The future must enter you, long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.
🌀
– 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 …I let things die, and filled in holes…watered children and sappy songs.
Ranted about the radiance of Angels and cardboard boxes filled with 36 years of married love…
I chopped up word search puzzles because there is passion and paradox in loving words that heal, instead of hate…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 winter…
Family and friendships took in artists and dreamers…wedding vows that added deeper love to our days…heart shaped rocks in tiny boxes on tables to say we belong to one another…and children that grow into wonderful stories of every lasting love…
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 doors…
I taught class while learning the heart of acceptance, forgiveness, fables and follies…how one can know absolutely nothing, and everything one needs to know…to be a water-bearer flowing…to kneel while pouring…to bend at just the right moment, to wash a glass, dimly lit…
I fought a concrete city with a magical jungle holding religions and relationships…forgave myself for not knowing how long I had been loved and known…how one gift could change it all…found sacred ground under a community with feet. Dancers who know how to move to a rhythm and a beat…
God speaking Yes, porous and free …a mystical thread sewn into the bone of the body,
A year like no other…just beginning to gather purple Iris for another…
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!! 💞
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
There is a path we all walk in life. All the places we go when the path gets too rocky and exhausting and brutal and beautiful are dead-end detours. If you take these detours you are not bad, but you are wasting your time and energy.
The path looks like this:
Come back to the path.
There’s no other way.
You will never find your perfect life “balance” on the path for the same reason you will never find a unicorn on the path – because these things don’t exist. Forget unicorns and balance. If you were perfectly balanced, you’d never have to take anyone’s hand to steady yourself, and that would be a tragedy.
There is no solid ground on the path — so don’t hold your breath till you find it. Breathe deeply and keep moving forward awkwardly. You can make it down the whole path imbalanced and flailing. When you fall, give thanks for the opportunity to rest. While you’re down, send love to every other path walker who’s down with you at that moment.
Then get back up.
Or crawl. Crawling is encouraged and respected. Path running is fine, but crawling is much better. Crawlers travel with their eyes close to the ground — so they never miss an inch of the beautiful, rocky path. Crawlers get less glory but learn the most about the path’s terrain.
And know your fellow travelers are both your teachers and students. Your relationships with them will be the hardest part of path walking. To avoid humbling oneself into the role of student and having the courage to position oneself into the role of teacher — many try to walk the path alone.
But the path was not designed for solo treks.
The path was designed to teach Love. Whenever you introduce your true self to a fellow path traveler and listen and speak and learn and stay with her for a while – that is called Love. Walking with and staying with messy fellow path travelers for any length of time is Love. Love is the most brutal and beautiful part of path traveling. Participate. Learn from and teach every path traveler you encounter. Exchanging love with fellow path travelers is how we gather the wisdom and strength we’ll need to overcome the next obstacle on our path.
Note: You do not teach by teaching — you teach by loving. Be humble and courageous.
You always have enough strength.
And courage and wisdom. You always have exactly what you need for your daily trek. Sometimes you won’t believe this, because you will encounter stretches of the path that are treacherous and terrifying, but if you give up in the middle of those stretches — if you sit down permanently in them — then you have to live there. Don’t live in the dark, scary parts. Trust and keep moving. There will be a clearing soon and you will feel the warm sun again.
The One who created your path is outside of time, so your life is an epic movie that has already been scripted. So don’t plan or worry — your job is to trust your path and participate fully and notice as much as you possibly can and keep on moving.
But don’t become proud or ashamed.
Don’t become proud that you are further along than many travelers or ashamed that you are far behind others. Your position on the path relative to other travelers has nothing to do with your strength or stamina or wisdom or cunning. We are all in different places because we all have different entry points to the path.
Where you are and where everyone else is along the path is none of your concern or business.
Let that go.
You are exactly where you are supposed to be, always, and so is everyone else. The portion of the path you wake up to today was written for you.
Everyone is exactly where he or she is supposed to be. You are not your own or anyone else’s path-planner. You are just a traveler. You just keep moving. Trust the Path. Follow in the footsteps of a billion other mighty travelers who have walked and run and crawled the path before you.
This day is not ordinary. This day may be one of quiet or chaos, challenge or rest. But no moment is ordinary. It may be familiar. It may be predictable. It may make you frustrated and angry, discouraged and sad. It may be one where you see hope, hope all around. It may be the day you see deeper, go further, pursue a new place you’ve never traveled before.
I hold you in what you see as ordinary. I look ahead and stay here with you, in this moment.
Let me unfold it for you.
There is a point where you can no longer see. There is a point where there are obstacles and there is nothing to do but wait on Me, look to Me, desire for Me to take hold of all control and guide you.
Where I guide you, where I am with you, is not the place of ordinary.
There are the regular tasks to get done, the job to do, the responsibilities to complete. It may involve doing the same thing day after day, for a while, and another while.
But still, where I am is not ordinary.
Here—here I am, with you. The intake of your breath, the shape of your skin, the ideas taking place in your mind, the beat of your heart. You are a wonder, a beauty, and this day, with all I’ve made, can never be an ordinary day.
Let Me give you new eyes to see so you don’t miss the possibilities around you that I see. Let Me give you new eyes to see so you don’t get discouraged and mistake wonder for ordinary. Let me show you how what you think is mundane may be an opportunity to be with Me in a new way.
I am always new and always the same. You can always count on Me. But I never stop wanting you to see the hidden wonder in this not-so-ordinary day.
When I am with you, the only place I want to be is closer. 
life: acoustic & amplified 