To Photo Shop or Not

I consider myself non-judgmental (much of the time) but I may need to rethink that. Or maybe there's a line between judgement and just plain curious. Here's what got me thinking along these lines......

Not long ago at the bank, it happened again. The greeter at the BOA, the one I don't frequent but have as of late, walked up to me and said, "Do you only have a deposit?" 

I smiled, nodded and said, "Yes." I nearly began walking toward her assuming she was about to write a deposit slip for me the way the greeter does at the BOA in my 'hood. 

Instead this young woman said, "The ATM is just behind you." 

From her look I could tell she saw my look, because her smile vanished before I said, "I prefer people over ATM's." 

I stood in the line and met the gentleman in front of me when what I really wanted to do was ask this woman about her looks, not her look. 

Yes, I wondered how she really looked beneath the mask of make-up. Trust me it was a mask and I'm not knocking make-up. (A handful of folks, or maybe more, have probably looked at me and thought I could benefit from make-up. Or they've been curious as to why I don't.)

I wear lip gloss and blush at times but have worn foundation all of four times in the last 5 years - once for Wendy's wedding, once for a video, and twice now for auditions. 

The man in front of me agreed he liked the personal touch of human tellers as well. I shared the last time I stood in line at this particular bank after being encouraged to go to the ATM. That time, I commented on the teller's necklace and learned it was a St. Christopher that had been blessed by Pope Francis. No one was behind me so she and I talked about our appreciation for him. I told her he was enough to make me consider becoming Catholic. In my world, ours was a beautiful exchange confirming I had made the choice best for me, standing in line rather than using a machine. 

After the banking encounter, I ventured to Whole Body. I made a return and as I walked out I passed a boy of five or six with his mother. He was talking and pointing to the magazine rack. The word  "air brushed" stopped me as he continued pointing. His mother bent down trying to understand. 

I understood. This child of six at the most was telling his mother that the thin woman on the magazine cover had been air brushed. I looked at the mother and said, "Your son is wise and he's right." 

Then I added, "Just about everything on magazines and ads are air brushed these days. Actually I'm beginning to think even people are air brushed." 

She looked at me a bit strange. Afterwards I wished I had gotten down eye level with this young soul and said, "Don't ever let anyone air brush who you are! You be You not what you're told to be or think you're suppose to be."

This brief interaction circled me back around to the woman in the bank. 

What's up with our society and world really? 

Fast isn't necessarily better. Machines cannot deliver the personal touch. (I definitely don't want a drone delivering my pizza as I read recently was in the works.) Beauty is only skin deep and in the eye of the beholder. The personal always tops photo-shopped (unless I'm a marketer trying to sell something.) Foundation is an interesting word choice for what we women put on our face. 

And I am curious as to how women and girls spend time putting on make-up, some a lot more than others, covering up how they really look because a magazine, a mother, a model, a societal mode tells them to. 

I'm curious. Are you? 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 13 March 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Dear Winter

"Dear Winter" in Audio. Click HERE.

Dear Winter,

Here you are near your end and many are so very glad. (I write near your end because you and I know it's not uncommon for you to swing through even the south in March or April.)

I'm guessing you've heard. You've been a most tweeted and talked about guest. Similar to last year you've gone viral multiple times. You've trended more than Miley or Kim. You've been all over Facebook, the papers and media. Your offspring, Remus, Pandora and Neptune, made headlines.  The Weather Channel might hardly exist without you. You have stimulated the economies of bread, milk and plumbing companies.

Many have moaned about you as water pipes have burst. I am grateful to have shut the water off each night and drained the pipes.  Except for the night we forgot and our bathroom became a temporary lake, I have not moaned in the typical way.  I do wonder as to the salt scattered about our roads and its effect on our watersheds in ways we are unaware and seem to not care.  I have wondered who owns Metro's salt contract and if the authorities are so afraid of lawsuits that they over salt the roads more than my grandparents did their food.

In the mid-west, my mother-in-law didn't see the grass in her front yard for weeks. About that, I would definitely moan.

Winter, I dreaded you so much so that I once told Jerry I would be living elsewhere when you came around again. At the time I really meant it. I just didn't know where.

After that pronouncement, months passed. Your sibling Spring arrived and stayed and stayed.  Summer came late and left earlier than usual. Fall took a chapter from Spring as its visit was prolonged. Then you came and I had not moved.  Well, I actually I did move.

