The New Bar in My 'Hood

This morning I walked down the street and was surprised to find a new bar less than a block away.  Bees of all sizes were getting drunk on the sweet nectar of wisteria's purple clusters.


If we got intoxicated or high on Nature or just savored sweet Earth as the bees at the bar are, might our addiction rates decrease?  Would painkillers, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications sell like they do if people got outside and felt the grass under their feet, heard the birds sing, saw the sun set and the stars rise?

All of Earth is a bar, especially this time of year, from which to fill, feel and drink.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 19 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

National Wildlife & Art Week

According to my calendar National Wildlife Week and Art Week are this week! Loving artists and wildlife, I can't think of anything better than this. Well come to think of it, I can.  What would be better than this is if everyone more fully realized what wildlife and artists do for us.  Artist wake us up. They show us beauty and wonder and many of them do so through their interpretations of wildlife.

Thanks to The Woodscrollers buffalo, deer and wolf grace our home as does Merritt Ireland's fabric piece "Two Crows."  We didn't set out to find animal-related art.  It just happened as we came upon works that moved us.  Art and wildlife move me and at times because I'm moved I judge humans as a result.

As one who loves animals, it's challenging for me to write about wildlife and not find some thread of judgment within. I don't get why people want heads and antlers in their homes.  Of course this may be art to them though I've assumed an animal's head on the wall gives one a sense of potency and power that is otherwise missing.  And I sure don't get arm-chair hunting.  I've now had two friends tell me of hunters who through internet sites find the animal they want killed on a hunting preserve and then have someone else kill the animal then send the desired part to them. 

Then there are those who want animal hides around for their beauty I guess.  Last fall at a local art opening in a home, I looked down to see I was standing on a zebra skin and I nearly threw up.  I got off the rug and out of the home as fast as I could.

I judge because I feel pain and grief.  Despite so many more people standing up for animals wild and domestic today, animals and the wild are under such assault politically. 

Yet when I look at the animals on our walls and consider the ones I see in visions, I know the animals both wild and domestic do not want me hurting, judging or tuned out.  They want me loving, loving, loving.  For they continue to arrive and grace Earth in hopes that more and more of us will show up in our wisest and most compassionate selves. 

Animals are woven into our lives in ways we don't often realize.  Many sports teams would have an identity crisis and be mascotless if suddenly the animals found a way to go on strike.  Think about it. We've the Timber wolves, the Bears, the Lions, the Bulls, the Hawks, the Ravens and the Cardinals to name a few.  But to go on strike though is not the animal way.

The animal way is to love, to continuing coming to Mother Earth to live among us and in relation to us despite our blindsides and shortcomings.  This is true power, potency, beauty and grace. 

So in this week dedicated to Wildlife and Art I am most grateful to the animals here on Earth who model for me the art of the heart and for artists who open their hearts to the Muse and create. 

Imagine the Shift in your life of more greatly appreciating artists and wildlife not just this week but every week, every day!

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 19 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Flowers for the Grieving

As I took this photo something shifted inside. I felt comfort as a thought came to mind.  'This is why we bring flowers to the grieving.'  

After just having posted, "Go outside, hear the birds sing" one Musing prior, I walked around the corner yesterday and found feathers on the ground, black feathers with bright yellow tips. 

Two days ago under the same tree the feathers were cardinal red. That day I cried and cried.  The second time though I was stunned.  I was angry and busy.  I had too many things to do to cry and if I had time I couldn't.  I felt numb inside.  I went on autopilot.  I began running errands which included buying a granular product that supposedly keeps cats away as well as cat collars with bells on them for neighboring cats who venture into the yard.  I'm not a violent person but I felt an emotional current within that made me think this is how folks feel who rush to war.  

Then I pulled into the parking lot at the office supply store and saw this exquisite row of blossoming trees.  As I snapped the photo above I literally felt something shift inside me.  I felt an inner sense of comfort and immediately thought, 'This is why we bring flowers to the grieving.'  

