Love's Pattern in the Web of Time - Honoring Walden's Puddle

This story has been on my mind and the many animals at Walden's Puddle on my heart after the fire a week ago that killed many of them. Please keep the people and animals at Joelton's Walden Puddle in your prayers and meditations as they rebuild a facility due to severe smoke damage in this their high season for receiving injured animals.  To learn more or donate click here:  Walden's Puddle 

What role does synchronicity play in your life?  What pattern is essential to really living? 

Last night before bed, a face book post from a friend got my attention.  An owl had hit the hood of her car while she was driving, frightening her and she suspected killing the owl.  Inside I cringed as one response asked if this meant 'bad luck' and another suggested making stew. These mysterious creatures of the night prompt discomfort and fear in some yet awe in others.

Minutes prior, I had been among the awe-filled while attending a reception for Walden's Puddle, an area wildlife rehab center.  The event honored those donating money, time and service to Walden's animals and included a viewing of the new dvd "Giving Wildlife a Second Chance."

Among the mingling guests walked an employee with Carson*, a screech owl unfazed by the music and people. Carson is one of the few animals that can't be returned to the wild thus he serves as an animal ambassador for educational purposes.  

Upon seeing the face book message, it seemed synchronistic that I spent the evening with those who rehab owls and animals so they can return to their home in the wild as my friend two hours away encountered the owl that returned to its home in the stars. 

Earlier the same day another synchronicity got my attention.  While at a musical event on Wednesday night, I met a young woman I had not seen in a year.  When we initially met she told me of working with Roma youth in Europe. The Roma or gypsies have suffered much discrimination which continues presently. 

After seeing Amber, I came home and saw a news story regarding the new Berlin memorial dedicated that day to the Roma people killed in the Nazi Holocaust.  Between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma were killed by Hitler due to their darker skin. 

Early the following morning I awoke thinking of the profound beauty of the owl dying as not that far away we celebrated owls and animals.  Thanks to the unseen web by which we are all connected, I believe the owl leaving Earth felt the love shared by those of us gathered celebrating Walden. Likewise the souls of the Roma killed decades ago felt the love of those gathered on German soil this week honoring their loss.   

Mystics and indigenous people have always known of the web that quantum science is now researching.  Through the energetic, unseen threads of this web, these beings, animal and human, both held with fear and suspicion by some, found comfort in Love's pattern, the pattern of an open heart.

It seems more vital than ever that we keep our hearts and minds open so those closed in fear can experience Love's pattern in the web wherever they are in these Times.

* Carson I learned died, not in the fire but naturally, and was replaced by Demetri.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 26 October 2012
and again 30 June 2014 

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

I Want a Heart of Garlic

A friend's photo of her freshly dug garlic reminded me of the story that follows from my site "Little Farma."  I didn't know until rereading it moments ago that I posted it exactly a year ago today.  This synchronicity prompts me to share it here at Imagine the Shift.  Enjoy. - Dawn 

Garlic's POV at sunset

This is my fourth year to have garlic's green sprouts breaking Earth's brown skin.  I continue to find myself mesmerized by the magic of how garlic grows.  Scientist-types of course would be quick to point out there's nothing magic about growing garlic for the credit belongs to soil, sun, rain and nutrients.

Garlic is still magic to me.  I am mesmerized by the fact that over eight months time one small clove can morph into 7-8 cloves clumped together providing the kick we savor on pizza, veggies, scrambled eggs and all kinds of things.

Garlic feeds me in all kinds of ways.  

I look at the word clove and c-love (see love).  If I can c-love in the darkest of people, acts and times then my heart of compassion and my mind of understanding will grow and multiply like the cloves of garlic in my yard outside. To C-love is the key to returning to relationship with rather than having power over.

Who decided to call it a 'head' of garlic anyway?  Why not a heart?  I'm not surprised it's a head as over the centuries, the head's gotten way out of proportion to the heart in our world. Valuing reason and thinking over the emotional and intuitive experience has gotten us to this place of such deep divides.

