Jars of Light - We Are Made of Glass

 These candle filled jars captured me as we savored music with quinoa/sweet potato tacos and hibiscus tea at local clothing store Imogene &Willie's  "Supper and Song' one evening.

We are light in jars; Spirit in glass, passionate, fiery, shining light in the dark, sometimes burning others, at times getting burned, a gift and a responsibility.

Imagine the Shift if we deeply remembered we are Spirit in glass.

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 21 May 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Honeymoon - Around the Block with My Beloved

This week I'm on my honeymoon after having over the weekend married the Earth.

When we deeply love our Beloved, we can't get enough of them. They're mesmerizing. We want to be with them every second and when we're not together, we carry their image in our hearts and minds.

These photos are one aspect of my Beloved Earth as we honeymooned around the block this morning. She is more than willing for me to share herself with you !

Enjoy and savor. Find delight and wonder. Imagine if you were to take vows to Marry the Earth to what might you commit.

-Dawn, the Good News Muse, 17 May 2011

Energy Rising, Healing Divides in Nashville, Thanks to Egypt, Greece, India and the Cicadas

The Great Southern Brood is rising. No, I'm not referring to another political party or fringe group. The worlds' largest cicada brood is birthing as I write this morning. Their first personal appearance in my yard came Sunday night as I went out flashlight in hand and found them crawling up our home's foundation seeking a hang out in order to begin phase two of emergence, the crossing of another threshold in their heroic journey.

The 13 year cicadas known to scientists as yes, The Great Southern Brood or Brood XIX, are coming out all over Nashville and parts Southeast.

After posting Sunday's first cicada-related musing, I fell asleep smiling recalling my Creepy Crawler kit in the 70's. It came with several metal molds, bottles of colorful goop that could also be poured in swirls and a little baking machine that when heated turned goop into rainbow colored spiders, snakes, lizards and bugs. I fell asleep thinking these childhood creations may have laid the foundation of my being mesmerized by the insect and reptile world, a world that evokes delight for some and fright for others.

I have continued to smile as on morning walks I've found birthing units on light poles and this morning even assisted in some births. There's something at least for me that's deeply satisfying and heartening as to how these creatures live for years in Mother Earth's dark, enveloping soil then find the courage and feel the sensory knowing (or the sap rising and soil temperature right) to come out into the light.

The fact that these particular cicadas venture out every thirteen years makes them even more curious and special. Thirteen is considered sacred. There were 12 disciples with Jesus being #13 just as there are twelve planets around which the Sun #13 rotates. The number 13 is preserved in the measurements of the Great Pyramid. Thirteen is part of the Fibonacci sequence found in aspects of nature such as leaves on a stem, the arrangement of a pine cone or flowering artichoke.

Thirteen reduces to the number 4 ( 1+ 3 = 4) the number of Earth and the astrological correspondence to 13 is the Earth. How perfectly fitting that the cicadas live within the earth, the below, finding nourishment from tree roots and sap that sustains them until it's time to emerge.

The "below" takes me back to the South, the below of our country, where these particular cicadas reside and where like the cicada Southerners are still at times the brunt of jokes and put downs. You know the ones suggesting we still use outhouses and our lacking education (although compost toilets are now in, maybe we're not behind times but ahead of the curve).

Regardless of jokes or innuendo Nashville the city I've lived in or near all my life called the "Athens of the South" is an energetically potent place in an extremely potent time.

There is an energy rising here alongside the cicadas as historically divisive events are being marked by anniversaries related to Civil Rights and the Civil War.

We're now a month into the 150 yr. commemoration of the Civil War. Although I'm not a re-enactor as some folks are, I've recently learned that unlike other Southern states, Tennessee was evenly divided pro-Union and pro-Confederacy. (I think I was hibernating like the cicadas during history class which to some may sound like my being uneducated.) It took two votes in Tennessee for secession to pass. We were the last state to secede and the first to return to the Union after the war. Nearly 1500 battles were fought here, more battles than any state except Virginia and more skirmishes than any state. Each of our 95 counties suffered bloodshed. Because of this, the entire state is considered a Civil War Heritage Area. As with any place of war there is an energetic inheritance, one of courage, sorrow and grief residing in the land and lineage here.

