZPViII/AAAAAAAAEig/-UR3mg9x06Qq98cZCfe_yvMcpFRzsDXFQCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_3298.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Remember how I've held the blossoms?<b> </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>To those of us who carry this Great Love, please hold these Times and our fellow travelers in your loving hands for you and I are the embodiment of those pink bones of the Divine Feminine. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">To ponder: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">1) I have literally held the parts of this story yet avoided this story? In the quiet before pressing “publish” I realize I likewise have held the parts of this story internally and have avoided My Story out of weariness, fear of judgement, and feeling powerless. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 11px;">What parts do you hold related to your story and </span><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 11px;">Earth’s Story in this time? Do you reflect and consider responsible action or avoid, distract, react, and ignore? </span><br />
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2) What if realizing the brevity and beauty of life holds a key to violence diminishing between individuals and also the self-inflicted violence of judgement and self-hate? Really let Life's brevity sink in. You do not get another NOW. What keeps you from embracing now? What keeps you from seeing the beauty all around you?<br />
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3) We are, like the blossoms, each departing. What do you want the memory of YOU to be? How do you want to be remembered by those you encounter each day and by those who will hear of you in future time?<br />
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-Dawn, The Good News Muse at <a href="http://imaginetheshift.com/">Imagine the Shift </a></div>
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20 August 2017 </div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-20273045978598865192016-10-16T11:28:00.001-05:002016-10-16T11:30:28.378-05:00"Emerge and See" in Times of Emergency <b>(This simple epiphany came to me initially when Nashville flooded in 2010. It comes to mind during times of flooding such as happened in Nepal last year and has occurred along the Eastern Coast recently especially in towns like Lumberton, NC and in the country of Haiti.) </b><br />
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At lunch, I glimpsed news coverage titled "Flood Emergency Update." The word 'Emergency' caught my eye because I immediately saw tucked within another word - "emerge." Then I heard myself saying, "Emerge N C" followed by "Emerge and see."<br />
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I love words. They are simple yet powerful keys available for us to see the possibilities in times like these.<br />
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Imagine what is being held in this crisis if we can hold and use this as an opportunity to Emerge, to come out, to bring forth new ways of being, living and relating to one another and to Mother Earth.<br />
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Every emergency offers an opportunity for us to<b> emerge</b> and <b>see</b> the patterns, people and things that really matter.<br />
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Emerge and See with Me !<br />
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-Dawn! <a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">The Good News Muse</a> 5/7/10, 5/01/15, 10/16/16<br />
<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-29083743231733938792016-10-13T14:41:00.001-05:002016-10-13T16:26:05.165-05:00Of Patterns, Papaw & the Patriarchy <h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="line-height: 1.4em; margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 4px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #cc6600; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(I originally wrote this in 2011, ten years after my grandfathers death. Yesterday it popped up in social media as a "memory" ..... moments after I realized today would be my grandfather's b'day. I reread this story and found it possibly more appropriate for what's occurring in our country today than it was in 2011. I hope you'll take a moment to read, share and consider how you are in relation to the patriarchy, control, or however you consider the challenges written of and evidenced in the world today. Then pause to meditate, pray or send good vibes to all. - Dawn</span></span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #333333;">This week at dinner I heard myself tell the cliff notes version of a story related to my father’s parents. I had</span> <span style="color: #333333;">not spoken details of this story aloud since summer when my 2</span><sup style="color: #333333;">nd</sup><span style="color: #333333;">cousin shared it. </span><br />
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This cousin with whom I had never really talked at length and I had a random encounter in March at a high school basketball game. Now I know our meeting wasn’t so random. I asked if he knew who the Native American man was in our family. He told me a bit, but it wasn’t until August as I prepared to go to Cherokee that I called to talk further. </div>
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Thirty years ago this year, I had seen a Native man in an old family photo. My cousin was unable to fill in specific details about this mysterious man but I did learn Albert Crow was my grandmother’s grandfather, the unwed father of her father. To those on prior branches of my family tree, to have a Native in the family and in an unmarried couple at that was something of deep shame. Details are few because people refused to speak. </div>
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Our speaking of the un-spoken loosed the bonds on other family un-spokens. My cousin asked if my father ever spoke of how my grandfather treated my grandmother. This was the man we called Papaw, my father’s father who was so very controlling. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My paternal grandparents prior to their marriage.<br />
Today I see their photo and feel such sadness and compassion for them both. </td></tr>
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I shared how as a child I stood between him and my grandmother as he yelled at her. I had also heard stories filtered through others after my grandmother’s death as to the abuse she had endured, abuse my father never spoke of but I suspect haunted him through life. </div>
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At dinner this week while telling my friend of our family’s native kin and a bit of the above, I suddenly remembered this was December 23, the anniversary of Papaw’s death. </div>
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Ten years ago he lay dying just down Natchez Trace in a nearby hospital. My parents made the trip to sit in the ICU waiting room all day as I sat for periods of time with them. </div>
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Each night after they returned home, I would check on him. One night just prior to his death, he kept repeating two words. “Lord’s prayer” over and over was all he said. In my grandfather’s dying I glimpsed his terror. I asked if he wanted me to say the “Lord’s prayer” with him or for him. He bluntly said, “No.” I said it aloud anyway. </div>
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My cousin shared how his own father did not speak to Papaw for decades because he could not bear how meanly his sister was treated. He quit speaking to him until her death in 1981.</div>
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At the time of her death my grandfather, I learned, began to call his brother-in-law and ask forgiveness. My cousin shared how his father listened at times quite regularly to my grandfather cry and share his sorrow. </div>
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This morning I realize my grandfather, the frightened man who lay dying just down the street ten years ago represents the dying patriarchy and the frightened, vulnerable part of us all that tries to control situations out of discomfort or fear of loosing control.<br />
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Although I don't think of myself as controlling as Papaw, I too am part of the patriarchy. That night at his bedside my intentions may have been good, but I exerted control, assumed I knew what was best as I said the Lord's prayer rather than honor his request. I said the Lord's prayer as a means to allay my discomfort as much as his. I took control rather than risk vulnerability and share my heart's words, "I'm sad you're scared."<br />
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This holiday ten years after his December 23<sup>rd</sup>death, I’m grateful to know Papaw found his confessor in my cousin’s father. Ten years later in my own journey, I'm grateful to remember that speaking from my heart may make me feel vulnerable, yet it is in vulnerability that power lies.<br />
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In this time of changing patterns, as competition and control give way to compassion and community, I find myself wondering, "If greedy CEO's and lobbyists suddenly made themselves vulnerable and said 'We're sorry. Forgive us' could I hear them as my cousin’s father heard my grandfather? Can I hear the fears of those who in their anger don’t even know they’re afraid or vulnerable, the many politicians and white men especially rallying behind cries for fewer restrictions on guns and the EPA? Can I hold their fear as they unconsciously sense their numbers are diminishing as America becomes more diverse? Can I offer the dying patriarchy compassion?<br />
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With awareness, loose threads from over the decades seem to find their place in life’s tapestry. Broken connections are healed between the generations and in the greater connected web as we offer compassion through openness, vulnerability and a desire to understand. </div>
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-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 1</div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">3 October 2016 first posted 2011 </span><br />
<span style="color: #999999;">d</span><a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com" style="color: #333333;">awn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-13782885119296030402016-06-29T09:40:00.001-05:002016-06-29T09:48:01.101-05:00Message from a Morning Walk - Creativity and Will From a couple of houses away, the cup's bright yellow caught my eye as I walked Monday morning. My irritation stirred upon realizing the cup lay wedged in the storm grate headed down the drain into Nashville's water system.<br />
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As I picked it up, I noticed a tree-shaped car freshener and half of a plastic egg in a clump of leaves and twigs over the drain as well.<br />
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The different shades of yellow reminiscent of summer's sun and flowers seemed perfect for the season. Yet my first thought was of the solar plexus, the energy center below the breast bone. Yellow is the color of the third chakra, the seat of will, creativity, energy, and passion whose element is the fire of the inner sun.<br />
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On this particular walk, I had just listened to a recording made while backpacking in the Grand Canyon. I had forgotten it but in the recording I heard myself say:<br />
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<b>"In the beginning there was a fire longing to be listened to, gathered around, and explored. All souls that come to Earth agree to take a piece of that fire's energy and passion. We've free will to choose what we will do with that spark while we are here." </b></div>
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Curiosity trumped irritation as I collected the trio of humankind's creation and turned to walk home only to see more yellow.<br />
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Scattered on the sidewalk were yellow leaves having fallen prematurely from lack of rain. The leaves were the perfect reminder of Nature's creation resulting from Tree's inner fire.<br />
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I picked up the nearest leaf and stood holding the artificial and the authentic, the nature made and human made.<br />
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I walked home mindful of the stunning amount of plastic flowing through our lives and collecting in the oceans and landfills. I walked pondering how creative will invented plastics and how creative will with connected consciousness now has the opportunity to do something about the stunning presence of plastic on Earth.<br />
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The objects on the drain grate reminded me of the phrase "down the drain." Some say humankind as a whole is "down the drain" or certainly headed that way as artificiality trends more than the authentic and genuine.<br />
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Personally I'm often like the objects clinging to the grate, resisting going with the flow. If you were a fly on the wall in my home, observing my actions would tell you to what I'm committed. You would find me trying to get everything done on the never ending list (ordering and controlling my external world) and only episodically committed to my creative endeavors (birthed from my inner world).<br />
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Consciously using my energy or the spark of fire I carry is one of my greatest challenges. To really be clear and conscious of how I use my fire, requires turning off my devices and tuning into my greatest device, my body, heart, spirit and mind.<br />
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In the big picture, the objects I found or that found me, suggest we are already in Time's great drain. The cosmic egg has opened, energy pours forth and we now travel along in the flow of Time.<br />
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Over 7 billion of us each carrying fire's spark are here together on this amazing, creative, energetic planet Earth.<br />
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We only have moments and each moment, we choose how we use our will, energy, creativity and passion. <br />
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Each moment, we choose whether to invest energy and presence into creating more of the artificial, manmade or the authentic., Nature made.<br />
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Each moment, we choose whether to honor or ignore the spark we agreed to carry here on Earth.<br />
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Imagine that.<br />
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-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 27 June 2016</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">www.imaginetheshift.com</a><br />
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Link to "<a href="http://ecowatch.com/2016/04/01/plastic-whale/">Plastic Whale</a>" a company fishing plastic from the ocean and turning that plastic into boats. </div>
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Click <b><a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2010/05/messages-in-mess.html">HERE</a></b> for a "<b><a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2010/05/messages-in-mess.html">Messages in the Mess</a></b>" another walk related musing.<br />
Click <b><a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2011/10/naming-of-trees.html">HERE</a></b> for a link to another Musing on <b><a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2011/10/naming-of-trees.html">Naming</a></b>.<br />
And <a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2014/09/igniting-fire-to-put-out-fire-you-can.html">HERE</a> for a Grand Canyon musing on <a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2014/09/igniting-fire-to-put-out-fire-you-can.html">FIRE</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-38081474991270418562016-06-24T19:01:00.002-05:002016-06-24T19:07:19.126-05:00Paying Attention to the Nuts and Bolts of Life<div style="text-align: left;">
I walk just about daily because movement is good for me, not in the eat-your-brussels-sprouts-they're-good-for-you way or I-met-a-goal way. I walk most mornings because I feel internally satisfied when I do whether I'm sweating profusely as has ensued this summer or bundled in three layers as happens often in winter. </div>
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Yesterday early on while walking, I realized my satisfaction has more to do with being present. Yes, even though sweat stings as it runs into my eyes and there's not a dry stitch on me, I enjoy walking because I am present rather than just wishing my walk complete. </div>
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Thank to presence, I am a Noticer. Twice lately as I've pondered how I've not seen many dead birds this Spring, I have come upon a young dead bird each time. I've blessed each as I held it before placing them under a nearby shrubs. </div>
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It's common for me to notice the stuff of man's making that ends up as trash on the roadside. If I can joyfully pick up the trash (without resentment or judgement), I usually do. Oftentimes the odd assortment of rubbish becomes the stuff of a story. </div>
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The manmade held a message yesterday mid-way down West Linden. I came upon something unusual and potentially hazardous scattered near a driveway. As I bent down to pick up the assortment of hardware, a thought zipped through my mind...</div>
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<b><i>'Pay attention to the nuts and bolts of your life.' </i></b></div>
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'<i>That was definitely interesting</i>,' I thought, as I placed the hardware on top of a nearby water meter by the homeowner's mailbox. </div>
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I turned the corner a couple of houses down the street and there were more nuts and bolts scattered this time in the middle of the street. I'm guilty of not paying serious attention to the messages I receive so this time I picked up the assortment and kept them. Maybe I needed a literal reminder to pay attention and really consider the nuts and bolts of my day.</div>
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I turned left at the next street and within a couple of houses there they were, nuts and bolts, scattered about again. I grabbed these, walked down the street and there they were yet again. </div>
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<i>'Ok. Ok. I really got it,</i>' I thought. I really DO need to pay attention to the nuts and bolts of my day. My hands were full when I looked up to see a cup just large enough to hold the collection. I continued walking, my cup full literally and metaphorically. </div>
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I chuckled thinking how I walked with hardware symbolic of my walking each day with "hardware" mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and energetically that I don't use to its full potential. </div>
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Every morning this week, I had experiences of which I knew I was to write. Then as soon as I began, I allowed distractions to intervene. </div>
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This morning would be different. In the ninety minutes, I had before work I would shower, get my lunch ready, then write. I would not stop to talk to the screenwriter friend I hadn't seen in years one street over who I happened to see trimming shrubs. (Failed that test.) I wouldn't stop to knock on the neighbor's door and tell them I could hear water running from the meter under their portion of the sidewalk. (Failed that test.) I wouldn't stop to talk with my elderly neighbor who often calls to me when she sees me outside. (Fortunately she wasn't out.)</div>
