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Archive for Beauty

The Miracle of Life

It’s almost like clockwork – every Spring, no matter how long it’s been since I last posted, I am inspired to write something about the sheer LIFE I experience burgeoning in my garden.

It usually starts with the Gertrude Jekyll roses – because they are early birds and because they smell divine. But even given their undeniable lusciousness, without the back-up chorus – lilacs shyly emerging from their slumber in the shade of the California Pepper, fat water lily buds jostling goldfish in the pond, eager buds covering every rosebush, tiny scrolled buds on the wild nasturtiums creeping under the fence; there’s even a peony bud building momentum in a pot outside my office door – I still might not be motivated to write.

But there is something so primal and yes, so beautiful, about this annual celebration of the life force that I too am awakened from sleep and want to take part.

It’s on days like this that I remember these words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

“The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

And I am moved to share my gratitude for being among the walking right now, for my garden, and its reminder of the endless generosity of the earth.

I lost my sister Katherine Grace on February 24th. I was privileged to share her last days, her last hours, and the precious minutes of her last breaths. I say privileged not only because she was extremely private and this sharing wasn’t a gift she gave easily, but also because the laying down of life is a sacred time for every human being, and it is always a privilege to be in the presence of the sacred. It’s a time when we are distilled down to the very essence of who we are. My sister fought hard for her life, for her time on this earth, even when she could no longer walk without help. But when it was time to lay it down, she surrendered with all the grace and beauty that defined her.

And as the beauty of new life emerges all around me, I send a silent prayer of gratitude for her life. In some secret way, I can imagine her here still, in my heart, like an unfurling bud that will continue to bloom as long as I walk this generous earth.

To my Kitty Gae, with love.

Attunement

photo by Amy Lenzo

In describing the series of online ceremonies I’m co-hosting with FireHawk Hulin and Pele Rouge over the next solar year, we talk about attunement:

“During this process we will dance with an older way of looking at time, one that is in relationship with the cycles and wisdom of the natural world, the way things actually are. When we move in supportive relationship with the natural cycles of Earth, we establish patterns in our lives that are life-giving, nourishing, and in harmony with the larger rhythms of life.”

“(This is a) … “tuning” ceremony, bringing us each into our own direct relationship with the medicine of Earth.”

To begin preparing the container for this timeless journey, FireHawk and I created a basecamp to serve as the ground for our expedition; its design based on the four directions of a Medicine Wheel. In the South, we placed an intention for “Attunement”.

The South is all about relationship, the place of feeling and emotion. We placed attunement there to remind us that we are aligning ourselves in relationship; with our own inner life, with those that are journeying with us, and with the natural world we are all part of. Attunement requires that we slow down and listen to the quieter voices, so often missed in the bustle of daily life, to find the deeper patterns we want to attune to and synchronize ourselves with.

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“Scent”sing

The first roses of the season are in full bloom… in my garden and all over the neighborhood; their scent a intoxicant I willingly abandon myself to. There is a particular blend of longing and joy that scent can evoke… without a word having been spoken, I find myself laid open by this subtle Beauty.

Diane Ackerman, in Natural History of the Senses, says that when Cleopatra first invited Antony to her bed she covered the floor in rose petals a foot and a half deep. Apparently the Romans were so enamored of the rose that they founded Rosalia, an annual holiday to sing her praises (ah! perhaps it’s the Italian in me that so enjoys this luxurious flower).

Still impacted by the sweetness of an online Elemental Ceremony I co-hosted this weekend with my friends Firehawk and Pele, in honor of the element of Air, today I’m struck by the relationship between air and scent. If scent is a kind of nuanced communication delivered by air, it carries a tale we cannot close ourselves off from like we can the stories of our other senses (we can close our eyes or plug our ears indefinitely, but we cannot live without air for more than a few moments). Not that I want to – the scent of new roses in this lovely California Spring is a spirit-reviving tonic and I am most grateful for the Medicine.

 

A Blessing

Looking for “inspiration” – a juicy tidbit to post this morning – I came across this blessing from someone who has inspired me deeply for many years, someone I (like so many others) hold dear to my heart; the late great John O’Donohue.

Here’s John’s blessing, taken from Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong:

May you listen to your longing to be free.

May the frames of your belonging be large enough for the dreams of your soul.

May you arise each day with a voice of blessing

whispering in your heart that something good is going to happen to you.

May you find a harmony between your soul and your life.

May the mansion of your soul never become a haunted place.

May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within.

May you never place walls between the light and yourself.

May your angel free you from the prisons of guilt, fear, disappointment, and despair.

May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world to gather you, mind you, and embrace you in belonging.

May it be so, and to John’s beautiful blessing I add the collective prayer that we all “arise each day with a voice of blessing”, and recognize each other and all that lives as part of our sacred circle of belonging.