Constant Movement within Us

   All is movement, is sound, through this spring day. Wind, changeable, in tree boughs and flowering, leafing, growing life.
Winds ~ coming and going, quieting and surging ~ always accompanied by the constant shushing of the distant sea...the waves and tides, winds and water. Like heartbeats ~ the constant movement within us: life.
 Eyes closed ~ sounds become richly complex. Feeling wind - gentle touches of coolness, pushing at my back, spiraling in sound from one cheek and ear in a circle to the other....Winds of change, of forward journeys.

 Eyes open - filled with light, the world is made of movement. Each blowing lily-of-the-valley glows, rings and is still -

 

 

under ancient, anchored firs, billowing their deep green beauty against a cerulean sky. Birds, silent in mid-day heat, return to calling, chanting in the fading evening light...moving in flight and song.

The sea ~ all turquoise, teal, blue-green and white - all impossible shades

of watery light - delicate and dense at once. What life moves within its rocking,relentless sound & motion? 

The ground around my feet is filled with moss and clover, and tiny white stars of flowers - pine needles and cones, and old shells someone gathered there long ago to remember the day, connecting beach to garden.

Where the sun heats, the wind cools. Where dreams are a longing, this present moment is some small glimpse of peace. 

Listen ~ A New Song

Listen well ~ hear ~ be well ~ absorb the day, the light of life ~ the swirling bird flocks and tides, the unending power of wind and water ~ the myriad gifts, each moment blending into yourself and spirit. Walking,walking,walking amidst birds and stones, shells and wood, water, sand & reflected sky...listen and hear a new song. Can we? wherever we are, whoever we are?

"Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking downhill to a frothy shore?"
~ ROBERT FROST ~ (from Bereft) 

I stood there, on the dunes, above the expansive, deserted windswept beach ~ absorbing salt air, a shifting grazing flock of sandpipers, gulls & eagles flying low, white caps on steel blue water extending seemingly forever into deepening, dark sky. A new song blends erratically with the old ~ filling me with a familiar angst, an overwhelming sadness experienced months ago in a warmer, intense beach land...a place where grief lives in every moment of every day & night ~ such an intensity of emotion floods through where I had sought to move beyond into necessary work for others.
 A single white crane flies over our bay and I am back there on the island, where white egrets symbolize intense hope. I watch an eagle climb in elegance against the mountainside and over the ocean....I am there, everywhere, bound to all who see and hear, who listen and absorb.
Each day, a new gift of thought...as yesterday contrasts with today, it's turquoise spring beauty sending me laughing and sighing with amazement. As changeful as always, the sea gives up alternate states....influences and inspires.

Listen well...it is never gone, that which we experience on a soul level. Listen and absorb the old into the new, and then try to sing again. Looking across an empty expanse of land and churning, powerful sea ~ an immensity of spirit guides my memory of that familiar, forgotten, distant tension and turmoil of a land not quite mine. Yet, this empathetic compassion, which so seems like grief, serves as a bond, connection, inspiration. Gratefully, again, I realize: a continuing journey of resilience provides light and song.

May! is here! Hear it, absorb it! My favorite month of a lifetime, providing scents and sounds for a gladness of heart! Be well. Live deeply.  Go ahead: be sad, be unendingly happy, just be....May Spring bring whatever you need most.

"SPRING IS AN EXPERIENCE IN IMMORTALITY." ~ Thoreau

 

"Resilience" ~ pop topic of the moment

Having no idea what a "pop"-ular topic I chose back in November 2011 when this blog was started, I am amazed, confused and humbled by the abundance of essays, articles, books, workshops, courses exploring "resilience". It's suddenly everywhere! I wonder.........why....?

As many leaders are writing and teaching: Many of us are searching, are hoping, are questioning the complexities of the current global experience. Resilience, we remember, is a journey - according to psychology......or a state of being, according to physics. Something to aspire towards, or something to gather strength from, or something we work on, day after day....and something we are utterly blessed with when it becomes an integral part of our being.

I'm attempting a new journey ~ calling it "A Gathering of Wisdom Journey 2012". It began with a new grandchild, and progressed to visits/conversations with family and friends, in Oregon & Colorado. It will continue in June in Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and New York....gathering wisdom of my oldest friends, my mentors, teachers and colleagues, as we all approach this time of life through divergent, diverse paths. 
Conversations, as many have written, are essential today. Communicating honestly, with dedication to clarity, truth, learning and giving. There is forever much to give....and to gather....and to give again, after the "gathering of wisdom journey" begins. Sharing our resilience can only serve to help all.


Peace for your journey, is all I can wish you ~
(pictures are Colorado, March '12)

Leadership: Contemplative & Resilient

Did you know that our Pacific coast abounds with restored-from-endangered bald eagles? They ride the currents and soar beside my car as I drive to work on Hwy.101! How about great blue herons in the tidal bays, or white egrets in fields with cattle(just like Jamaica!), sea ducks of all shapes and colors riding & bobbing the bay waters? The bay waters~ impressionist views eternally altering in mood & intensity. Light upon bird and wave,reflection, glorious resilient flight. And here, in the quiet cottage neighborhood, finches and doves, flickers tapping and dashing across your path, near your face....all in love with this beauty as much as we are.