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But our hydrangeas were wilted and the lilies and balloon flowers needed deadheading. I placed the cup of hardware on the recycling can, turned on the hose and began. Fifteen minutes later I finished but not before wishing the Miata were in the drive. I'd rinse it since we're trying to sell it. </div>
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I showered, ate, and sat down to write just as three work-related calls I was awaiting came in one after the other. Twenty minutes remained of the initial 90 I had and I wrote nothing in that twenty minutes. </div>
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This is how my entire morning can unfold when I shift focus and loose energy. </div>
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The nuts and bolts of my day are varied. Visiting neighbors, tending the yard, answering a text or checking Facebook aren't negative unless I allow them to derail me from what I know in that moment is to be my focus. When that occurs, which is all too often, I am not honoring my time nor my soul's calling. </div>
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For me the most important nuts and bolts of my day are the parts and pieces of my life that I know and sense I am to value, but my actions don't value .... like the four written pieces I began this week. Honestly I only wrote the beginnings of the beginnings before allowing other things to intervene. </div>
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So today as evening drew near, I felt compelled to feed the birds and refill the bird baths before ending this piece. I tuned in to ensure I wasn't distracting myself and headed out with seed in hand. My breath was taken by a hairless baby bird by the chair where I usually sit. </div>
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I scooped it up and sat outside humming my gratitude and sorrow to it until its eyes closed. </div>
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This was not a distraction for in one crystal clear moment I knew this dear creature whose earth journey was maybe all of one week was providing the most important piece to this story.</div>
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What matters most about the nuts and bolts of my day (and therefore my life) as I walk through it is I am aligned with the love that's inside me whatever I'm doing at any given moment. That's really all that matters. If I am aligned with the love that lives in me, I will then hold the stories that come through me with the same tenderness and devotion that I hold this baby bird.</div>
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So I leave you with this: <b>What really are the important nuts and bolts in your life? How committed are you to them? </b></div>
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-Dawn, The Good News Muse 24 June 2016</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">www.imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-18142339737910211462016-06-16T15:33:00.004-05:002016-06-17T07:18:18.428-05:00Guns, Gender, God, and Grace - Thoughts on This Journey <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
As I hiked a new trail a week ago in the Smokies, I glimpsed a large feather hanging in front of me. I thought of a Native American headdress and instinctively reached up to brush the feather out of my eyes only to realize what I cognitively knew. There was no feather. </div>
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I stopped momentarily. This got my attention as did the sun shining exceptionally bright through the cathedral of trees towering above me. Stopping allowed me to see the spider's web hanging before me. I sensed I needed to take a photo of this place. </div>
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The photo confirmed what my body felt. Light from the Universe was pouring in from above as fuchsia light shown on the other side of the web (hanging vertically near the middle of the photo). </div>
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As I continued hiking this land once home to the Cherokee, I was mindful of the unfathomable pain of being torn from home as white man claimed ownership of what wasn't his. I pondered how everything in life's web is interconnected. </div>
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This was a new trail for me to be hiking. The further I ascended, while not knowing what lay ahead, the more sweaty, tired and self-focused I became. I periodically hummed "We are climbing Jacob's ladder," a song I never sing yet I assumed came to me due to climbing. Physically I was exhausted yet internally felt like I was walking in heaven on earth. Gradually I neglected my experience with the web and light </div>
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That evening upon reaching my room, the first thing I did was read that fuchsia light represents forgiveness, mercy and transmutation. </div>
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The Native souls of this soil got my attention through the feather as a means to get me to stop and see the spider web and the Light. Sorrow and pain have been transmuted throughout time as victims of violence offer their offenders forgiveness and mercy. (I think particularly of a story from South Africa that Andrew Harvey tells in which a woman whose son was killed during apartheid asked that the man, a white officer, visit her weekly and be her son since he had killed her (black) son. The officer passed out in the presence of this woman's mercy.) </div>
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I fell asleep with just about every muscle in my legs and feet aching yet grateful I heard this Truth revealed as the Divine Light of Love pours to Earth and onto the web of all my relations (not just humankind but onto earth's soils and waters, as well as her plants, animals and trees). </div>
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I fell asleep forgetting the rainbow bridge photo and not knowing until today that to some it represents the DNA ladder or bridge between heaven and earth and forgetting until moments ago that the rainbow flag represents the LGBT community. I fell asleep that night not knowing that in just over a day, publicity's light would shine on that very community targeted by violence in Orlando and stirring conversation, debate, attack, responses and reactions related to guns, gender, and God....</div>
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....and potentially providing an experience of grace if we are open. </div>
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A deep breath comes from me as I write the line above for sorrow, outrage, trauma and fear prompt closing rather than opening. I know "closing" personally though I didn't loose anyone in Orlando. I also know that grace arrives through and after the weeping, raging and questioning. That present events, when we reflect, reveal how we are connected to these seeming horrors of the world. And reflection allows us to respond with mindful action. </div>
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Just as I didn't know what lay ahead on the trail, we do not know at any moment what lies ahead. We make plans and fill our schedules yet we do not know what Mystery has planned. Yet just as I stopped and saw the web of connection and sensed I was to take the photo, when we stop, we are more likely to see how we are connected to one another. When we mindfully stop, we are more likely to see how external events are connected to our internal workings. Stopping allows us to sense what the next wise step (response) is. Stopping isn't passive. Stopping is actively accessing our beliefs, fears, judgements, the things that drive us unconsciously. </div>
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Stopping to be with the depth of feeling can in some allow space for forgiveness and mercy to the offender as well as to those who will continue to offend through fear-based comments and stereotypes. </div>
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We are on Life's trail or Jacob's Ladder as hummed through me. Contrary to the news when bad things happen, we are as a whole ascending. Consciousness is rising. Our capacity to Love greatly and deeply is increasing. We don't know what lies ahead yet we can know we are not alone. When we become self-focused due to discomfort (the fear of "other," those who are different, feeling vulnerable due to change) it is easy to forget that we are all connected in the greater web of life. It is easy to forget the Light, the light pouring in. </div>
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I share what was shared with me in compassion for those who hearts are breaking, for those who will now live with a hole resulting from loss and I share this on behalf of the tortured souls who take life. The trauma, terror and alienation of their inner world must be unspeakable. </div>
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May those of us who are in this time attuned to receiving Divine Light be anchors for mercy, forgiveness and wisdom so heartache, discord, and terror can be transmuted and Peace be felt by all Living Beings in Love's Great Web. </div>
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Peace to you. </div>
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-Dawn, The Good News Muse at <a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">www.imaginetheshift.com</a> 16 June 2016 </div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-41277262487963128072016-05-25T20:53:00.001-05:002016-05-25T21:42:21.140-05:00When Bird Food Became Soul Food <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yGJN-Sccob4/V0XtZ8rnkYI/AAAAAAAAEfk/H3Ny5YoG1bg2AC4u6g_a9KdCOIkdAUW4wCK4B/s1600/IMG_6449.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yGJN-Sccob4/V0XtZ8rnkYI/AAAAAAAAEfk/H3Ny5YoG1bg2AC4u6g_a9KdCOIkdAUW4wCK4B/s400/IMG_6449.JPG" /></a></div>
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I try to provide equal access to all the critters in my yard when it comes to seed and nuts. Alas the chipmunks learned to beat the blue jays to the peanuts so I thought I was helping the jays when I placed peanuts head high on my deck in a clay dish.</div>
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This strategy worked a couple of days until I walked outside and reached for the dish and found this.</div>
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My first thought when I saw the four dove down feathers was a precious dove had left me a gift. Then I saw the rest of the story. Dove feathers were scattered about the corner of the deck. A hawk, the bird associated with messages, had fed on a dove. My joy quickly turned to regret for unintentionally creating such an unprotected space for the dove to be eaten. </div>
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Yet I was intrigued by the four feathers and one lone dove feather suspended </div>
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in a spider web before me. </div>
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Needing to return to work, I snapped photos and wondered as to the message Nature offered in this unexpected turn of events.</div>
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Days later while reconnecting with two dear friends in from out of town, one referenced the planet Saturn being related to foundation. When I heard this, the proverbial light came on within me. Suddenly I got it.</div>
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Dove<i> had</i> left me a gift and Hawk was the messenger. I remembered that "4" is the number related to building a foundation. I was being told to make my foundation of Love and Peace, qualities exemplified by dove. When I do this, everything that comes my way can be embraced and trusted as part of my inner growth in a beautiful way. </div>
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Some days this is easy. </div>
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Other days (when I'm accused of having intentions that are actually the accuser's projections or I'm struggling with Lyme disease as happened shortly after the dove's gift) it's challenging to embrace and trust what's coming my way. </div>
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What I'm certain of is the food intended for the blue jays became food for dove </div>
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then hawk and ultimately soul food for me. </div>
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And I am the feather (as are you) suspended in a web connected to Nature and Others who provide clues to this Earth journey. </div>
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We are all, Nature and Humankind, participants in building if we choose a foundation of peace and love to lift Earth in this Time. </div>
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-Dawn, (Most Days Still) The Good News Muse, <a href="http://imaginetheshift.com/">imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-51046859731936512862015-11-25T18:14:00.002-06:002015-11-25T18:14:45.188-06:00Dear Bill (Murray) <div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica;">
The audio file to this story is at Sound Cloud. Click on the title "<a href="https://soundcloud.com/dawn-kirk/dear-bill-murray">Dear Bill...</a>" </div>
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Dear Bill,</div>
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Where do I begin? <i>Where</i> do I begin? </div>
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This letter has had many incarnations. The first was prompted in February 2014 by the telling of “our story” while in the Apple store with a new, yet deceased, desk top. In an attempt to deescalate me, several Apple guys asked about my writing. They gathered around as our story became the main event. Apple employees are referred to as geniuses. In my case their getting me to talk was genius because hearing myself share tales of our encounters stirred me. The geniuses woke me. </div>
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I’d like to write what I think is the more grammatically correct “awakened” me but can’t. Awakened implies, at least to me, something lasting and deep. And though recounting our relationship brought me joy I returned to sleep. As is my pattern, I pressed snooze on my life’s alarm clock. A file on an old laptop actually ushered in that sleep.</div>
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The weekend following the Apple store encounter, I went seeking the Bill Murray file as I began the first letter to you. I randomly took one flash drive of many from the ziplock bag in which they’re kept. I anticipated finding the file to be a challenge. Instead your name was the first file I saw. I began to read. My heart sank. I felt nauseated. That file documented much of our relationship. I scrolled through my notes related to our many encounters and felt profoundly sad. Rather than be with the despair of the moment (as I encourage my psychotherapy clients), I avoided my despair and went metaphorically to sleep and literally to bed. That first letter was derailed and left incomplete. </div>
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I began another letter this Spring after a dream in which I was about to share our story with someone who knew you. Before me lay a sheet of paper on which I frantically noted each of our encounters. Then just as I began to speak, someone else entered the room and the conversation changed. Your acquaintance asked how this interruption was for me as she needed to hear the new arrival’s story. </div>
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I was fully honest for a change and replied, “I’m disappointed but Disappointment has been a close friend to me.” </div>
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I awoke that morning with an emotional hangover from the dream. I knew it was time to write you. So I began again. This time as I wrote tears suddenly streamed down my face. I wanted to apologize, yes, apologize to you. As I wrote and cried, tears of sorrow turned to joy. I laughed while crying knowing “we” were getting free. (I know. How can “we” get free when you don’t even know me?) </div>
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That evening I opened a plastic container that held one of my screenplays. This was the first time in 7 years I had looked at “Deadnuts.” It was in the room where I keep unfinished projects<b> </b>and things of nature that I find or find me like dead bugs, butterflies and bees - the small things on Life’s path that matter to me. </div>
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I sat in the floor late into the night pouring over the script, notes and ideas. I had started a rewrite and changed the title to “Grow” just before the script entered the box. “Grow” involved GG, the Grass Guru, and Annie the last angel on Earth. All the other angels were in AA (Angels Anonymous) having admitted they were powerless over humans. And although I didn’t write that screenplay for you, I often thought you would have made a good Grass Guru.</div>
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As I sifted through through my notes and ideas, something stirred in me. I felt a sense of hopeful happiness, something I’ve not felt toward my creative self in a long time. As I read I thought, ‘I wrote this? I was creative.’ As I continued to read, something else stirred in me. Hopeful happiness met up with shock and anger. And lest I be dishonest, I felt betrayed. I know. There I go again. How can you betray me when you don’t even know me? Yet I felt a deep grief over these lost years of creativity. </div>
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That letter to you started earlier in the day never ended thanks to Disappointment’s new found kin - Betrayal. </div>
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As a writer I’ve learned writing involves rewriting. Fortunately in June, I began again. That letter was preempted by something actually good, a sudden trip to France. During that trip, I committed to completing this letter.</div>
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That was over four months ago.</div>
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So here I sit beginning a “Dear Bill” letter not knowing where or how this one will end. All I know is I must because each time I do a new layer is revealed. And equally important I must do this because things changed this year.</div>
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I knew something had shifted for me on our anniversary. Previously whenever February came around you entered my awareness.</div>
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This year I pushed thoughts of you away each time they surfaced. When February 26th finally arrived, I got out the framed clipping and photos from behind a door in the spare room where Redbud the cat sleeps. I should have known something was changing when the framed memento of our first having met ended up behind the door in rambunctious Redbud’s room. To my surprise, the clipping was dated <b>February 25th</b>. </div>
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I was a day late. I had missed our anniversary and I didn’t even care. Of course you didn’t know “we” had an anniversary.</div>
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And lest someone reading this wonders if Jerry my partner of nearly thirty years knows about ‘us,’ he does. He was there the day our story began.</div>
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It was 1996. </div>
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Initially outside Chicago’s United Center, Uncle Jerry and three boys played paper, rock, scissors. My nephews who were 3, 5 and 10 thought I was inside getting them Bulls’ souvenirs. Instead I was in line at Will Call awaiting five tickets promised to us through a player’s grandmother. Three months prior I began a campaign to secure five tickets to see my nephews’ favorite NBA teams, the Chicago Bulls and the Orlando Magic, play. I hoped this surprise gift would provide a good memory during a difficult time, their parent’s divorce. My campaign was during the Michael Jordan era. The Bull’s ticket office personnel laughed in disbelief over my thinking I could call and buy tickets. How was I to know tickets were sold out years in advance.</div>