In looking back, I became a morning one instead of a moaning one thanks to moves I made.

Indoors I placed clear lights around the windows of the room in which I write, meditate and work. They still brighten that room to this day because regardless of the season I decided their gentle glow evoked peace.

Outside I placed a chair near the neighbor's fence by the ferns and Japanese maple.

We moved to this spot of Nashville Earth with its fence and house the year of the Nashville Ice Storm.  We enjoyed five days at least without power. We bundled up , ate out some and walked. We walked a lot.  Then they began cutting the trees after that ice storm.  This stimulated the economies of cutting companies contracted from out of state as well as the anger of those of us who love trees.  And of course there hasn't been an ice storm of that magnitude since until this year and this years didn't rival '94.

I have lived in this house for twenty years and thanks to you, Winter, I finally found this place where every morning I went to my office as it was dubbed.  I and two blankets, a scarf, hat, gloves, two pair of long underwear with pen, paper, coffee, camera and often a burning candle settled into a chair.  On a handful of rainy mornings, an umbrella became my roof.

My "office" 

Surrounded by colleagues, I watched, listened and wrote even when it snowed.

External distractions, caused me to nearly miss half of you these last two years. The after-Christmas fight between Jerry and me nearly did me in. To those with tough skins who don't feel connected to Nature, this will not make sense. I awoke one morning to find he had raked and mulched all my leaves. He didn't know I was attached to the Japanese maple leaves all around my office floor. He was helping, picking up. I was stunned. It took me two days to recover. I got down on my knees as did he and gathered leaves, Nature's carpeting, to scatter at my feet. Carpeting was laid, we made up and I returned to work. This year the water company has been laying a new line for the last two months. Their jackhammers can be heard like a giant woodpecker throughout the neighborhood. It took me a month to realize their noise was why I had avoided being outside.

And speaking of woodpeckers, one of their kin, a Great Northern Flicker has been daily company to me this winter and last. I think he left this week as have the juncos. I still feel the joy from that December day these winter visitors arrived. That same joy will be stirred soon by hummingbirds.

Great Northern Flicker (woodpecker's kin)

Chipmunk has reappeared as has a bunny. I finally saw a vole, kin I suspect to the frozen one I laid to rest our first single digit day.

Winter, you have reminded me of Ice Ages past. Early cave man didn't have groceries to which to run and stock up.  I have pondered what it was like for people then.  I have imagined the Ice Age of the heart melting in our world today.

I have felt kin to Audubon, Aldo and Ansel while noting and photographing the visiting birds, the plants holding their own in various shades of brown and green as well as the trees anchoring my office walls and towering over me.

Oh and I can't forget the other towering Beings.

Bundled like a human burrito, Sun has towered over me many days and I have felt its energy inside me as I've never before experienced it.  While at night, Jupiter, Sirius, the Pleaides and Orion's belt have faithfully proceeded over my office gifting my colleagues and me with energy.

Winter, do you feel my joy and my deep gratitude? You have given me parts of me that I didn't even know were missing. And though I will enjoy not wearing long underwear daily and I've already been outside barefoot this week, I will, like the juncos, so miss you.

Some people probably look at gray-haired, fifty-five year old me and think I am nearer my end than my beginning.  What they don't know is thanks to you, I am in my beginning, for you have allowed me to find this outer place that has revealed to me the inner places.

I SO love you,
Dawn
The Good News Muse 
11 March 2015
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

I wrote this in my office this morning then happened to look left while packing up to head inside. I started not to pick up the scrap nearby but was curious. What was this? I turned over this piece of plastic from ferns planted years ago and read: Pictum (the fern name).  Of course I thought, 'Yes, I picked em' these beautiful colleagues with which to hang out  this Winter. And for that I am so gratetful.

The Elements - Inspired by Blue and Gray

I've seen this scene from our bedroom a multitude of mornings, but never before have the words "blue and gray" crossed my mind until yesterday. 

I glanced outside while reading as those two colors came from nowhere, which is always somewhere.  They were quickly followed by "the civil war."

I am no history buff and only did well in history class because I could memorize the facts required on tests. Had something specific occurred on March 8 during the Civil War? 

I grabbed my computer and instantly learned the battle between the Merrimack and Monitor began March 8, 1862.  I vaguely knew these terms but had no idea what happened. My search took me to various sites where I learned this was the first meeting in battle of ironclad warships, quite different from their wooden ancestors, and neither side actually won. The Merrimack had been rebuilt with much of its wooden structure replaced by iron and the Monitor was reminiscent of the submarines to come as it was primarily under water.

