on this day…

 

…anything could happen

 

…but…

 

you can’t do anything without risking something

 

I ᖇEᔕOᒪᐯE. 

TO ᗷE ᗩᗯᗩᖇE.

TO ᔕEE. 

to ᔕEEK.

ᗪIᗩᗰOᑎᗪᔕ & EᗰEᖇᗩᒪᗪᔕ along the Path. 

TO ᔕEE. TO  ᗯᖇITE.

To ᗪOᑕᑌᗰEᑎT.

EᐯEᖇY way.

EᐯEᖇY day.

I ᖇEᔕOᒪᐯE. 

TO ᔕᗩY,

‘I ᔕᗯᗩᖇE TO ᔕᕼᗩᖇE’.

ᗩll these ᗰIᖇᗩᑕᒪEᔕ.

ᗩᑎᗪ

ᒍEᗯEᒪᔕ.

ᗯITᕼ TᕼOᔕE I ᗰEET ᗩᒪOᑎG TᕼE ᗯᗩY

EᐯEᖇY one.

every ᗯᕼEᖇE.

How do we stay in the present?

Especially when things are not going as we would like them to go?

circle photos above by Robin OK – sharing the God-path

Maybe we take a walk on the God-path, or follow the yellow brick road…

Time with myself

a day apart

alone

 (sort of….I’m never really alone)

I sing my soul over and over

I confront my blocks

I challenge my status quo

I admit my ambivalence 

I shake the foundations of my acceptance

I shatter long shadows of my shame

I root out erroneous stories 

I write new endings

I let go of my need to resist change

I enter my griefs 

I accept my feelings

I forgive my failures

I write my treasures

I talk to my people

I connect with the world beyond my knowledge 

I laugh…just because

I move into new freedom

I express my thanks

I smile and smile because of you

the sheer ecstasy that you appeared

just for a moment

then you disappeared again

I keep letting you go

 I grieve your silent leaving

I wish you true love

I destroy my expectations 

I combust my wanting

I celebrate my freedom 

I explore the new structure

my structure

home of my own design

I acknowledge this historic moment

I delve into my desire for a circle of accountability 

I call into being like-minded friendships

scarecrows and lion hearts to walk with on this golden path

holding hearts and hands is responsibility in its highest and best form

I rise to meet my newly found pieces

I give away my longing for familiar

I slash the tires of my comfort zone

I conjure practical magic

I walk into this new room 

the theatre of my making

hung with velvet curtains

colors of mystic and navy blue

I am ready

I am willing 

to bear this new badge

with courage

to assume this custom role 

only I can fill in the world

I step into these new shoes

(You know how much I love new shoes)

I become central player

of this fabulous life 

I’ve been given

for this very time and place

I slowly walk center stage

content with my integrity

proud of my accomplishments

prouder still of my strength in doing right

doing the hard things

winning the battles to open my heart

again and again

my truth-filled speaking

which, sometimes,

brings silence to the room

I have done the work

I am prepared 

my calling is this:

leaving everything else far behind me

I saddle, and mount, up

I point my dragon toward the sun

grace drips down my back

puddles around my feet

love surrounds me

accompanies my going

like dust clouds of glory 

keeping pace with my movement

on this road less travelled

I acknowledge my hard truth –

for a little while

I didn’t want to stay here

hopes illusion lay dead 

I didn’t know how I could go on

I challenged my very existence 

I refused to save myself

and in doing so

I, somehow, saved myself

rising again on the wings of the morning

I bow to Your wisdom

I thank You for this granted moment

this day of acknowledgement 

this gentle touch

this state of being

this satisfaction of discord 

this testiment of salvation

this pilgrimage of miracle

this pathway of grace and glory

this radical victory of faith and trust

this revolution of respectability 

the lighting bolts within my own thoughts

the thundering intensity of my worded ways

the firey fury of my burning passions

hanging chads of my living

scale of justice balancing in my favor

karma smiles in delight

at this boomeranging harvest of goodness

this resurrection of Phoenix

 rising and rising

this burning bush of unrelenting passion

all this is

just me myself 

burning away

stripping away

chipping away

throwing away

breaking away

continual discovery

uncovering

excavating

reclaiming

fading

becoming

I AM

All is well

friends, let’s try to stay in our skin today!

Just relax – Just relax

This very moment is the house of God!