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I placed newspaper ads and wrote letters to anyone and everyone I could think of connected to the basketball world and Chicago (including Oprah and Jesse Jackson). It was Jerry’s idea to write the player’s grandparents who lived here in Nashville. The grandmother responded to my letter the day it arrived in the mail. I walked in from work to hear a message on my phone saying she had spoken with her grandson’s agent who would get us tickets. We drove from Nashville to Chicago on that promise. </div>
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Growing cold, Jerry and the boys had just come inside when they, as I, heard my name called across the room. The noon game time neared. </div>
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The sea of people parted as I stood face to face with an official who announced con artists could not come in off the street pretending to have tickets and that I needed to take my children and leave.</div>
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I pled with this man to tell the player’s grandmother she spoke with his agent about setting aside our tickets. </div>
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My bewildered nephews huddled around asking if we were going to the game as tears rolled down my face. </div>
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I’ve always assumed you were somewhere in the vicinity and heard my earnestness because the next thing I knew you were giving me a ticket and hugging me. I didn’t see your face. Actually I don’t know that I ever looked directly at you. My vision was focused on this one ticket before me as I thought, ‘This is Bill Murray. Be very calm.’ I recognized your voice as you apologized for only having one ticket. I must have continued crying because as you hugged me you said, “You’re going to make me cry if you don’t stop crying.” </div>
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You left the area as Jerry, myself and these three dear boys circled around our holy grail wondering what we were going to do with one ticket. </div>
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Suddenly you returned and were pulling me by the arm as I grabbed one nephew and Jerry grabbed two. You kindly but firmly got us past the ticket taker who said, “We don’t care if you are Bill Murray, you can’t bring people in like this.” </div>
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You left us with a security guard who you said would take care of us. He suggested we each watch ten minutes of the game with the one ticket and that I put the three year old on my lap. Then he asked to see the ticket. I will never forget his exclaiming, “Lady, you're sitting by Mr. Murray center court. This ticket is selling for a thousand dollars on the street today.” He seemed as excited as we were. </div>
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I flung Christian to my hip and promised to be back in ten minutes. When I showed the one ticket to the woman at the court entry, she said I had to have two. In probably the most bold moment of my life, I said, “I’m with Bill.”</div>
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She asked, “Bill Murray?” </div>
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I said, “Yes” and kept right on walking. </div>
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In retrospect it’s a bit telling and sad that that’s the boldest moment of my fifty-six years. </div>
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Christian and I arrived at our seat as “Let’s get ready to rumble” heralded tip-off. You asked what I was doing at the game. I explained the game was a surprise gift for my nephews whose parents were divorcing. You said, “You’re an ok aunt” and wrote “OK” by your name on a piece of paper on which I had written ‘Would you sign this four times?’ </div>
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That’s about all we shared because I was afraid if I spoke my body would tremble and my voice would shake. Then just moments into the game an official told you Jerry and the two other boys were being kicked out of the facility because they didn’t have tickets. I’ll never forget you telling me to go with the official and something would be worked out. </div>
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Holding my nephew, I made the walk to the ticket area aware I was experiencing a stunning emotional roller coaster. One minute I was desperate and sad, the next elated and high, the next panicked and desperate again. </div>
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The official was apologetic. The tickets we had been promised were not there that day. Yet just as you said something did work out. We were offered three tickets that had not been picked up for the game. They were near the floor behind the goal. We could have each of them for fifty-five dollars, their face value.</div>
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My youngest nephew and I returned to our seat while Jerry and the two older boys watched from across the way. Tears trickled down my face during that NBA game as I quietly thought, ‘There is a God.’ </div>
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Months later while rereading a journal, I found a plea to God written when my ticket campaign began. I had forgotten this yet penned in handwriting I recognized as my own, I read:</div>
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<b>“Dear God, if you’re out there, please help me find a way to take my nephews to see the Chicago Bulls and Orlando Magic. I want to make this a memorable time in a good way, not just a sad way. I can be determined, but I need your help. I’m asking for basketball tickets, but I’m searching for a reason to live.” -Dawn </b></div>
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It wasn't until posted this letter that I realized I wrote the above exactly twenty years ago tomorrow, November 26, 1995. </div>
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The years surrounding my nephews parents divorce and the events that unfolded were dark for me. I really was looking for a reason to live beyond just going through the motions. You unknowingly were integral in the answer to that prayer. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SzaKqoslFbs/VlZMycUcMAI/AAAAAAAAEe8/QF5Q3vW6jzs/s1600/IMG_5267.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SzaKqoslFbs/VlZMycUcMAI/AAAAAAAAEe8/QF5Q3vW6jzs/s1600/IMG_5267.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The framed momento I found behind Redbud's door.</td></tr>
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I returned to Nashville and often shared the magic in Chicago with others. I always made the point of encouraging listeners to stay awake and aware as you were that day and to practice kindness as you did. I didn’t know at the time that with all good story what seems like an ending holds the seeds of beginnings. Yet our encounter birthed a mysterious new beginning for it was quickly evident something else was unfolding, a parallel process as you continued to show up in my life. </div>
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Surprisingly when I told our story, I often received another story, another story involving…..you. Russ my next door neighbor told me of spontaneously golfing with you. My friend Ann in North Carolina had a roommate who knew you in college. An acquaintance visiting one holiday told me his girlfriend managed property you rented in Colorado. </div>
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And even more mysteriously, even when I wasn’t sharing the magic in Chicago, I received stories of you through odd encounters you had with my friends and strangers. At one pivotal moment, Jerry came home one day and told me he had just learned he knew someone who knew your sister. After I hiked out of the Grand Canyon, I found a phone message from friends telling me they kept running into you in the lobby of their hotel. Another friend called one Monday to tell me she had just spent the weekend at her cousin’s wedding party where the groom had entertained her with stories of the two of you from your college days. There was a salesperson in Telluride whose husband taught your sons to ski and Beth in California who sent an email saying I wasn’t the only one whose nephew had met you. Attached was a photo of her nephew with you. </div>
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In the midst of these encounters another beginning occurred. As a school teacher in my early twenties, I submitted a personal story to a magazine and was paid for its publication. Sadly I never submitted anything else nor did I write much except for scribblings in journals…until we met. Our initial encounter jumpstarted my writing. I wrote the story of the magic in Chicago and submitted it to several magazines. Then a friend suggested I write a screenplay. I bought a how-to book, hired a tutor, and cried my way through the first draft. </div>
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Through this process, you were my spirit guide and muse for I continued to periodically hear stories of your being out there in the ethers making contact of sorts through my friends and acquaintances. Your odd presence, which I surely needed, helped me persist as I embarked on what proved to be more challenging than writing - getting someone connected to the business to seriously look at my screenplay. Part of the Bill Murray file chronicles my following the clues and cues I received as I was certain I had a movie in the making. </div>
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I read of a local music row video producer who wanted to get into the movies, so I called and took him my script. The day he said he wasn’t interested, I walked down the street in tears. Two blocks into that walk I met a new neighbor who was an aspiring producer. I gave him my script and he later contacted me to inquire who I might know to fund the film. That wasn’t what I expected. This was long before the days of internet fund raising and was out of my league. </div>
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I made cold calls to agencies and created stationary and response cards that I sent to agents, hoping someone might at least give my script a look. I had what Jean Houston calls “galloping chutzpah." Now when I recall that me, I wonder what happened to her? I got a few responses but none with the area checked next to "Send your script to me." </div>
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The friend of your sisters who Jerry met agreed to give my script to your sister. This “in” became a dead end. I was told your sister loved the story you inspired but you said you couldn’t play a good guy in a movie. </div>
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Around this time, we were following the Bulls in the NBA finals in what was probably Michael Jordan’s last games. I noticed Penny Marshall at the games in Chicago and thought she might be sensitive to a woman’s story so I spontaneously bought airline tickets and flew with my script and Jerry to Chicago. We went our separate ways in hopes of finding Penny Marshall and possibly affordable tickets. As I roamed the immense crowd in search of Penny, a guy walked up wearing a sandwich board that read: “Will dance naked for tickets.” He asked why I was there that evening. As I replied, he held up a microphone. He was actually a radio announcer working the crowd. I explained how I wanted to get a screenplay to Penny Marshall. Surprised I didn’t say I was there for the game, he asked what my story was about and I of course said, “Bill Murray is an angel in disguise for me and my family.”</div>
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The interview concluded and a guy walked up who said, “Lady, Bill Murray usually comes through the crowd right here every game. You should give him your script.” </div>
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As if on cue, there you were ten feet away and walking toward me. </div>
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That’s when I lied although I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I gave you the thin box and said, “I flew all the way to Chicago to give this to you.” You thanked me and that was it. We went our separate ways. </div>
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I wish I had said, “Bill Murray! Remember me? What on earth are you up to in my life?” I was terrified of speaking with you. </div>
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The Bull’s lost bad that night. When I called my mother from the hotel room to commiserate and tell her about you, she said, “That game was so bad, he probably left your script under his chair.” </div>
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My spirits sank.</div>
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They sank again the day my aunt from Alabama called me to share that Michael Jordan was retiring. She thought I would want to see the televised announcement. (Aunt Cola became the first MJ fan in our family while she was living in North Carolina and he played at UNC.)</div>
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I watched and subsequently learned he was playing golf with Tiger Woods at Pebble Beach. We made arrangements to go only to find Michael Jordan wasn’t there yet you were. The first day of play I saw you on the 17th fairway of one of the courses. I hurriedly wrote a thank you note for the tickets and told you I was the one who gave you the screenplay meant for Penny Marshall. And, yes, I wrote that if my mother was right and in duress you left my script under the chair, I could send you another copy. </div>
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I intermittently play golf and know what it’s like to have one’s concentration interrupted. Near the 18th green, I got your caddies attention. I asked him to pass the note to you in the clubhouse. Instead he gave it to you as I begged him not to. Petrified I stepped behind two men. You read the note, then scanned the crowd with Carl Spackler eyes and asked, “Where is she?” The two strangers parted and there I stood. Mortified, I slightly waved. You addressed the ball and hit a horrible shot for which I felt responsible. I found Jerry on another course, told him what happened and how I knew you thought I was a stalker for certain now. </div>
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That night we went to dinner in Carmel then walked the streets window shopping. When we got to our car, we decided to look over the menu outside the restaurant where we had parked in case we wanted to eat there another night. I still recall standing in front of the posted menu and Jerry’s saying, “There’s your boyfriend.” I laughed and said, “You’re my boyfriend.” Jerry of course replied, “Your other boyfriends in the window looking at you.” </div>
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You sat at a window table eating dinner. You were looking at me and I totally freaked. Rather than even acknowledge you I frantically told Jerry we had to go. I got into our car right in front of where you sat and refused to glance your way. I was petrified. Stars, I know, don’t want to be bothered and I grew up not wanting to be a bother. </div>
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The tournament ended early due to rain but we didn’t have anywhere to go until our flight out the next day. As Jerry and I hung out at the course, someone walked up and asked if we were the couple from Arkansas. I explained we were from Tennessee. This woman asked what we were doing there. I explained how we came to see Michael Jordan but I was fairly certain you now considered me a stalker. As she asked more questions, I told “our story” to which she inquired if we would be the front page story for the Monterey paper the next day. </div>
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I hoped you read the paper and knew I meant you no harm or alarm.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Monterey Herald the day after the tournament </td></tr>
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Shortly after returning home from the golf tournament, a flier arrived in the mail for a writing intensive in the San Francisco area. Feeling an unusual burst of confidence, I applied. Upon receiving my application the teacher called to inquire what I had written. I overlooked the part of the course explaining it was for advanced writers. I laughed about not being advanced but did say I had a screenplay. Tom inquired as to the content then said, “So you’re one of Bill’s writers?” I joked that maybe I was but Bill didn’t know it. The teacher though was serious. He shared that he knew some of your writers and thought I might be one. I didn’t attend the course and it didn’t occur to me to ask until a year later if he would consider sending my script to your writers. (Totally unrelated but how can I recall that man’s name, Tom Jenks, when at times I can’t recall what I did yesterday?) </div>
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I entered the second year of no interest in my script beyond friends who would say I had “something.” I decided I was living a joke not a mystery. I truly felt like I was engaged in a cosmic conspiracy. </div>
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In retrospect, I can’t believe I did this but in September 1999 I gave up. </div>
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I had no idea that writing a script was the easy part. I gave up in just under three years. Today I think “YOU GAVE UP THAT QUICKLY!” Yet I did. I burned the first draft of my screenplay and took the ashes of my dream on my first trip to Oregon. In a private area just up the road from Cannon Beach, I held a ritual with Jerry as my witness and released my dream of being a writer and “The Magic in Chicago” into the Pacific.</div>
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The next morning at an art festival in downtown Portland, an artist from whom I was buying a piece asked what I did for a living. I told him I had just relinquished the idea of being a writer. He asked what I wrote and I told him about placing the ashes of a screenplay you had inspired into the ocean. </div>
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Angus replied, “I love Bill. He and I have coffee at times when I visit my parents.” </div>
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I had just released YOU into the Pacific. I had let our story go. I had given up on being a writer. I had gotten rid of you and you came back. Bill Murray, you came back. I had been beyond concerned that you would think I was stalking you and instead you, you were somewhat stalking me. Wouldn’t you agree? </div>
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I returned home my commitment to writing renewed yet I didn’t have a framework at the time to hold this unfolding story. My threshold guardians eagerly lined up internally to remind me I was just a country girl who was not really a writer. Writers need to know big words. It should be obvious by now I’m short on those. </div>
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A couple of weeks later while visiting my Alabama aunt, she shared a magazine story she had saved for me about Michael Jordan. In large letters the beginning of the story read: “Michael is just a country bumpkin….” God, the Universe or something orchestrating my journey was telling me to not devalue myself. </div>
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Over the prior year, I had started another screenplay, written the first draft of a potential book and several essays and poems. I didn’t know where to begin so I asked this entity orchestrating my journey for guidance regarding my focus.</div>
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After this request, I surprised Jerry with a birthday trip to Sedona. While in Oak Creek canyon one day, I was taken with a small clay pot a Native American was selling. We didn’t really need another clay pot but this one tugged at me. It wasn’t until arriving home that I knew why. Standing in our kitchen, I unwrapped the pot then removed the price tag from the bottom. I screamed for Jerry (and I’m not a screamer). We stood in amazement looking at the artist name that had been covered by the tag. Etched in clay was Shawn Williams, the maker of the pot and the main character in “The Magic in Chicago.” </div>