Divine Love is like a clove of garlic in Time's dark soil, stretching, expanding and morphing into multiple cloves. We have reached the end of Time's long night.  Love has been waiting.  Love is ready to be harvested, gently pulled from the shadows and the dark.  Divine Love is ready to be brought into the Light from the dark, yet magic Earthen Universe.

When I look at my garlic beds, I C-love and think, "I want a heart of garlic with a head, a thoughtful, open head of garlic on the side."

-Dawn, The Good News Muse at "Imagine the Shift" 30 June 2013
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

My Father's Brown Baby and Me

I had already been up for two hours this particular 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 Nashville's flood a few years ago, I found her again in a trunk from my childhood, a trunk that had protected her all those years still protected her 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's death 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 this shouldn't be 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 Kirk, The Good News Muse,
14 June 2014 and 15 May 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Friday, Freya and Memory's Black Hole

(As this only Friday the 13th in 2014 draws to a close, I came to my computer with the intention of finding this story written several Friday the 13ths ago. It seems for me more appropriate than ever as I continue to call up and re-member times past. So I share it again for me and possibly for you.) 

What have you contributed to Memory's black hole desiring to emerge in these times? 

I spent the end of last week sensing something stirring within while troubled to find my brain wouldn't work.  As hard as I tried, I could not think clearly. I could hardly think at all.  I felt myself internally scurrying about  panicked, fearing I was loosing what was just beneath the surface and that whatever it was would enter Memory's black hold (I accidentally wrote hold but meant hole) to forever vanish.

Then Friday I realized it was that time again.  This explained a lot.  I'm a woman of 52 still having an occasional period. There's something deeply satisfying about bleeding yet despite knowing better, I resist the accompanying changes a couple of days preceding this now bi or tri-monthly cycle. My energy fails as does my brain. Highly stimulating places like the grocery or just being inside my own skin can feel overwhelming.

Upon finally surrendering, I realized that when I resist letting go and struggle against my flow I'm no different from the patriarchy or men in power trying to maintain control.  When I choose action over being and use force over mindful stillness, I'm no different from the line of men in powerful positions who seem to need to wage war of some sort.  The war I wage is within.

When I force my path rather than stopping to sit and listen, I'm no different from the Cheney's and Rumsfeld's who at least as far as I can tell aren't open to Mystery but need to put everything into boxes of us vs. them for ego and financial gain.

When I resist, it's me versus the Mystery, the Mystery that when I stop struggling and listen always reveals something that in that moment that I need to hear.

When I finally surrendered early the evening of Friday the 13th, I began my day over again.  The day hadn't started as usual.  I allowed an 8:00am meeting to preempt my morning routine. Finally on Friday evening I sat down with my journal and the written material with which I usually start each day.

I seldom have a plan for what gets written in my journal and this night was no different.  I opened the cover and spontaneously wrote, "Why do I hesitate writing what I know?"

Without effort, the answer immediately came.  I am concerned with being questioned.  I sensed some unknown authority demanding information of me.  I wrote in response, "I know it in my body as sure as I'm breathing and writing.  I know through my body and soul yet what I know for me doesn't have to be for you.  What do you know in your body?"

In the moment this didn’t make sense yet it was what showed up on my internal radar as I sat in the quiet and listened.  I then read the information for Friday the 13^th and learned this date was initially associated with the feminine and Friday was originally named after the planet Venus from the Norse tradition whose primary goddess was Freya. Friday was Freya's day.  In ancient times 13 was the sacred number of the Goddess.  Then political and church leaders wanting to increase their power and control associated Friday the 13^th with bad luck to separate the people from the feminine and the goddess.

Not only did I learn Friday the 13th was originally a good day, but that the French Templars on a Friday the 13th in 1307 were arrested on this day and eventually questioned and killed.  Reading about the Templars brought a sudden sense of ease to my entire body and being that I had not had all day.

Since going to France I've sensed I had a connection with the Templars be it a life with them long past or a present day sensitivity to their experience.  The next morning I awoke seeing five or six scrolls in a stack and later knew I had been part of the Templar experience in some way that was connected to the feminine.

Days later I am mindful of the Mystery unfolding in me and in this Time.  I think of Memory’s black hole and what we as humankind have collectively placed there through repression and fear over time. I imagine all that has been split off from consciousness and disconnected from like the fear of the feminine from hundreds of years past.

