The Nest - What's Being Born on Earth?

The stone angel stands, her hands in prayer, over the bird nest I found on a recent morning walk. Empty the nest now sits at her feet in my earth garden.

Empty, the nest reminds me every moment something's born into this world, a soul, a thought, a touch, breath, forgiveness.

Empty, the nest reminds me every moment something parts as well, a soul, a thought, a touch, breath, forgiveness.

Forgiveness? Oh, I hope not, yet it is possible even now in some corner of the world or not that far away forgiveness is being withdrawn prompted by fear and uncertainty.

Emptiness, a product of parting, prerequisite for birth.

What is waiting to be born in this nest that is Earth?

-Dawn, the Good News Muse 10 Sept. 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Freedom Lights the Way

"Freedom Lights the Way" or so the matchbook read. Typically I would have
cringed. I tire of the flag being used by many as the symbol of freedom, a freedom with narrowly prescribed parameters often based in fear and exclusivity, not the America the founding fathers had in mind. 

This particular morning though I smiled for the patriotic matchbook was part of an ongoing theme.

We had just arrived in the North Carolina mountains the night prior when I felt compelled to take photos of light, the setting sun light reflected on the Tuckaseegee River, lights at Bryson City's "Cork & Bean" and little Holy Spirit lights reflecting outside waiting to descend on unsuspecting passers-by.

I went to sleep that night contemplating light.

I awoke the next morning puzzled by a patriotic outburst in a dream. I had been on stage at the symphony belting out, "land of the free and home of the brave." 

I got up, walked to the patio and there lay the matchbook with its message: "Freedom lights the way."

'Yes, it does,' I thought. Freedom does light the way. Every moment, I am gifted with the opportunity to choose my actions and attitude. Every moment I've the freedom to choose whether I will open or close my mind and heart to the people, experiences and possibilities along my path.  When I choose the path of loving openness, there is a shift inside, a lightness lights my way.

Yet staying open and not closing my mind is challenging at times these days.  Freedom is a hot word thrown about as guns, the economy, immigration, gay marriage and abortion are debated. Many focus on freedom as if there has to be an external enemy to whom we're continually reacting.  At times we're our greatest enemy internally living in fear of this 'other' while reacting with suspicion and judgment.  We  become so focused on freedom in the U.S. we overlook the source of true freedom within US.

I suspect a few of the the founding fathers actually had this inner freedom in mind, something much more subtle and potent than fighting an external enemy in this experiment they named America. 

I glimpsed an aspect of this level of freedom upon returning home from North Carolina and learning a friend was soon going home, to the big home, the Unknown.   

It may sound strange but when I went to visit Mark I found myself seeing "Freedom light the way" as his face shined light. He was truly not afraid to die.  

At the visitation I stood looking at photos taken in his last weeks and days. I could hardly pull myself away from the collage of snapshots as one shifted to another each reflecting a light in Mark's eyes and his smile. I thought, 'This is true freedom. The freedom to leap into the great Unknown with anticipation not fear.'

Except for the sadness of leaving his loved One behind, Mark joyfully made the big leap.

A terminal diagnosis sharpens the focus making one aware the earthly visit in this skin suit is time limited.  Ironically we're all terminal as is each moment. One moment arrives then passes to make way for the next in the here and now we have. To live and love openly without fear is truly a great personal freedom.

Maybe this is partially why living on Earth, the land of such possible inner freedom and the home of the brave souls who come here, is so challenging and so dear. Our earth brains have grown accustomed to being wired for fear while our spirits are made for leaping and our hearts for loving.

I want to live in such a way that I joyfully leap into the Unknown every moment, every day.  Freedom in this state regardless of where I live will surely light the way.

Mark, did you know you were teaching me this?

I suspect so.

Thank you.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse - 12 December 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Gauze this Morning

Gauze this morning holds my heart.
Wrapped in a delicate cocoon.
Wrapped by the hands of the Mother
Bringing solace, comfort and rest.

In the quiet, drum beats of the ancestors
like Morse code message me.

We are not alone.
Those gone before walk among us.
Those yet to come surround their soon to be home.

Watching, waiting, listening, sharing.

Gauze this morning holds the Earth
Wrapped in a delicate cocoon.
Wrapped by the hands of Spirit
Swaddling clothes and shroud
Held in the arms of Love.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 9 September 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Stream

Last weekend prior to the rains arrival, I was reflecting on the July and August drought here in Middle Tennessee. The external often prompts me to consider the internal.

Soil drought. Soul drought.
As within. So without.

I pondered parallels between the hard, dry earth and my own insides. Here's what came.....

Listening for who I really am inside is like seeking an underground stream. Quietly it flows beneath layers of rock. It can't quite be found though I sense it's there deep down inside.

Then when tears suddenly come, I know I've found it or it has found me. The stream within reveals itself in tears without, bubbling up when I ask a loved one to place their hand on my heart before I venture out to meet a significant task. The stream lets itself be seen at times when hearing music or the telling of a story. Then there's the time, the stream flowed in France when I knew I had previously walked French lands. The stream became a river, Memory's water shed.