In that moment, I was no longer distressed.  All I felt was gratitude to Mother Nature and my unknown kin who grew, planted and tended these trees.  In that moment they felt especially meant for my hurting heart and me. They lined a path bringing me back to peace.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 18 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

I'm Being Held Hostage this Spring

I'm being held hostage this Spring and don't send a ransom. I've been captured and enraptured by a tulip tree. For fifteen years, day in and day out, I've walked and driven past this tree. For fifteen Springs, it has faithfully stood alongside my driveway, but this is only the second time in its life that it's flourished with sweet smelling blossoms. Usually a sudden Southern frost brings to an abrupt end the colorful life emerging. Then as summer ensues, green leaves replace dead blooms.

Earlier this week, the tree was covered in rich purple buds reminiscent of my grandmother's lipstick samples kept tucked in a wooden box on her dressing table. The little white tubes held mesmerizing colors. Then overnight it seemed the buds began to open, each at its own pace, a beautiful natural ballet. I found myself wishing I could open to life the way the buds were with seeming trust and grace. 

 

This morning to my surprise, the blossoms were in various stages of reopening after having been closed for the night. I was struck by the fluidity of this process, the opening and closing, the back and forth.

How is that for fifteen years I've missed the tulip tree teacher until this week? Is it because I've valued the external show over the internal spirit of the little tree?  It's taught such tenacity spring after spring, freeze after freeze.

It is said, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." 

 

Teachers surround us and we are unaware. Nature quietly goes about its business teaching not preaching, showing us quietly how to live and die, trust the process of life. 

 

 Imagine the shift if we showed up for this class every day!

-The Tulip Tree & Dawn, the Good News Muse, 

first printed 4/2/10

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Go

Go outside and hear the birds sing.
And if you can't go out
Go in.
Go inside and hear the birds sing.
They sing inside too.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 17 March 2012
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Moon - It Is a Miracle

This morning I sat outside pondering, writing
as a crow kept cawing, calling.

Once upon a time I listened to crows
actually not that long ago.

Yet somehow I stopped.
 I still heard them, but I really didn't hear them. 

This morning I stopped
put down my pen
and looked up.


There just beyond the crow was the moon
The same moon that at 5am streamed her light
through the bedroom window onto my pillow
prompting such peace and joy.

It is a miracle this sphere of rock, a quarter of a million miles away
sheds light on this our earthly home. 
Light that finds its way into Spirit's room, my heart 
that for so long felt heavy, dark
that for so long I quietly thought was rock. 
(Yes, my heart truly felt like rock.)


It is a miracle this sphere of rock, a quarter of a million miles away lights the way to this rock within allowing me to remember who I am. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 15 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Imagination's Playground - Happy Birthday Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Einstein

I noticed on my calendar that today March 14 is Albert Einstein's birthday (b.1879) and immediately thought of the poem below from my cd.  So Happy Birthday Einstein. I'm imagining right now that you feel how happy I am that you came to dear Earth!  Here's a poem from me to you.

Applause

Popcorn

Bubble wrap

Horses galloping

Fairies tap dancing

Bullets raining down

The interminable tapping of fingers on lap tops

Thousands of tiny feet hurrying across wooden floors

     to behold gifts on Christmas morn

Grease in my mother’s electric skillet as chicken rolled in flour browns

Messages from the Divine trying to penetrate our thick heads.

All of these and more were born of my imagination while listening to

     the patter of raindrops on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

The mind, imagination’s playground, offers a myriad of memories and image.

Upon hearing my list, you may have thought me a bit wacky but you have it too.

Imagination

Regardless of gender, class or race we’re born with it.

Yet in time, control, competition and culture squash it. 

It’s never fully erased. 

It’s never too late to tend it,

Imagination transports us, lifts us from the mundane, no lifts the veil from the mundane,

  allowing us to see the magic in each moment.

So make the time to exit the interstate in your mind and drive down the dirt road of your

     imagination.

Who knows, you might stir up more than dust.

Imagine that. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 

originally written March 5, 2005

dawn@imaginetheshift.com