What was it the church fathers feared?  What is it men in power so fear today? How is it my own fear and discomfort keep me from personally slowing down to deeply listen and connect?  In my unconscious busyness what do I repress?

I imagine all that has been placed in Memory’s black hole as being like a seed growing over time, awaiting us in this Time.  I imagine this period in which we’re now living as the time for us as Earth gardeners to gently water this seed with tears of joy and sorrow and like the sun coax it forth with the warmth of love.

This is the time of Mystery moving over and through Memory’s black hole calling forth through us the Mystery of Love wanting to grow in this time, a Love that redeems, forgives and joyfully celebrates.

As I wrote in my journal a week ago, this is what I know in my body and soul. What do you know, not in your mind, but in your body on the inside as truth for you in this time? What have you contributed to Memory’s black hole desiring now to emerge?

Imagine the Shift of honoring what is planted within and allowing it to grow forth in the Mystery of this Time.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 20 January 2012
and again Friday the  13th of June 2014

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Simple Synchronicities

"Holy persons draw to themselves all that is earthly." 

- Hildegard of Bingen 

While decluttering yesterday I came across the above quote on the cover of a brochure from the Catholic Sisters of the Upper Mississippi Valley.  I had picked the brochure up last year during a spontaneous visit to a botanical garden in an Iowa town where Jerry's mother was in PT rehab. 

I kept the brochure during the decluttering spree because I love the feel of holding things in my hands, something a computer can't provide at least yet. 

I don't know that I draw the earthly to me as much as it arrives and I recognize it because it tugs at a place inside me that has been with me all along and longs to not just come alive but stay alive...which is what the Japanese Maple and Sun's Light did for me this morning. 

As I sat temporarily bathed in Sun before it disappeared behind summer's leafed out trees, I could feel the magic and healing permeating my insides. A few moments later, I photographed the Japanese Maple by which I sit each morning and saw this, not only the beautiful leaves but the interconnected Flower of Life circles in the upper right hand corner. 

That is when synchronicity arrived.  Moments before Sun washed over me in my shaded yard, I was reading another story I found yesterday but had saved since 2009.  It was an interview with someone named Drunvalo Melchizedek who had written on the Flower of Life.  Interesting to say the least.  

Then as I came upstairs to post this photo, I saw the Hildegard of Bingen quote and opened the brochure. The first thing I saw was a reference to St. Francis and St. Clare. In the last month, a friend told me St. Francis and St. Clare were watching over me. I sure didn't feel that way and I didn't even know who Clare was or is. 

Simple synchronicities keep me going when I've not a clue 'where' I'm going.  They are beautiful golden bread crumbs prompting me to learn, engage and stay awake.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse,  2 June 2014

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Options for Living from the Inner Well or Inner Hell

 

From March 2014.....

The first thing I noticed when I sat down this morning were two bundles of wisteria blossoms on the ground not far from where I sit most mornings in my small Nashville yard.  This struck me as odd as I'm accustomed to seeing the purple clusters hanging from the vine. These looked deliberately placed near my morning chair.  I laid them on a journal that I had brought outside to read.  Their long bunched bodies reminded me of people passing on a family tree.  Then I noticed those nearest the base had opened while those at the tip had not.

In the wisteria, I saw our options for living. 

As children, we come here open.  Some close early on never really opening again, I suspect, while others sooner or later find their way back to the openness of childhood.

I took a photo then suddenly from nowhere which is always somewhere tears arrived and I wept.  I had come upon my Heart's truth.

I want to always live open.  

I want to always live open yet I haven't and I don't all the time.  Living open for me means feeling and feeling means not only allowing in joy and delight but pain and sorrow as well.  People are cruel. They hurt the animals I love. They unconsciously bring harm to Mother Earth and at times they hurt the people I love too. Those I know and those I don't know have let me down as well.  Yet taking others personally, at least for me, creates an inner hell.

Feeling primes my heart's pump.  When I allow the sorrow and loss to flow, I also ultimately find peace, joy, and love flowing from my inner well.

