Seeds of Love

We all need a personal inner space of peace and safety, like birds seeking refuge, returning to a familiar place time and again. With mindfulness as our practice, our first place of refuge is to return to the present. "I have arrived, I am home in the here and in the now, I am solid, I am free." Each breath can be an opportunity to gather our energy and return to our real "home," which is within.   Thich Nhat Hahn

"Like the women of Liberia, we broke the barriers of religion, race, ethnicity, status and we stepped out and redeemed out time.  We broke all the barriers that patriarchy has set in front of us and we said "War is nonsense.  Peace is what we want.  We will take it if you don't give it to us."  We can never, ever redeem our time if we continue to wait for the men to give it to us.  Is it in your home?  Is it in your community?  It is time for us to break the barriers that separate us.  It's time for us to bind together.  Hold on to that thing that binds us, even though patriarchy wants us to ignore it. If you don't know what I'm talking about when you go to take a bath, find another woman to stand  by you.  The thing that unites us is our Womanhood.  It moves beyond child, it moves beyond tribe, it moves beyond culture, it moves beyond everything.  As women, we need to hold together.  As women, we need to redeem our time.  As women we need to take it back.  As in the 60's and 70's.  As women, we need to be more radical.  There is nothing wrong with stepping out there and saying we are claiming our space.  Why are there still issues of discrimination?  You need to take it!  The men will not give it because it is shifting the status quo.  You need to take it. "  Lehmay  Gbowee

Transformation

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." ~ Nelson Mandela

Healing

The cloud does not insist upon it's form,
The wave does not force it's way over the ocean,
So why should you clutch so tightly your little map?

Follow your heart
And know joy in all things.
The path of freedom
has no markers,
Yet leads to fulfillment;
The path of confusion
Is crowded with signs,
Pointing in different directions.

The Great Way is a humble, solitary path
Leading home;
Follow it closely and be guided.
How do you know you are on the Way?

When your map no longer serves you.

Havin Travino, "The Tao of Healing"

Wild Geese

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
and mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean, blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Journey Home

"The Journey"

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
through their melancholy
was terrible
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Listening

"Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing.  It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us.   When we listen, we offer, with our attention an opportunity for wholeness.   Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person.   That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and by others.  That which is hidden."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Openness

"All of your experiences are temporary and unique waves in this ocean of openness.   The raggedness of your sadness, the perkiness of your lover's nipple, the smell of coffee - all experiences wash through this openness coming and going, tragic and ecstatic, remembered or forgotten, and yet the openness remains, always and only, a home from which you cannot leave because it is your very nature." David Deida

Home

"To be holy is to be home, to be able to rest in the house of belonging that we call the soul."  John O' Donahue

Soulmates

"It is as if millions of years before the silence of nature broke, your lover's clay and your clay lay side by side.  Then in the turning of the seasons, your one clay divided and separated.   You began to rise as distinct clay forms, each housing a different individuality and destiny.   While your clay selves wandered for thousands of years through the universe, your longing for each other never faded.   This metaphor helps to explain how in the moment of friendship two souls suddenly recognize each other.   There is an awakening between you, as sense of ancient knowing.   You come home to each other at last."   John O' Donahue

Shadow

"Each person has certain qualities or presences in their heart that are awkward, disturbing and negative.   One of your sacred duties is to exercise kindness toward them.    In a sense, you are called to be a loving parent to your delinquent qualities.   Your kindness will slowly poultice their negativity, alleviate their fear and help them to see that your soul is a home where there is no judgment or febrile hunger or fixed or limited identity.   The negative threatens us so powerfully precisely because it is an invitation to an art of compassion and self-enlargement that our small thinking utterly resists."   John O' Donahue

Solitude

"Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit.   It is different from loneliness.   When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation.   Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging.   We cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for the things that we need from within.   The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people.   They are at home in the heart of the soul."   John O' Donahue

Love

"Love alone can awaken what is divine within you.   In love you grown and come home to your self.   When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit.  You are completely at one in the house of your own longing and belonging."   John O' Donahue