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I had the answer to my question. My task was to rewrite the original script. Yet the thought of this made me nauseous. Now I realize this was a sure sign I needed to do just that. At the time, I didn’t know my body provided clues in this way. I felt uncomfortable to the point of throwing up when I thought of sitting down to rewrite our story. I now know I resisted doing so because I feared the sorrow I would touch if I returned to the place from which I originally wrote. To attempt this felt overwhelming. </div>
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So instead of continuing to answer “the call” of writing, I got a literal call about organizing a training for massage therapists. I chose money over the uncertainty of creativity and hosted sixteen people from several states over a six-month period. I told myself I would do this, see my own therapy clients and write. You can guess which of the three I neglected. </div>
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During the closing dinner our final evening together, the training participant who was local suggested I tell the group our story. I did and at the conclusion added that I thought our encounters had ended. I can still hear Karen from New York now living in Muscle Shoals, Alabama as she said, “Honey, I hate to tell you but your story’s not over. I worked with Bill on Saturday Night Live in the 70’s.” Then two other people, one from South Carolina and one from Colorado followed her with vignettes about you. </div>
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Shortly after that, another of the massage therapists from out of state who had been at the dinner called to share that you and her friend’s mother skipped yoga class to grab a beer. Following this another friend on my daily walk called to me when I passed his house. He wanted me to know he had just had lunch with Emmylou (yes, that Emmylou) before she boarded a flight to perform at the opening of one of your restaurants. </div>
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This was the mother lode. I knew something big and positive was on the verge of happening. And it was, just not what I was expecting. I incorrectly read the signals. You were giving me a cosmic shout trying to get my attention before I got derailed.</div>
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I quit writing entirely and invested massive amounts of energy and time in helping family members through an assortment of challenges. They didn’t ask for my help. I volunteered. My sibling’s custody case was followed by my father’s sudden diagnosis and subsequent death of lung cancer. My previously healthy mother had to have surgery which was followed by emergency surgery to correct the error of the first surgery during which time my cat suddenly became ill and died. </div>
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In reflecting on these times, I realized I would spend nearly two years helping someone then have a year to recover before another crisis arose.</div>
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It wasn’t until last year’s Apple store encounter that the magnitude of all this really sank in especially the part surrounding my father. The Universe seemed cruelest in my experience at that time. I determined to rewrite “Deadnuts” and submit it to a screenplay contest. (I had just pitched it to two producers. One said I had a great Southern novel while the other said I had a wonderful children’s book. I was disappointed and couldn’t hear they were actually complimenting my creativity. I wanted them to take interest in the screenplay.) </div>
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In the midst of the rewrite, my father was diagnosed. I haphazardly made the contest deadline. Then I got a download of sorts for some songs I thought had potential. I eventually played one of them for a new acquaintance who I in turn invited to write with me. The day of our first meeting, I learned my father was to begin receiving hospice care. Those songs are still on a recorder somewhere and the encouraging, handwritten note from one of the judges regarding my humor is in a file.</div>
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Hearing myself tell this part of the story to the Apple geniuses made me realize this was heavy, hard-to-hold and balance stuff. I still don’t know how one juggles creative pursuits amidst crises among those they love. </div>
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During these times, people would comment that I had the energy of Joan of Arc. I knew nothing about Joan other than she was burned at the stake. </div>
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Eventually I burned out. I felt pummeled by events that unfolded, pummeled and exhausted. In looking back, I checked into the “belly of the whale” a familiar residence in my journey not to recover as much as to feel depairing and lost. </div>
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Remember how I noted in the beginning that I had to begin again because writing “Dear Bill” letters helped me discover new layers to this journey. This is one of those moments. I just realized that during the recovery year of the cycles referenced above, I didn’t actually stop writing. I recorded a cd of personal essays that led to co-hosting a radio show, a great leap for someone who had vowed as a child to not speak in public…which is probably connected to why I’ve had a hard time speaking to you. I began four blogs (before the world was blogging) and another screenplay with a friend but I never returned to “Grow” or “The Magic in Chicago.” </div>
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Another of the layers revealed as I write this time is I don’t have regrets. In past incarnations of this letter, I’ve realized how bitter I let myself become. The hopeful, happy me became bitter without even realizing I was bitter. </div>
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This round of “Dear Bill” helps me realize the events above brought out more of me, the me that is compassionate and loving to the extreme. Each event helped me retrieve parts of me that I had forgotten or not fully embraced. They offered me necessary, painful, and beautiful lessons. I learned the justice system is often unjust. I held my formerly distant, controlling father’s hand and sang as he navigated dying at home. I still recall his placing my hand on his heart after I sang one day. Heat emanated from his chest as he said, “That was beautiful.” And then two years later, I let my mother teach me how she saw things in Nature from her hospital bed as we watched a nature channel during her time in the hospital. These are experiences I would have never had had I not answered the call I felt in those times. </div>
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And still, Bill, in the midst of even these years, you showed up, not often, but you did. </div>
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In 2006, I held a small ritual to honor my “returning to me.” In the sharing of my journey, I told of the magic in Chicago. After my story, two women on either side of me remarked that they had stories of you. It wasn’t until writing this that I realized with curiosity that you returned to my life’s radar as I honored my returning to me. Still I did not resurrect those screenplays. </div>
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Three years later, I entered my fifties while in France then backpacked into the Grand Canyon. Both were rituals for me. I was in the Grand Canyon when my friends left the message that they kept running into you in their hotel lobby. </div>
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Then you showed up after I had surgery that I postponed for a year. When I say after surgery, I mean <i>after </i>surgery. The post-op nurse asked what I did for a living. I told her I was a writer. (Anesthesia it seems emboldened me as I usually don’t say, “I’m a writer.”) She asked what I wrote and I told how you inspired me initially to write by being our angel in disguise. She laughingly told me her friend’s parents owned the house in which “What About Bob?” was filmed. She and her friend often laughed about your being in that house. </div>
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You and I have had 23 encounters of the etheric or face-to-face-yet-Dawn-can’t-talk kind. These don’t include “our” dinners every April with my friend Maryann. </div>
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Yes, you’re still around or so I hear. For the last five years, I’ve had dinner with Maryann an intuitive friend who comes to Nashville from Maine. At some point during our yearly meal she says, “Are you doing anything with that Bill Murray guy?” </div>
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Intrigued and puzzled, I reply, “No” each time to which she says something along the lines of, “He’s in my face right now.”</div>
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My friend works as an intuitive so I don’t use our social time to inquire further but I am curious. I am extremely curious and desirous of knowing why we have had this long, strange journey, not to mention why you’re in my friend’s face as we share our yearly meal. </div>
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Those dinners have been in the last five years. Ironically I realize in this beginning again that these are the same last five years that I’ve put the brakes on trusting Mystery in my life. I know it sounds strange but I truly did feel abandoned and betrayed by you and the forces that got this whole thing rolling. I was attached and I’m not even certain to what I was attached. I take that back. I truly thought we would finally meet and I’d be able to have my voice without hiding. </div>
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I think of myself as an increasingly conscious and aware person, yet I really did feel like you left me although I know, I know, I left me. I left me. I betrayed and abandoned me and didn’t realize this until these last few months. </div>
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From the looks of social media, my negative energy hasn’t gotten in the way of your getting around. You are everywhere. But if indigenous people and quantum science are right (and I believe they are) we are all connected and my negativity may have affected you. I’m sorry for the unconscious bitterness and anger I’ve sent your way. It hasn’t been okay for me to be so angry with you or the Universe for I’ve not only potentially affected you, I’ve affected me.</div>
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And though I’ve felt betrayed by this mystery that is my life, Mystery still speaks to me. The Universe or Divine Love as I think of it has not abandoned me even though I’ve been a resistant, frightened child of the universe. I continue to receive signs. Beautiful events happen in my life just about every day connected to Earth and her children especially the winged, four-legged and green, growing kind. I have a dear, magical life.</div>
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And still I wonder about this thing between us. </div>
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Were the seeds of what we are living sown long ago in some other time? Where did this dance originate? Did we make a pact as souls in the stars to show up in this way? If so, it seems I forgot my lines. Or maybe I didn’t. My inner judge believes I really screwed up my role in this dance. Is it possible I’ve done exactly as needed…. even in my silence when we’ve met? </div>
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Maybe my life’s lines are somewhere here in these lines to you.</div>
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And with that sentence, “it” happens again. </div>
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Lines are my life. Writing is my life line, my life line to myself and to my putting out into the world my experience of Earth. I hope when you read this you feel my heart’s gratitude. For in this beginning again, I realize YOU are the reason I began to write again.</div>
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That ticket to the game was the grail I sought for my nephews. I thought Chicago was the end of my quest, yet you unknowingly catapulted me across an unexpected threshold into the twists and turns of my hero’s journey, into and out of the belly of the whale more times than I can count to this place in which I deeply value who I am. Our journey has taught me ultimately to celebrate and love myself. </div>
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I wish everyone, especially the adults walking this world, could “get” that. Love, love, love yourself. It sounds so simple and it is so hard. <b><i>Feel</i></b> love for yourself and in turn love for others and this world comes pouring out. </div>
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Thank you, Bill. Thank you for being my guide, my muse and my heart’s kin. I don’t know what’s next but I do know I needed to write this letter to you from me and I needed to write this letter to you <b><i>for </i></b>me.</div>
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Thank you, dear Bill. Thank you. </div>
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Dawn </div>
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P.S. I looked for your 1-800# and realize it's not public. Naive me. Rather than post mine, just call me in Nashville, TN.<br />
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-Dawn, (Still) the <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a></b></div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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25 November 2015</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-52214018342867548992015-10-03T18:03:00.004-05:002015-10-03T18:06:14.250-05:00Experiencing a Frog I sit holding a dear flattened frog someone ran over on busy Charlotte Avenue. It may be a land dwelling toad yet with the rain we've had a frog could have made its way from the nearby greenway and creek.<br />
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Initially I walked past it while returning to my car, yet as I opened the car door, a voice inside me said, 'You do know you just walked past a dead frog?' I turned around, picked it up to bring home with me.<br />
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I hold it and hear ribbits. I recall playing leap frog as a kid and wonder if children still do that these days? I'm reminded of tadpoles swimming in the creek of my childhood, a creek that no longer exists due to bulldozing.<br />
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And then the boy at Cheekwood one Thursday at dusk comes to mind. He announced to his young peers that he was the king of the world about to kill a frog as a periodic deep croak sounded from the small ponds bull frogs call home. Fortunately his plans never came to pass.<br />
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Earlier today, I held a board from one of my waterlogged appliances after Nashville's 2010 flood. I've been unable to put it in the trash. I see it and think if minds can do this surely we can house and feed everyone on Earth. Doing so takes heart and mind engaged.<br />
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The frog engages my heart and mind. I hold it and ponder how it is I find Nature's dead or dying ones.<br />
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Some people would value the intricacies of the board from my appliance over the intricacies of the frog. When I get scared as to the drastic diminishing of Nature on Earth, I want to shout from the roof tops that Nature was here long before technology and that Nature is imbued with an aliveness not found in this laptop on which I write.<br />
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My soul is fed by Nature, art, and music. I wonder if technology can feed one's soul or does it satisfy a mental quest that at times feels out of control. Take for example the recent story I heard on drones eventually delivering pizza. I go to Pizza Perfect and get take out pizza but if I had it delivered I would want a flesh and blood person knocking at my door and not a drone or robot.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0a8p00hCZ0o/VhBdyys6nLI/AAAAAAAAEeo/VKkxzmNHl4Y/s1600/IMG_4769.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0a8p00hCZ0o/VhBdyys6nLI/AAAAAAAAEeo/VKkxzmNHl4Y/s320/IMG_4769.jpg" width="240" /></a>I ponder these things and for the first time in over five years of keeping this electrical board, I turn it over and see a maze of Life's many paths.<br />
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This earth-walk holds many paths. What matters most to me is that I am on my path.<br />
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How do I experience being on my path really? I have a sense of being at home within my body. I am present, not in my head thinking 'what's next?' or what to fear but present and aware of a resonance that is deeply calm and centered...like now as I hold the frog.<br />
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In the quiet, I hear: Just honor me. Hold me in your palm. Let me feel your love and gratitude. Then lay me to rest under the fern fronds so what's left of this physical form can become one with your garden sanctuary and return to Mother Earth.<br />
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In this moment, people around the world are suffering, hungry, cold, homeless, dying or about to be like this animal suddenly killed. I wish for them a palm in which they and those who love them feel held.<br />
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For now, I will take what remains of the frog and do as it asks. Right now that seems even more fitting as rain falls and I realize as I hold the frog one last time, it appears to dance.<br />
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<b>How do you experience being "at home" within? </b><br />
<b>How do you experience being on your path? </b></div>
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<b>-Dawn, The <a href="http://http;//www.imaginetheshift.com">Good News Muse</a>, 3 Oct. 2015</b></div>
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<b><a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-82174746231414771252015-09-25T10:15:00.001-05:002015-09-25T10:33:40.073-05:00As We Rise So Does Earth - Ascending and Descending Upon encountering the zipper spider, I knew it was time to put into writing what I sensed when I found these objects on a morning walk nearly two years ago.<br />
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I have looked for the <b><a href="http://www.spiders.us/species/argiope-aurantia/">zipper spider</a></b> around my front door nearly daily this summer. Last year a landscaper with whom I was consulting saw it at my front door and told me what it was. I was smitten and have thus looked, truly nearly every day, to no avail until Wednesday's Autumn Equinox.<br />
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Here in Nashville my plants are thirsty for rain. While attaching the hose to the rain barrel, I saw my friend hanging from the oak leaf hydrangea.<br />
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I immediately associated the Zipper Spider with opening. That's when I thought of these objects from some time ago and how they are related to this time in which we find ourselves, this time in which we are rising.<br />
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*******</div>
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I walk my neighborhood streets just about every weekday. On this particular walk, I glanced down to see a white feather reminiscent of a spiral path. I saw it and knew I was seeing the spiral of ascension or rising to a new level of vibration and being.<br />
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Then within a couple of steps I saw the spiral earthworm and knew I was being reminded that as we rise, Earth rises. Yet to fully ascend we descend as well. In the descent, we allow to rise the often repressed, denied stuff of this earth walk, the sorrow, shame, anger, and fear. Honoring through feeling these often labeled dark emotions frees us and them.<br />
