Imagine the Shift of Letting Fire Fly

This morning as I sat down outside I noticed in the adjacent chair a firefly spinning its wheels or legs as is firefly’s case.  The morning dew on the blue plastic prevented it from gaining traction. I placed a magazine close enough for one leg to finally make contact then walked to the yard swing to hold the magazine, listen and be with this little bug of which I had been thinking.

Just Monday night I was contemplating fireflies and how their numbers seem to have diminished. They were abundant when I was a kid. Even now in my yard in the country I’ve only seen two thus far.  Are fireflies a casualty of decades of chemically laden lawns?

The shapes and colors on its head were the first thing that caught my eye.  The black area between the orange reminded me of the vesica piscis.   The vesica piscis is the oval shape formed when two circles slightly overlap.  In sacred geometry, this overlap represents the place of creation from which all other shapes and patterns in geometry come.*  I think of it as the place of the Unknown and found the firefly’s black oval perfect for representing the unknown void and the unseen dark matter through which quantum science suggests we are connected. 

At times I wonder if things like the firefly diminish because over time humankind forgets.  In our lives filled with technology and haste, do things of nature fade as we stop noticing and naming them? 

In terms of the Vesica Pisces, are fireflies dying, returning to the dark from which they came or do they wait in the dark hoping we will not forget them?  If fireflies were suddenly “trending” might those left roaming our yards feel our vibes, sense our texting and tweeting of them? Might they stay with us on Earth or think they were only a passing trend in our distracted lives?  Might those waiting in the dark feel us calling them forth?

As co-creators with the Divine, we’ve an untapped capacity for calling forth into form that which is needed.  Some might say fireflies are the least of needed things. I suggest we need them for their light in the night as well as for the wonder, curiosity and magic they evoke.  I need their blinking bodies as a reminder that I carry Light especially in what can feel like dark times within and without. 

Even the name "fire flies" connotes sparks of creation coming from the dark.

I didn’t place the fire fly on a specific place on the magazine.  It crawled to ‘fact and fiction’ and hung out for quite awhile as I wrote this. I felt like I was being reminded this is both fact and fiction for me, not one or the other.  It is a fact in my personal fiction that I need to be reminded over and over, again and again that if I am really going to grow and be who I came here to be then I must patiently and courageously sit in the unknown, listen and sense the stirring, the stirring of creation’s fire wanting to fly from my insides.  

We carry a creative capacity so much more profound than we realize. In this moment I imagine the shift of  letting fire fly. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 18 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

* To learn more about Sacred Geometry, I highly recommend Michael Schneider's "Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe."

Imagine the Shift - Morning Light & Hope for Man

(Most weekdays for the past two months, I can be found somewhere in my postage stamp-size yard near I-440 not that far from downtown.  This brief Musing came as I sat this morning tucked in a corner of my deck as Sun rose.)

Then I look up and see sunlight in the top of one tree this morning and think: 'There is hope for man.  As long as another day dawns, we are given yet another chance to do this love thing with one another, to be this love thing with ourselves.'

I quickly note the above and look up again to see the light has spread. It shines not just in one tree, but two then three. In only a few moments time, Sun's first rays have traveled across the continent of my backyard.

I make a few notes then look up again to see light moving still. As day's ensued and Sun begins to climb, the light lowers.  From head to toe, it begins to move down the tree's body.

As the hum of traffic increases and a jack hammer begins its woodpecker-like rhythm on the nearby overpass, I feel I've been given the secret to life and love through light. 

Morning light reveals how love travels quietly across the land. I still believe there is hope for man.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 16 May 2012

dawn@iamginetheshift.com

My Father's Brown Baby and Me

I had already been up for two hours this morning when 7 o'clock neared and suddenly I was ready to return to bed.  Sleep overcame me as I held the small brown doll from my father's childhood.  I had reached for something else on the shelf when the doll's arm fell to the floor.  I gently replaced the arm and was reminded of how I ignore her.  

As best I recall, I got her when my grandmother died in 1981 and sadly my father never knew I had her.

After the flood two years ago, I found her again in a trunk from my childhood, a trunk that had protected her all those years even as recent from the rain water in which the trunk floated.  My father's brown baby has been on a shelf in my office ever since. 