Support, soil, song, story touch the stream of me.
Support, soil, song, story, stream of love setting me free.

How do you experience the stream that is you? How do you experience free?

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 8 September 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Simple Thoughts on Economy Inspired by Dog & Dawn

This week I've started morning walks again, a ritual I neglected with the heat. Within a block I'm aware of the value of this sacred thirty minute span as I greet and am greeted by crepe myrtles declining or reclining as I think of their coming winter's rest.

At one neighbor's home I savored half-dollar size pink morning glories overtaking a flower bed and beginning to climb a tree. A neighbor came out, nodded to me and I continued to converse with the neighboring flowers. At one corner, I stopped and let the sun warm me as I closed my eyes and looked skyward sensing I was being fed.

Yet the encounter close to home made me smile brightest and still does to think of him. Standing at the corner before mine I spied Cuff the black lab who's been in the neighborhood nearly as long as I. Both of us are sprinkled with gray, well me more than him these days.

The enthusiast and lover in me wanted to run up the block and cross the street to Cuff in excitement but paused. What would his owner think?

I significantly picked up my pace and called Cuff's name. His look conveyed a bit of confusion at first. 'Hmmm, she remembers my name?' It's more common in these peri-menopausal days for me to first ask: Now what is your dog's name?

I cheerfully greeted Cuff, who after his initial perplexed pause walked over somewhat stiffly to me, the walk with which I'm familiar some days. We locked eyes; I rubbed his black coat and salt and pepper face and talked tomatoes with his owner. Then we parted ways.

I had been the giver or so I thought. Yet I walked away more full than when I had crossed the street. Before I could ponder how that could be, I quickly realized Cuff had given to me.

How often do I think I'm the giver forgetting I receive.

The cycling of energy, good vibes and love, is a beautiful thing. Givers receiving. Receivers giving. No owing or debting, no interest rates. No foreclosures. I take that back, if there's a foreclosure, it's on my side of the equation because animals are always giving to me. There is no taking back. If there's a sense of owing, it's because a small part of me has been quietly accounting rather than freely giving. It's so simple.

Then just when I think this story's at an end (and maybe it should be), I remember tonight the president, whose hair is now sprinkled like Cuffs, gives his jobs address. Post speech if all goes as usual the air waves will be even more filled with how he's failing.

I know people need jobs to pay the bills, feed their children, pursue their dreams. My intent isn't to diminish the seriousness of joblessness or the longing for security. I get frustrated with the talking heads simplifying complex issues, spinning their version of the facts to suit their side of the debate, influenced by who's paying their salary or in the case of politicians, the lobbyists getting them elected.

They of course would say I'm the simple one not understanding this world in which we live and that's okay. Regardless of what is said post speech and in a thousand tomorrows, I desire my airwaves be more about what's beautiful in my neighborhood and world. I want my airwaves filled with the spinning of shared energy and experience, inspired by crepe myrtles, morning glories, the sun and Cuff the black lab down the street. This is the economy in which I want to invest. The Bank of Loving Energy.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 8 September 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Grrrrrr - Imagine Earth if Sisters (and Brothers) Refused to Be Contained

I chose to spend my Labor Day going through files, pitching and tossing the many things onto which I've held. Somewhere midst the piles, I found a folder labeled "My Poetry." In it was a piece related to women growling. Was it an accident that an hour earlier I had been part of a meditation and poetry call, a call I've missed for months now, a call in which growling was referenced?

Yes, as I entered this morning's call, I thought I heard someone refer to growling. I asked just to be sure. I later emailed these faraway but close friends that growling contained the word grow and that maybe we are called as women to "empowered growling."

I then got back to cleaning out files and found the following written at least six years ago, certainly not polished or professional, but I think you'll get the point.

My Mood

(Note to reader: Grrr and Growl are to be read as guttural, really growling sounds)

Grrrrrrr, Guuuuurrrrrr, GGGGGGrrrrooooowwwwllllllll

Some would say I've a bad mood
But I wonder why - why does it have to be labeled 'bad'
When grrrrr is stirring inside?

So I decided one recent morning, not so long ago
To embrace this inner mood
Call it what you may
My morning meditation's food
had seemed to come, to stay.

Candles lit, legs crossed on the sofa
covered in roses, floral and pink
I invited the mood to show herself
to hear what she feels and thinks.

First came the "Umph, you're not ready. Not ready to listen to me."
I sat determined, scowling, "Just you wait and see."

I growled and grumbled,
uttering sounds that didn't make sense.
Then it came tumbling out
Church fathers might say "Repent."

It wasn't that exciting or filled with great suspense
But between the grrr's and the growls, out came a sentence that made sense.

I'm not ready to be nice.
I'm quite tired of nice, in fact.
For just a few moments in my life,
I'd rather not have tact.