Wood   Metal   Water   Earth   Fire 

I thought of the elements involved in making theses ships and something a stranger said to me during the recent ice storm.  As I dropped my car off at the airport, a gentleman and I had a brief exchange regarding the storm that had just passed through Tennessee. He said, "The elements have some responsibility. They are trying to get our attention." This was a kindred spirit. I agreed, got on my plane for a brief flight and eventually had lunch in the hotel restaurant where I was attending a conference. That restaurant just happened to be named "Elements."

Earth's precious elements have served us for eons. Even during weather crises, the elements serve to help us connect with one another when we are open to it. This was evidenced during Nashville's 2010 flood and the recent ice storm on the Cumberland Plateau as folks from various churches and zip codes crossed social divides to help those in need.

Wood    Metal    Water    Earth    Fire

Fire's energy broke open the nut birthing the great wood sculpture called oak out my window as fire and water made steam propelling these great metal beings I glimpsed through history's window.  

We've the opportunity and gift, the responsibility and challenge of using and harnessing the elements with greater consciousness. What gets in our way? How is it difference and opposition so easily divide? In some people's minds, the blue and gray still fight.

Then I thought of the colors - blue and gray.

Blue represents the throat chakra, the center of voice and will.  Gray is what we are challenged to hold each day as we navigate the issues and differences that create tension rather than resort to black and white. 

If those who died in the civil war were around today, what might they voice regarding the consequences of war such as never seeing their loved ones again? If they could get our attention, like a weather crisis does, what might they say as to our divisiveness?

May we use the elements of our daily life and honor the elements of Earth so that wars are fewer and our differences don't as easily divide us.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 9 March 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Extraordinary In the Ordinary

Do you notice how the extraordinary is embedded in the ordinary?

Many mornings I am attitudinally challenged, but one recent morning was especially intriguing since Jerry and I talked the night prior about my having a morning ritual before getting out of bed.  I immediately knew the essential oil I would inhale before my feet hit the floor. I had not used it in a year or more.  I found it, slipped the bottle under my pillow and fell asleep only to be awakened by the prolonged alarm Jerry forgot to turn off when he got out of bed.

The blaring sound didn't help with easing into my day in a different way.  I grumpily took the essence from under my pillow, forgot to use it and headed downstairs. As I waited for water to boil, I began to work on the top of my new outdoor mug. In trying to get the flip top back on track, I had broken the entire lid. I don't spend money easily and the most expensive mug I've ever bought was suddenly not functional for cold mornings outside.

I then turned off the boiling tea water just in time to see the essential oil bottle nearby land in the floor. The "Heart of God*" broke. Its contents spilled to the floor

The Heart of God was broken.  

Tears welled in my eyes. I knew immediately this is a big part of my challenge in getting out of bed each morning. My heart gets broken and I don't always own my sorrow.  To make matters worse I try to protect or shield my heart to ensure brokenness doesn't occur again. 

I cleaned up the mess and took out bird seed while the tea steeped. On the deck, I bent down to tussle the herbs' green heads forgetting I had an open container of seed tucked in the crook of my arm. Seed was now all over the deck. 

These were not the rituals I had planned to get my day off to a better start yet they were exactly what I needed.

As I pondered the cup, the Heart of God and spilled seed, this creation story came to me. 

The cup appeared empty though in quantum science terms it was filled with invisible energy since nothing is ever really empty. The Divine took the lid off so to speak eons ago and Creation's energy came tumbling out. Humans eventually showed up on the scene and in time God's heart was broken. How could it not be looking at how the earth and her kin are treated as well as people living impoverished, neglected and trafficked.

Yet seed was on the deck. 

In baseball terms, this gave me great hope for the seed on deck represented new souls and old souls ready for a do-over, awaiting their turn at Earth's home plate. Seed on the deck reminded me of opportunities awaiting, opportunities of which I'm unaware but am being prepared. Seed on the deck represented all things new and ready to grow - ideas, inspiration and hope.

As the alarm clock of these times blares, I am grateful for the seed on deck. I am grateful for the extraordinary messages I see and hear in my ordinary life. And although I know I am episodically cause for Divine grief, I also know I am balm for that grief as well.

Pay attention to how the extraordinary arrives in your life. There are secrets hidden everywhere.