May also marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Right's Freedom Rides. Congressman John Lewis a student at Nashville's American Baptist Theological Seminary and many other Nashville college students were integral to those historic, courageous rides into the segregated South. These young people experienced violence and imprisonment 100 years after the Civil War because of their race. The Freedom Rides are being reenacted and tomorrow May 12th a group of present college students and past riders will arrive in Nashville for a showing of "Freedom Riders" (also to be aired on public tv nationally Monday, May 16th).

(There's a new healing energy available now as evidenced by Fisk's Jubilee Singers performing at last month's Civil War commemoration ceremony whereas fifty years ago the Centennial was started by the removing of the American flag from the State Capitol.)

There are other reasons this land holds the energy of cheers and tears. We were the state casting the deciding vote ratifying the amendment so women could vote. Unfortunately we were also the state, as was much of the South, where thousands upon thousands of Native Americans were forcibly removed from their homes in the Trail of Tears.

Global energies are rising in Nashville to assist in this time too. We are presently host to objects imbued with energies of the Egyptians, Hindus and Greeks. The Frist Museum is hosting Vishnu until May 29th; the TN State Museum hosts King Tut until September and as always the Parthenon hosts Athena.

What does this have to do with the cicadas?

The cicadas carry a vibration, some call it noise. This vibration is reminiscent of a giant rain stick being turned over and over, end upon end.

The work of French otolaryngologist Dr. Alfred Tomatis suggests that upper mid-range frequencies like those of the cicadas have an energizing effect on the brain and ultimately produce an electromagnetic charge. (I'm quoting my friend Garth on this and have since read some about Dr. Tomatis work.)

All I know is I find the cicada sounds soothing yet energizing. They're like a heavenly rain stick raining down energy that is grounding and balancing.

I envision the cicada vibrations lifting us energetically to a higher plane of compassion, wisdom and openness, a plane in which it's possible to heal the wounds of past and present divisions, the civil war and civil rights wounds still held and the civil wars continuing politically in Washington and on Capital Hill here at home.

Joining with the cicadas are the archetypal energies of the Hindu, Greeks and Egyptians. Oh, and the Divine of course. How did I forget we're in the Bible belt!

This is a time of energy rising personally as we assimilate the vibrational shifts of the cicadas and planetary as the energies rise in Mother Earth to be held, healed and wholed.

The Great Brood is rising for a long awaited family reunion, a reunion of the heart and mind, a waking up and coming out at this historical time, a time which the Mayans called the ninth wave, the wave related to Unity Consciousness.

All minds, hearts and hands are needed on Mother Earth to assist in making the shift from fear to love, from holding on to pain and suffering to healing. Mother Earth needs those who can hold and bridge the dark and the light, bring consciousness to the unconscious and with courage heal the divides within and around us.

The cicadas presence are a reminder that those of us in the Great Brood at this time on Earth embarked on this journey long ago. The cicada brood and all of Nature awaits us. I'm in. How about you?

-Dawn, For Today the Cicada Loving Good News Muse, 11 May 2011

Cicadas! (If Mother Nature had a printing press...)

Nashville's cicadas two years ago prompted a burst of local creativity resulting in the selling of posters and bumper stickers and the sharing of recipes, yes, recipes related to cicadas.  I watched and pondered what paraphernalia might read if the cicadas and Mother Earth accessed a printing press.

As I've read of the cicadas emergence now in the East, I've returned to what arrived for me that evening in hopes that people (including myself) will awaken again along with the cicadas.

