Something Always Blooming

Like everyone and their cousin, I am trying to take better care of my body. I don't like the 'e' word that sounds like demon banishing, so I say 'body in motion' or 'joyful movement'. Motivation can be tricky, for the part of me that would rather stay cozy in the blankets doing sleeping yoga is very strong. So I must lure myself out to the cardio hills and stairs with promises of beauty and the wildly disciplined drumming of Babatunde Olatunji.The endorphins are a bonus.


The plants conspire with their endless creativity. Amidst the running up stairs or purposefully striding uphill, I pause and notice what's around me. One foggy morning I met potato vine flower flashing a yellow eye at the center of deep purple, a no-nonsense kind of beauty. Bare cherry tree sprouting tender red baby branchlets a few millimeters long. Reddish purple cyclamen pushing up out of the cold, moist earth. What bravery!


On another morning, clear and cold in another microclimate, I found a tiny barrelly cactus with green torso, its head and little arms a fiesta orange and yellow. Try being grumpy now. A perfectly fragrant pink rose, just at my nose level, reminds me of the one in The Little Prince. Birds of Paradise, here? You've got to be kidding. And it goes on.


What's so easy to observe in the green relatives is sometimes harder to see in me. Where am I sprouting, emerging, braving the fog and cold? What beauty and joy am I sharing with others?


Like this new habit of joyfully moving with the hills and stairs, it takes practice to be honest with myself. The part of me doubting by own growth, beauty, creativity and impact on others may always be here. But the more I connect daily with the wild and cultivated nature around me, the more I get in my bones that I am just like the green relatives. There's always something blooming in some corner of my wild inner garden. If I look for beauty and signs of life, I will find them. Somewhere in me, fertile ground is producing and supporting life.


So walk out, expect to meet signs of life wherever you are. Be met with beauty and be amazed.

Making Space for Change

After not collaging or writing much in late fall, I wondered where my creativity was going. I actually asked myself this while spackling and painting my new healing space. I somehow forgot I was pouring my art and soul into an 11' x 11' x 11' room.

Need is the mother of invention. Months ago I left a rented office situation and didn't want yet another office that didn't feel like me. It finally dawned on me to transform the junky guest room into my new healing space. A tarot reader who knew nothing about my work expressed great urgency about home improvements, work environment, and finances. Doh!

My creative process over time went like this:

dissatisfaction, desire, visioning

incubating

research, investing, gathering materials

deconstruction, recycling

prep, painting, installation, decoration

test-driving, feedback, aesthetic fine-tuning.

Most of this is in collaboration with my husband, who has the can-do to complement my vision. It's contagious. I'm ridiculously proud that I installed the dimmer switch all by myself without burning the house down. I tell all my clients. I'm still in fine-tuning - I am a dimmer switch! Yet in a relatively short time - VOILA - I am sitting in a beautiful new space, ready to receive and happy to serve an abundant flow of clients.

The feng shui people are onto something. My new healing space is in the life path/career part of my house. How could we have let it get all junky?!? What's sad is that this is the very last room in our flat that we've upgraded to be all nice and beautiful. I'd been putting my livelihood last, a refugee without a proper home. For my work and my husband's the more beauty, grounding, comfort, quiet, warmth, the better. I'm grateful we know how to make an inviting beautiful space and that my healing work with clients finally, finally, finally has a room of its own.

*I'm leading collage workshops starting 1/31. Check out www.wildimagination.org/calendar.htm

New Year Magic

I did a wonder walk through the fog with my man on New Year's Day. What I want to say about that: it's good to start your year daring to be a fool for love. On Van Ness Avenue, near the serious opera hall and spiffed up city hall, we looked up and found a hawk soaring. Fairly low, it looked down at us while hunting for lame pigeons. We do what we always do with high fliers. We stuck our arms out and echoed their soaring, swaying back and forth with our long fingery wings.

I called to one, then two of the beautiful relatives, that we love them. It's thrilling, my heart leaps when I see the wild in the city. I tell them I love them and thank them. People around us are giving us the hairy eyeball. We point, "Look at the hawks!" But they just pass us by and don't look up.

I believe that the animals, our relatives, only let themselves be seen by those with eyes. I have eyes, my man has eyes, and certain of my friends have eyes to see the magic in the world. I am grateful they are here. Hawks are messengers to Spirit, so whenever you see one, send a message of thanks, love, and blessing. Use that acute vision to hone in on what will feed you well. And ask for what you want.

I wanted to feel myself alive in the city I love, exploring with my man, being a body in joyful motion. And so it was.