Anything can happen today!

Anything!

Facebook/Gaia Blooming

 

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Happy the one*, and happy s/he alone,
 S/He who can call today their own:
S/He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

________________
Happy the Man by John Dryden (*edits by me)
Public Domain

what am i to do?

meadows. valleys. sea. sky. poet. realist.

onions.

biscuits.

common thread. 

                        SOUL!                         

             - Robin OK*

If anything in life matters – then everything in life matters. Every choice has the potential to lead us to our highest and best purpose, or not. There are no small miracles, kindnesses, choices, loves, lives. Though we have a tendency to rate them as small if they aren’t flashy, don’t give us everything we want the moment we want it, or don’t conform to our societal image of ‘rich’ – which in our culture is defined by having money.

 

There is only life and what we do with what we’ve been given within it. There is only living mindfully, or not; joyfully, or not; with our whole heart – or not.

This beautiful question is stated perfectly by Mary Oliver, What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

It behooves* us to think about, struggle with, and begin to live-in-answer, to this question!

What happens when we begin to take responsibility for our living in this way? I can tell you, first-hand, it changes everything.

The invitation is always there for each one of us…as long as we breathe…even within the tumult*…to ask, seek, knock and find our way into life – in all it’s gory glory. Life begs us to enter into intimacy with our own selves, that very narrow gate which will lead us to life.

The inward journey is the start of the outward journey – into relationship, into community, into the world.

This is the beginning of love.

This is the beginning of everything.

We are given many gifts
over our lifetimes
Gifts are heaped upon us
Every day we receive

The way we acknowledge these gifts
the way we receive
each moment
our counting of the gifts
our awareness in each breath
may be our most important choice in life

This one insight brings us life
as grace or prison –
heaven or hell
is bound up in gratitude

I have had many strange & wonderful gifts
many in boxes of darkness
received over my life
so far

this knowledge
this ability to see beyond
to choose to seek the blessing
the good in all I receive
has been the best gift
of all

My cup runs over and over
deep upon deep
My path is lined with diamonds
My sky is bright with twinkling stars
My field is overflowing with flowers*
⚘🌷🌹🌼🌻🌺🌹⚘🌷🌹🌼🌻🌺🌹⚘🌷🌹🌼🌻🌺🌹

Many people get huffy* with God for the bad things that happen in the world, or to them personally. When things are going the way they want, they usually don’t mind taking full credit for themselves. It’s an interesting concept to me that most people’s version of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is based on their own preferences, and those are constantly in flux, and also different for each and everyone of us.

As I look at the world, I find it, and us, as humankind, flawed and imperfect. Full of good, full of evil. The spiritual life to me, is in all ways, a practical one. It is not the subtraction of all pain, loss and things we don’t like. It is the addition of help within those hard circumstances, the hope that we can get better and heal from our traumas, the firm belief that, no matter what comes, we are never abandoned, never truly alone, never less than completely loved and accepted – even when ‘evil’ overtakes me, even when I am the instrument of ‘evil’, there is always hope. I can make a new choice within this moment. It does not mean there are no consequences for our bad choices, but even our worst choices have hope for redemption. It’s a big WOW moment when this truth arrives in your living.

Living this way is the ultimate adventure in faith! Ruthless trust says, even when I can’t see beauty, I can still know, for sure, life is beautiful! It is a grace-full life. Anne LaMotte says, Grace meets us where we are, but never leaves us there! This is our miracle! This is the truly amazing part, and pathway, of grace!!!

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There are hundreds of thousands of people,
maybe even millions,
holding the world together,
each doing one act of goodness today,
one righteous act of peace,
one simple smile of grace,
one pie to a neighbor,
one stepping into the breech,
to bring one giant defiant action against evil.
Somehow we hear just a few names in history…
Abraham Lincoln
Mother Teresa
Martin Luther King, Jr
Gandhi
Great names for great people,
they inspire us, yes.
Yet, sometimes it makes our ordinary, everyday effort seem less,

it’s not!
We seem to have come to believe only in celebrity, yet,
there are hundreds of thousands of people,
maybe millions,
holding the world together,
every day –
one small piece for each of us

I repeat the beautiful question by Mary Oliver,

What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

go back to the beginning and read the title of this post again….

