Take Heart  

The path is before you

The path of heart

Walking on moccasin feet

 I know you are weary, the mire, the fall

Still questioning things long ago decided.

 You are a warrior.

Bravely entering  the unknown territory

As if your life depended on it.

 I am a Warrior too

 I came here to break new ground

 And  to ride out into the dark cold night

 Holding my empty hands upward.

Sit by this fire… 

Women Warrior

And I will drape the softness  around your shoulders 

And help you remove your boots

Look into the fire 

It’s not recognition you seek 

Only a truth

A choice made.  

 I am a warrior

 I am a warrior

 I am a warrior

 I think strategically

 And death sits upon my shoulder

 Knowing  this act could be my last

 I am conscious

 Habits are harmful

I am not small

 I extend from here to Canyon wall

I am magnificently large and old and sometimes sad

 Alone at my fire most nights

 Because I haven’t said who I am

 Take heart, dear one

I am a warrior

Maybe you are too!

Best Beloved….

You laugh delighted at the turn of events,

your life is an opening

a wonder

an appreciation of the smallest thing.

A door to a second room

a chance to make your own cup of coffee.

You light a fire in my heart

and end every conversation

with, I Love You Sally.

( Michele has plans

to move out of Mesa Vista..

into Assisted Living with Terry

whom she married last fall)

Infinite Love is our true nature!

It’s Imbolic , The Day of Ewes Milk!

Lambs wiggle as they nurse.

And we find ourselves on this day

wiggling

between a Solstice

and an Equinox.

It’s the first day of winter’s turning.

And if I stand very still

as if listening for a far off mountain stream,

my mind lets go of it’s endless thinking.

This is a practice

This always listening for that which is far away-

corrals the mind

and lets me experience being here…..

delicious

Mothers milk.

“I’m just waiting to see if my coffee

chooses to use it’s power

for good or for evil”

Honoring the range of possibilities

I tip tow on the catwalk…

threes cups in

strung like a net over

the frothing sea of emotions.

Caffeine accentuates the moment to moment

precipice of every minute

to be conscious

and not just strike out with a claw.

I read in yesterday’s Daily Good

about an artist and a mother,

named Rachel Callander,

who worked with hospitals

to change their wording

on their medical forms

from just what was broken in her child

to add, what they loved about this child,

what they enjoyed….

so that these beautiful things

would be part of their medical record.

And then I heard from a friend of mine

who’d also read this article

and contacted me about it.

My friend whose son had died.

And as I wrote back to her I realized that

I’d never had a chance to

say his name to her and to me at the same time

To allow the wonder of him to be with us.

Loving the children we don’t get to keep.

I spoke his beloved name

and such aliveness was with us.

January is stock show season in Denver

Bulls with blackened hooves

ready to tap dance….

their curly hair blown back by a hair dryer,

Such care.

The bull is the beloved!

An oiled Nundi!

The warm smell of animals has a settling effect.

Can I just stay here until spring?

It’s not an easy time of year.

I have to be careful not to slip on the ice

and then there is so much to feel.

In my childhood friend’s Christmas letter

along with the photos of her family

she told me of her intense health struggle

and I am brought to my knees.

In the Tibetan book of the dead

It says that, when we have passed through

the different forms of light and then dark

with it’s fullness( tricky going here)

“We get to a place where we know

that our willingness to include it all

with arms open, heart let go-

matters more then we can imagine

and at that same moment…

We know

that all the suffering was Bliss.”

We were always in Nirvana, in Bliss.

( with Nundi)

2022 222200002222000 2022

Two represents duality and Zero is non dual

Zero is you and me

before and after and in between.

But we do want for guidance here

with our demanding human life…

maybe if I can get lower down

in my own sweet body

into my belly

out of the head ( out of the story)

I can learn to read the belly’s signals

and trust them.

(noticing too the confirming synchronicities

that validate my experience.

” Synchronicity as an active way of life

a path of steady observation

and a response to the little messages

that come from the environment every day:

sensations in the body,

encounters

and events that happen,

the way things line up in linear time

and all the little miracles.”

The spider’s web holds it’s shape

even in the strongest wind!

“From her belly she spins something from nothing

everything from the empty space within.

In the same way that a spider’s web

is infinitely sensitive to vibration

and the smallest movement is felt reverberating

over the entire web

so are all the actions and reactions

felt by everyone

contained in the web of life.

There is nothing that happens anywhere

on the planet

or galaxy, for that matter

that does not affect each one of us

and that we do not feel on some level.

Nothing we do is without consequences

Each life matters

at the same time,

each of us is no more then a tiny speck of light

Let’s be vow to be animal enough

to acknowledge the movements of the web,

made both safe and challenged by it’s sway.

The spiders web holds it’s shape

rocking us not gently but with a firm hand

on this New Years Day!

\

Are the young cottonwood volunteers

(perfect beaver food)

that have grown up here after the flood.

We also planted a number of trees

and now we have a beaver

who thinks nothing of taking down

a major tree……

which is exactly what happened.

It’s interesting to receive a heavy blow

from a creature I have reverence for

Like God , a beaver can deliver your next dose of woe

without bating an eyelash

I stand in Awe tinged by Anger

It had been John’s job to wrap the tree

He’d promised.

So my first impulse when I saw it down

was to get mad at him.

And as it often is in relationship

the coming together in a shared grief

is at first fractured by guilt or it’s equivalent…

“We should of been better prepared”

“We’re too old to manage this place”

So on this cold winter afternoon

John went out to wrap trees.

Attending to the effort of living

our softness returns….

dancing under the moonlight

(to the Moody Blues)

Two beavers- or one beaver and God

or two parts of a mutual God

Who can say?

and we are not separate.

The electromagnetic field that is my body

interweaves with yours

waves on the ocean.

Tomorrow is my sister, Jan’s, 80th birthday.

She is already with the beyond ( but still here in form)

The family is freaking out- of course

But what I feel is her readiness,

to just be the magnetic field…

tiny beads of light

invisible to the eye.

She is done for,

as they say in the West.

I had a dream Christmas night

That Anne pulled up to the curb

with Jan in the sidecar of the roadster,

ready to be off, on the adventure ahead.

The two of them side by side

tucked in low seats the engine purring

So on this eve of Jan’s birthday

Anne is in the roadster

ready to give her a lift

as soon as she steps over the threshold

off they will go, joy riding.

The horizon is not a line.

Two sister’s are circled up

as the unit they have always been.

And when I asked

Hey Anne ” do you know how to drive that?

in that quirky way of hers she said,

“I guess”

So get out of their way

Beep Beep – off they go!

In this season of the descent

Where Innana gets hung up on a meat hook

in the underworld

(in an attempt to aid her sister)

whittled down to nothing

no arms or legs or head- just a trunk

And isn’t that just it….

Our besties do this whittling

although we truly wish they wouldn’t

sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, friends, spouses

taking away what isn’t me.

So much baggage,

so much dross.