My intention this morning was to sit and be with the heart-shaped template filled with rocks that I found the day we went to look for my father's grave marker.  Instead I sat holding this doll and as I did I felt heavy with sleep.

It was all I could do to sit up. Was I in some way sensing the energy of my father as he fell asleep with this doll at night or was this the energy of my grandmother who sewed this dear doll's little dress?  Such heaviness my grandmother must have felt, abused and controlled by my grandfather.  It was only after my father was gone that I began to really wonder what he had seen between his parents.  Did this doll belonging to my dad provide comfort for his young fears at night in bed?  I wish I had asked him if he ever stood between his parents as his father shouted at his mother the way I stood between my grandparents once.

I wish I had really known my grandmother.  I wish I had asked questions, even simple ones like:  How was it growing up in your family? Why did you quit driving?  And then there were the questions I didn't know to ask when she was alive like: How was it living so near your family yet forbidden by the man you married to visit them?

The home in which I visited my grandparents is now gone. I was devastated to see the structure had been leveled years ago. All that remains is the stone stack of the chimney that was attached to the fireplace.  I can still see glowing embers as the black metal door was opened to lay in more logs. 

The outer structure was leveled yet the inner structure lives on.  The unspoken rules around not asking questions, not inquiring of much of anything other than 'Can I help with dinner?' the rules that kept us from being personal and not rocking the boat, the rules that protected us from vulnerability, those rules live on.  Those rules erected walls between us keeping us from one another, but also created walls within keeping me from myself and I didn't even know it.  The inner devastation has been profound and for that I feel very sad. 

I awoke early this morning thinking about how hard it has been to let myself be loved, I mean really be loved.  In this way I am my father's brown baby, symbolic of his disowned self, his feeling, needing, wanting to be loved yet contained, controlled, frightened and controlling self.

This morning before the sun rose, before I rediscovered my father's doll, I went outside.  I lay on Mother Earth face down and as I did I heard:  "Let your brown body be loved by my brown body.  Let your brown body love my brown body for I too know separation, isolation and loneliness.  I know what it's like to be neglected, unloved"

Today we refer to the devastation of Earth in relation to the mistreatment and neglect of the land yet this morning I suddenly realized:  Why is this surprising?  How could humankind treat Earth any other way when there's been such unacknowledged devastation and neglect of our insides, our inner terrain.

I write of Mother Earth and Nature for that is where I feel most connected, alive and loved yet there is a level in me and I sense in Earth, a level unexplored desiring to be held, trying to get my attention like my Father's brown baby within that I have so ignored. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 15 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Imagine the Shift Opens New Business - You Can Too!

The labor and deliver room is busy this morning.  I listen for sounds of new life as parents move to and from the little ever green by our back door.

When I first noticed the robin couple flying in and out of the thin green limbs, I was immediately apprehensive fearing the floppy, vertical limbs couldn't hold a bassinet.  I watched the nursery being built for a week before finally peering in one moment when construction had slowed.  As I feared all the building materials had fallen to the ground.  I found a bit of rope and put on gloves so as to not impart human scent and wove the rope in, out and around the limbs.  Then I placed twigs in horizontally and some of last Fall's leaves.

The determined robins continued building.  My offering became the basement as the robins built a level above mine.

For a month, they've continued to come and go yet earlier on this May morning I sensed a shift.  Birthing has occurred. I cannot imagine a finer place to be born than in our yard filled with ferns and hostas, fountains of green, encouragers of birth. 

The presence of a nest so near the back door and ten feet at most from my writing and star watching spot has slightly cramped my style.  Initially I avoided using this door for when I did the parent's left the nest.  For the longest if we were on the deck, both parents would watch from a limb afar seeming to weigh in on whether it was safe to come home.

As I watch this morning an inner voice chimes in: It's just a damn bird. 

What?  To me it is a sweet life. Because I love I can't imagine not caring especially about an animal's life.

Maybe if this person had had someone like me to tend their birth they would not have grown so callous.

I hear: It's never too late.