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We rise carrying less of the shadow of our individual and collective past.<br />
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Those who are willing to engage this descent can also invite the suppressed experiences and emotions within the land, animals, and plants to rise and be felt. Consciously honoring and asking Earth's energies to be turned into love, peace and light sends healing ripples through the quantum field.<br />
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Then in the next block all within a few steps of each other, I found ribbon, chord, a rubber band and a piece that looked like a zipper pull. These simple objects used for closing, wrapping, containing and tying were untied, broken and cut. They conveyed a potent message.<br />
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<b>New Times have opened.</b></div>
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After writing the above, I read that the zipper spider is also called the writing spider or Argiope. The argiope symbolizes <b>New Realms or the opening of New Dimensions. </b>(source<b> </b>The Animal Speak Pocket Guide)<br />
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<b>New Times have opened! </b></div>
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I feel such joy in this. </div>
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This potent energetic time in which we rise is the entry to New Realms. Some fear the world's end. I place my attention on the New Realms opening as we traverse the spiral path joining heaven and earth as a Great Shift occurs in the Universe.<br />
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-Dawn, <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">The Good News Muse</a></b>, 25 Sept. 2015</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-81471226212022222942015-09-24T13:33:00.002-05:002015-09-24T13:33:16.248-05:00Four Simple Words She said, "I'm sorry." I replied, "Thank you."<br />
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The young woman on the other end of the phone had no idea how much her two simple words meant to me, but I knew. I actually said to her, "Thank you. Thank you. It's okay."<br />
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I had just experienced back-to-back encounters in which my trying to do the "right" thing ended up being a frustrating thing. I buy really good (ie. holistic and as chemical free as possible and thus expensive) food for my cats. The store at which I buy it has a monthly discount day. I rushed over on what I thought was the correct Wednesday only to find I was a week late. I had waited for this specific day and even penciled in (yes, I still use a pencil) a time between clients to weave my way through the new Nashville traffic to get discounted food. I was angry at myself and unfortunately the person assisting me could only say, "It was last Wednesday. It's always been this way. Don't you want to be on our email list? It's always the second Wednesday."<br />
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I realized driving home that I actually became irritated with the salesperson because she seemed stuck on repeating "It was last Wednesday."<br />
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That same week, I went to the pharmacy to ensure they had a particular drug in stock that I was going to need for a heavy metals test. The drug was unusual so I thought it wise to stop in and inquire before my doctor faxed the prescription. To my surprise, they had the drug I needed. The following week as my doctor prepared the prescription, I even called to ensure they still had it. (I've never done something like that.)<br />
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You can imagine my surprise to walk in and find the faxed prescription was on the head pharmacist's desk where it had spent the day because he didn't know what it was....and he hadn't asked his associate (with whom I had twice spoken). I had given them all day to fill the prescription and now had fifteen minutes which was not enough time for the medication to be compounded.<br />
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I became impatient in this situation as well and explained that I had ensured not once but twice that they had the drug. Now I had to leave without the drug and postpone the test until the following week. I became irritated with the pharmacist who I've known for years and drove home realizing I just needed to hear two simple words from both he and the salesperson in the pet store.<br />
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<b>"I'm sorry."</b></div>
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"I'm sorry that happened."<br />
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"I'm sorry you came on the wrong day."<br />
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"I'm sorry I didn't think to ask my colleague what DMSA is."<br />
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For me, as a feeler, just a simple, "I'm sorry" would do.<br />
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So when I get a call from the doctor's office reminding me of my appointment for the following week which I had already cancelled and said I would reschedule, I thought, 'Here we go again.'<br />
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I called the doctor's scheduler to remind her that I had cancelled and she had already called me back. That's when I heard "<b>I'm sorry</b>." I could tell from the tone of her voice that she wasn't just pacifying me. She truly was acknowledging her mistake.<br />
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I in turn said two words of equal significance in today's world. I sincerely replied, "<b>Thank you</b>."<br />
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The words we use and the tone with which we convey them is important even with simple statements like "I'm sorry" and "Thank you."<br />
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Imagine the shift in your personal life and thus our world if we each took the time to say "I'm sorry" when we or another has erred or "Thank you" to convey our appreciation.<br />
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Inside I smiled. Life provided a healing do-over.<br />
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-Dawn, <a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">The Good News Muse,</a> 24 Sept. 2015</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-80050323763776986152015-09-23T14:44:00.000-05:002015-09-23T14:44:41.969-05:00Joy Amidst "the Fall" - When Nature and Hymns on a Walk Conspire During yesterday's walk, I came upon a dried, dead earthworm on the sidewalk. I cupped it in my palm for a moment before placing it in the grass. Then I came upon another. Earthworms stir joy in me and I found this exodus troubling. I'm accustomed to seeing earthworms on the sidewalk in Spring not Fall.<br />
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"For such as worm as I" sang through my mind. This line from the hymn, "At the Cross" implies we like worms are lowly and sinful. It was not good to be a worm back then. Yet earthworms area amazing and good. Earth nor we would be here without them.<br />
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I continued my walk thinking of being at the cross while listening to audio clips I recorded a year ago on Fall Equinox while hiking into the Grand Canyon. I had not listened to these since recording them. I randomly clicked on a file not knowing what I was about to hear except that it would be my voice. In this particular file I referred to the five bridges crossing <a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2010/10/bright-angel-trail.html"><b>Bright Angel Creek</b> </a>as we descended into the canyon. Then I heard myself comparing the five bridges with five crossings between Times, five times when life on Earth as it was known ended to start over again.<br />
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I walked and thought of Jesus and the crossing or bridge he created between dark and light. I shouldn't have been surprised to look down and see a bermuda grass crown of thorns in the middle of the sidewalk.<br />
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I had just read of Archangel Michael governing Autumn and hovering over Jesus in Gethsemane while assisting him in transmuting streams of hate and despair into currents of healing love.*<br />
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I lay the crown aside and walked a few more blocks before turning a corner. My pattern is to turn at the third house up the inclining street. I got to the second house and looked down to find a host of earthworms, dead and dried, in many shapes like an early alphabet reminding me to listen to Nature's language.<br />
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I asked a man nearby if he knew whether the lawn where I stood had been sprayed. He told me landscapers had been digging earlier in the week.<br />
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This Fall migration reminded me of Earth's people today being forced from heir homes due to war and the corporate take over of African soil as businesses mine minerals to be used in our technology.<br />
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I bent down to more closely see the worms and realized one worm fragment had the tiniest of down feathers stuck to it.<br />
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Inside I smiled.<br />
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Needing to get to work, I gathered a handful of these beautiful beings and walked home. And yes, I stopped and got the "crown."<br />
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At my day's end, I sat with my treasures and listened. These creatures from the soil offered profound messages for the soul.<br />
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<b>Earth and heaven are united.</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<b>Earthworm now flies....as can we.</b></div>
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<b>Yet flying isn't superior to crawling. They are one and the same.</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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And the little fleck of down reminded me: </div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<b>Do not fear "down" - being down, feeling down, going downward.</b></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">(How often I've resisted down and judged myself for not being 'up.')</span></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<b>Down is ultimately the path to freedom and flight. Jesus traveled into the darkness we associate with down in order to shine the Light.</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: start;">Grace had crawled from the grass in the form of earthworms and still grace lay before me in the form of the grassy crown. </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">I felt the need to place the crown on my head. I did and immediately experienced it as the crown of harvest and celebration at this time of Fall. Then the thought occurred to me. </span><span style="text-align: left;">What if humankind's "fall" was ultimately a beautiful thing meant to bring us to this Earthly place in Divine Time? What if the cross is now a place of crossing, a crossroads of sorts in which we each get to choose how we will use our energy and whether we will focus our attention on love or on fear so that rather than destroy ourselves and Earth this time around, we birth something unexperienced and new based in Love? What if the cross is now a place in which we realize the center is where up, down, in and out all meet together? Neither is more important than the other.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
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One of the first things my friend Wendy said to me years ago when we met was "The Universe is always speaking to us." </div>
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<br /></div>
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The Universe IS always speaking to us..... through the stars and earthworms, through the grass and hymns of old. The Universe is always speaking to us through the quiet and simple, through the common and usually not so bold. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Imagine the Shift to hearing. </div>
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-Dawn, The <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a></b>, 23 Sept. 2015</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>*</b>From "<b><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/274399.Nature_Speak">Nature Speaks</a></b>" by Ted Andrews. </div>
<br />
After writing the above I went in search of two other earthworm-inspired storie. I hope you take time to read it as well <b><a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2014/03/crawling-home-finding-grace-earth-worms.html">"Crawling Home - Finding Grace." </a> </b>and<b> "<a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2009/11/earthworm-class-isnt-over.html">Class Isn't Over</a>." </b><br />
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And here's another story related to being <a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2010/10/one-more-thought-about-bright-angel.html">Bright Angels</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-12748985711333447472015-09-17T16:02:00.002-05:002015-09-17T16:02:14.262-05:00Independence and Interdependence - The New Paradigm <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Soundcloud audio link to story here <a href="https://soundcloud.com/dawn-kirk/independence-and-interdependence-the-new-paradigm">https://soundcloud.com/dawn-kirk/independence-and-interdependence-the-new-paradigm</a></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What did our forefathers know that we’ve not been told?</b></div>
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The weekend of the 2012 autumn equinox, I awoke seeing the Pleiades, the star cluster I look forward to in winter’s sky. These seven stars shown so clearly I thought I was outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was elated until I realized I was in bed in the middle of the night. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L9zmFIDslkk/VfsW6zG-lMI/AAAAAAAAEc8/hf7rCpKGudw/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L9zmFIDslkk/VfsW6zG-lMI/AAAAAAAAEc8/hf7rCpKGudw/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">A color-composite image of the <br />Pleiades from the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitized_Sky_Survey" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;" title="Digitized Sky Survey">Digitized Sky Survey</a><br />
<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Credit: </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;" title="NASA">NASA</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">/</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;" title="European Space Agency">ESA</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">/</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Universities_for_Research_in_Astronomy" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;" title="Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy">AURA</a><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">/</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_Technology" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;" title="California Institute of Technology">Caltech</a></td></tr>
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Then I was shown another scene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Against a gray background, black silhouettes of telescopes revolved around me. I sensed I was seeing an astronomy tower of old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I was shown the Liberty Bell and Ben Franklin came to my mind. </div>
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I lay in bed wondering if these things were linked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew nothing about Ben Franklin beyond his experiment with the kite and key.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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The day prior I had just confided in a long distance friend that I’ve never been able to comprehend what I read. Because of this I have felt mentally inferior all my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being able to memorize facts for tests, I did well academically but retained little regarding history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I now know I learn through experience something for which our education system was not set up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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This particular morning, I noted what I was shown along with my first impressions and experience then I went to the internet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the seconds it took to type a few words and click search, I realized this information somehow fit together but I had no idea what it meant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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The first reference that got my attention regarded the <b><a href="http://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/stories-libertybell.htm">Liberty Bell</a></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Called the Independence Bell in Ben Franklin’s day, it was rung when he went to England to express the colonists’ grievances to the King.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was just one of eight times Franklin crossed the Atlantic in his life long before the speed and ease of today’s travels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I was stunned to learn Ben Franklin only went through 2<sup>nd</sup> grade yet became a printer, scientist, inventor, statesman, politician, author and the country’s first post master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He started a fire department, organized the first library and became the Minister to France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He learned five languages and played three musical instruments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This man called the First American whose many discoveries are integral to our lives today had an immense curiosity and willingness to ask questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I felt a particular affinity for Franklin upon learning he authored “Poor Richard’s Almanac” a precursor to the present “Farmer’s Almanac.” This inexpensive paperback in the last two years has become my gardening Bible with its charts for planting based on planetary and moon influences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Most intriguing was information regarding Franklin’s belief in other beings in the stars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His interest in the Native Americans, as well as legends of the Iroquois confederacy resulted in one of his <b><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">best-selling pamphlets, the Iroquois creation story of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/fp/fpz2f22e.shtml" title="Atahensic"><span style="color: windowtext; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Sky Woman</span></a></b><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b>. </b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This story describes Sky Woman’s coming to Earth and birthing the human race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reading this brought tears to my eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"></span></div>
