The future must enter you, long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.
š
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Today is my friend, writer, fellow spirit seeker, Donna Knutson’s birthday!! Wishing her happy today and every day!
Sharing and loving her beautiful thoughts and words describing the lovely world event of her time here:
When 58 is Almost Gone and 59 Flowers Are Coming on Strong
Purple Iris ā¦I let things die, and filled in holesā¦watered children and sappy songs.
Ranted about the radiance of Angels and cardboard boxes filled with 36 years of married loveā¦
I chopped up word search puzzles because there is passion and paradox in loving words that heal, instead of hateā¦then tied them on a string, like prayer flags blowing through the bedroom in a February wind.
I wrote Voice with purple pen on a hundred sheets of silk like paper, folded them in drawers and placed them near the windows, so the morning sun could warm their chords and prepare the world for what sound would come that day.
I angled photos and trinkets from baskets, memorizing short periods of my day where love was the only witness to my growing , to fading a bit more like Autumn, then into a bright summers sunset spoken softly now, rose colored, like winterā¦
Family and friendships took in artists and dreamersā¦wedding vows that added deeper love to our daysā¦heart shaped rocks in tiny boxes on tables to say we belong to one anotherā¦and children that grow into wonderful stories of every lasting loveā¦
It was August before I blew kisses to the toddlers playing in a nearby gym, their jumping and fantasies whirling with my inner child, shaking fingers and toes, while hopping through a hundred thresholds, finding keys to a million doorsā¦
I taught class while learning the heart of acceptance, forgiveness, fables and folliesā¦how one can know absolutely nothing, and everything one needs to knowā¦to be a water-bearer flowingā¦to kneel while pouringā¦to bend at just the right moment, to wash a glass, dimly litā¦
I fought a concrete city with a magical jungle holding religions and relationshipsā¦forgave myself for not knowing how long I had been loved and knownā¦how one gift could change it allā¦found sacred ground under a community with feet. Dancers who know how to move to a rhythm and a beatā¦
God speaking Yes, porous and free ā¦a mystical thread sewn into the bone of the body,
A year like no otherā¦just beginning to gather purple Iris for anotherā¦
Yesterday there was a facebook post from Jen Lemen over at Hopeful World http://hopefulworld.org (she’s one of my most admired people on the planet) telling me that it was a half-way-between-solstice moment and she would be burning a fire in celebration and prayer. If anyone wanted to be part…just say ‘yes’ and she would bring us! I said, ‘Yes, please’ as quickly as I could type it!!!
And so, last night, while I was sleeping…Jen Lemen was doing something so amazing, I get chill bumps every time I think about it!!! She was holding me, and mine, in that space between.
Yes, there was INTENTION, there was fire, there was singing, there was celebrating and grieving, there was prayer for the world, for everyone who requested it…and, Holy Batman, Batman, there was prayer for ME and all I hold within and without me.
What a gift! Beauty and all she is! Powerful and humbling! Encouraging and valuing! I feel it all this morning and I say, Thank you, Jen! Thank you, more than I can say! I am so blessed by you and your work!! š
I woke up to these words from Jen this morning:
Writing blessings. Saying prayers. May you be happy and peaceful. May no harm come to you. May no difficulty come to you. May you be deeply blessed. May you take care of anyone and everything smaller and sweeter than you are. May you surrender your power to make space for a forgotten voice. May you notice the earth and how she moves and breathes. May you say yes when you’re called and stay quietly beside until the time is right. May you become love and be love and find love and hope for more love, when others say it doesn’t matter or all hope is gone. #pathofprayerandpleasure #urbanfamily #bliss #mysticlife #blessings #imbolc #brigid #celticspring
Thinking that money will somehow make one happy isn’t thinking at all.
Hey, sorry, you know better. But you might not believe how many people think that just because they don’t have much of it now, its lack is at the root of their challenges, which is never the case.
Nev-a,
It is hard, these steps. This releasing of the emotional debris that encases our heart. The shedding of the false-identifications that obstruct our path. The farewells to that which doesn’t serve. The fundamentlal shift from survivalism to authenticity as a way of being. It is hard, these steps. Because you are not just clearing your individual debris- you are tapping into and releasing the debris carried by your entire ancestry. You are shedding the armor of millions before. You are saying goodbye to ways of being that have served and imprisoned countless generations. You are making the shift from an animalistic way of being to one that is genuinely human. Do not underestimate your significance, fellow seekers of the heart. We may be the first deep release travelers. We may be the first authenticity-questing collective. We may be the first soulpod to consider the possibility that there is a sacred purpose at the heart of every birth. Our load, heavy. Our courage, essential. Our significance, profound. Our need for one another, irrefutable. We rise in unison, or not at all. We rise in unison, one hard ass step after another…
– Jeff Brown
Do not fall out of flow or confidence simply because a task led to hardship or disappointment. On any worthwhile journey, there will be many dead-ends and storms. Endure. Have faith and resolve. Don’t torment your mind wishing the path were conflict-free. Anticipate difficulty and decide to meet all obstacles as if they were obvious, inevitable, stones meant to sharpen your will and character. Happiness isn’t at the end of the path; it is in knowing that you met life and its inevitable hardships and blessings with a mindful grace, strength, and gratitude. What is in front of you is not terrifying or random or impossible – it is your proving ground, your opportunity to learn to bring peace to the chaos, your podiums to show your family and loved ones real grit and love and perseverance. Your only defeat in life will come from a mindset you choose that bemoans difficulty versus anticipates and rises above it.
– Brendon Burchard
Beauty comes in many forms–and there is no form more beautiful than you. Just exactly as you are, this minute, right now, without changing a thing…you are beautiful. Beautiful enough to take God’s breath away.
– Neale Donald Walsh
If you ever doubt the power of language, listen more closely. Witness the magic the first time someone whispers “i love you.” Watch a woman put on head phones, close her eyes, and have her life changed by a lyric. See a bad moment flipped upside down by a well timed joke. Words propel us, empower us, make us human and more than human. We constantly struggle to say what we mean and mean what we say. To “wrestle with words and meanings.” that’s what t.s. eliot calls it. But as we whisper and shout, stutter and spin, we create order out of the chaos around us. We are built of words, and we live by them, too.
Now the word of Yahweh came to me saying, āBefore I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.ā Then I said, āAh, Yahweh God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a child.ā But Yahweh said to me, āDo not say, āI am only a childā; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.ā Then Yahweh reached out and touched my mouth; and said to me, āNow I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.ā
āJeremiah 1.4-10
Read it again. Put yourself in there.
Imagine God’s presence in you, God’s powerā
not to get your own way, not to sway crowds,
but to convey love, to be truth,
not just to say words but to live life
with power in it.
You do not have to apologize for yourself.
You do not have to be afraid
of those to whom you bring yourself.
You only have to be yourself.
And because it is from God
When I am with you, the only place I want to be is closer. 
life: acoustic & amplified 