One More Thought about the Bright Angel Trail

(This is a follow-up to "The Bright Angel Trail" posted Oct. 1st. I believe it was Flannery O'Connor who said, "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you odd." The following may put me in the category of odd but I'll choose odd over silent. - Dawn)

In the earlier Musing about the trail of Divine Love issuing from a morning glory and experienced while hiking in the Grand Canyon, I wrote that there's a "necessary living" to which we are called and that I hoped to continue listening to the flower and my trip long after the story was posted.

No sooner had I posted it than I heard something else, actually several things. I realized for me there's a necessary listening I must do and that I betray my purpose here on Earth and am unfaithful to myself when I'm not attentive on a quieter, deeper level.

It isn't uncommon when listening for me to hear things that I know I must share or release onto the internet air waves. These messages at times take a circuitous route. I hear something, jot it down, accidentally, intentionally misplace the jotting, then feel out of sync and disconnected until I realize I've allowed fear and apprehension to silence me.

This happened just after posting the Bright Angel story. I continued listening for I had been captured by the Light coming from the Morning Glory. I thought of how plants carry the light of the stars and that we ingest plants and in turn carry light likewise. Despite what my poet friend Mary Ann says, I edited myself since I've no science or astronomy degree. (Mary Ann says there's no need to explain what I write. That I just have to write it.)

Then I heard the third thing, the thing I noted on the back of a crumpled piece of paper, then placed at arms length literally on a nearby footstool and avoided for days. It reads:

"I imagine the Bright Angel of Divine Love in the eyes of a child about
to be trafficked or an animal about to be tortured. I imagine the light of that Bright
Angel being glimpsed, being seen by the dim but still present Bright Angel in
the abuser. I imagine this meeting of Light and Love initiating a great waking
up, a waking up that births a healing heard around the world, the sound of
Bright Angels being freed from their prisons of trauma and shame."

I set aside this notation fearing someone would think I had no business writing of torture or trafficking if I've never experienced it. Yet I am reminded of it daily through emails regarding the unconsciousable treatment of children, young men and women and as well as animals in our country and our world. (The global yearly profits from trafficking people for sex and forced labor is 31.6 billion dollars! Trafficking is the third most lucrative black market just behind drugs and weapons. These numbers are five years old and staggering!)

Leonard Cohen sings, "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." The first time I saw this in print I thought, 'There's a crack in everything including the hardest of hearts and that's also how the light gets out.'

I believe in invisible circles of life, light and love, circles of interconnecting reciprocity in which we live most of us unknowingly. I imagine a dormant, untapped reciprocity between the light longing to be freed, longing to get through the crack in the heart of a Bright Angel who was abused and is now an adult. I imagine that Light connecting with the Bright Angel in that person's potential victim.

Some will say this is too simple. I believe the unfolding solutions to so much lies before our very eyes. Some will say this can't be done. I believe we must try.

Won't you join me by offering your Bright Angel, your divine heart, to help turn up the power that's been dimmed in others for whatever reason so the Black Markets around the world become places of Divine Light.

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 8 October 2010

P.S. Colette Bercu founder of "Free for Life International" will speak on trafficking Friday Nov. 5 at 7pm at Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville as part of "Sojourning Women - Women's Global Voices on Interfaith, Immigration and Violence." For more info click: Sojourning Women II.

Nature's Texting...

Long before pre-curled ribbon came onto the gift wrap scene, I loved running scissors down pieces of ribbon then watching it spring into curls to be placed atop a gift.

This Arizona plant and tree recently reminded me that Mother Nature likewise tops her children with ribbons, gifts for those with eyes to see.

-Dawn! Imagine the Gifts! 4 Oct. 2010

The Bright Angel Trail

Last week I was backpacking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon via the Bright Angel Trail. I’m not a regular hiker. The most regular I get to hiking is a two mile morning walk. And I’m certainly not a backpacker.

I attempted this journey because I was answering a call, a call sensed months prior. I knew I was to go to the Canyon, actually go into it and Listen. I didn't know why. I only knew I was to show up. I tried to talk myself out of this challenge due to continued exhaustion from earlier surgery and wanting to hole up somewhere and sleep. My hesitation was always met by an inner knowing that I would regret not following this mysterious call. By not showing up, I was aborting my journey.

I’ve now returned to walking city sidewalks. I walk and listen.