My challenge is to tend their soul today. To send out on these cool airwaves vibrations of love, not just to the robins, but to my human kin all around this Earthen delivery room so appreciation for all life is birthed.

Of course their soul is my soul, the voice within is one of the many in mine.  My greatest challenge is tending my personal capacity for callousness.  Because I love, I care and at times my heart becomes so heavy and full that I tune out rather than cry out.  I ignore my sadness and throw in the towel causing an inner disconnect.  Yet seeing robin parents and hearing peeps from the nearby labor and delivery room brings me home to my heart and home to Me.  

*******

Then I walk into my office and see vases of flowers, each bouquet in a state of dying. 

'My office is a morgue,' I think.  And for the first time ever I take sage and smudge the flowers.  

Why have I not thought of this before, this ritual of honoring and thanking roses, peonies and iris for sharing themselves with me?  I feel such gratitude in this realization. 

In the tissue paper petals I see nooks and crannies and lines unnoticed when these same petals were filled with watery life a week ago.  In these petals, I see my drying skin. I have never this closely looked at leaving blossoms nor have I considered Earth a morgue.  Yet that is what it is, isn't it or at least a funeral home? 

And maybe this is one reason why my inner voice can be so harsh.  To live in a state of constant birthing and letting go is tricky.  I'm much better at letting go than I use to be but if I stay awake I experience new layers of holding on. 

I awoke recently in the middle of the night with watery life flowing down my face.  Flowers were on my mind.  I awoke sobbing, grieving the loss of flowers and their having to die.

I lay in the dark trying to console myself knowing this is part of their seasonal cycle, yet my heart was breaking of a deeper sorrow.  I knew so many flowers were dying without being noticed, really noticed, fully embraced and taken in deeply.  I'm guilty of this not noticing when I excitedly take flower photos to share yet don't fully take in their beauty and grace in that moment. 

Yet I sense I was also grieving another flower, the flower of the heart that grows callous and shuts down.  My heart's known "Closed for Business" well.  Its shopkeeper has been the critic that called the robin damn.  Its shopkeeper started with a huge heart but slowly built a damn. 

This is how I've forgotten that on this precious portal called Earth between the coming and going, arriving and leaving, entering and exiting, I've an inner heart flower through which to access the Divine.

In my heart I want to hang a new sign:  Open for Business - Welcome Births, Deaths and All That's In-Between.

In this business there are no taxes to pay or license for which to apply, no inspectors nor codes.  Well there is one code. The only code is Love.

Imagine the Shift to the code of Love today as people around the world open the business that is their heart.

-Dawn! The Good News Muse  30 April 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Saved by Farmaceuticals

This Musing was first posted in 2009.  That summer I had two raised beds. This year I’ve five along with random garlic beds and potato patches.  They do not supply all our tomatoes, squash and beans but they supply something more valuable. As I discovered that first summer, they feed me and free me.  


In the beginning, I didn't know I needed to be fed or freed.  

Here's how it started.  It started with a seed. 

The speck at the tip of this pen is a lettuce seed.  I had no idea that leaves of lettuce really started with something so small.  Yes, I knew growing things came from seeds, but not something so tiny until that summer.    

How many people today will eat lettuce on a burger or from one of the millions of salad bars around the world or dine in a fine restaurant on a simple Caesar salad and realize the lettuce leaf they put in their mouth grew from a seed this small?  

In 2009, I lined a tray with trans-plantable seed cups and planted seeds.  Something magical happened for me when I discovered sprouts emerging from darkness, seeking light and finding form.


Thanks to Happy Frog fertilizer (who could resist a fertilizer with a name like that?), raised beds from Gardener's Supply and a truck load of dirt, my first garden took form. This would not qualify as a garden for my grandparents who had two significant plots that fed them. But this 8 x 4 space became my Farmacy where I first realized gardening was good for my physical, mental and spiritual health.

It was mid-April. I had just cleaned the driveway of twigs and leaves earlier that morning only to walk out and find bags of dirt at varying stages of emptiness strewn about as Jerry planted azaleas. In all fairness, he had no way of knowing I had just cleaned the driveway, yet I went to my default setting of disappointment and silence. Suddenly I felt like I had to work in the garden, like this was the garden's fault, yet I had a truckload of dirt to finish layering with Happy Frog and kelp.