*Click HERE for information on Belva Cunningham's line of "Scentered" line of essential oils. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 9 March 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Ella's Valentine - Thoughts on Keeping Close and Floating Away

Audio Link to this story HERE.


If I hoard anything it's paper things, notes-to-self, quotes, information, recipes I enjoy reading yet seldom make and cards, the things made of paper which comes from trees.  People use to receive cards in the mailbox the oblong structure on a post in my case out by the street not to be confused with the today's inbox. The cards in the mail box hold personal handwritten text, unlike generic digital text sent and received today.

I recently went through a minor paper-clearing spree and came across one of these cards, a Valentine saved from a few years ago.  It was from one of my favorite families who use to live next door.  The inside of the Valentine got my attention in a necessarily uncomfortable way the first time I read it.  It did this time as well. 

Drawn in pencil, on the left was a crescent moon on a heart-shaped balloon. The balloon floated among clouds.  Written in pencil were the words: "Keep the ones you love close, don't let them float away." Love, Ella

The first time I read this I felt sick for I knew I had let Ella float away.  How had this happened?

Ella's parents moved in next door as newlyweds and had lived by us for several years at the time of Ella's birth. I forget things easily (one reason I keep my journals) but I think I was the first to baby sit Ella so her parents could go out to dinner when she was only a couple of months old.  She was two-ish when they moved a few houses down the street but it still wasn't uncommon for me to knock on the door just to check in or for us to get together to eat just about every week.

Ella and her eventual sister Lily inspired many of my stories from spontaneously making an airplane out of a cardboard box in which to fly to Madagascar to the special woman we met on one of our Christmas eve adventures. 

Then there was the night I will never forget when I volunteered to baby sit while their parents went out.  I don't ever want that night to float away.  Lily who just a baby was asleep. As I tucked Ella in she asked if I'd lie down by her for a moment.  We lay there side by side on her twin bed as she said, "Aunt Dawn, you know my favorite thing about you?"  Certain I was about to hear, "Going to get ice cream" or "When you take me to the Frothy Monkey" I asked, "What?"

Instead this child of four gently tapped my chest with her hand and said, "My favorite thing about you is your heart. You will always be in my heart and I will always be in yours."

A tear ran down my cheek as we lay side by side on her twin bed and I told Ella she would always be in my heart as well. 

This is the child who at my women's drum circle a couple of years later asked if she could say something. She was the only child there. All eyes turned to her as she said, "Everything in Nature has a heart in it."  Then at the circle's close when we were naming specific people we wanted to hold in love in the circle's center Ella asked, "Why don't we just put the whole world in the circle?"

How have I allowed a child of such heart and love to float away?  How have I allowed her younger sister Lily filled with such spunk and spirit to likewise drift?

It's easy to blame the distance on my spending weekends in the country over the last few years and on Ella and Lily's busy schedules.  It's easy to blame this floating thing on adolescence being the stage and age in which things get awkward between kids and grown-ups.

Yet this floating concept in general is used often in our world. Buddhists practice non-attachment because all things are temporary (ie. they float away.). Many Christians look forward to floating away to the sweet-by-and-by where suffering and sorrow will be no more.  Likewise people often use drugs, drink, spend compulsively, and self-medicate to temporarily float away and relieve themselves of trauma and the tension that comes with living.

Biologists, environmentalists, sociologists and linguists can attest to the fact that species, cultures and languages are floating away at a faster rate than at any other time in recorded history. Some say this floating thing is inevitable as Earth is now in the process of a sixth extinction.

My truth is I let Ella float away. In this painful realization I also know I have allowed slices of my life to float away, time that can never be recaptured. More significantly I let my heart, the core of who I am, periodically float away. In my unawareness and ignorance, I have not consistently valued who I am. I have allowed myself to get easily discouraged and distracted. 

So dear, dear Ella, this is my Valentine to you not just on Valentines but everyday. 

"You hold within the most beautiful treasure on Earth for you hold a compassionate, wise and wonderful heart. 

I did not fully recognize the gift you shared with me ten years ago as we lay side-by-side that night because I didn't at the time recognize the full beauty of my own heart. You saw it. You saw my heart as a four year old! And I thank you for that. I thank you so vey much. 

When adults, like your "Aunt" Dawn, don't recognize things within themselves, it's harder to receive these very things as gifts. When you shared your beautiful words with me in the Valentine, I was just beginning to wake up to who I more fully am.  Waking up is a process, for me at least. It's similar to having a dimmer switch inside that turns the light on gradually rather than having an off-to-on switch.