When I fall, whether today or 10,000 today's away, I want to have shown up in my life like the wisteria in my yard.  I want to live open and connected to my inner well rather 

than in a self-created inner hell. 

I am so very grateful for the messages in Nature, simple yet profound, always surrounding us.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, posted 20 May 2014

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Chords of Love

I've not posted anything in awhile although I'm still writing..... and I just did an interview on "Voices of the Earth" with Carol Ohmart-Behan which I wanted to share.

It's available for a listen anytime at blogtalk radio.  Here's the link: Voices of the Earth

An hour before the interview, I was perusing my website and already aware of what I was going to share. Then a story got my attention from 3-4 years ago.  Interesting how things unfold and not as we plan.  I hope you'll take the time to give a listen or read "Chords of Love" which I'm reposting below. Hearing myself read the story aloud after having not read it in years, I was struck that this is also a story of allowing oneself to be stirred, even or especially when that stirring involves grief as my friend Tim opened himself to and in turn allowed me to.

Again here's the link: Voices of the Earth  and here's  the story in print as well as the continuation three years later.... Love, Dawn

Chords of Love 

When I’m fully present and aware (not distracted by things I think I have to do or am suppose to do), I’ve a sense of being at home inside myself. It’s in those moments that I hear, sense and see at another level the richer reality by which we’re all surrounded and in which we’re all connected.

For example, recently I stood at the stove cooking when my friend Tim’s music crossed my mind.  Thanks to Facebook, Tim and I have crossed paths again. Although we were in high school together we really didn’t know one other. (Can you really know another as teenagers when one hardly knows oneself?) Now over thirty years later, we’ve discovered we’re kindred spirits as we share a love of Nature.

About a month ago, Tim messaged me, requesting my phone number. He wanted me to hear a bit of music he had written. If I liked it, he’d in turn send me a cassette if of course I had a cassette player. I smiled. We’ve at least two or three along with cassettes we occasionally play.

Later that day, the light on my land line blinked alerting me to a new message. (Yes, we still have a land line too.) I pressed ‘play’ and heard these beautiful chords seeming to reach from Tim’s guitar out into the ethers, into the Universe.

A thought crossed my mind as I listened to the brief clip. I thought…

‘This would be soothing to the trees.’

I had no idea which or what trees, but I immediately emailed Tim and shared my impression. He enthusiastically wrote back “Yes, I’d love for you to play it to the trees!” and within days, the cassette arrived.

We had company so I set it aside but I didn’t forget. I sensed I needed to wait for the right time although I didn’t quite know what that meant.

The time arrived last week as I prepared lunch. I stood at the stove stirring when Tim’s cassette crossed my mind. 'Was this the time?' I wondered. 'And if so, why?'

Within seconds of my wondering, I knew. In a magical moment of profound beauty, I knew for I heard. I heard the chain saws.

Tree cutting crews had been roaming the neighborhood cutting the trees I connect and commune with on morning walks. As someone who deeply loves trees and also desires to hold the whole of our world including the tree cutters and loggers in a conscious, loving way, seeing and hearing trees being cut always evokes mixed and deep feeling.

That very morning as I drove Jerry to work, I had noticed two trees one block over stripped of all their branches. I was hurried and didn’t want to see. It was too early to be ‘stirred’ too early to be feeling deeply. I didn’t even walk that day due to the earlier snow. I came home and busied myself until that moment I stood in the kitchen cooking.

That's when Tim's music crossed my mind and suddenly I knew why. The two trees nearby were coming down as all the trees seemed to call to me, “It’s time. It is time.”

I put in the cassette, turned up the sound and imagined the trees as they were cut being comforted by the peaceful vibrations of Tim’s guitar. I felt the sounds reaching the trees all along Natchez Trace, trees now missing their limbs nearest the power lines as well as those that hadn’t been cut. I sensed them all finding comfort as members of their family left this physical plane.

I felt them being soothed by the chords of Tim’s guitar as musical vibrations reached the trees in a beautiful chain of connectedness.