In minutes of creating earthen lasagna, my mood completely lifted and shifted. Contrary to the spandex lifting underwear advertisers suggest women should wear, I prefer, "My garden shifts and lifts." I was chuckling over this when I realized my anger and resentment were missing.  All my negativity was gone and I had my first Farmaceutically induced epiphany.  Growing food was good for my mood and my relationship. I was content, unusual for a Gemini. I was present and engaged, unusual for many folks these days.

This is my first memory of wanting Farmaceuticals. I'm not referring to corporately grown, perfect appearing, chemically covered, nutrient depleted vegetables although that's better for you probably than fast food.  I'm advocating for food birthed in one's own back yard or in pots on the patio and if not there at least from area farmer's markets.

I thought of the depressed multitudes that could benefit from Farmaceuticals. So many people are given anti-depressants even when they're just in a minor funk. Many of these people trade the funk for feeling flat and nothing at all, as anti-depressants often numb one to all experience.

Farmaceuticals on the other hand are all about experience. I was grateful to have my resentment lifted. Chronically held resentment ruins relationships and not only contributes to depression but to a myriad of physical symptoms (ultimately benefiting pharmaceutical company CEO's bank accounts).

This was also the moment I realized growing a bit of food should be mandatory for everyone, especially our representatives and senators. I think it would be impossible to maintain ill will and mean-spiritedness if you were required to dig in the dirt.  I know.  We really can’t mandate growing one’s own food and if government did someone would protest with “My government can't make me eat vegetables from my own garden." 

Yet Farmaceuticals is one piece of the answer to our present healthcare jigsaw puzzle. I know some people legitimately need drugs to live. I also know I'm not the first person to be offered unneeded drugs by a doctor. Years ago I awakened with a chest pain. My doctor suggested I call a well respected heart specialist. I was seen immediately and given an EKG which proved normal. Upon hearing my mother had mitral valve prolapse, the doctor asked me to do deep knee bends while he listened to my heart. He heard nothing irregular but said I would inherit my mother’s condition and wrote me a prescription.  He said although I didn’t really need this now, he was certain I would eventually have her condition.  I said, "No thank you" and walked out through the packed waiting room where I wanted to shout, "Just because your doctor prescribes it, doesn't mean you need it. People, wake up!"  All the way home, I debated entering medical school at mid-life. I was outraged and stunned.

Now I'm just grateful to be pushing Farmaceuticals. My gardening continues three years after my first mood lift.  Being engaged with growing things continues to bring me joy. Every time I clip bugged leaves, smell a tomato leaf, mix in manure or plant something new, I experience a felt sense of connection to nature and myself. We are so loved by nature yet most don't realize the depth of this love. 

In the meantime, tending this tiny raised bed is teaching me about love, to give, engage and take time to be. I feel the joy of engaging as I talk with the plants, thank them for their presence and encourage their growth. 

I've seen heart shaped leaves birth green beans and star shaped blossoms become squash. I'm saved by Farmaceuticals each day as I witness the miracle of growing things.

And although this years seeds haven't born fruit, I still harvest the memory of years prior and experience the alchemy of seeing plants I've tended over time become nourishment for my body and the tomatoes from a local man nearby become the spaghetti sauce and salsa that we'll enjoy for some time. Every yellow squash, green bean and zucchini, I cooked one year came from my personal grow-cery

If we learned how to be fed at the levels that are available to us in a garden or in Nature in so many ways, there would be no healthcare debate.  Big Pharma wouldn’t exist if we chose to invest in Little Farma.

Think about it:

Farmaceuticals are packed with nutrients. 

Pharmaceuticals are packed with chemicals.

Farmaceuticals alter the mood without addiction as a risk. (Okay I admit, I'm already buying seeds for next year and have a lettuce tent in which I hope to grow greens through early winter.)

The only pre-existing condition related to Farmaceuticals is attitudinal, a willingness to get dirty. 

Pre-existing conditions related to pharmaceuticals result in higher premiums or make you ineligible for coverage.   