I will go in June to a wonderful symposium in Nova Scotia, learning and sharing with leaders around the globe, in contemplative, compassionate, resilient creativity,~ re-thinking, re-inventing, caring, searching, facilitating positive change...challenging present communities to new, innovative, inclusive pathways for this most diverse & complex world. I am hopeful this experience will advance my Peace Corps community & education training, opening mind and soul to something vibrant, inspiring and so relevant. 
Be inspired;look at this website: aliainstitute.org

What do you see when your eyes take in such skies? Look up, even in the rain and storm. Be blown off course for just a moment. Find resilience: your journey.

 

Absorbing Resilience ~ a childs flight

".....Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.....an unlimited idea of freedom."  ~ RICHARD BACH (yes, the old 1970 J.L. Seagull)

"The moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest..." ~ RALPH WALDO EMERSON (c. 1870)

A seagull child calls and flies, high on the dune cliffs, where homes more expansive than mine hug the shifting sand and scrub pines - bay windows set towards the sunset. A young girl dances on a deck, waves, flaps and skips ~ calling in an astonishing voice to a small flock of circling gulls.

Gulls swoop, dip, dive and elegantly hold to the air currents, closely calling and wheeling with the child on the cliffside. Far from their usual ocean beach habitat, entranced by this young strangers voice, resounding as their own, perhaps communicating a kinship, a love, a longing, even wonder...the birds slow their normally erratic swift flight, hover and flow with a kind of calm beauty.

I stop my beach walk, directing my gaze to the high perch of this creative one. I turn my back on the rolling waves, the kites, the dogs, the tourists on this unusually busy winter Sunday ~ 
I am entranced with the slow elegance of the seagulls, as they loop over and around the childs head. They are performing for her, and she for them! Count them: six white winged, lazy dancing birds - normally so arrogant, so brazen in their strutting, diving perpetual search for food. Yet here, I witness a beauty, and hold close a new appreciation.

The child calls, sings, skips rope down the length of her deck....she calls with arms raised as if to launch upwards in flight. The gulls circle, soar, float ~ wondering.......

Absorbing resilience, I watch until the child disappears into the home and the gulls at long last return to wandering. I will not forget.

Being "HOME"

"There's a place for us; a time and place for us... Time together with time to spare. Time to learn, time to care." ~ Stephen Sondheim, from lyrics to SOMEWHERE (West Side Story) 

HOME ~  comfort, safe, settled, stability, shelter, familiar, relax, honest, rest....inspires longing, hoping, searching, a natural quest.

homecoming ~ homegrown ~ homeland ~ homeless ~ homemade ~ home place ~ home port ~ homesick ~ homespun ~ homestead ~ home stretch ~ hometown ~ homeward ~ homework ~ home free


To "be at home" in the world ~  is perhaps a common, shared hope, goal ~
To "BE home" for self, family, for friends, community ~ is perhaps a never-ending process which we strive to be comfortable with.
Without our potential sense of resilience, of starting over each morning, of believing in the value of the process, of knowing there is a perpetual place for us in the universe, feeling the truth of our life...even when the search, the process itself continues.....without that sense of resilience, would we be here, now, this moment?


The process of resilience ~ the potential to lead a resilient life ~ feeling "at home" or even "being home" ~ may lie within all of us.
My home is the world, is within the souls of my children and grandchild, within my friends, family, students and colleagues, even strangers as we pass on the beach or in our cars or in the post office and library.
Home is in the center of an old song, a symphony, in the wild abandon of storms, of forest, of sea, of the exquisite, unspeakable beauty of a smile or a flower or a shaft of light through mountainous clouds. 
My place is where I am needed ~ settled, safe, sheltered ~ challenged, concerned, inspired ~ finding the courage to forget myself and give to others. I give unbounded thanks for the opportunity.

Epiphany

EPIPHANY ~ revelation, awareness, opening, new insight, "a moment of sudden, intuitive understanding"(Webster's)......12 days after Christ's birth, a time of giving in the spirit of the Wise Men...can not epiphany be a constant state of being, of spiritual giving?


~ Know this is truth, this moment, life, time.
~ Know you are here. this way, beloved and for a purpose.
~ Know, feel, believe in your wealth of spirit, the gifts of another new day.

Always wake with a grateful heart. If not, search your life, in truth and integrity, for a reason to be in gratitude, some measure of grace allowed.

Resilient Life ~ 
the journey....a newness of spirit; a fresh, brand new dimension of self:
I woke New Year's Day 2012 to the early news: I added "grandmother" to my being, my identity! At 61, this is not a surprise, no amazing addition ~ yet, a glowing shift in spiritual dimension occurred, a new life full of possibility inspired and altered our world.



We live to love and to find love, to be loved and to give love.
Resilience requires acceptance, embracing even, of that ever-shifting paradigm~ elusive state ~
Shadowy, then enlightened; tender, then exuberant; awake/alert, then quiet, simple,clear.
Faith upholds us, every one of us, even those who doubt ~

Are we not born with an innate faith in the light and dark of the world, the pull of gravity securing us and all there is? Aren't we possessed of the awareness & unassuming knowledge of something beyond that knowledge,something we may never know/understand ~ just be aware of?

Resilience believes, accepts, glories in the unknown. Resilient life absorbs energy in order to multiply it and release it ~ To hold it would stagnate the capability of being resilient. Our mere tuning to the vibration of the air we breathe signifies and validates our very being.
We - all living things - are brave and strong, at some amazing point ~
Look carefully: How, when are you, have you, been there -in your unknowing, believing resilience?
Epiphany ~ a gift forever available.