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I thought of the many Atlantic crossings Ben Franklin made and wondered if his openness to Native American belief was somewhat influenced by his own personal encounters with star beings during those eight long crossings?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was he imbued<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>with heightened creative energy from the stars?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What messages might he have received influencing his discoveries, attitude and knowledge? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I then read that Franklin developed relationships with the members of the <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Society_of_Birmingham">Lunar Society,</a></b> a small group of men in England who met on the Monday nearest the full moon to discuss new scientific ideas, technology, innovation, metaphysics and philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These men became the fathers of the Industrial Revolution. </div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Was it by coincidence, intention or grace that these men met each month on a Monday, the day of the week derived from Moon Day</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <b> </b></span>They supposedly met near the full moon so it would light their way home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What inspiration or illumination came from meeting beneath the energy of the moon near its fullest and then walking home by its light?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b></b></div>
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I found myself wondering what our forefathers knew that we’ve not been told? </div>
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Where did the Pleiades fit into what I was shown?</div>
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In May 2011, two long distance friends visiting me shared how some Native Americans thought certain souls came to Earth from this star system. This stirred my interest and I began to look for them in winter’s night sky. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My first personal experience with the Pleiades was in January (2012) after my partner and I held a ritual at one of the starting points of the Trail of Tears. As we returned to our car, I happened to look up and saw the Pleiades overhead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sensed we were being quietly watched over from these stars above us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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The particular morning of my on-line search I found “in the ancient world, in places of great power and influence, monuments were built aligned with the Pleiades. The Washington Monument is aligned with the Pleiades.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I found sites suggesting that the whole of Washington D.C. is laid out based on aligning buildings and monuments with certain star systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sites I later came across insisted this held demonic intent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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What I thought more interesting is that in today’s culture, the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">star </i>evokes actors, musicians and athletes not heavenly bodies of light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those interested in the heavens stars tend to fall into groups: Scientists and investors seeking to exploit bodies in space for minerals necessary for our technological devices, those looking to the star’s for Earth’s salvation, those looking to the heavens for religious salvation, the curious and those who consult the heavens for astrological insight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many I fear live ignorant of the stars as I have until recently. </div>
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I concluded my morning’s search, my mind a tangle of information yet curious as to these things shown to me. </div>
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The next morning I was given more of the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw what looked like a photo of a doorway, specifically the floor at the threshold. This was followed by a slowly spinning mandala of five-pointed stars outlined in black. One star was in the center and each point was connected to the point of another star.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The turning image looked like something from the Southwestern Hopi.</div>
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I watched and knew I was being shown that the turning stars offer a threshold for our entering a new space and time. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></div>
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The next morning, I sat on the sofa my mind wrapped in a fog, coffee in hand, watching sunlight climb the trees. The Liberty Bell was on my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something felt missing regarding this piece of what I had been shown. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Not being one to read the news, I picked up the weekend’s paper to distract myself or so I thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I opened the local section, my breath was taken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On page two was a small photo of a bell, a replica of the Liberty Bell being rung at a local celebration of Constitution Week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Before work, I delved into sites regarding the constitution and became even more mentally laden with information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each day that week I read about the Constitution yet nothing I read felt intuitively right in relation to what I had been shown. </div>
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Days later as Jerry walked through the room I asked, “Does the Liberty Bell mean anything to you?” </div>
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He only responded, “What does a bell do?” </div>
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In that moment I knew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bell sounds <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a tone</i></b> and in a tone I also saw <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at one</i></b>. The first thing I had read was of the bell’s being rung when Ben Franklin went to England representing the colonies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Were the people “at one” then or more so than we seem today?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bell did crack after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was this symbolic of the challenge even then of being unified while maintaining and honoring individual differences? </div>
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I wondered, ‘If a bell makes a tone, can one be constructed to make specific tones?’ (I had totally forgotten of hearing church hand bell groups long ago.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I searched on-line and learned the Liberty Bell made in London was made to sound E flat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wondered if E flat in particular evoked a particular feeling or mood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I searched E flat and found it is often associated with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">bold, heroic music</b>. How perfect is that.</div>
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It is heroic the founding fathers convened to discuss, debate and ultimately craft a document that held a vision for America and that families set out for the unknown by crossing the watery threshold of the Atlantic with the starry night sky for navigation. </div>
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Those before us won independence from England and became the builders of the outer structures in which our leaders convene. They crafted the political structure under which we’re governed and about which there’s such division today. </div>
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It is equally heroic that we as Souls have gathered at this time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like those before us, we too stand at a threshold to the unknown with assistance from the stars. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have the opportunity to build a new structure born in independence yet requiring something possibly more evolved than independence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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These times call for a new heroism founded in the curiosity of Ben Franklin and the willingness to ask questions without knowing the answers. Who among us is willing to be that curious, to suspend what we cling to and the beliefs we adhere to and dig deeper to ask more and better questions? </div>
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These times call for a heroism that doesn’t reactively vilify those who look or believe contrary to us. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We may celebrate Constitution Week, yet reacting in fear, judgment and anger suggests our constitution is weak, our personal inner constitution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These times call for an inner structure of courage, compassion and awareness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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The tone that sounds today isn’t that of a bell but the greater conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We each have the opportunity to consciously set our individual tone which impacts the greater tone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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The Founding Fathers gained independence and created literal and political structures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve the opportunity to more fully realize our interdependence and support a new relational structure, one that joins the inner with the outer and realizes our interconnectedness with one another, Nature and all of Earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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And just as the stars were with our founders, they are with us assisting in the opportunity to use free will in relation to our hearts, minds and voices as we cross the threshold in a new paradigm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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-Dawn, The <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a></b><br />
17 September 2015<br />
first posted 20 December 201<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">2</span></div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-22949084247167286752015-08-25T14:23:00.003-05:002015-08-25T14:26:44.234-05:00The Goose Feather that Got Me to France Just over a month ago, I was arriving home from the most spontaneous trip of my fifty-six years thus far. In a span of two weeks, I decided to board a plane to go to <b><a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/81">Chartres,</a></b> France for a conference with <a href="http://www.ubiquityuniversity.org/#top"><b>Ubiquity University</b>.</a><br />
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During the week,<b><a href="http://www.jeanhouston.org/"> Jean Houston</a></b> one of the presenters said to the group, "Tell your stories. Tell your stories over and over."<br />
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I don't recall the context of Jean's saying this but I felt as if her words were meant specifically for me. So here I sit reflecting on the events that led to this sudden trip, another round of my <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero%27s_Journey_(book)">Hero's Journey</a> </b>and the unfolding story of my time on Earth. <br />
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In early February I came across an email sent to Jerry (who doesn't do much emailing) about a conference call with <a href="http://www.andrewharvey.net/"><b>Andrew Harvey</b> </a>one of the speakers for a program in Chartres. I was already familiar with Andrew's work from prior workshops and books yet I was drawn to the February 12th call not to mention curious as to the emails coming to Jerry's seldom used address rather than mine.<br />
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So I listened and knew I was suppose to be doing so when one of the speakers was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Garrison_(theologian)"><b>Jim Garrison</b>, </a>a man I interviewed in 2008 on a Nashville radio show I co-hosted for the newly formed <a href="http://radiofreenashville.org/"><b>WRFN-Radio Free Nashville</b>.</a><br />
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Weeks passed after the February call. I missed the March and April calls yet in my journal I now find "Chartres" periodically noted in the margins as if I was contemplating something I wasn't consciously considering.<br />
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In April I had dinner with my friend Maryann. We've kept this ritual for years as she comes to Nashville to see clients. This particular dinner she asked if we had any trips planned. I said no. We travel fairly spontaneously (another reason I shouldn't have been surprised by France).<br />
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<b><a href="http://maryannbrussell.com/">Maryann is an intuitive</a></b>. Her forehead wrinkled a bit as she asked somewhat confused, "You're not going to Europe?"<br />
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With my own wrinkled forehead but no confusion I replied, "No" while placing her comment in the Maryann-really-got-that-one-wrong file. Although I've traveled and love travel, I had no desire to go to Europe and didn't give her question any more thought until I saw the billboard.<br />
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Three weeks later while hurrying down Nashville's busy West End, one of the rotating billboards read <b>"Chartres"</b> when I glanced at it. I did a double take only to find the advertisement had moved to another ad.<br />
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'<b><i>Am I to go to Chartres</i></b>?' zipped through my mind.<br />
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I knew in reality the ad was more than likely for Charter-something yet in that moment I knew I saw "Chartres." It was easy to discredit what I thought I saw. I was ambivalent about returning to France. I recalled the sadness from six years prior when I was there. I did not want to be surprised by sorrow like I was then while walking and weeping through French towns remembering what I felt there prior. (That trip convinced me of past lives.) I wept tears of profound sadness and joy as we traveled in the south of France for a week visiting sites of the Black Madonna, Mary Magdalene and Sarah, a saint to the Romani people. Upon arriving in Chartres during that visit, I longed for the greenery of the south of France. I didn't want to be surrounded by the concrete and asphalt around the cathedral. I wasn't even taken with the stained glass for which the cathedral is known.<br />
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Yet after the billboard I did wonder. I wondered yet reasons for not going stirred in my mind. Not only was I apprehensive about returning, I didn't have the money to go, and I didn't feel my best.<br />
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May arrived and I received an email about the upcoming call related to what would be occurring in the stars while the group was in Chartres. I could at least find out about the heavens without making the trip.<br />
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I listened to that call and sensed a inner hmmmm when I heard . '<i><b>Was I to go to France</b></i>?'<br />
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I read my notes from the call to Jerry. He listened but asked no questions. I shelved the possibility.<br />
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In the meantime, I spent the rest of May recovering from a sudden bout of Epstein-Barr virus activated by a potent herb I took for something else.<br />
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The June 11th call came around a month later. This time Jim Garrison spoke of the Greek stories of which he would share daily during the conference. A deeper HMMMMM resounded in me. I read my notes from the call to Jerry and said, "I miss being a student."<br />
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A couple of days later he asked, "When is that conference in France?" (He thought it was in the Fall.)<br />
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The trip was now just under three weeks away and his passport as I feared had expired. We quietly wrote the trip off as renewing a passport required weeks.<br />
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The following day while outside working, I came upon a bug, a large black bug that appeared dead. Actually it was behind me and as I turned it got my attention. As I held it I knew I was being told to hold the things of the past, that are <i>behind</i> me, like my experience in France. I placed the bug under the azaleas nearby then turned around to again find <i>behind me </i>a large down feather.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IF0wS_vcvgk/VcjyUE4oQOI/AAAAAAAAEbw/Ew-UwgZko6Y/s1600/IMG_3351-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IF0wS_vcvgk/VcjyUE4oQOI/AAAAAAAAEbw/Ew-UwgZko6Y/s1600/IMG_3351-1.jpg" /></a>I've many feathers yet had no idea what this one was other than down. I later wrote a friend who made suggestions then as I read her response I intuitively knew I had been given goose down. A quick on-line search confirmed what I thought. I looked up the symbolism of goose in "<b>Animal Speaks</b>" and read: "<b>The call of the quest and travels to legendary places</b>."<br />
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I excitedly, hesitantly told Jerry, "I think we're going to France."<br />
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He didn't jump for joy but he was open.<br />
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Later that day I read further in "Animal Speaks" and learned goose can also be related to having assistance in one's writings. Was that why the goose feather found me? Maybe I was being given help in my writing (which surely I need) and we weren't to travel.<br />
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Yet I kept thinking '<i><b>What if? What if the conference comes and goes and we've not even tried to get a passport</b></i>?' We agreed that getting a timely passport appointment would be a sign.<br />
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I found a number on-line for getting an urgent appointment in Atlanta. One would think I would have called that number immediately. Did I? No. I waited until the next day, a Tuesday, and made the call. There was availability at 10:00 am the following Monday. Jerry and I never take Mondays off together unless we've a vacation. Yet that specific Monday we were taking off from work to hike. We were actually free the day of the available appointment.<br />
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Was this another sign?<br />
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I pressed the key pad to hear if an 11:00 or Noon time was available that Monday. The next available time was four days out and too close to the trip to accept. When I returned to the prior 10:00 time it had already been taken.<br />
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My heart sank. I had rejected our opportunity because I didn't want to get up early enough to be in Atlanta at 10:00am. I felt devastated. I put out feelers to everyone I could think of including a friend who suggested I call my congressman. I did and learned the staff member who might be able to help was away until Thursday.<br />
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I left a message and received a call from her Thursday morning. Within thirty minutes we had an appointment Monday at 8:30 in Atlanta.<br />
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All the reasons I shouldn't go suddenly to France circled my mind in bed that night: We don't have time to prepare. I wasn't fully recovered. I had forgotten my French. I hadn't read any of the books on the suggested reading list. I usually give the cat and house sitter sufficient notice. I would have to cash in retirement money. No wise investor would do that. And I reminded myself that just because we had an appointment didn't mean we would get the passport.<br />