With awareness, Farmaceuticals feed one at many levels, the entire heart, mind, spirit and body system.   

Pharmaceuticals feed the system, a system that whether intended or not creates dependencies and addictions to many medications while financially benefiting a select few. 


Of course, I would be remiss to not mention side effects of Farmaceuticals. (This is where you imagine me speaking in that hurried, low and serious tone heard at the conclusion of drug commercials.)

Side effects include most of the following. Time spent in front of the television and computer will decrease. One's home as well as friendships may be neglected. Food may taste differently. This does not suggest taste bud disturbance. You are actually discovering how vegetables are supposed to taste. Farmaceuticals may result in random episodes of philosophical wonderings and creative surges. You may be called names like the guy on YouTube who thought he was insulting me by calling me a quaint philosopher. I found this a complement.  Farmaceuticals also carry a risk of heart break due to the interaction of bugs and fungus on growing things. It is advised to engage and enjoy the process without attachment to outcome. If you experience any of the above, do not consult your doctor.  Feel free to contact me.

Last but not least you may experience sensations of extreme peace and wholeness. 

The above is based on the experience of the FDA (Freed Dawn Administration) and has stood the test of time now for three summers going into the fourth.  This does not mean the above is true for you or that the FDA is assuming responsibility for you.  This would make the FDA liable and thus easily sued.   

In the meantime, rather than take my word for it, grow tomatoes this summer or get yourself to the nearest Farmer's Market and ask specifically for organically grown vegetables.  Don't let the price deter you.  Buy a bit and savor. Savor Flavor and be saved by Farmaceuticals too!  

-Dawn Kirk, The Good News Muse -08/14/09
(revised 7 May 2012) 

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Turning of the Quilt of Time

Not knowing the magnitude of the coming rains the day of Nashville’s 2010 May flood, a friend and I went on a field trip of sorts.  (Field trips aren’t just for school kids.) She had driven to our house in the country for lunch and I suggested we go to a nearby quilt show. 

I grew up with grandmothers who sewed but one in particular who I remember periodically quilting.   She suspended her quilts from a frame in the middle of the living room floor. I recall the magic and safety of sitting under one of those quilts as it hung suspended like the starry heavens overhead as she stitched above me. 

At the show, my friend and I oohed and ahhed struck not only by the beautiful fabrics and patterns but the intricate stitching that held each quilt together.  Threads visible upon a closer look spiraled and curled with extravagance. Not being bold and colorful, these stitches were easy to miss unless one stopped to really see and be with each quilt.   

I walked the aisles created by hanging quilts in the exhibit hall aware these works of art and heart would in two weekends be replaced by guns, yes guns, as the building we were in would be house a gun show.  

I quietly walked and wondered, contemplating the symbols of quilts and guns.  Both, I realized, are connected through love.  I thought of the millions of quilts stitched by the caring hands of women over time desiring to protect loved ones from the cold and the guns held in the hands of men desiring also to protect loved ones from perceived harm.  I walked and pondered the metaphor of patterns.  Our personal patterns sewn together make up a life and when combined create the larger patterns of community, culture and society. 

One of the scheduled events of the day was a quilt turning.  Neither my friend nor I had seen a turning so we decided to watch.  Decades old quilts neatly stacked on an antique bed were held up one at a time by two women as a third woman described the origins and pattern of the quilt shown.  The quilt was then turned down at the foot of the bed as another was held for viewing.  

Four or five quilts into the turning the potential high winds and rain were announced.  Being nearly two hours east of Nashville, we didn’t yet have rain but we parted. I took my friend home then worked in the yard and considered returning to the show before finally turning on the tv. 

The first image I recall is etched on many minds I suspect for there floating by a Nashville interstate was a portable school building with cars and trucks bumper to bumper in rushing water.     

I sat in shock and disbelief watching the city I live in and love inundated with rain.  I sat listening to the commentator yet in my head I heard these words that were not mine.  I heard, “We are bearing witness to the turning of the quilt of time.”

I didn’t know where this came from nor what it really meant but I knew I had been given a truth.  