May 8, 2011

Upon coming home tonight from an out of town trip, I discovered company had arrived two days early.  I was slightly surprised as they were publicly anticipated the 10th.  Yet I knew they were here as soon as I stepped from the car.  One made its presence known in my back yard.  I walked across the deck and there  two waiting me.  I exclaimed, "You're here" and immediately grabbed my camera.

Yes, the 13 year cicadas are here and although some folks will be frightened and avoid going outside, I am exceedingly happy.  The last time these guys (and girls) were here my sister and I videotaped their debut.  We lugged a rather large video camcorder (remember those things?) about my postage stamp size yard recording cicadas crawling up the hack berry trees and foundation of the house.

Again this night they cling to the foundation of our house where they're in various stages of coming out of their skin.  The site of these other worldly beings make some people want to come out of their skin.  My reaction is just the opposite.  Hearing them stirs a deep soul sense of being at home in my body, my skin.

Nature is mesmerizing and cicadas are part of that package for me. I watch and wonder as they are  transformed. How is it they know to start their journey from below every 13 years? What's their process for waking? Are they like humans in the morning? Do some wake up ready to crawl while others are groggy and take their time moving on up? Whatever their pace, they rely on the inner GPS. 

The local newspaper recently carried a story about a guy who's created a line of cicada memorabilia including a sign that reads:  

"Cicada Invasion - Sing, Fly, Mate, Die."

I'm all for creativity, but after reading the story I thought if Mother Nature had a printing press what might she design based on her observations of us?  Her bumper sticker or poster would likely read:

 "Human Invasion - Sing, Fly, Assimilate, Die"

Think about it.  Each of us starts out as children and as such when really young our hearts sing and with our imaginations we fly.  Unfortunately just as we're coming into the fullness and freedom of our imaginative selves, most of us enter schools where song, flight and wonder are educated out of us or manipulated into our inner recesses.  Imagination and the creative streams of inner life are quietly buried.

This process results in many people experiencing the remnants of what the cicadas leave behind - a shell.  People walk around looking alive, but inside feel empty and lifeless. Something's missing.

Fortunately this doesn't have to be the end of the story.  Creativity, art, music and yes, Nature can return to us a sense of wonder and curiosity.  We can wake up from the sleep or spell that's been cast and remember how to sing and fly and leave behind the shells of our former, anesthetized selves.  Instead of human potential dying, I imagine the dying of ignorance, illusion and separation.  

As the cicadas awaken and rise from their many-yeared sleep, I imagine humankind rising and remembering we came here, like the cicadas, to sing and to fly! 

Imagine the Shift our rising brings! 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, reposted 12 June 2013, first posted 8 May 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

When Called, We Respond - A Reflecton after the Flood

On this day a year ago I was cleaning out our basement, the only part of our home affected by the weekend rains. Having wanted to unclutter this area for some time, the flood in a strange way worked in my favor. I just didn't anticipate the catalyst would be coming home to find the washer floating in water.

Compared to those who lost everything including those they love, I've quietly felt my challenges weren't legitimate enough to even consider myself impacted by the flood.

For this reason, I nearly didn't attend "Voices Rising" the ritual of remembering held at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center this week.

Now I'm grateful I listened to the quiet nudging of my internal GPS.

After a beautiful ceremony presided over by Barry Scott's rich voice and book ended by symphony members playing "Fanfare for the Common Man" and Will Hoge singing "Washed by Water," I walked around the symphony hall specifically to see "The Recording Angel."

There she stood quill in hand recording the tones just as I recalled the first time we met. This time though I noticed a quote inscribed by the female sculptor on the back of the pedestal on which the angel stands.

"The recording angel inscribes the tones, that envelope the heart and heal the bones, that lighten life's toll and soothes the soul." - Audrey Flack .

My soul was fed by the folds of her garment, the intricacies of her feathered wings and flame-like hair and the quotes from Einstein, Huxley, Shakespeare and others engraved on the granite surrounding the angel.