I came into the world wide awake and free. Then I gradually abandoned myself through trying to please others and make them happy. I began to follow the rules of my time and home. Rules like "Don’t let people see you sad or scared for they’ll judge you, try to change you and at times even make fun of you."I so wish I had known that being made fun of was about them, their discomfort and lack of self-esteem, and not really about me.  I wish someone had told me that I had a beautiful heart long ago and that beautiful, open hearts are touched by everything in the world - the sad, the scary and the happy. Over time, I began to abandon my heart which in turn meant abandoning me. As strange as it may sound I floated away from me which brings me to "keeping close."

The most important thing to keep close is to yourself. Stay close to you for this way you are less likely to abandon yourself. You’ll always be true to you. When you are true to your insides, everything will be alright. That doesn't mean that events aren't challenging, trying and sad at times. If you are true to you, if you keep close to you, it will be alright which brings me to “floating away.”

You, I and all on Earth similar to us are the Heart walking in the world. When you’ve a big, open heart, living can hurt. It can hurt so because the truth is people do float away. They float away as they change, move, grow, get upset with us, have health issues and yes, die. Things float away because change happens. The key, and I still have to practice this daily, is to live in a continual place of keeping close while letting go. 

These are opposites of course, which can be hard for adults who learn over time to think in black and white, good and bad, right and wrong. How can we keep close while letting go? 

Children know we can hold close and let things float because the truth is they never float away. You knew that truth at four years old. When we have had someone or something in our hearts as you told me years ago they never really go away. 

So show up. Stay awake. When you catch yourself falling asleep, meaning you feel yourself disconnected from yourself, check-in and be curious about what's going on in your heart and head because you can always wake up again. Honor your heart and let your feelings flow through you. This way they don't get backed up and stuck inside you which is often why we disconnect and fall asleep to begin with.

Love everything. Even the hard stuff. This is still periodically challenging for your "Aunt" Dawn, but I know our hearts are built in finding joy in loving the hard stuff. Keep your heart open and your mind curious as to how even the hard stuff can benefit and help you. Try to love, love, love everything and remember as you told me years ago, I will always be in your heart and you will always be in mine.  Ella, you were a wise child. You are now a wise girl."

I love you, 

“Aunt” Dawn 

There is much good, such beauty, going on in the world today and I believe there is much at risk in these trendy, techy, hip, fast times.

When we don't recognize the beauty of Earth, we allow it to slip away. When we neglect or forget the beauty in the personal whether in the handwriting of someone we love, the sending of a card, the song of a bird, the feel of grass under our feet, the sound of a friend’s voice, the touch of a pet's fur or simply saying, "I'm scared. I hurt" we risk the floating away of our sensory, sensitive, beautiful, vulnerable selves and the exqusitely personal on Earth. When we don't realize the beauty in getting to be here on this profound planet, we run the risk of missing so much. 

Let's not let Earth float away. Let's not allow the personal to float either.

Show up. Wake up (repeatedly) and practice keeping close while letting go.

...and here's a magical story inspired by Lily - The Earth is Magic.
...and the first story inspired by Ella and Lily The Day My Funk Flew to Madagascar. 
...audio link to "Friendship."
...link to our meeting Corina Christmas Eve at "Gifting One Another."

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 14 February 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Racing Pigeon - Bearing Witness to Freedom and Forgiveness

Audio link to this story is HERE. 

"Dawn, you are freeing me. You are freeing me in a way 

that is more important than all the freedoms found on Earth."

These are the words I heard as I held a pigeon. This wasn't just any pigeon.

In early September, I sat outside watching the morning fog and noticed a down feather float to earth. "Bearing witness" came to mind as I was the only human to see this feather fall.

“Bearing witness" crossed my mind at sunset the day prior as a lone wren hopped in and out of the lattice around the arbor.  In my small Nashville backyard, I bear witness regularly to Nature's wonders.

This particular fall morning, I found a cicada wing on the steps I walk daily to get to my chair. I love cicadas so I picked up the wing. As I did light reflected in a dew drop reminiscent of a many faceted diamond in the beautiful web of the wing. I had just read the day prior of cicadas representing past life connections.

I held the cicada wing and watched the fog as the feather fell in that sacred moment. Bearing witness took precedence over what I had planned. 

In moments like this time deepens. After a few minutes of what seemed like forever, I walked to the front of the house and noticed something in the the street. 

