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
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 despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.
to be right, of course.
How do we live with the reality of ‘seeing in part’,
through a ‘dark veil’,
with just glimpses of the light in the night sky,
we fish in the darkness,
trying to catch one small piece of a star at a time,
just to have it burn out,
leaving us to go back and try again?
This is the life of the seekers,
the mystics,
the warriors,
who have been seized with the firm belief –
that life matters.
That love is the way to healing.
That there is always more of God to be had.
The mystery gets bigger with each illumination.
The balance comes from allowing it all.
Good. Bad.
Joy. Sorrow.
Sickness. Pain.
Poverty. Wealth.
Even the broken path,
the truth and the lies,
have eternal divine purpose.
Our task to
learn,
open,
love,
trust,
forgive,
heal,
move,
sing,
dance,
create,
keep letting go,
keep changing,
be present,
through it all.
We dream the large dreams of living into our best selves.
We focus intently on each small task before us.
We think,
We listen,
We give,
We receive.
We speak, when necessary.
We walk daily in vigilance.
Letting the legacy of each day stand on it’s own.
We live knowing our next choice is always our most important….
and so it goes
and so it goes
🌀
AL
Sometimes you have to leave
what you think you know
behind.
No one ever really wants to do this.
Knowing things
can be very comforting.
All day, soul whispers
what I need to know.
I don’t hear her
until I lay aside
cherished beliefs and assumptions
until I dare to be with the not-knowing.
And then. . . .
Well, that’s the risky part, isn’t it?
There is no telling
what living an ensouled life
might ask of us.
~Oriah “Mountain Dreamer” House
So this is where I am in writing the book, “The Choice,” -on the great plain of not knowing, offering myself- pen in hand- anyway. Each day, the darkness yields to the light, and words hit the page, surprising me. This is what it’s like: the light coming again and again, the darkness making the illumination breath-taking.
life: acoustic & amplified 