Monday as I zigzagged through Hillsboro Village streets, I passed a brush pile enveloped in morning glories. I set out the next day camera in hand in search of that pile. I felt compelled to find it. Just as I was about to give up, there it was in the same yard where the Snow Goddess sat eight months prior during an infrequent Nashville snow.

This pile of dead wood covered in blossoming morning glories is an exquisite example of life and death, living and dying. The dead twigs and branches provide a framework for the flowers and ultimately sustenance for eventual new life as the wood and flowers gradually decompose. On this spot of Nature’s canvas, I witnessed death supporting life.

I snapped a couple of photos, hoping also to capture the star in each flower and returned home intent on sending out a tidy little short story.

I loaded the photos to my computer only to realize I was being gifted with much more.

See the light coming from center of the star? Death was not just supporting life, that life, the morning glory, was emanating Light.

I could not produce an instant story. As in the canyon, I needed to listen, to allow this morning glory to take me on a journey.

One of the things I heard last week early on in my trek was “We are all Bright Angels walking the Bright Angel trail.” I whispered this into my hand held recorder and forgot it.

Sitting on my sofa miles and miles away from the canyon, I sat with the morning glory and knew the Light it held is Love. Divine Love is the Bright Angel trail that each of us comes here as Bright Angel’s to walk and to carry.

In reflecting on the bigger picture of the wood and flowers, life and death, light and dark, I thought how often the Bright Angel within is most deeply contacted and brought forth in the darkest of times, how alchemically the pain of loss holds the opportunity for new life.

I thought of my dear friend who having lost all she owned and all that defined her, saw the Light of love in a child’s face, a Bright Angel in Africa intimately acquainted with death, rearing her younger siblings. That Bright Angel inspired my friend to be the diligent scribe for a musical for the children and elders of Africa. “I Dream” one of the songs from the musical debuts tonight as esteemed Broadway singer Ernestine Jackson presents it at the Washington DC benefit for Kenya’s Nyumbani Children’s Home.
I thought of the young man I met on my flight home from Phoenix, a young man whose family has lived through the unfathomable loss of their daughter and son, ages 3 and 2, to a rare motor neuron disease. During my flight I learned how this man and his wife, John and Laurian Scott, in two short years have created The Olive Branch Fund to increase awareness, provide families with resources and raise research monies for Brown-Vialetto-Van Leare disease. They’ve created ongoing, multi-city fundraising events for this cause, published “Thisbe’s Promise” a children’s show and tell book written by Laurian for her daughter who loved the myriad of animals around their Tennessee home and this past Spring attended the International Children’s Neurology Congress in Cario where Thisbe and Noah’s cases were presented.

This family and my friend have navigated great loss to emerge as Bright Angels touching not just those around them but answering a Higher Call to share their Light with others worldwide. As the pile of twigs and branches supports the flowers, these people have allowed loss and death to not only support life, but to help them ultimately emanate Light, the light of love and compassion, the Light I see streaming from the center of the beautiful morning glory.

I set off this week in search of morning glories. I was shown that we are surrounded by morning, noon and night glories, the glory of being Bright Angels showing and sharing love for and with one another in these times as well as with the greater Earth family.

I hope to continue listening long after this story is posted. For now I know that in all the dying in our world, so much unnecessary dying in our dear world, we are called to a necessary living, to each shine the Divine Light of love and compassion wherever we find ourselves on life’s trail. For we are carriers of Divine Love. We are all Bright Angels on this the Bright Angel Trail.

Deep gratitude to Sharon Mounu Riddell and to John and Laurian Scott for permission to write of them in this Musing. Please take a moment to be inspired by the two websites below.

-Dawn! Imagine the Shift! 1 October 2010

* The Angels of Africa Project - artistic projects using story and song to raise awareness regarding the orphan crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. "I Dream" should be available at the site after tonight's performance by Ms. Jackson.
* The Olive Branch Fund- A Thisbe and Noah Scott Legacy

The Divine LIght

(This is a shorter version of the 10/01/10 Musing.)
This morning I set out in search of the brush pile I noticed yesterday enveloped in morning glories. Just as I was about to give up on finding my treasure, there it was in the same yard where the Snow Goddess sat only eight months ago during an infrequent Nashville snow.

What a beautiful example of life and death, living and dying succinctly expressed in this one spot. Even as they bloom the morning glories are dying while the seeming dead limbs and branches provide a framework for the flowers and ultimately food for new life as this pile eventually decomposes returning to Earth.