I stood in wonder yet wondering what else I might have missed around the symphony hall when a young man walked past. I asked him about other sculptures in the area and he told me of the fireman on buildings opposite side. I thought this an oddity until he shared that the symphony hall is built on the site of the city's first fire hall.

How had I missed the fireman? Tucked near the East entrance, he stands, a memorial to first responders past and present. The memorial described the fireman's symbol, the Maltese cross a symbol of protection adopted from the Knights of St. John who fought for the Holy Land hundreds of years prior.

What extraordinary beauty that the space, the literal land, housing those who fought fire and its potential destructiveness now houses a space for those playing with fire, the fire of passion and creativity. Both firemen and musicians save lives by living from that place that is the inner Holy Land, the territory of the heart.

This took me back to Colquitt, Georgia and the sign that hangs on their fire hall. The sign reads: "When called. We respond."

Last year from Middle Tennessee the call arose and people responded. Neighbors and strangers from near and far answered the call.

The waters have long subsided. We aren't all firemen and musicians, but now just as then we are still called for we are each carriers of the heart's holy land.

We're called to stay awake, to each find our personal way of reaching out to our human kin across the Southeast who have now lost all as well as those in Japan. We are called to stay awake and maintain connections with one another not just in times of crisis but at all times. Through these connections we become the recording angel, the vehicles for healing the bones, lightening life's toll and soothing the soul.

May we each in our own personal way, answer the call that comes every day.

Imagine that Shift in your life and the world!

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 2 May 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Messengers of Flight Along the Sidewalk of Life - The Real Story of Lizards & Birds, You & Me

(This story is an unexpected continuation of the one prior: Hidden in Holes-Hope for the Heart.)

Two days after seeing the bird feed her babies in the wall and wondering who owns the eyes that hide in the sidewalk hole, I came upon half of a small blue egg during my near-daily walk. A sign of new feathered life lay in the grass near the concrete's edge.

I wished for a camera then realized a few yards ahead was the hole in which life hides. Just as I thought this, something darted into the dark. Eyes, I've assumed of a lizard, had glimpsed me.

I walked on wondering if lizard asks, "How did I end up crawling earth?" Does it remember eons ago that its flying kin gave up their wings over time?

I was reminded of all souls before birth before we give up our wings and choose life on earth. Once we get here we tend to forget our wings and the heart's freedom in flight. We construct walls and like the life in the concrete, we retreat.

I once knew someone who thought people, especially many politicians were reptilian. Being the former owner of "Iggy" the Iguana as well as one who loves animals, I didn't like reptiles being dismissed this way.I also had hope for people, even politicians.

Arriving home, I grabbed my camera and drove up the street to take the above photos. I mindfully approached not wanting to frighten the life and there it was.

The lizard allowed me a photo. I thanked it and blessed it. Inside I smiled. It was kin to the lizard Mystery befriended from our second floor window this time last year. Just after the flood, this little meeting of two would convene on the roof on either side of the window. The lizard masculine in my mind hung out with our cat, the symbol of the feminine in eons past. Even then I wondered if lizard on a cellular level remembered that once it could fly. I imagined the lizard asking 'Do you know the secret of flight?' and Mystery conveying, "The secret is inside."

One Christmas Iggy did fly. As I walked past our Christmas tree, he flew from my shoulder into the tree and from those limbs of green I like to never have retrieved him.

Hidden in holes cellularly within or in Iggy's case a tree, lies the heart's wings, flight's memory.

********

On Wednesday this week, I hurriedly walked prior to the predicted rains. For the third time in the past year near the church on the corner, I found a pile of light bulbs. Like the prior times, I picked this little stack up and thought, 'Now here's a story.'

"Discover the power of Jesus," they read.

Yet the story had not come.

Placing the light bulbs in my pocket, on I walked. Overnight rains had washed twigs, mud, rock and leaves to the curb and over the metal grates along Natchez Trace.