Two years have passed since I began contemplating patterns and heard the above statement.  In that time, I’ve been a Watcher, one of the many today similar to the women who stood on either side of the bed holding up quilts of personal and societal patterns for those who will to see including myself.

As with any crisis no matter the size, opportunities abound for the disrupting of entrenched patterns and the rising/piecing together of new patterns.  In the flood crisis, Nashvillians were exemplary in this regard. People reached across the divides of zip codes, color, gender preference and religion. Our one-ness was amazing and our one-ness was felt as patterns related to competition, control, detachment and isolation were replaced by compassion and connection.   

Since Nashville’s flood, there have continued to be crises especially of the environmental type.  From Japan’s tsunami and flooding all along the Mississippi and New England to the tornadoes destroying homes and killing many North, East, South and West of us and even recently wiping out a rural town.  Nature has continued to bring challenges. 

Does Nature know we've this pattern of easily forgetting we are more alike than different?  Does Nature know we need to be reminded of the pattern of love we hold within?  In crisis we remember patterns that are ever present in the heart yet have been forgotten over time and stay buried midst our busy lives.

Politically on the other hand, things could not seem more divisive.  Muslims, immigrants, women, organic farms, wolves, the Arctic, Mother Earth and just about everything related to Nature and democracy seem to be under attack primarily by systems run by men (and women who act like men) with monetary influence and entrenched power. 

Those following the patterns of the patriarchy are participants in trying to maintain the hold of the patriarchal patterns of competition, control and dominance.  Most of us have participated in this pattern's conveniences and benefits.  These patterns though have also contributed to toxins, chemicals, cancers and stresses unimagined by prior generations.  These patterns have contributed to the exploitation and rape of Mother Earth, women and children, the exploitation of the poor, the people and land of Africa and many Asian countries.

Ironically those at home at least on the attack would say they are under attack.  They live in fear of their guns being taken, their children wanting to live with someone of the same sex or have an abortion and their money being taken.  Their attitude is “I made it so I deserve it all” and “If any one comes to take what’s mine I will attack.”  They live in fear of communism so much so that it’s nearly impossible to have a dialogue about taking care of the poor or the environment without being called a communist. 

As I reflect on the words I heard in May 2010, “We are bearing witness to the turning of the quilt of time” I now see these struggles as symptoms of the turning of the quilt of time. 

We have before us the quilt of these Turning Times. Let's thank Mother Earth for being the exhibit hall that holds the display of our many patterns and ask her forgiveness. I ask forgiveness for my unconsciousness and ignoring. Let's honor the male souls who came to Earth and took on the karma of the wounded masculine, especially men in power married to the patriarchy who have caused such damage and pain.  Let's honor women who have held patterns of fear and apprehension causing us to not act and take risks or when we do the risks are measured.  

Let's lay to rest at the foot of Time's bed the quilt of these dying feminine and masculine patterns within us and between us.  

Then let us sit down around a frame like my grandmother had and begin the piecing of new patterns in peace, welcoming the quilt of living and loving from patterns of greater awareness, compassion, understanding and feeling, the quilt where patterns are sewn with threads of love stitched side by side.  

Just as I felt the security of sitting under my grandmother’s quilt like it was the sky above me, we live under the starry heavens quilted with constellations, the moon and sun.  Like the field trip that started this story, life on earth is a field trip from the stars as we experience the field of love in physical form.   

We are the quilters. We each hold the threads in this the turning of the Quilt of Time. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 4 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

!!! Wanting a Saturday road trip? Check out the Quilt Show in Sparta, TN 90 miles East of Nashville on I-40 just off Hwy. 111 at the White County Fairgrounds.

And coming to the Frist Museum May 25th "The Quilts of Gee's Bend," a show you do not want to miss!!

Of Drones & Dreams - Waking Up

This morning a large black bug flew back and forth over our house and yard as I thought, 'This isn't what I thought aliens would look like.'  The bug landed in the yard and I realized it was a flying machine as its wings moved forward and became mechanical arms. I awakened trying to get the cats inside before the machine saw us.

I'm unaccustomed to dreams like this as well as talking early in the morning, but I came downstairs and immediately blurted the dream to Jerry.  When I finished, he held up the newspaper and said, "This may be why you had your dream."