I snapped a couple of photos, hoping also to capture the star in each flower. Yet upon arriving home, I realized these flowers gifted me with more. See the light coming from the star? The Light from which we come and to which we return emanates from these beautiful flowers gracing the dead pile of brush.

I set off this morning in search of morning glories. I am shown that we are surrounded by morning, noon and night glories, the glory of being alive on Earth in such beauty with one another in these times. From all the dying in our world, so much unnecessary dying in our dear world, there comes a Divine Light, a Light of awakening and compassion. May we each awaken to the Divine Light within as well as in one another.

Imagine the shift as we remember the Light we hold and why we are here.

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 28 Sept. 2010

The First and Last Morning of Vacation

(Enjoy two simple vacation stories, bookends of sorts, which despite their mixed verb tenses carry much meaning. Sandwiched in between was backpacking in the Grand Canyon and that's another story.)

The first morning of vacation I came outside early hoping to find 'my' chair at Sky Ranch Lodge empty. For several visits I've made my way to a willow chair on the grounds where I can usually get in-sync writing wise and find the rhythm that often eludes me during vacation thanks to beds, bathrooms and coffee pots that aren't mine as well as living from a suitcase.

Outside our room was a cluster of evergreens and just beyond them the hot tub where I finally succeeded at Bean Sight after having failed miserably on the flight out. (That's another story.)

The evening prior we sat in the hot tub hoping to wash away jet lag as well as reminiscing about the desert quail we'd previously seen as they ritually made their way to the largest shrub in the cluster. I wondered if they were still on the grounds.

Previously the quail arrived at dusk. They'd waddle walk single file to the base of the shrub where each would then give a hop to the first limb. The shrub would shimmy as an entire group of quail made their way up the staircase of limbs before nestling in for the night.

The first morning of vacation I rushed out the door determined to find 'my' chair. Instead I noticed the shrub trembling and heard the familiar staccato sounding like shy hiccuping sopranos warming up.

Then the ritual began. One at a time they hopped from bed, sixteen of them, in the shrub to the ground where they congregated before making their way to another part of the motel grounds.

Earlier in the week while still in Nashville, I heard my friend Ernestine visiting from NYC impromptuly sing a song from the Seventies (I think) that included the line: "Everything changes."

As I sat, not in my anticipated chair, but in the perfect one from which to be mesmerized by the desert quails descent that song came to mind. Everything does change except as the lyrics go: "...the sun in the sky and the rain that falls."

And at least for now I would add the desert quail who find protection and rest in the evergreen at Sky Ranch Lodge. Theirs is a deeper ritual that touched my rhythm and magically overrode my physical discomfort, allowing me to sink into the Present without ever making it to 'my' chair.

Amidst life's inevitable changes, Nature's rhythms weave quiet threads through our lives providing a constancy of pattern and ritual, a haven of renewal if we're listening and watching. That Shift is all around us. See. Hear.

The Last Morning of Vacation

The last morning of vacation I came to my chair, the one I started in search of the first morning, the one in which I've spent many mornings over the years.

Except while in the Canyon, I sat in this chair each day last week as the sun
started its trek across the sky. As in prior visits, I photographed the nearby cactus with which I'm mesmerized and watched the birds feed under the juniper as curious bunnies came around me.

Unlike prior visits, I came to this particular spot on my last morning to express gratitude for this literal place on Earth where this chair, tree and cactus still stand (testament to other things that haven't changed). I had previously not consciously held intention this deeply when sitting in the chair.

Unfortunately this morning I found an addition to my spot - a tour bus awaiting its guests with an engine idling. While moving from bench to bench, distancing myself from the noise and fumes not to mention my chair, I hoped to enjoy the sky just the same. I then realized I do not do my sitting ritual even in Sedona for the sky view. Although I tried to find another place where the constant grumbling, mumbling of the engine was less, I realized I must return to my spot. No, I wanted to return to my spot, the spot to which I am accustomed, in which I feel connected, to offer gratitude to the cactus, tree, animals and yes, the chair. Last year there were two chairs. This year there's one, a reminder of yes, change.

I nearly allowed a tour bus to steal from me my ritual and this place of stillness, within and without. The noise represented everything that distracts me or causes me to disconnect, to forget how grateful I am to be walking Earth as well as Earth's gratitude that I am here.