And, in the End...

...the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

<sup>In these final hours of 2008, it's good to recall this bit of wisdom from the Beatles. Those with whom we share moments of love and understanding are our profound mirrors and teachers. Of course, they are our friends and family, the long-term reflections of our own human frailty that we find in our lives for some strange reason. Mirrors and teachers are also fleeting strangers, like the people on the train who laughed with me about some such urban craziness. (See my 2/21/08 post.)

Where did we extend our love, forgiveness, and understanding this year? To whom? In what circumstances? How did we stretch our hearts? And what were the rewards? Conversely, where did we withhold or step back from meeting another with compassion? What did that experience give us?

My late friend Randy was fond of saying hearts break, yes, but they break OPEN to get bigger. And as we enter a new year, we can be on the lookout for how best to tend our hearts, meeting ourselves with compassion and care. When we do that, we feel safe to keep ourselves open to life and other people. So along with your resolutions, consider what shape and size you want your heart in 2009. Mine is going to be shapeshifting, but mostly roundish, so that it can roll around and play with others.

Blessings for this passing year and all the riches it has brought.</sup>

We did it!

My close family of friends started a meditation group right after 9/11/01 to allay our fears and practice peace together.  I remember Lou's intention then was to release 'against-ness'.  He wanted to let go of opposition and retaliation on a personal and global level. At last week's meditation, I expressed wonder that we'd been circling together on and off for seven years. Considering the tremendous openings for healing change in the culture, David joked, "We did it!"

And in a way we did.  Along with everyone else who took 9/11 as a call to go deeper to what's important and authentic, reach farther beyond our comfort zones, and connect with others despite differences. According to my teacher Angeles Arrien, when we use our unique gifts and talents, the Earth can heal herself. In other words, the more we humans are in balance, the less harm we do to ourselves, other beings, and our world.  

Each of us can make a unique contribution through work, service, family, relationships, creativity, healing, and spiritual practice. If you don't feel you are already contributing the way you'd like, what is stopping you? These times are calling us out to participate, so consider what you need to feel safe and supported to take baby steps forward. We need you.    

The Pause

A while back I missed my Friday morning routine of house plant watering. So my maidenhair fern, which had grown several lush arms, is now all crispy. So again I cut it back to black stubble and wait for new tender green fuzzy spirals to emerge. I have yet to nurture this plant to fullness, and yet it still comes back, as if it trusts untrustworthy me to return to this practice. 

After beating myself up about it, I see I am consistently inconsistent. I can sustain a yoga routine for a few months, then I miss a class and that's it for three years. Or only remember to take my blood pressure when my doctor's appointment is looming. Anything that is a routine routinely gets interrupted. 

But perhaps this is not a bad thing. In that time out, maybe my energies are needed elsewhere. And coming back to a practice after a break, we may be chagrined, but also refreshed and ready to commit in a way that's more fitting. After all, the point is not to become robotic and perfunctory, but to actively choose to show up.

I'm wondering if it's just me or if it's a universal human thing to break out of rhythm. The pause is a space where integration can happen naturally. My birthday today,Winter Solstice this weekend, and New Year's beyond that all say the same thing: time for another round on the great spiral of life. But they are all pause points too. Time to reflect, revisit our vision, recalibrate our trajectory. A pause to get current.  

In this winter holiday season, I hope you get a chance to slow down enough to pause and choose what's important now.

     

Z is for Zeitgeist

I've always liked the word 'zeitgeist,' meaning the spirit of the times. Some visionaries sense the zeigeist and have their finger on the pulse of what's happening now and what's needed next. Take President-elect Obama, who seems to have ridden the wave just slightly ahead of the crowd. He's not too far ahead, just clearly evoking the visionary leader in each of us that's longing to make a difference. The resonant field now offers us a new way to be as a whole, together.

In the healing arts, there's a certain zeitgeist that's been emerging for a while now. It's about human to human parity as healing partners. My intention as a healing practitioner is to collaborate and create with the inner healer of my client, making space for their own expertise about their own process. We've seen enough harm in the fixer/rescuer healer mode, what herbal medicine woman Susun Weed calls the "heroic" mode. It can be very disempowering to one identified as wounded and in need of rescue, having their own inner resources bypassed. It's just as harmful to those overidentified as the giver, the expert, if they don't see that the healing process is sacred and innate and ongoing. Something to align with and support.

   

So you might feel into what zeitgeist you're noticing in your world - could be in relationships or work or common themes in your community.  Are you aligned with the spirit of the times, holding back or running way ahead?