The main story in the local section covered MTSU an area university's new drone program sponsored by the US Army, Department of Defense and NASA.  Drones are used by the government to kill long distance and gather intelligence, but these drones we're assured will be used in agriculture for example to to study "plant health" by providing instant data to farmers of large fields so they can quickly assess pest problems, water issues etc.  Humans are more of a pest to Mother Earth than are bugs but that's another story. I want to go to MTSU and say, "If you're really concerned about plant health, do something to stop corporate made pesticides."  The news piece didn't cover the fact that large fields today are connected to AgriBusiness Corporations like Monsanto nor did it reference the incestuous ties between these corporations and the military.

I had oddly enough already been thinking of drones.  Sunday I met a dulcimer player who strummed a few chords to explain something to me and referenced certain strings being drones.  Even then I thought of the drone bee who mates with the queen as well as the military's killing machines.

I walked away from the dulcimer player wondering 'Who's in charge of twisting words related to Nature and beauty and appropriating them for violent, invasive use?'

How is it a bugging device came to be called a bug and a person who spies is a plant? A bug pollinates crops and flowers and plants provide food, medicine and beauty.  Plants aren't people and bugs aren't devices.  They are both very alive.

A couple of years ago I read 1,000's of words related to Nature had been removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.  The dictionary's spokesperson said the majority of children were now urban making words like wren, dandelion, acorn and lavender obsolete!

It is so not okay that Nature is pummeled, devalued and dying while Nature's words and mechanisms are co-opted by corporations related to the military and agriculture and used to describe things and processes that dominate Earth and kill humankind. 
 
Yet on a deeper symbolic level I am not surprised.  This all strangely makes sense.  The drone bee dies after mating with the queen.  The dear drone bee gives its life so we can have honey and food.  Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of 1/3 of our food crops. (Insects as a whole pollinate 90% of plants.)

I think of those drones who die as representing the wounded masculine especially the millions of men who give their lives to defend and protect while all the while they're dying inside.  They live with unacknowledged, vulnerable, hurting heart lives often walled off from this awareness even themselves.  I weep for the wounded masculine and men who have never known or have gotten disconnected early in life from the beauty of who they are inside.  It is tragic how millions of men and now women are swept up in war, real war and the war  of competition, trying to make their millions or just survive, labeling other human beings as collateral damage or bad guys, insects as pests and Mother Nature as the enemy.  We have gotten it so wrong.  

When I'm overwhelmed, undisciplined and not using my healthy masculine self, I hope to wake up and discover this whole thing is just a dream.  But it's not and there is waking up to be done.  

It's time to reclaim the greater dream of what can be, to love drones as related to dulcimers and honey bees, to be grateful we've Nature and claim our true Nature.

It's time to Wake Up to who we came here to be! 

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 3 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

*Here's the link to the Oxford Jr. Dictionary piece.   

The related Musing "Of Birds & Words - Let's Come to our Senses." 

The Tennessean piece MTSU Creates Buzz Over Drone Program

Imagine the Shift's New App

It's occurred to me recently that when I awake in the night receiving messages I record them yet I don't say "Thank you" to their source. Appreciation in that moment doesn't cross my internal radar.  Even when morning comes, I get out of bed quietly feeling something kin to low level panic while thinking, "What do I do? What is the message here? How will I get it out?" 

I still don't say "Thank you"? How could I forget this???

In this way I am kin to men (and women), CEO's running the country, stockpiling wealth, driven by unconscious fear there won't be enough, who forget to say "Thank you." This makes me no different from people who hurriedly eat forgetting to say "Thank you." This makes me no different from people driving 40 down the small hill by my house not realizing they're driving down a neighborhood street as well as missing the trees all around them.

Unappreciative people are one of my pet peeves.  Yet I am my own pet peeve when I lapse into unconsciousness and forget to say "Thank you" and most importantly feel "Thank you" to the deliverer of my visions, to the sun overhead, the soil beneath me and the world all around me.

Based on 2011 figures, I figure there are close to 1 million apps now available for iphones, droids and such yet the one APP available 24/7 in these bodies of ours is the App of Appreciation.

