A promise of light ...

Have you felt the descent into darkness? Human life mirrors nature, mirrors human life. Each season lives within every moment of our lives. We have only to look. The turns of the wheel are sacred. Are teachers to those willimg to learn. 

This time, feel into this. The darkest dark, given time, given grace, given love, given friendship, given all the broken pieces to be held most tenderly while awaiting a new form, is always followed by the return of the light. 

Always. 

Just as the seasons cycle, we cycle, life cycles, boundless in the micro and macrocosm. Over and over. What do we do with all this? What do we do as we enter the darkest night? We enter, my darlings. We enter the deepest and darkest parts of ourselves. Away from the countless facades and distractions, away from the manufactured busyness, away from the roles we play, away from speaking, away from seeing with our eyes... We enter into the slow. We seek our way back to the lessons of the dark.

We are surrounded by artificial light at all times, literally and figuratively. All to get away from the dark, literally and figuratively. But we cannot escape the dark because it always comes... We must learn to be with darkness again. That we can be. We must learn again how to help ourselves and that we need the help of others in the darkest time. 

Sit with this. See where it finds you. Hold space for the you that exists beyond the doing.

Because here we are. The longest night, brings the return of the light.
As above, so below, as within, so without.

The Winter Solstice is a promise of light, a promise of new beginnings.

Alchemy always.

Happy Winter Solstice my darlings.

The harvest always comes ...

Autumn is almost here my dears. Did it feel like time went faster this year? The solstice will be upon us soon. It is a funny time, isn't it? Everything is so lush, so alive, so rich in greens, colours, life ... The sun, hot, ripening everything to peak perfection ... toward its death...

Transformation ...

Nature, is our wisest and greatest teacher, if we allow. Everything we could ever hope to know is right before our eyes, waiting to be noticed, witnessed ... the forgotten sacred, waiting to be remembered. Look. See. Open. Go back.

Have you noticed now how hot the sun feels on your skin these days and how cold it is in the shade? The hot-cold sun of Autumn is a sun we need to be grateful for. He is a generous Sun. Letting us know that this particular life will soon come to an end for another season and giving us time to enjoy the heat, the bounty, the sounds, the air ... so gently letting us know that we must prepare for the cold and darkness to come.

The harvest always comes.

Harvest Moon is a time of death and transformation. It is the last harvest of the season, the animal harvest. The most difficult one. The minute we eat anything at all, we have taken death and transformed it. What we have eaten now becomes us, and this being we have consumed, now goes on as part of a new whole... Life is wild ...

The harvest always comes.

Think about your lives now for a moment. Not later. Now. No matter what you are doing. Stop. Give yourself a minute.

Stop.

Do you feel the moment of peace inside of you? Does the breath naturally come? A relief?

What will you harvest when you are in the Autumn of your life my dear ones? No matter what, day by day, moment by moment, with every single action you take, you are putting into the garden of your life. Good or bad, loving or damaging, every moment, it's going in.

The wheel of time goes on.

So take a good, clear, honest look at how you are spending your days ... who you are spending your days with ... what information you are feeding your mind ... what are you feeding your spirit ... your heart ... your stomach ... it all matters, every moment. It all builds your garden and readies it for Harvest.

How will your internal and external garden look in the Autumn of your life? Will it be full of thriving things that have been nurtured and cared for, given adequate food, water, love, sun, air, moon, love, space, time, rest, protection ... Every living being thrives on these things...

Or, will it be dry, wilted, devoid of fruits, stunted, weak from abandon, hungry for love, for rest, for food, water, sun, air, moon, love, space, time, rest, protection ...


Which will you harvest? The bounty? The lack? Think. Look. See your life ... your input in it ... your power to create anything.

Because my dears, the harvest always comes.

A good Harvest Moon to all. ReJOYce in the magnificence of this extraordinary life. Gratitude. Remember the forgotten. Open your eyes once more to what is important. The magic is in the minutes, the seconds, rich with eternity, rich with you.

Fully hers ... fully me ...

A little magic merry go-round lives right beside the shoe store at the mall where dogs are allowed to roam in the summertime. So teeny tiny … complete and utter magic to little children, who still live in their heart. It has three or four little ponies on it, I don't remember exactly. Some pink, some purple, some blue ...

"Mommy mommy can I go on the merry go-round?!!" Sure my baby, I say. She jumps for joy and I reach for my change and put it in the slot.

In my smartphone days, I would immediately reach for my phone, take a few photos (to participate in the endless documenting of every single moment that we have all become addicted to) of her enjoying the ride and put it away. There may have been the little red number that signifies a text or a WhatsApp box on the top and whether I wanted it to or not, the visual alone, would have diverted my full and complete attention away from this moment. The flow of connection, of pure presence would have been broken. Even if for a moment. It matters deeply.