Tell me to smile or cheer up
I may throw up instead.
Sometimes a woman just needs
to let go of all in her head.

Now wait! Don't forget the throat and the guts
She needs to stomp, to howl.
Embrace her inner Kali
Lick her chops
Re-member power.

I'm not ready to be nice.
I won't be intentionally rude.
But I can promise one thing.
I'm gonna listen to my moods.

Our moods - they're labeled bad
When they're really not bad at all.
A signal something's off or amiss
A sign I'm not listening in some sense.

We're taught to be true to others and often put self last
But just imagine the world if we turned it, girls, upside down on it's ass.

Ooooppps there I go
It slipped out, a word un-nice

But imagine the Earth if Sisters joined in sweet refrain
And purged our moods, our tears, our fears, bellowing our pain.

Imagine Earth if Sisters refused to be contained.

At times I sit and ponder if some of the un-nice in the world
is sourced in our shadows, tucked away there when just girls.

How many times have we been told, "Smile. Be good. Say please."
When what we need most right now is to get up off our knees.

To take our place
Step into our power and not become like men.
Maybe this is how we all ultimately can win.

The planet desperately needs us, awake, aware, alive
Not sleepwalking, numb and listless, to our power anesthetized.

Of course, I am not saying
We don't need to be more nice
The world needs genuine, loving-kindness
But our un-nice, we must not hide.

I lick my chops
No grrr comes out
Now that wasn't so, so bad.
I thank my Mood, she's part of me
Without her I'd go mad.

..............................................................................

Now that I've found this piece, I suspect I will ponder it further. For now, may we as women and men everywhere become conscious of our inner Grrrr and not take it out on our partners, spouses, children, friends, pets or the stranger in the car who doesn't use his/her turn signal, but instead invite it (the Grrr) to sit and stay, to speak its truth so our shadows may be owned and not projected on to those who are different from us politically, economically, racially, religiously and sexually.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 5 September 2011

....who also just learned thanks to Cayelin Castell's Celestial Timings that today's a good day for cleaning out one's files and organizing. So back to the files.

Children at Cheekwood and The Nature of the Relationship - Medicine We Need

(This is a piece written this summer yet never posted that I came across today. It was medicine for my own spirit as I've allowed myself to become scattered and busy. May we return to our bodies as well as Mother Earths. In joy, Dawn)

I visited Cheekwood one evening this summer for a quiet evening, only to discover it was family night. Children gathered around the train exhibit while others watched a nearby puppet show.

I settled in by a stream above a beautiful wooden sculpture* floating in two small ponds below. The falling water drowned out the voices atop the hill until a few bites into my meal the puppet show and my quiet ended.

Dozens of squealing children descended onto the area. Many took off their shoes and waded into the stream beside me. I was surrounded and stunned. My quiet evening was disrupted by children acting as if they had never seen water.

I eventually walked along the hillside where there were more children exuberantly playing in the fern-lined stream.

It seemed many of these children had never experienced water in nature, water flowing like the country streams to which I was accustomed at their age, streams filled with crawfish, tadpoles and pebbles etched with fossils.

I reveled in watching these children, yet wondered how many of them will become businesspeople and bankers whose livelihoods will revolve around using Earth? Will they recall their joy in the stream? Will they remain aware of their relatedness to Earth or will they exploit Earth for financial gain thus forgetting nature is the source of material goods? How soon will these children replace the joy of play with the adrenaline and pressure of competition?

Early on we unconsciously trade our connection with Nature and the spirit of embodied play for an attitude of controlling nature, our bodies and spirits while ignoring their interrelatedness.

How does this disconnection occur?

When young, we’re embodied living life through experience. Our educational and social systems based on competition, hierarchy and control, birth the disconnect. Separation is furthered in our families and in business models, through technology and entertainment.

We have lost the way of embodied experience and relationship with ourselves, one another and Earth. Addiction, depression, anxiety, debt and violence are symptoms of this disconnect.

The children in the stream hold the medicine we need. The joy in connecting with Nature is part of the remedy to remembering we are each players in life’s stream. As adults our capacities may be diminished by training or trauma, but we are still spirit in body walking Earth’s body.

If we remembered the joy of being in our bodies and appreciated the precious gift of life, family disputes, political posturing and wars would cease. Doctors, therapists, lawyers, hospitals and prisons would see a drastic decline in clientele.

Our capacity to experience life deeply and begin reconnecting within and without awaits discovery like the children did that evening discovering the stream. It’s as near as allowing your experience to be stirred right now by the fireflies light, the wren’s song, making music with blades of grass or imagining the cool water of the stream.

This is the world we’re here to build, a world in which we live in relationship with ourselves, one another and the Earth.

Imagine the Shift!

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

* The beautiful floating wooden sculpture is one piece in a double installation called "Double Heliotrope" on display at Cheekwood until October 31st and created by British artist and Vanderbilt art and philosophy professor, David Wood. For more info click here: Cheekwood and thank you, David Wood !