Now why on Earth would I not keep this App on all the time inside?? 

Can you Imagine the Shift that might occur if we used the App we already own?

Can you Imagine the Shift that WOULD occur if we turned on our internal App of Appreciation ???

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 2 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

A Flood Thought - Honoring My Homes

(In 2010 as Nashville flooded I was flooded with thoughts and stories, most that never made it to any thing beyond pages in journals and scraps of paper.  On today's anniversary I've had a similar flood. Rather than file these away from human eye so they can't be judged, I've decided to share them rather than hide them and me away. This is the third for today. Two others follow it.)

Two years ago, Mother Earth's brown body could no longer hold the rains that poured on many parts of Tennessee that day. Water seeped into even our basement on the high side of the street.

This morning as I reflect on that day, I wonder if the rocks and concrete around my basement walls felt relief as liquid love permeated their stony hardness.  And although I'm grateful my upstairs didn't get wet, I wonder if our wooden floors and walls longed to feel fluid touch.

Considering this makes me want to love and honor my home even more, my physical home with its walls and floors, my Earthly home and bodily home.  To that shift, I open my heart.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 1 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

May Day! May Day!

May Day! May Day!  To those on the seas this phrase is a call of distress. To Celtics past and many today it is a day honoring the return of the fire of rebirth on Beltane.  To Nashvillians and many Tennesseans, it marks the day the rains came.  I was out of town that day but I recall thinking this is Mother Earth’s distress signal.  She was weeping, pouring out her pain and as a result so many experienced such loss. 

I don't mean this callously, but I recall thinking: Mother Earth knows loss.  She experiences loss every day as her oceans become increasingly acidic, her rain forests are cut and given over to palm oil companies and her mountain tops to coal mining.  Her animal children are hunted in caged pens and called pests.  Yet if it weren’t for the internet I would know none of this. 

Mother Earth was crying, “May Day. May Day.  Oh dear Children in Middle Tennessee, I've taken all I can take.”

The rivers overflowed with liquid love as she cried and tried to wake us up.  I imagine God saying “Honor your Mother.  Meet my Divine Wife.”

We call the Masculine the provider yet Mother Earth’s body is the brown bed from which all our provisions rise, the crops, the trees, the plants. Mother Earth’s brown body is the vessel in which the metals for our technological gadgets reside, the gravel and rock for our driveways, the mulch in my yard, the asphalt on which I drive.  I take her so for granted. 

Call it an act of God, Mother Nature, weather patterns or random chance, but when crisis happens like we had hearts are laid bare.  This laying bare also lit the May Day fire of Beltane with the rebirth of community and passion in Nashville as thousands volunteered and created movements of love and good.

Since our crisis two years ago, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and Japan’s tsunami have occurred.  And Mother Earth’s crisis continues.  Will we offer her our hands, hearts and minds in gratitude and praise for continuing to let us live ‘at home’ even when crisis subsides and we go back to our negligent ways?

On this May Day, may we answer the call of May Day by rebirthing the fire of passion and compassion in our hearts and minds in relation to all our relations starting with Mother Earth. 

Imagine the Shift!

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 1 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

'For' Love

As I walked this morning I saw a sign in a window that read:  “Way to go, Kelly!” I suspect Kelly ran in the marathon. Thousands gathered along Nashville streets to cheer on runners last weekend. This made me smile yet think.  People cheer on sports teams, congregate for religious events and rally for causes yet in each event that’s ‘for’ there’s usually an entity that’s against. (I suspect there was no one ‘against’ Kelly.)

Is there any ‘for’ for which there might not be an ‘against’?   Might we all be ‘for’ the heart and Love and not just on Valentine’s and select holidays? 

What would it look like if I woke up ‘for’ Love each day?  And then I realize this is what crisis does as happened two years ago with the flood. In the midst of great loss, we woke up ‘for’ Love every day as strangers and friends crossed usual divides offering their hands, hearts and minds to make heart break and loss more bearable.

This morning I ask: What will it look like, what will it feel like if I wake up 'for' Love today?  What does it look like to rally for my heart and open to all it contains? 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 1 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com