Ordinary As a Wheelbarrow Full of Potatoes

You would think that reflecting on Mother's Day would be about my Mom. For some reason this Mother's Day was filled with thoughts of my Dad.

His birthday is May 11th and while it doesn't always fall on Mother's Day it did the year he was born and it did this year. He was also the one to really teach my about the beauty and sacredness of nature, of Mother Earth.

As a little girl I would get up early on Saturday mornings to help him make breakfast. We would go to the feed store in his truck. I wore a hat just like him, the kind that has the plastic holes in the back to adjust the size. I loved spending the day outdoors with him.

I would help him in the garden. My duties might include holding back plants while he rotatiled, gathering eggs or shuttling out ice tea from the house. We would sit back and laugh at our cat as he teased the mockingbird. He brought home a rolling staircase from the air force dump and we would roll it up to the cherry tree and sit in the branches to  have a "cherry festival."

He always noticed things that I didn't. He would find agates and other treasures in the dirt. I would walk by a ditch with a little water in it only to be told it was a freshwater spring and there was a trout living there.

I could walk by entire worlds of life thinking it was all quite ordinary. I even thought he was quite ordinary.

I am rethinking ordinary.

Everything is ordinary.

Everything is extraordinary.

Planting the Seeds of Peace

Kids need gardens more than they need iPads.

Today's Joyous Living Journal states that "It's through simple awareness and subtle tweaks to behaviors that will make a difference, impacting all of us sharing this earth. When you don't know better, you can't act better."

I feel far more comfortable calling for complete revolution. I feel that we are just placating ourselves with these simple tweaks and aphorsims. I would change "raising awareness" to seeking truth.

My friend was sharing what she sees as our primary challenge. She describes it as a challenge of self discipline, not as self denial but one of "maintaining energetic integrity."

"Energetic Integrity" is when what you say, what you want to create and what you are doing are all in alignment. Our current path with our planet is certainly not one of "energetic integrity." We know this.

We are all one. We are all tapped into this collective consciousness which includes the Earth herself and we KNOW we are not taking care of her and therefore ourselves. We know we are making ourselves and our world sick.

Everyone knows this, on some deep level in their DNA, and it causes us to live in fear.

And how do you get rid of fear? You shine a bright light into the places you fear. 

Yes, we need to plant seeds of peace but first we need to rip up the soil and treat it with a good dose of truth and awareness. We need uncompromised loving truth with ourselves and uncompromised loving truth with others. Take a good look at where our power comes from, where our water comes from, where our food comes from.

We need to teach our kids about gardening. We need to teach our kids how we really treat the ocean. Our kids will be coming up with the next set of answers. We must seed their minds with the ambition and dreams to create better choices and a better life. We must seed their minds with uncompromised loving and complete truths.

When we are collectively truthful with what we have done and are currently doing to our planet we can collectively create answers which are in alignment with our desires and create a world which works for everyone.

What's behind that light switch?

How does water come out of that faucet? 

Where does it come from?

What is the story of my food?

We must be truth seekers.

And peace will be found with energetic integrity.

Remembering Spiritual Truths in San Clemente

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks earlier. ~ Wikipedia

I am always struck by how the topic for today from the Joyous Living Journal matches what is going thru my head before I get out of bed in the morning to write my blog post. "Remembering Spiritual Truth" is the title for today, and we are reminded that the most powerful spiritual practice is more than sitting on our meditation cushion in the morning and seeking the Presence of Spirit. The most powerful spiritual practice is taking Spirit with us throughout our day. Knowing that we are the Voice, The Hands of Spirit on Earth as the song says, in our every action and reaction. Like the butterfly who's wing beat can start a hurricane on the other side of the planet our interactions with those around us can show the power of our God Qualities as we personify them.  If we think about how we are living in this way, everything we say, everything we do becomes a prayer and matters.

Even the smallest act of kindness will reverberate across great distances and spans of time -- affecting lives unknown to the one who’s generous spirit, was the source of this echo of good. Because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage, years later, and far far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each expression of hatred, each act of evil... ~ Dean Koontz

Contemplation: What are some of your favorite spiritual principles and truths? and more importantly how will you personify them on this day? Because You Matter.

You Are The Wings Of Spirit On Earth

Affirmation: Spirit is all there is, in every situation, person or event, I remember a spiritual truth in any moment of concern, worry or doubt.

And So It Is! 

Grounded - A documentary about the healing power of earth

"I just need to get my feet in the sand." I've certainly said that. Gardeners will often say "I need to dig in the dirt." When I take Kate to the beach she always pleads "bury me Mommy bury me."

In more than one conversation this week the topic of "grounding" or "being grounded" came up. So when this documentary came to my attention I made sure to watch it.

There are some amazing claims and some powerful demonstrations of healing. I'll be interested to see what you think.

"All of nature's forces gift the earth with subtle energy. 

All we have to do is touch it and become truly alive."

Following Your Intuition Into The World

Following Our Intuition Into The World

Last month a few of us gathered together to do a "visioning" for the month of October. We were instructed to sit quietly and listen to our intuition. What came through loud and clear, and one of the things that keeps coming back to me over and over again.

Get Outside 

Get outside of your comfort zone, get outside and meet your neighbors, get outside and interact with your friends, get outside and sing, get outside and love, get outside and learn, get outside and share, get outside and teach, get outside and practice, get outside and capture the moment, get outside and play, get outside and change your world.

Take the time to listen to your intuition today, where should you be going?

"I would argue that immersion is primarily a quality of consciousness that has to do with the capture and control of attention, a necessary condition for any interpersonal persuasion, education, or entertainment to occur." Diana Slattery.

"We are talking about directly engaging the technical material of subjectivity itself" Erik Davis.