Every Day is Small Business Day - Inspiration from 1907

"When I begin the day at my inner altar, my day is altered and my vision changed 

so the sacred is more likely seen in everything."

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was designated Small Business Saturday yet every day is Small Business Day for me. I love supporting individuals in this way. Stimulating their economy usually stimulates my heart's economy and its currencies of love and joy.

While visiting local businesses in Eastern Iowa's small towns over the weekend, I was taken by this miniature book at LeClaire Antiques in LeClaire (home I also learned to "Archeology" owned by Mike of Mike & Frank seen on The History Channel's "American Pickers.")

"The Daily Altar" lay on a lower shelf of a glass case.  I randomly opened it and was further captured upon reading:

"Make the very corners of my life centres of spiritual loveliness." 

Hundreds of miles and days later, I revisited that paragraph today and another line gets my attention: 

"help me fill up the vacant places in my life" 

In the morning's quiet of my daily altar time, this passage stirs me again yet differently.  We're well into the season when we're encouraged to fill even more the vacant places of our homes with stuff and our bodies with food, while many have no homes nor food and I think, 'No more filling up!' 

This book dated 1907 was written in a time when vacant places were abundant. Homes weren't filled nor were bellies, yet I suspect many experienced 'enough.' The countryside wasn't filled with sprawl and people weren't unconsciously fed fear through mainstream media. 

I ponder the mystery in this.  No space is really vacant.  Things aren't as they appear.  Winter tree branches outwardly empty and barren of leaves hold life stirring in their veins preparing them for spring. 

No space is really vacant.  Quantum science now tells us the unseen energy of dark matter comprises what we think of as vacant space all around us. Possibility lies in vacancy.

Then I read: 

"Make me a wise gardener"

Ah, this is what I most desire to be a wise gardener of my time, my heart and mind, my body and its energy. 

And as the seed grows in the dark matter of Earth, I desire to see wisely and compassionately into the dark matters on Earth, to see into the shadows of greed, consumption and environmental disconnect and any roots of such that lie in me.  I desire to consciously relate to the places and spaces appearing vacant, to feel and be filled with the energy of conscious creation. 

When I begin the day at my inner altar, my day is altered and my vision changed so the sacred is more likely seen in everything.

This small book over a hundred years old found in a small Iowan business reminds me we are each in our own way small businesses, uniquely created, here to go about the business of being ourselves. Come to think of it, that's no small thing. 

-Dawn! 1 December 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

* And check out Nashville's Small Businesses at Hillsboro Villages monthly art walk today from 5-8. Bring a non-violent toy to donate and get your photo taken with Santa.  Check out the new Kay-Bob restaurant's grand opening at 6 just down 21st. Music, art and free samples. Bring 2 cans of food for 2nd Harvest and get $2 off you meal.  See Friday night's opening of  "23 years of Peace in the last 1,000 years" at Scarritt-Bennett and Saturday's Porter Flea, the Handmade Holiday Market (East Park community Center Noon to 8p),  the Local Table Holiday Market at downtown Farmer's Market Sat. night just down capital hill from the monthly ART WALK. 

It may be winter but shoots of creativity, art and love are sprouting all over dear Earth.