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Yet to give in to these fear-based rationalizations meant ignoring Maryann, the billboard, the hmmm, having Monday off and Nature's messenger, the goose feather.<br />
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The passport appointment lasted all of 30 minutes and we were home by the afternoon.<br />
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The wait began and I began to reread my journal from 2009. In it I saw notations where Chartres, this city of concrete and asphalt where I did not want to initially be, was one I did not want to leave two days later when my group left. As I read notes from my prior trip, I knew we were going to France.<br />
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Four days later Jerry's passport arrived. Seven days later we boarded a plane.<br />
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We crossed the threshold from our Ordinary World as <a href="http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=83&p9999_action=details&p9999_wid=272"><b>Joseph Campbell</b> </a>calls it in the Hero's Journey and embarked on the Road of Trials and Adventures. This trip our trials were few and our adventures many. (Actually my trials are usually more of my own making due to mistrust aka fear.)<br />
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Synchronocities, always a sign I'm on my soul's path, continued during our trip.<br />
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And I walked around Chartres thinking and saying aloud to Jerry, "We're suddenly in France, aren't we?" It all unfolded so quickly I didn't fully believe at times we were there.<br />
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Now we're home and I reread my notes and look at photos to get a felt sense of my having suddenly returned to this land that broke me open in a beautifully, unexpected way.<br />
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I reflect on my experience to return to that felt sense of following the "bread crumbs" placed before me, to ponder why I resisted and feared? I retell this story to you and to me because Jean's words resonated with me.<br />
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In today's busy world it is far too easy to forget the signs and synchronicities weaving themselves through my life and possibly through your own. It is easy to get caught up in the news of the day, what's next to be done or loose time reading the passing comments on social media that I don't listen to the stuff of my life...the many layers and planes, the planes of Then woven through the Now.<br />
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Through reflecting and remembering my trip, I see the patterns within me and in the bigger picture of my life.<br />
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As I continue to listen I am reminded the Hero's Journey begins with what Joseph Campbell refers to as The Call which the hero usually resists. I smile since my "call" was literally "three calls - three conference calls."<br />
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Reflecting on the past, I'm reminded <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">of Nature's engagement as the goose offered its feather and animals arrived with messages throughout my trip. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">How do you receive messages? What is your relationship with the world of Nature? </span><br />
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As I wrote this I searched the meaning of goose on other sites and read:<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> When goose totem appears you may be embarking soon on a journey (physical or symbolic) with others for a collective purpose. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This was another reason goose appeared for 100 of the most amazing people from around the world convened at Chartres that week, creative, innovative, inspiring people open to listening and being more alive in the world. </span><br />
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I've not known how or where to conclude this story or at least this part of it. I realize it has no end yet I've knowings that I experience as Truths thanks to the goose feather and France.<br />
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One of those Truths is the Universe is always speaking to me through the nature made and manmade and through unexpected interactions and encounters. My challenge, opportunity, and fortune is to stay wake, open and be willing to follow.<br />
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<b>To what are you called? What do you feel tugged to do? How do you feel tugged to be? </b></div>
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<b>Do you jump in, vacillate or at times resist? <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How do you receive messages? </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What is your relationship with the world of Nature? </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How does the Universe/God/Spirit/Higher Power try to engage with and speak to you? </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">-Dawn, The <a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a>, 25 August 2015</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-41742073435616903012015-08-24T14:42:00.000-05:002015-08-24T14:50:48.947-05:00Our Golden Home <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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At first I thought the shell lying at my feet was a peanut shell. (I broke my rule last week and fed the squirrels some peanuts in the shell.) Curiosity got the best of me and I picked it up to find this gilded casing had been the home to something, something that may eat my plants or tree leaves in the months to come or something that may have already been food for a bird.<br />
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What I do know is this shell once held life and my first thought was 'I hope this is symbolic of me!'<br />
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For this golden home I now hold in my palm reminds me of my home, this physical body of mine and the life within that I take for granted and forget.<br />
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Just last night as I lay in bed with my hand on my chest, I realized I was feeling the beat of my heart - the steady beat of the organ rhythmically thumping inside me. It has been with me all along, yet in fifty-six years I have not stopped to really take this in. Really take it in.<br />
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How have I neglected this golden home of my body that has held me, heart, spirit, body, mind and soul?<br />
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This golden home in my palm reminds me as well of my earthly home - Mother Earth as I think of her. I am connected to her. How is it I take my body more for granted than the Earth?<br />
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Some people spend more time focused on Earth issues while others spend more time tuned into their body's issues. I live more tuned in to dirt, water and trees than to the dirt and water of me.<br />
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These are wonderings I will ponder in the days ahead. For now, what I know is I want to imprint within me this golden home with the dirt heart on its shell. I want to be reminded that my body and this Earth are golden homes in which and on which I live.<br />
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-Dawn, The <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a></b> 24 Aug. 2015</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-3168438551270627032015-08-12T15:20:00.002-05:002015-08-12T15:20:40.951-05:00Of Soles and Souls (After the Morning's Near-Accident) The first thing I do each morning is ensure the bird feeders are filled and this time of year the hummingbird feeders as well. This morning I took fresh sugar water outside and promptly stepped on a feeder part that I had left on the ground the day prior. A metal point punctured my flip flop and made contact with my bare sole just as I stepped down. Fortunately somehow I avoided puncturing skin and as is not uncommon for me kept right on with my outside tasks without checking my foot.<br />
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As I walked about the yard, I began to feel the subtle physical repercussions throughout my body. The angle in which I stepped in order to avoid a major injury could be felt in my hip, back, and neck. And interestingly the discomfort in my right foot was mirrored in my right hand which now had a similar discomfort.</div>
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I marveled at the interconnectedness of my body and how an event with my foot could be felt in so many places. </div>
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I came inside to ice my sole and take a remedy to prevent bruising. I hoped a temporarily cold sole would prevent a bruised and hurting one come tomorrow. </div>
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The connections in my body reminded me of the connections related to Mother Earth's body. What we do to the Earth or don't do through negligence or ignoring comes back to haunt us whether through present disasters with the Animas River that's now running orange with metals and toxins that were stored from mining decades prior or the cancers sourced in environmental toxins.</div>
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I sat and pondered my foot and sole and root and soul. </div>
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To harm or affect the root of something affects all else. </div>
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And to "get to the root" of something takes time and space for considering. Whatever one finds at the root, often creates tension, discomfort and initially at least more questions than answers. </div>
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In trying to prevent a bruised or hurting sole, my temporarily cold sole also reminded me of bruised, hurt, cold souls in today's world as well as those of the past who still impact the present because of what they did to the root of something or because the root of their distress was never addressed. (I think of the impact of the Great Depression still on generations today evidenced through addictions born out of family histories in which one's ancestors never dealt with the consequences of the Depression and its trauma.)</div>
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I have more questions than answers in today's world, yet I know bruised, cold, hurting souls need to be heard, deeply heard, even if they don't care about hearing themselves. They need those of us who can to bear witness and hold what they are doing to Mother Earth's waters, soil, air, plants, animals, and people. They need those of us who are willing to hold great compassion for them and for ALL and to hold the better questions as to what is driving them to treat Nature and others with such disdain, violence, and hate. </div>
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Not paying attention caused my accident this morning yet listening allowed me to make connections and hear the deeper story in this simple event. </div>
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Not paying attention has gotten us to where we are in this time yet listening (without reacting) can just possibly allow us to hear at a deeper level what's trying to emerge through souls that have been bruised over time.<br />
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Listen. Be curious for what's going on at the root...of your sole, your soul and all souls.<br />
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-Dawn, The Good News Muse 12 August 2015</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-24765887444031646902015-08-06T11:57:00.002-05:002015-08-06T11:58:04.769-05:00Loving in the Extreme - A Tribute to Cecil<b>With the killing of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_(lion)">Cecil </a>the Lion, this vision from August 2012 related to big game hunters has been on my mind. At times it seems to big to practice yet I as reread it, I know it holds the way. </b><br />
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<b>From August 2012: </b><br />
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This particular summer afternoon, I became tired so I lay down. I was immediately shown the fuchsia face of a man in the stars. Something about him immediately reminded me of former vice-president Cheney yet I knew it wasn't him. The face vanished and an elephant's trunk appeared. It then vanished and was replaced by a huge snake reminiscent of the one in the Harry Potter series. It crawled into my field of vision in the stars then opened its mouth just like in the movie.<br />
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Everything went black. Then a fuchsia heart shape appeared. I could feel the star pulsing energy to me, feeding and invigorating me, as I recorded the vision and wondered what it meant.<br />
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I sensed the snake represented the Divine Feminine enveloping the man as the word <b><i>transmutation</i> </b>came to mind. Yet I wondered, 'Who was the man?'<br />
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Twenty-days later I came home from being out of town for a week. I was sorting the mail and newspapers collected by the house sitter. The story and photos on the front page of the Tennessean from two days prior literally took my breath.<br />
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There on the cover of our local paper was the man in my vision sitting atop an elephant he had killed. The story's heading read: "He takes hunting to an extreme." The reporter told of a local sixty-year old who after a health scare in 1999 decided to hunt "dangerous" animals. The story referred to animals of course as 'game' but this was no game to me. This man hunts my children, an elephant and leopard in Zimbabwe, a brown bear in Russia, a hippopotamus, zebra, fox, every deer imaginable and thousands of fowl.<br />
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I did not want to read the story. Even now to write of it brings tears to my eyes. Yet to avoid it was to neglect the vision and resist listening for its message.<br />
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So I read. And I have read the story again and again while listening, still listening wanting to discern why this was delivered to me by the Universe and the newspaper man.<br />
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The local hunter invoked God in defending his pastime quoting scripture from Genesis where God told Noah that every moving thing that lived was food for him and his family. I thought, 'I bet God wants to take that back.' Surely he had no idea Earth would become so overrun with people, people who would crowd out and kill off creation with a hunting arsenal like this mans.<br />
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The reporter wrote of how local school children in one village were dismissed from school when the hunter killed the hippopotamus, so they could gather meat for their families from the bed of his truck. Similarly the elephant fed 100 people in a village for over a month. I read this yet thought, "Why not use your passion and money to teach these villagers something that would last a lifetime that they could pass on to their children, something that didn't involve killing the endangered animals of God's earth?"<br />
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The writer quoted him as saying, "Everything I do, I do to an extreme<b>.</b>"<br />
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And this is where the story comes around to me - to me, to possibly you, to the snake and the fuchsia heart.<br />
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<b>We are here to love to an extreme. </b></div>
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I knew the August afternoon of the vision that I was to follow the example of the snake, to take within the traits of this person I find most disturbing and love him in the extreme in order to transmute the negative in him as well as myself. The Snake as a Divine symbol says, "Hold the all of who this man is as well as yourself in Love."<br />
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<b>Hold it all in Love for this is how transformation occurs.</b></div>
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Months later, I came across a National Geographic buried beneath a pile of papers. I had not yet looked at it. I glanced at the cover and saw what I knew was a message for me. A story headline in the bottom corner read: <b><a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/125-venom/holland-text"><i>The Healing Power of Venom</i>. </a></b><br />
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My breath was taken. Immediately I knew what I consider poisonous in the hunter is here to activate the power of my heart creating a healing venom for him and for me.<br />
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If I had to rely on myself alone I could not respond to the Call of this vision. Yet I nor we do this alone. The Heart of the Universe that pulsed energy to me, whether you call it God, Great Spirit, Higher Power, the Stars, or Goddess feeds us energetically if we are open to holding the abuses and violations of this world that stem from shame, ignorance, arrogance, greed and self-hate.<br />
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Is there anything more beautiful than transforming the poisons in our world into venom that heals? Is there anything more beautiful than loving in the extreme in this profound way?<br />
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-Dawn, The <a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a>, 5 August 2015</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a><a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com"><br /></a><br />
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com"><br /></a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-52400855121559558542015-08-01T09:29:00.002-05:002015-08-01T09:29:38.389-05:00A Do-Over for Dawn Sunday I reconnected with a friend by phone and came up with a plan for meeting this week before she returned to her teaching job out-of-state. Somehow our conversation turned to spiders and how neighbors suggested she kill the grandaddy long legs that call her garage home. She didn't see the need to harm them and added she grew up with a father who transported bugs from his home, alive rather than dead. I was on the other end of the phone smiling hugely and thinking 'This is another reason I like this person.' I told her of the bug jars I keep around the house for escorting spiders and bugs outside alive and I mentioned the story I had just read on <b><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-case-for-spider-conservation-they-keep-pests-from-devouring-humans-food-supply/2014/07/21/07b0a21e-0b8c-11e4-8341-b8072b1e7348_story.html">the benefits of spiders</a></b>.<br />
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We made a date for the week ahead and I got on with my chores only to discover I needed to go to the store. I avoid as much as possible big box, corporately owned stores but on a rural Sunday afternoon, a big box store was my only option.<br />
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This particular store was obviously where I was suppose to be because as I stood in the check-out line the checker a young man of twenty at the most scratched at the back of his shirt then around the neckline. I noticed from my position in line and wondered what he was doing. I feared I knew when he looked down, stepped left then twisted his leg several times. I internally cringed when he looked at the woman he was checking out and said, "I hate spiders."<br />
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He was one of the many of whom I had just told my friend I have a hard time.<br />