⚘🌷🌹🌼🌻🌺🌹⚘🌷🌹🌼🌻🌺🌹⚘🌷🌹🌼🌻🌺🌹

*thanks for all fun, amazing people bringing the words of the week into this post:

               behooves – Sue Timony-Hall

               huffy – Debbie Edwards

               tumult – Todd / via Sue Timony-Hall

            all kinds of good fun…including a “David Bowie Avatar Mermaid”   – Robin OK

            NO RAIN NO FLOWERS…At this point I am a garden….working my way up to
           becoming an endless fu@#ing field!!!!!¡!⚘🌷🌹🌼🌻🌺🌹
                                                                                                                                   – Lissette

 

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

So many things on my mind this week – Tuesday, January 10, was a huge 5th Anniversary of a milestone event for me. Those dates always bring a lot of reflection and celebration into my week, and change me in certain ways as I move forward from them.

I’ve also had several really interesting and challenging conversations this week. One discussion with someone who believes we cannot change our past, that we can never out grow, out run, or out distance our foundational beginnings. I do not agree. I do agree that it is difficult and there are few people who even attempt it, but I believe we CAN. I’m staking my life on that possibility.

When the sooty corners of our dark night

absorb into porcelain skin at last

leaving it a whole new shade of refined

When the geese in their skeined wedge take another enchanted voyage across the endless blue

When we wake up to this new day 

loving life in spite of all that has gone before

When the one who loves us allows us joy in our exile

until we are ready to break our silent bread

When we allow the challenging heaviness of our limiting beliefs to enter into our arena

wrestling until we have achieved Olympic gold

When we trust the great freedom of what has brought us to this very moment

When the wine of our heart 

in it’s purest burgundy of bubbling merry or deepest sorrow

pours clear and jeweled in its crushing

When we give away freely our best crimson vintage

to everyone we meet at the royal wedding 

and take off our scarlet badges forever more to allow each to live in freedom

When we finally recognize the truth that there is no journey of arriving

there is simply life

this grandest celebration of skin touching skin

the sharing of moments

the wonder of storytelling 

the ancient ancestral linage of our tree-relations  

the wonder of teaching and tasting and exploring 

coffee and kisses and learning any odd/old/new thing with the ones you love

then we have arrived at our true work 

the ‘why’ we have sought desperately to uncover for so long

lying crumpled and useless in the rubbish pile

as we, a bit drunk, on our own exquisite knowing

make love to the world in blissful ecstasy 

shhhh…there are new songs playing 

listen…

just listen…

to Dark Star…alive

In this world…

a new dead-head is born

I’m so glad there is you

🎷

Another conversation popping around in my head is about the ways we protect ourselves, so much of it, subconscious. These protections, which are needed to protect us during abusive and harmful circumstances, naturally become part of our living. The problem with that is, it can lead us to live way off kilter in every area of our lives. It shows up in our work, in our relationships, in our money, in our way of living and making a living.

Those of us who have had trauma continue to carry those beliefs we adopted at those points in life, and they continue to keep us stuck in patterns we, most of the time, do not want to continue in, as it rarely leads us to the door of freedom and joy!

Photo found on pinterest.com

And so we continue to knock, without realizing we are already on the inside of the door and our freedom depends on us looking within to resolve those things done to us way back then, which will lead us to a new life now.

This past year I have been working on resolving some of these traumas. Things so buried I didn’t even remember them. As I do the work, I am uncovering them one by one. It’s been a difficult, yet truly transformational, process. I am currently use a technique called Tapping (aka EFT/Emotional Freedom Technique) to do this work to break up long held false beliefs, release trauma and, in doing so, releasing myself from the belief that I need a relationship BEFORE I can do my work in the world, Releasing chronic pain from sciatica held in my body for 24+ years and continuing to discover and excavate traumatic incidents from my childhood and adulthood, which is leading me to finally begin to stabilize financially, as well as using my gift of singing after 51 years. It is a miraculous process.

 

Here are some links to some of the resources I am using, in case you are interested in finding out more about it –

http://www.thetappingsolution.com/

http://www.thetappingsolution.com/blog/use-movie-technique-audio-meditation/

http://www.nickortner.com/

http://www.jessicaortner.com/

Do you believe we can change our lives? 

Do you believe we can heal our trauma?

Do you believe we can overcome our foundations?

Do you believe we can become who we want to be?

Do you believe we can live in joy and peace?

