Category Archives: Creativity – Inspiration & Support

What Is the Choice That Has Kept You Alive?

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This is a vote against the void: the yawning pit of utter nihilism, the haunting pull toward self-sabotage and passive self-destruction. This is a vote against despair and the excruciating comfort of submerging in terror, uncertainty, grief and outrage at the headlines of the day; against allowing hope to be swept away in the tsunami of corruption, sadism, and malevolent destruction of the People and the Planet.

This is a vote for the possibility of facing, recognizing, and consciously deflecting the force(s) that would destroy us, until we can move forward, toward the Light. Not once, but again and again, because the predator never stops following, inwardly or outwardly.

What Is the Choice That Has Kept You Alive? full post

(592 words, estimated 2:22 mins reading time)

Making Peace with my Mother’s Paradoxes

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Dear Mom,

You’re one of my angels now, nine years gone, cheering and challenging me from the spirit world after you blessed my vocation in our last real talk….but I’m still trying to make sense of your paradoxical legacy as I, in my turn, approach elderhood. Not only your legacy in my own life, but the legacy you left the nation through your contributions to the Heritage Foundation and Republican Party and the rest of your conservative causes.

Making Peace with my Mother’s Paradoxes full post

(1566 words, 3 images, estimated 6:16 mins reading time)

Navigating a Nightmare in a Connected Cosmos

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I’m watching the election returns, seeing my friends’ Facebook feeds registering fear, horror, anger as each new bit of news shows 14963156_10154003827395592_8791516528117946790_nup. Fighting the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, madly tracing Reiki symbols in the air and sending energy, then turning back to the spiraling disaster.

What happened???? Yes, the polls were all over the map, and when I went to Standing Rock the Midwest was a sea of Trump signs….but how could anyone seriously vote for this racist rapist….we all know the epithets he’s earned.

Navigating a Nightmare in a Connected Cosmos full post

(833 words, 1 image, estimated 3:20 mins reading time)

Findhorn Bound: Women’s Wisdom in Nairn

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Leaving Edinburgh was not easy – in one day I’d seen enough to fall in love with the city’s glorious stone buildings, urban mountain, royal and postage-stamp gardens, and friendly people – but I took a great and shamelessly touristy thrill in riding a real British double-decker bus to the train station.

I’d been hoping to find a congenial – and informed – seatmate for the four-hour ScotRail ride to the North….and glory be, next to me settled a delightfully acerbic elder lady from Inverness, who’d been taking the North/South ride throughout her life. IMG_20160415_075758329 Together we entertained a young mother’s active toddler, while my companion shared her memories, gave history lessons about landmarks, clued me in to differences between British and American English, and dished gossip about the royal family and their Balmoral Castle, far over the snow-clad peaks of the Cairngorms to the east.

Findhorn Bound: Women’s Wisdom in Nairn full post

(757 words, 7 images, estimated 3:02 mins reading time)

To Stop Feeling Alone, Stop Being Alone

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In a long-ago job, a manager once told our team – “I don’t want to hear about a problem unless you have a solution to offer.”

I’ve tried to take that as a guideline for blog posts: not to kvetch about an issue unless I can work my way through it to an answer…or at least a new perspective.

To Stop Feeling Alone, Stop Being Alone full post

(363 words, 1 image, estimated 1:27 mins reading time)

Taking the Risk of Sharing Our Stories

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Four years ago, in the midst of studies towards my Master’s degree, I birthed the precursor of this blog on the free WordPress platform. What a journey has taken place between that time and this!

At the beginning, I had no idea of where the journey would take me. I only knew that I was waking up to the reality – not just the single, catechism-shattering experience that I’d had in childhood,  but the everyday, sublime-and-mundane Reality —  that we exist in a conscious cosmos.

And along with that awakening came the calling to, somehow, integrate and share both that experience and that Reality.

Taking the Risk of Sharing Our Stories full post

(451 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Edgewalk

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These images are part of an evolving series honoring the Standing People (trees) as their fallen forms return to the soil.

I’d gone to the woods seeking peace and guidance, with too many personal paths beckoning, too much spinning in my mind. Almost immediately I found myself drawn off the pathway by the forms of felled trees and boughs in a massive brush pile. As I clambered about, witnessing the wood meshing with fallen leaves and returning to mulch, totemic shapes, faces, portals began to emerge in the dance of light and dark, pattern and texture….

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Edgewalk full post

(99 words, 7 images, estimated 24 secs reading time)

Our Responsibility, Our Power

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I shut down another conversation the other day on Facebook. Didn’t intend to do it…but my comment was one of those that are met with embarrassed averted eyes and even more embarrassed silences.

No, I wasn’t sharing the intimate details of my health,  sex life, or bathroom habits. I wasn’t evangelizing or objecting to the exclusive holiday greeting “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Easter” or what have you (though I do object to such exclusivity, early and often).

So what taboo did I break in this supposedly taboo-free society? I responded to a friend’s posting of Elaine Boosler’s comment: “When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.”

Our Responsibility, Our Power full post

(1611 words, 1 image, estimated 6:27 mins reading time)

Beatitudes for the Weird

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Click the image to learn about the work of http://blessedaretheweird.com in affirming those of us who obstinately refuse to fit the cookie-cutter.

As my husband’s teacher used to say – Give thanks that you’re weird. Look at the alternative – normality, a.k.a. death. 

Permanent link to this post (44 words, 1 image, estimated 11 secs reading time)

Dancing with Spirit

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I was deeply saddened to hear today of the passing of Gabrielle Roth, meditative dancer/artist/musician/shaman/healer. Although I never had an opportunity to participate in one of her classes, I’ve been awed by her videos and her philosophy of retrieving our souls, our humanity through the metaphor of dance.

When I was a child, I used to dance. Not the usual little-girl structured dance experience, though my parents did send me to ballet and tap classes in response to my kindergarten dreams of being a ballerina. Like poorly fitting toe-slippers, between chronic respiratory issues and two (apparent) left feet the lessons didn’t get far…but somewhere, somehow, some vestiges of the dreams and the lessons did remain.

Dancing with Spirit full post

(692 words, 1 image, estimated 2:46 mins reading time)

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