Lately when on the interstate, I'm relieved to see that what I think are animal remains are actually cardboard boxes and what I fear are bird remains are frayed tire pieces. 

This particular morning I hoped I was seeing trash in the middle of Natchez Trace but I wasn't.  I hurriedly got a shovel and scooped up a beautiful bird bigger than a dove and colored similar to a pigeon. I had never seen a pigeon this close. Its legs and claws were large and strong.

A green tag with lettering on one of its legs caught my eye.

Immediately, I called someone I know at Tennessee’s Wildlife Resources Agency and learned I had found someone's racing pigeon.

"Why would anyone race a pigeon? I just don't get it” was all I could say to the woman on the other end of the call. 

Silence hung between us. 

I don't understand why people race animals. In my anger, I want to shout, "Get out and race yourself and if you can't do that, find a way to race through a video game. Stop using animals to satisfy your needs for competition and your personal lack of potency!”

Yet I felt a sense of urgency. If this were my bird, I would want to be notified of its death. Without a second thought, I found the racing pigeon website to which the woman had referred me.  I could plug in the tag number and find the owner.  I felt a strange and sudden relief to see the tag was broken and missing its numbers.

I couldn't reunite the bird with its owner. In that moment this was more than okay. The birds do not have owners. Intuitively I knew the racing pigeon was exactly where it was suppose to be.

I never gave thought to pigeons until I was drawn to a model of a clay passenger pigeon in a gift catalogue a few years ago. Cher Ami was responsible for saving the Lost 77th battalion of 194 men in WWI. Shot through her breast by the Germans and blinded in one eye, she flew behind enemy lines with her life-saving message in a canister attached to her leg. Profound awe still fills me as I consider the tenacity and courage of this bird. 

Just prior to the encounter on my street, I noticed a reference on my calendar to the date September 1  honoring the death of the last known passenger pigeon.  Did you know it is estimated that when white man arrived on this continent there were 3-5 billion passenger pigeons that filled the skies.  America was heaven on earth and the pigeons of course were shot and clubbed. Now scientists are trying to recreate them. Why? So more people can race, hunt and kill them for food and feathers or for messaging in case satellites go down? 

It was no accident I found this pigeon and it found me. I felt like its midwife and mother.  In a moment of grace, my tears of sorrow became tears of joy as I honored this dear bird here in my heaven on Earth. I couldn't think of a more beautiful stopover on its way back to the stars.

I stroked its head and breast and wondered if its owner cherished it as much as I did. Was it loved for its being or was it loved for the joy it brought its owner when it won, if it won? Was it a possession or a companion? 

This divine creation’s kin saved men behind enemy lines yet men have often been its enemy. 

As I held the beautiful body of the racing pigeon, I thanked all pigeons for coming to Earth and asked this particular one to return only if it could do so freely with joy.  I asked that its kin help it find its way home to the stars and I acknowledged my neglect of the animals until late in life. For this I asked forgiveness.

That’s when I heard:

"Dawn, you are freeing me. You are freeing me in a way 

that is more important than all the freedoms found on Earth."

Freedom is a tricky thing. We fight over “freedoms” yet fighting implies we are more afraid than free. 

Even in that moment I was shown how I was not entirely free because I was judging of humankind and of the owner. 

In that moment, the racing pigeon freed me.  

I felt myself honor the relationship it had with its owner and realized this bird quite possibly enjoyed racing. I sent a message of love through the Nashville skies to its owner in hopes he or she would know the racing pigeon had been found and cared for lovingly.  

Even as I read this story five months after it occurred and see: 

"Dawn, you are freeing me. You are freeing me in a way 

that is more important than all the freedoms found on Earth."

I am made aware of another level to the racing pigeon’s message to me. When you and I can hold those judged evil in our society in great compassion and forgiveness,we are just possibly freeing their souls karmically from a least some of their deeds so they don’t have to live with the trauma that caused their deeds to begin with. 

I looked around my small yard. On this cloudy day, the private, dark corner where no one treads would be this bird's resting place. Its body might be nourishment for an opossum though I had not seen one in our yard in two years. I smudged the area with sage and made a bed of fern fronds and clipped Earth’s gifts zinnias, rosemary, and lavender to place over its body.

I returned to my chair to sit with everything that happened over the last half hour.