 

The dark is as bright as the light

                                                           once you settle into its rhythm 

                                                                                      get to know your other senses so well

you begin to see with your ears

                                                             your skin can see what’s ahead

                                                                                                                                                what’s behind 

the sensations of your breathing

                                                           alert you to danger and angels

                                                                                                                                  open the darkened eyes

to sight beyond vision

                                                       and the darkness falls away

                                                                                        and you are left with an unnatural conclusion

which no one can take from you…

                                                      the dark is as bright as the light

                                                                                                                        seeing is a subjective process

the ground will hold our weight

                                                         we are never abandoned 

we have no control
except to accept and surrender 

     we have no control
except to accept and surrender 

   – Amy Lloyd

I have been blinded by darkness and blinded by light.
What I’ve learned from it is how to adjust my eyes, my mind and my soul so I can see in both.                                                                                                                                  – Lissette 

Shhhhhhhh

 

a thousand miles in silence                  a thousand miles alone

                                               a thousand miles to get here

                                                  a thousand miles to go

                                a thousand smiles to cheer me

                                                               a thousand more to know

                                                                a thousand miles of learning

 a thousand more I’m home

________________________________________

We’re a week in already! The new is already wearing off of our year. Time moves us along so quickly, it’s really interesting to me how aware of time I have become. I have spent the last 9 years marking time through creative sharing. I created and published an inspirational newsletter called, Songs from the Valley, for 6 years. During those years I put out 2/ 8-page issues a month. I loved marking the months in that way. Over-lapping the newsletter, I started my daily poetry blog, Life:  Acoustic & Amplified, which I created for 5 years. During one of the daily blog years I also wrote a poem a day for a whole year, I ended that year with over 800 poems.

In this blog, The Oracles’ Compass,  we will mark our weeks. My current plan is to post once a week and am already enjoying the pleasant possibilities accompanying our 52 week progression around the sun, knowing how much it will change, adapt and evolve over this time traveling around the sun.

 

Zora Neale Hurston said, There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

________________________

in a year of answers

be as quiet as possible

practice solitude

make yourself a friend with silence

open your inner ears

listen for voices from other dimensions

care for your soul

allow deep mystery to bloom

sit in nature

find spots of beauty to fill you up

take time

go slow

so you can hear everything

waiting to be revealed

for such a time as this

I would add, there have been years for me when neither of these things happen – there have been years of silence and darkness, and there have been years of uneventful, dreariness, a couple of years leaning to the joy side and even one or two I can remember which burned with fire, lovemaking and sunshine. Years of struggle, getting stronger, silence and song.

To everything there is a season, and each year is marked by life and love; birth and death; beginnings and endings; sorrow and joy; winning and losing; enemies, friends and lovers; fire and rain; learning and forgetting; falling and rising; and always, always, no matter the theme of the year, there is food and laughter, tears, touch, stories and songs.

Below are the questions I’m currently sitting with.

I suggest you might want to take one or two of them with you this week to think about:

What will I recognize & reject / or celebrate this year?

What will I allow? to change / to grow?

What will I live for / what will I fight for?

Will I be a human being / or a human doing?

Will I stay present?   Will I remember my achievements?

________________________________________

Respectfully given to you,
exalted being
full of grace,
remember to forget
that:

surrender struggles to catch it’s breath,
then, finally, falls soft
as evening prayers at twilight,
gathering into the corners of our hearts
before falling full onto the center of our living circle,
free and happy as Friday night. 

next morning’s sun fills us, 
each day, each season. 
nurture moves with grace,
evolving slowly thru 
our caring hands,
our grieving hearts,
our shared experience, 
our acts of courage,
the healing salt of our tears.

with pieces of our true love,
we fly flags
of prayer,
of peace,
of poems,
of our own making 
to heal the worlds – 
within us/
without us. 

we allow –
simply complex. 

we understand –
clearly unclear. 

we stand and fill our world with the beauty 
of sound,
of hum,
of voice,
of music,
protecting us 
from lesser gods,
the terror all around. 

love is the shield, 
love is the answer,
love is the choice,
love is our glory,
our salvation,
crowning us 
sons and daughters 
of the King.

at times,
in spite of our broken pieces,
our refusal to believe,
even our darkened hearts. 
 –
astonishing, 

isn’t it?

Image Source: Aneta Ivanova @ tumblr