So I began my ritual. I said 'thank you' to each plant around me while feeling a reciprocity between this circle of living things and me. I needed them as they needed me. They reminded me of the importance of the internal, of the stillness that comes through staying present and connected while I hopefully reminded them they are noticed and loved.

And now I am many miles away in yet another chair writing, grateful to be connected here as I was there to all around me, sleeping cat in my lap, papers strewn about, hands and heart busily wanting to convey Mother Earth desires our gratitude.

Practice gratefulness this moment, today.

-Dawn! The Good News Muse - 27 Sept. 2010

Bean Sight

I've recently discovered previews of an upcoming trip playing in the theater of my mind. These film clips include scenes in which I sit in a garden, one I've sat in multiple times surrounded by birds and trees, hike the local trails then enjoy another sit by the stream that runs through the quaint little complex of rooms. The only antagonists in my scenes are those who come to the garden for an early morning smoke or chat on their cellphone at a level where I hear word for word their conversation. Hopefully this time I'll not judge as hastily these characters in my cast but be open to seeing them in me and vice versa.

These scenes running just beneath the surface of my consciousness suggest I already know how my vacation time is going to unfold. These scenes, suggest I, one who considers herself fairly good at living in the present, carry a quiet, unconscious attachment to following a former script. This script creates blinders so I'm not as open to events and possibilities on the periphery of experience or right before my very eyes.

It's a bit like looking for beans in my three little raised beds. Actually one of the beds was for beans, one for tomatoes and one for squash, but this year the beans and tomatoes have intermarried their vines twining and mingling, hugging one another all over the little space.

When I hurriedly look for beans, my vision narrows, a rigidity sets in visually and bodily. I am 'hunting' beans as I hastily seek the little green pods that I know are there. I've seen them usually as I walk past while watering something else or walking to the mailbox. I'm certain they've not vanished, yet my focus or seeing with such certainty causes me to miss them.

When I relax, stop trying so hard and breathe, my focus softens. I always find the beans hanging where they've always been, right where I've been looking.

How often does this happen? How many times does knowing what's next keep us from seeing and experiencing what's possible? How often do our filled schedules, repetitive travel routes and always being available via technology and now texting keep us from seeing the more that is available in the deeper text of these times? Even now as I write surrounded by trees, thinking I 'know' trees, keeps me from more fully experiencing them, listening and seeing.

I want bean sight, the soft, open way of seeing what's beyond what I think I see or know so I can appreciate what's growing in front of my very eyes whether in my little garden of raised beds or the garden in which I hope to spend some vacation time.

Bean Sight incites love and awakens us to the raised beds of growing consciousness in the Garden that is Earth. Imagine that Shift!

-Dawn, The Good News Muse at imaginetheshift.com
16 September 2010

The Butterfly

Saturday riding down the street, I noticed wings flapping on the center line. I nearly called out "Stop" so I could retrieve the butterfly, but we were in traffic. I didn't want to be the cause of a wreck.

I've been especially mindful of butterflies this summer as they've congregated in our yard and as they've simultaneously careened into my windshield. This was the first time I had seen one literally lying in the street.

The next day on my walk I came across another. This one very much alive seeming to enjoy flitting from gravel to gray gravel on the old paved road. I considered intervening as if I could coax a butterfly to stay out of the street. I thought of the quote posted on a bench at Radnor Lake, Nashville's Walden. The quote by Tagore reads: "The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough."

Moments. That is all we have and when I am present and accounted for that for me is enough. When I am struggling, not feeling my best or centered and at peace I want to scream, "No, I'll save up my moments for when I feel better, when I'm back to being my 'old' self."

Unlike the butterfly, I am resisting, not resting when my body says I should.

After my walk, I went to get a pizza. Usually Jerry does this, but this day he happened to be planting butterfly bushes around our chimnea, the little outdoor fireplace we named Venus for the beautiful star and the goddess of love and beauty.

I pulled into the parking lot, walked to the front of my car and there lay a butterfly, black, blue and gold wings intact but very dead. Inside and probably out, I smiled. I placed it in the car and got my pizza.

Last night at sunset, we buried this dear animal under one of the new butterfly bushes.

Life when I am paying attention, even when I am not feeling what I call myself, presents these amazing moments, gifts and as with the butterfly so it is with me. These moments they are enough. Oh these moments they are more than enough!

-Dawn!The Good News Muse, 13 Sept. 2010