In my new chosen reality, smartphone free, I instead reached for my bag (addiction habit), realized there was no phone and smiled. I felt such relief that it was not there. What I did instead, was spend two full and complete minutes looking at my child. Deeply looking. Looking into her joyful eyes each time the horses came by and she looked into mine and showed me her soul. I was fully there to see it. To see her. To fully witness. Fully hers. Fully me. I didn't take a photo of the moment for later. I was completely in the moment as it happened and it was so rich and so deep that the memory brings tears to my eyes as I write this. I felt so blessed to fully give myself to my life in the here and now. To fully and completely see my baby's joy, to look into those beautiful eyes for a long time and free to delight in it uninterrupted.

I have (and have had for a long time now) an idea of how you are never fully where you are with smartphones, but I did not realize just how much richness and depth you lose in life. How much you lose in the experience of self, of your own internal journey.

How much you become the one constantly documenting instead of experiencing and more importantly, while you are documenting, your soul's journey is constantly being interrupted and subjected to the incessant brain pull of various messaging systems and notifications. And the thing is, we have forgotten how much we have lost, how rich and glorious life and connection and existence actually are, because most of us are never away from our smartphones for an extended period of time.

I'm not sure how to end this piece so I will end it just like this. Imperfectly.

Stay tuned for more.

Oh, also, here are some photos of what we have been up to over here ...

Gathering the peonies of summer ...

The lavender came back this year … thankfully ...

I love flowers in the rain … capturing such beauty with a camera, not a smartphone ...

Watercress  ...

Making sun tea … the best ...

The rain is over, full bloom ...

This came in the mail from Spain … reclaiming my brain, one step at a time ...

Mother water ...

Looking up instead of down ...

Fertility … 

More looking up … slowly, fully … Grandmother moon ...

Fully where I am, everywhere I go ...

It has been almost a week now since I lost my iPhone and it has changed my life.

At first, I panicked, as one does when a drug is taken away. I scoured the house looking for it, frantically turning everything upside down. I wondered how I would survive without it. What would I do? This lasted the whole first day. The second day, the anxiety had diminished greatly. I had after all, survived a day without it. I had made it. I had taken any necessary phone numbers from my husband's phone the night before and used my house phone to make any calls I needed to make and the computer to message with people and let then know my phone was MIA and frankly, I was pretty thrilled about it.

Then came the big test. Going out without it. This was a huge deal for me because like most of us, I have not been out on my own without a phone in eons. Well, I did it and you know what? It was *excellent*. At first, I was fidgety at stoplights (the addiction thing again) but then, I was free. Freeeeeeee! Free from the compulsion to look and check. Free to be where I was and *only* there. Free to notice my world. My attention to my surroundings had noticeably sharpened and there was a huge sense of relief.

By day three, I had much more energy, much less anxiety.

Then on day four came a test. I was at the grocery store and I had bagged all my groceries (in my cloth bags, do it too!) and ready to pay and … declined … try again … declined … err, try this one … declined … and this is *just* as I was talking with the young girls at the cash, telling them how I had lost my phone and asking them if they ever went out without theirs (I'll write more on their answer in another piece).

So in the iPhone world, I would have taken the device out, gone on the app, figured it out on my own, paid, left. In my current iPhone free world, I had to drive back home! Can you imagine? So, the girls helped me and kept my cart in the fridge and I told them I would be back in an hour.

I went home, sang in the car on the way there, got on the computer once home, got some cash, my daughter wanted to come with me so we hopped in the car, sang on the way back to the store, we went in and the girls went to get my cart and voila.

So here is what happened. Instead of me having a solitary experience where I look down at my phone and push a few buttons and have a quick fix and save myself time for lord knows what (more time to spend on the phones most likely), I had a series of actual physical experiences where I connected with people and myself and life was more rich.

How many of these are we missing every moment for the sake of so called convenience and time saving? Ask yourself … for what …?

Another moment I had was when I made something special. A dish that meant something. In the iPhone world, I would have taken a photo, sent it to a bunch of people, gotten the nice texts in reply and that would be it. In my current iPhone free world, I will pack some up, get in the car and bring them to someone tomorrow who knows the meaning behind them. Again, a moment of a solitary experience, under the guise of being social, versus a real life experience in the world that requires effort and gives us so much more ...

So almost a week in without my iPhone, I have more energy than I can remember, my anxiety levels have drastically decreased, I feel more joyful, more alive in life, more creative, more social, less alone (strange right? not really ... I will write more on that) ...

I am fully where I am, everywhere I go. I am no longer tethered by countless invisible strings and possibilities encased in this tiny device that is made to keep us outside of ourselves and away from each other.

Stay tuned  …