I want to play Tim's music again while walking down my street. I want to play it in honor of the rolling country hillsides where trees are logged daily in our home county not faraway. I want them to feel the vibration of beautiful music as they give their lives to become floors, press board and beams in walls, as they, the trees, become our homes.

I envision ribbons of loving sound reaching around the Earth, wrapping in the vibration of love the great Sequoias and Redwoods of the West Coast as well as the tree covered Appalachians and Adirondacks. I envision all the trees and people on Earth feeling joy and gratitude for the dance that we share, human and nature, connected by the heart's vibration, connected in loving appreciation.

This magical moment while stirring at my stove reminds me there are no ordinary moments. We are surrounded by a much richer reality in which we're invited to engage as we’re present and allow ourselves to be stirred.

Tim’s allowing his heart to be stirred is what originally birthed the piece he shared with me. I learned as we continued to exchange messages that Tim's longing to connect with his deceased wife prompted him to play the guitar chords that resonated with his heart’s chords. These sounds in turn resonated with my heart and my love for the trees. (Is it a coincidence that cords of wood heat many homes?)

What beauty! Tim's yearning to connect, reaching for his beloved, allowed me to connect with my beloveds, the trees.

We humans get entangled debating global warming, the whys and why-nots and the right use of resources. I’m not saying that’s not important but it’s just as vital that we stop our side-taking and remember we are instruments of loving vibration walking Earth.

Nature, the trees, plants and animals, benefit most from our gratitude, from an awake heart, the source of Tim’s music and the source of all beauty.

In times that can seem dark, the world is made lighter by the chords of love connecting us all. 

P.S. The next day, I walked Natchez Trace with my clunky hand held cassette player with the volume up so Tim's music could be heard by the trees. I continued this ritual repeatedly and then then story continued..... 

-Dawn! The Good News Muse

 dawn@imaginetheshift.com

23 May 2014 

first posted 20 December 2010

Chords of Love (Three Years Later) 

At times I hear folks comment that they just don't understand, care for or like facebook.  I share this story because it's an example of the beautiful connections that can be found on facebook and the ripples around our world that result from those connections.

This morning I found a guitar piece sent to my phone last night from my friend Tim.  Tim and I have reconnected through face book after having known each other in high school, although we really didn't know one another.  I hurriedly listened to the piece not taking in the title nor the accompanying photo.  My first thought was, 'Tim's sent me another piece that should be played for the trees.'

Then I rushed out the door to the dentist a short drive away down Woodlawn.  I rounded the corner to see traffic backed up only to discover one of the oldest trees in the neighborhood being trimmed to half its size.  I feared it's coming down. 

If I hadn't been in a hurry I would have stopped to play Tim's song to it.  Instead I drove on trying to send loving energy to the tree and the men disassembling it piece by piece. As I drove past under my breath I said, "F#@#$%" then I quickly took it back knowing that whatever I send out comes back around to me.  It is hard for me to see trees coming down especially in the name of safety when there are so many other 'unsafe' things like chemicals in the water and air and the junk folks are fed that don't get addressed.

I made it home from my appointment just in time to start work, but left again later in the day to run an errand.  I made myself drive by the tree rather than take my usual route.  The tree was still coming down and I could not stop. Yet I determined then and there to return.

Tim's photo

At 8:30 tonight I picked up my phone to play Tim's song. That's when I noticed the beautiful accompanying photo of trees and the title to the piece - "To the Top."  How perfect was this given the height of the tree and the fact that the top was coming down? It was no accident Tim sent me this song and I had thought of trees.

Jerry and I drove down Woodlawn.  I placed special oils on the trunk then stood at its massive base.  I asked its forgiveness for humankind's negligence and ignoring all the tree life especially my contribution to that negligence.  I told it how much it was loved and as I did I played Tim's piece for it again and again imagining its chords reaching all the way "To the Top."

As I looked up, the moon and the three stars of Orion's belt were perfectly situated in the middle of the two trunks.  This was the perfect reminder that not only are we connected to one another and the trees but also to the moon and stars.

The vibration of music connects us. Music is the language of the stars that speaks to the trees and our hearts. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse,
23 May 2014
first posted 20 Feb. 2013

dawn@imaginetheshift.com