A moment later, Sun's rays confirmed I had placed the pigeon in the perfect space as light streamed through brightly on that very spot. Then out of the corner of my eye, a fern moved. An opossum ambled among the ferns and hosta leaves. I had been hurriedly making notes in my journal but went inside to use my laptop.

When I returned, all that remained of the racing pigeon were five feathers where it had lain. 

This deep time holds the intersecting of multiple times and lives. The events of these times are like the dew-drop diamond in the web of the cicada’s wing, multifaceted. When we are willing to bear witness and be open to listening with awareness to these events, clarity often arrives.  More importantly when we do this from our hearts, Love and Forgiveness arrive. 

We, like the racing pigeon, volunteer to come and experience Earth. We have the opportunity to engage sacred moments and remember, if we are willing, who we more fully are.

I encourage you to allow bearing witness to take precedence in your life for it is vital that we send out love and forgiveness through prayer or meditation to our world.  Nothing is more important than holding a vibration of love in these times.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 13 February 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Grammy Lessons and Granny's Lesson

For the audio version of Grammy Lessons on SoundCloud click HERE.

One the heels of last night's Grammys, I revisited this story from a year ago and found its message even more vital. Here's my Granny's lesson inspired by Jessi Alexander's Grammy lesson.

On Grammy Sunday 2014 reporter and singer/songwriter Peter Cooper wrote of Nashville songwriter Jessi Alexander's journey of "giving up" after a string of disappointments and losses including a lost record deal, the death of her mother and a Grammy nomination that was taken away through no fault of her own.

Sitting outside at a San Francisco restaurant, Ms. Alexander says she "gave up."  In Peter's words, "She decided to write songs every day, to focus on present moments rather than future fictions."  Giving up ultimately brought about a deeper satisfaction than living with the pressure of the music industry machine. And giving up ultimately led to two Grammy nominations for co-writing "I Drive Your Truck" and "Mine Would Be You." 

I have at times resisted giving up and at others have given up repeatedly.  In our masculine, doing-oriented, warrior culture, giving up is often associated with being weak and a failure.

This singer/songwriter's "Grammy Lessons" reminded me of my Granny's Lesson.

My grandmother as I remember her was more quiet then talkative.  Yet for some reason, Granny told me she quit singing late in life and as a result she lost her singing voice. In retrospect I wish I had asked her to tell me more about why she quit singing. I don't recall the specifics nor do I recall my age when she told me this. What I do distinctly recall is my being the one singing as she and I jointly held the hymnal in church. And I remember Granny's lesson to me as she said,

"If you don't use it, you loose it." 

She said this in relation to her singing voice and it stuck with me. My grandmother quit singing.  She gave up.

Granny and I around 1980 

Granny's lesson is true for one's voice, whether singing or speaking, as well as the body's muscle mass and the brains cognitive abilities. Gyms are abundant for the former while the internet is filled with brain-related studies, videos and games for the later.

There is a greater truth of which Granny wasn't aware.  She didn't know and I didn't know to tell her that just because she lost it didn't mean she couldn't recover her singing voice again.  It may not have been Grammy-worthy but that's not the point. The point would have been to sing.

Which is what I did one day a couple of weeks ago.  From out of the blue, I heard myself belting out, "Sing, sing a song, sing out loud, sing out strong. It doesn't' matter if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear just sing, sing a song."

I smiled as this song came from out of the blue. I suspect my grandmother was smiling too because this song came from my heart and that's what really matters.

Jessi Alexander found profound beauty upon giving up and and I would add going in.  I suspect this young woman went inside herself in order to ask the hard questions, then listen, really listen to the answers that came on that San Francisco street.

Giving up and going in - both require the ability to be with the tension of asking what it is that I am on the verge of loosing if I don't use it - whatever "it" is.  "It" may be as simple and profound as loosing the spirit of empathy and kindness by gradually and over time not extending oneself to others. "It" may be responding in tense times with one's truth without judgement and aggression or fear and reactivity.

Whatever "it" is for you (and it may be more than one thing), the world needs what you are loosing and more importantly you, I suspect need "it."

Personally I am regularly on the verge of loosing my voice, my spirit and imagination and I find these things again and again through encounters usually unexpected with people, those I know and strangers, and through Nature.

My voice may not be Grammy worthy, but I'm certain it's Granny- worthy and in my world that's what counts.

What are you on the verge of loosing through forgetting, not practicing or lack of awareness?

Imagine the Shift of finding It and using It again!  

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 19 February 2014
re-posted 9 February 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com