The first grate I came to I uncovered with my bare hand. As I neared the next one, I wished for a glove. There lying crumpled at the base of a shrub was a brown, clothe glove damp but ready for use.

I uncovered each metal grate along Natchez Trace wondering what passers-by thought if they even they even noticed the small, smiling gray haired woman squatting at the street's edge with dripping clods and clumps in her hands.

I had learned this art from Judy my 70-something neighbor who does the same thing around our street. I smiled realizing I truly didn't care what others might think which for a Southern woman from my family was really quite a feat. I was transported to the past first to sandboxes then to the memory of ooze as we walked in the ditches on my grandmothers street. After the rains mud covered our feet. My heart was happy.

Making my way homeward, I came to the cracked sidewalk. No sign of life darting to hide. Had the lizard been swept away by the overnight rains?

Just as I got to the block before my street's turn, there lay a little blue egg unopened among large landscaping rocks. What to do? I looked for the nest from which it might have blown then gently placed it under a nearby butterfly bush. I had to get home yet I couldn't leave. I held it and said, "Tell me what to do?"

"Take me home. Take me home and remember I am a symbol of the new. I hold the new man.
I hold the new you."

Moments later I sat writing this piece the little blue egg tucked inside a clothe heart near my own heart mindful the next day I would return it to the base of the butterfly bush.

Butterfly, birds, lizards and Mystery messengers of transformation for you and me.

*************

This morning the realization came that for the past six days, I had been given the pieces to a story in reverse, the story of love and rich life here on earth.

We arrive here whole like the egg, dropped from the Universal heart's nest. Most of us land in rocky places unaware that above us hovers the butterfly bush. In these hard places, heartache, disappointment and trauma covers our hearts and who we are, stopping the flow like the mud covered grates. We forget our winged selves and like the lizard we hide, feeling vulnerable, fearing the eyes of life and light. Then through gentle hands or kind words, the mud is lifted. We feel a shifting, a stirring of our wings. We've the opportunity to experience the current of love (for some the 'power of Jesus' as the light bulbs read). This Love if we receive it breaks open the egg, allowing our hearts to take flight. This is how it was meant to be, fear and hurt when we're receptive are part of the path to becoming free.

As I completed the paragraph above and thought it was time to return the little blue egg to the butterfly bush, I heard a slight crack. I took the egg swaddled in feathers from the heart-shaped pouch. For 24 hours I had kept the egg safe. Now the pouch was damp. The story was complete and I had accidentally broken the egg. I wept as I took it out. A crumb of a dried rose petal from my father's funeral was stuck to the egg. I had once carried rose petals in this pouch.

I cried and cried. The me that loved mud between my toes as well as climbing trees held hope that somewhere between home and the butterfly bush I would find a robin's nest in which to place the egg.

Life seeped from inside the egg, like the life in my heart flowing from my eyes reminding me of the new me, the me that finds joy in vulnerability. If I someone who's lived decades with a walled heart can fly, there's hope for the lizard and humankind.

Love through Life's story pours from the cosmic egg.
Receive.
Let your heartbreak open.
Let your heart break open.
Fly. Be free.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 28 April 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Hidden in Holes-Hope for the Heart

Recently I've been to Starbuck's repeatedly. Well, four times in two weeks which
for me is comparable to a 'grande' and for many not even a 'tall.' I've sat in the
drive-thru watching the bird that enters the wall.

Yes, a little brown bird, a sparrow I think, has a nest in the wall in the adjacent building. Yesterday it swooped down to the pavement below, pecked fervently at a cracker tossed out, then carried bits to the open mouth visible at the cave entrance.


Similarly two consecutive mornings this week as I've ran, I've glimpsed a sunning lizard dart into the dark beneath chunks of broken sidewalk. Every time it spies me before I spy it.

Birds and lizard.
Life hiding within the holes of hardness.
Hardness protecting life.

Hope for the hardened heart.
-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 23 April 2011