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My turn came and I was still shocked, sad and judging. I didn't know what to say or whether to say anything. I was mindful of not wanting to say something to cause this gentle soul of a country kid to feel embarrassment or shame and even more so with other customers in line.<br />
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I walked from the store curious as to the synchronicity and mindful that anything I might have said would have been backed by my agenda of changing him rather than being open to him.<br />
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This interaction hung out with me into the next day when I was to have a new washer and dryer delivered. Of course, one of them, and secretly possibly both, was afraid of spiders.<br />
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I didn't know this until I was in my basement, the hole as they called it, and one commented on a grandaddy long legs to the other then turned to me and said, "He's afraid of spiders." (Knowing how projection works the speaker may have been the one most frightened.)<br />
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I wasted no time and jumped in non-judgmentally and said, "Please don't kill my spiders. I'll move the cobwebs and them if they're in your way. Most spiders are actually beneficial and people just don't realize it."<br />
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I bombarded these two with information that was personal and factual and I did so without judging or shaming them. Actually I was laughingly, loving, kindly pleading with them. I received a beautiful do-over in exactly 24 hours.<br />
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These young men left and I considered my challenge in speaking with someone with whom I disagree without even the essence of judgment, control, shame or fear coming from me. Talking with these two young men was easy and would have probably been easier if it had only been one of them and not a situation in which one was making fun of the other.<br />
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After we parted I looked into the symbolism of <a href="https://earthengirl.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/animal-medicine-daddy-longlegs/">grandaddy long legs</a>. My interactions around this particular spider was even more perfect as grandaddy long legs represents "weaving deeper relationships." Navigating relationships in light of differences allows for a deepening especially when we do so lite-ly, loving lyand when appropriate with laughter, not at the other, but at oneself. We've the opportunity for more deeply knowing ourself as well as another.<br />
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This series of synchronicities reminds me grace-filled do-overs arrive daily through those we know and don't know, through our responses to news, nature, and the things that annoy. Are you open to them? Are you paying attention? Imagine leaning into that Shift.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x3GQvkoGUFI/Vbw2Q0l1V4I/AAAAAAAAEbE/9qk5i5lr2KI/s1600/photo-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="249" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x3GQvkoGUFI/Vbw2Q0l1V4I/AAAAAAAAEbE/9qk5i5lr2KI/s320/photo-1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here's another story inspired by Spider and a Vision: <b><a href="http://dawnkirkimaginetheshift.blogspot.com/2012/06/wanted-willing-weavers-spiders-message.html">Willing Weavers </a></b><br />
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-Dawn, The <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a></b> 1 August 2015</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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For those open to spider's benefits this comes from Bayer (one maker of pest control products). Even they are thinking of spiders positively...and of course still selling pesticides.<br />
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<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ff6600; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
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3 Ways Spiders Help Indoors</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">1. Spiders eat pests.</strong> Spiders feed on common indoor pests, such as roaches, earwigs, mosquitoes, flies and clothes moths. If left alone, spiders will consume most of the insects in your home, providing effective home pest control.</span></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.3em;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">2. Spiders kill other spiders.</strong> When spiders come into contact with one another, a gladiator-like competition frequently unfolds – and the winner eats the loser. If your basement hosts common long-legged cellar spiders, this is why the population occasionally shifts from numerous smaller spiders to fewer, larger spiders. That long-legged cellar spider, by the way, is known to kill black widow spiders, making it a powerful ally.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">3. Spiders help curtail disease spread.</strong> Spiders feast on many household pests that can transmit disease to humans –mosquitoes, fleas, flies, cockroaches and a host of other disease-carrying critters.</span></div>
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<b>And from www.spiders.us:</b><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #444444; line-height: 28px; word-spacing: 2px;">Spiders help to keep your home, yard, garden, farm, school, and workplace free from pest insects. Spiders help the whole planet in a similar way, preventing insects from becoming overly dominant and destructive. Spiders are in turn food for other organisms, from other spiders to birds, reptiles, and small mammals like shrews. Spider venoms show promise in the field of medicine. Spider silk is among the strongest, most elastic of natural fibers. Synthesized spider silk has proven useful in creating the next generation of parachutes and bullet-proof vests. Native peoples in Papua New Guinea even use the webs of </span><em style="color: #444444; line-height: 28px; word-spacing: 2px;">Nephila</em><span style="color: #444444; line-height: 28px; word-spacing: 2px;"> orb-weaving spiders as fishing nets. The spider is coaxed into spinning within an oval frame that is then used as a net. Spiders are also used as research subjects in such diverse disciplines as animal physiology and psychology.</span></span><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-38911740616880963842015-07-30T14:15:00.002-05:002015-07-30T14:15:49.723-05:00Taking Time - A Note on Presence from Sparrow and Me<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-izVU4goEmSI/Vbp03ZEUNII/AAAAAAAAEaw/62lqUm6qJso/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-izVU4goEmSI/Vbp03ZEUNII/AAAAAAAAEaw/62lqUm6qJso/s320/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="240" /></a>I don't know why I was surprised to find a dead bird early Monday morning when I came outside. The thought that I was about to find one had crossed my mind the day prior. It was the where that surprised me. A sparrow lay in the tray of the bird feeder. I gasped, my heart leapt and I immediately lifted the wire surroundings in order to lift her out. I had just read a reference to sparrow written by someone I met in Chartres, France. <br />
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I cleared a place under the ferns where I lay animals to rest then placed a fern frond on the ground. As I laid the sparrow on the fern I clearly heard, "Don't rush saying good-bye. It isn't time."<br />
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In Monday morning's quiet, I had nowhere to go and nothing to do in that moment so I took time. I took the time to hold this sweet soul cupped in my hands up to my heart and to my breast. I felt that little bird say, "Dawn, I could rest here forever."<br />
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I sang to it and as I did its eyes shifted from open to closed. Though it might say I gifted it, to be with this bird soul as it left was a gift for me.<br />
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At some point in this brief journey that seemed expansive and deep "have to" became "get to." My having to or needing to lay this bird to rest out of obligation and my initial rush to do so out of not wanting to feel turned into getting to and wanting to. I was reminded of the memorable quote in <b><a href="http://www.twildersociety.org/works/our-town/">Thornton Wilder's "Our Town</a></b>" when Emily says, "<b>Oh Earth, you're too wonderful for people to realize you."</b><br />
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Tears of joy trickled down my cheeks as I felt the wonderfulness of Earth.<br />
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Since this experience, the phrase 'taking time' has stayed with me. I think of "time takers" - social media and getting sucked into tv programming or the black hole of the internet world. <i>Taking </i>suggests the lessening of time. Yet in this situation with the sparrow, taking time alongside presence, I was gifted with expanded time. The joy of "getting to" transported me outside the bounds of clock time.<br />
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As I sat with the sparrow I thought of another aspect of 'taking time' - those who take time. You know who you are. You take time to make eye contact and see, really see, the person in the grocery, coffee shop or on the corner. You take time to ask a neighbor or colleague how they are without expecting the obligatory "fine." You take time to stop and see the flower, cloud or tree. You take time to notice, really notice, what you're about to eat and honor the myriad of people connected to the sustenance before you.<br />
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I knew as the sparrow and I sat together that if it had died on the ground, an opossum would have taken it overnight. It had laid itself down exactly where it was suppose to be in the tray of the feeder, the place where it had fed so I could find it. So I could find it and be fed then pass its wisdom along as food for others.<br />
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Imagine the Shift of taking time to be, to practice presence, to hear and see.<br />
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-Dawn, The <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a></b>, 30 July 2015</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.co</a>m</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-77235131119617186842015-07-03T02:04:00.001-05:002015-07-03T02:04:05.289-05:00Into the Canyon Came Love - Message from Sirius It is that time of year when our brightest star <b><a href="http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/sirius-the-brightest-star">Sirius</a> </b>is with the Sun and I am mindful of the vision given me in 2009 while lying by <b><a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g143028-d126794-Reviews-Havasupai_Falls-Grand_Canyon_National_Park_Arizona.html">Havasu Canyon</a></b>'s beautiful blue waterfall. I had been invited by an aqaintance to hike this more remote western end of the Grand Canyon home of the <a href="http://www.havasupai-nsn.gov/tourism.html"><b>Havasupai</b></a>. Traditionally the <b><a href="http://havasuwaterfalls.net/">Havasupai </a></b>were considered the Guardians of the Grand Canyon. The tribe in 1919 was restricted to the area into which we hiked when the national park was designated.<br />
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Each afternoon we'd make our way through the campground to the cool blue water, the gathering place of many campers in the mid-day heat. To the Havasupai these waters were healing and sacred. Knowing this created tension for me as hikers often climbed the rocks and jumped turning these sacred grounds into a water park. Yet I would lie on my towel immersed in the sounds of the falls and the people around me. The second day I was given this vision.</div>
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At first I was shown a five-pointed star. Then a ramp like someone would walk down rolled from the star's center. The star's edges then took a cloud-like shape and the star became a heart. Slowly the heart separated into pieces and vanished.<br />
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I turned this over and over in my mind so as to not forget the symbols amidst the surrounding noise and distractions. I intuitively sensed I had been shown Sirius but didn't know why nor did I really know anything about Sirius.<br />
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As I recorded what I had seen in my journal, I was joined by a dog. I called to his owners as they played cards on their nearby blanket and asked his name.<br />
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"Moses," they shared.<br />
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As soon as I heard "Moses" I knew I <b><i>had</i></b> seen Sirius for I remembered Sirius has been called the "Dog Star" by many cultures.* This four-legged, friendly confirmation affirmed my inner knowing.<br />
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I kept this vision pondering its message and realized:<br />
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<b>Into the canyon, Love came. </b><br />
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<b>From the void where all appeared dark, Love came from the stars </b></div>
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<b>and Love on Earth was born. </b><br />
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<b>Love came from the Stars to dwell in our bodies, minds, spirits and hearts. </b><br />
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<b>And now I know Sirius bathes us with Love especially this time of year when joined by the Sun. </b><br />
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The heavens engage with Earth and us. Is it accidental the Founding Fathers chose this time of year when the Sun is with Sirius for the signing of the Declaration of Independence? They knew the stars, planets, moon and sun dance with Earth and affect all of us. </div>
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Today as I've reflected on this vision I've thought more about the canyon into which Love comes. The canyon at times is internal when we are so very distant from parts of ourselves and neglect who we can become. At times the canyon is between people, loved ones, family members, and friends. At times the canyon is between those who on the outside appear so different from us. A canyon filled with suspicion, fear and mistrust is born of those differences and yet internally we are so much more alike than different.<br />
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The canyon whether within or between holds the energy of Love. </div>
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I imagine a shift in which Earth's people remember every living thing is Love, Love come from the Stars. </div>
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<b>*Today in July's<a href="http://cayelincastell.com/"> Celestial Timings</a> from Cayelin Castell I read: "The Taoists see the Sun as a gateway, so in this case the Sun is opening the door to the Sirius mysteries. The ancient Chinese saw Sirius as a heavenly wolf. In Sumeria, Babylonia, and Chaldea (present day Iraq) Sirius was known as the "Dog Star that Leads." </b><br />
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-Dawn! The <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a></b> July 3, 2015</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A reminder of Love along the trail on the edge of Havasupai. </td></tr>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-91583172402345148802015-07-01T09:40:00.001-05:002015-07-01T09:40:58.485-05:00"God Is Love" - Synchronicity A couple of days ago, the inscription on the backs of notes my mother mailed me crossed my mind. For a period, she always wrote on the outside of the envelope: "God is love." I save many things so I didn't go looking for the envelope but did wonder where it was. I had kept the one that birthed the epiphany for me. A few years ago, I saw those simple words as I took it from the mailbox and I got it.<br />
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God <b><i>IS</i></b> Love. </div>
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In that moment, I knew in my being it was so simple yet profound.<br />
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Last night before bed my August 2009 journal got my attention. I've two wooden crates in which I keep journals. This particular one with its pages falling out and called to me. The cover holds the Eiffel Tower and two other towering structures I don't recognize. I read the first page then went to bed but noted I wanted to read more this morning.<br />
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As I sat outside with downy and red belly woodpeckers at the feeder at 5:30am I opened the journal and there it was...<br />
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The three towers on the cover remind me of how we create structures, steeples on church and city skyscrapers, trying to be gods, trying to reach God yet God is. God is Love.<br />
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God is Love and where love is there is God.<br />
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-Dawn, The <b><a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">Good News Muse</a></b> 1 July 2015</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6848526954247049527.post-25226866679790873672015-06-30T08:47:00.003-05:002015-06-30T08:47:53.210-05:00Teacher. Student. Which Are You? This morning I walked to the bird bath on one side of my yard and found a perfectly shaped small feather. I checked the water level then made my way, only a few steps, to the other side of the yard. Near my chair lay a perfectly shaped large feather.<br />
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I have found many feathers in these recent years but never two so alike, one large and one small.<br />
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As soon as I held them I heard: <b>Teacher - Student </b><br />
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Learning and learned. Young. Old.<br />
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Yet which is the teacher and which the student?<br />
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Age nor education truly makes one a teacher.<br />
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The young have much to teach. For years the children, I've known have shared gems wiser than my writings and far beyond what might seem their years. They are nearer I sense to the great Truths of life in this world possibly because they are not so distant from the other world from which we all come. I am open always to their teachings.<br />
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In the morning's quiet, I ask: <b>Am I as open to the adults whose opinions and beliefs are as opposite mine as the feathers were in my yard? </b>They too offer me something of value, I sense, when I am open and receptive to their experience. And this is where I usually disconnect from those on the other side metaphorically of this Earth "yard." I find those on the other side don't really speak from their experience but instead tell me their beliefs rather than how they came to those beliefs and what their fears or concerns are.<br />
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I held the feathers and knew I am both teacher and student. It is not one or the other.<br />
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What about you?<br />
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<b>I imagine the Shift to humankind realizing we are all teachers. </b></div>
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<b>We are all students in this Earth journey called Life. </b></div>
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Dawn, <a href="http://www.imaginetheshift.com/">The Good News Muse</a>, 29 June 2015</div>
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<a href="mailto:dawn@imaginetheshift.com">dawn@imaginetheshift.com</a></div>
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<b><br /></b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702327874630383049noreply@blogger.com0