Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. — Buddha


My favourite colour combo is forget-me-not blue and dandelion yellow.   And Nature has of course conjured these two beauties side by side in my garden.  How perfect is that?  They nod at each other in wind and rain. They light up my day.  

It really doesn’t take much.  Noticing.  That is all.  It need not be roses that we stop to smell (but roses will do nicely).  Just a pause in the dailyness.  Pause and be present with what is there.   Otherwise we bluster through our day, sucked up by the whims of the moment and the winds of discontent.

But I digress.  I want to talk to you about dandelion — bane of lawn perfectionists, pride of herbalists. Its bitter taste stimulates mind, body, and spirit.  Clip the young leaves to toss into a fresh salad.  Roast the roots for a deep rich tea.  Use the flowers to brighten any ordinary meal.

Dandelion is high in both vitamin A and C, both of which boost the immune system and   encourage healthy cell growth.  It also helps our eyesight and reduces signs of premature aging.  And dandelions are brightened with vitamin K which helps bone health and blood clotting.  Add to this magnesium, potassium and calcium, throw in tons of anti-oxidents, and you have a nutritionist’s dream tea.

It has become my tea of choice.  Very coffee-like in colour, texture and taste and a great morning wake-up.

You wild, yellow sun-of-the-grass, the French know you as dent-de-lion, lion’s tooth.   We call you windblow or parachute.  But never would I call you ‘weed’.

 Dandelion is one of the ‘endangered words’ that has been removed from the most recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, widely used in schools around the world. 

Approximately forty words - nature words -  have been de-listed.  Among the words replacing them were: attachment,  blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail.

You see what is happening here.  The outdoor and natural is being replaced by the indoor and virtual.  The ‘lost words’ include bluebell (even now growing in my garden), heather, also in my garden, fern (I have a dedicated fern garden), adder, heron, kingfisher, newt, acorn, otter, and willow.  

I worry about this generation, and the expanding gulf between their childhood and the natural world,  it is a dangerous direction in which to turn the human race.  And we have not even discussed the sadness at losing the magic of kingfisher, otter, and newt.

So, in response to this dilemma,  Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris determined to make a ‘spell book’ to conjure back 20 of these lost words and the beautiful beings they name.  With their lyrical words and breathtaking paintings, they aim to return to us the grace and grandeur,  wonder and importance of everyday nature.  They have done it in verse and in landscape.  Each page a masterpiece.  I am holding that book in my hands and it has cast its spell over me, along with throngs of readers across North America, Britain and Europe where a grassroots movement has sprung to re-wild childhood.

The Lost Words was a gift from my children who understand and appreciate how I am charmed by the irresistible magic of words and of nature.  It actually feels like a ‘spell’ is being conjured, as I read, search and find the words among the letters and open each exuberant poem. 

It begins —

“Once upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children. They disappeared so quietly that at first almost no one noticed — fading away like water on stone.  The words were those that children used to name the natural world around them: acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker — gone!  Fern, heather, kingfisher, otter, raven, willow, wren — all of them gone!  The words were becoming lost: no longer vivid in children’s voices, no longer alive in their stories . . . “

And now I will skip to the last page and the invitation to teachers, offered here::

A free “explorer’s Guide to The  Lost Words”, written by Eva John and intended especially (but not only) for use by teachers and educators, can be downloaded from:

www.johnmuirtrust.org/initiative/the-lost-words

                Teaching children about nature should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives.  — Thomas Berry

                                                              THE WATERS OF MARCH

A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road

It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun

It is night, it is death, it's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush

A knot in the wood, the song of a thrush

The wood of the wind, a cliff, a fall

A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free, it's the end of the slope

It's a beam, it's a void, it's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks of the waters of March

It's the end of the strain, it's the joy in your heart

The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone

The beat of the road, a slingshot's stone

A fish, a flash, a silvery glow

A fight, a bet, the flange of a bow

The bed of the well, the end of the line

The dismay in the face, it's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike, a point, a nail

A drip, a drop, the end of the tale

A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light

The sound of a gun in the dead of the night

A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump,

It's a girl, it's a rhyme, it's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house, the body in bed

And the car that got stuck, it's the mud, it's the mud

A float, a drift, a flight, a wing

A hank, a quail, the promise of spring

And the river bank talks of the waters of March

It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe

It's a thorn on your hand and a cut in your toe

A point, a grain, a bee, a bite

A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle, a sting, a pain

A snail, a riddle, a wasp or a stain

A pass in the mountains, a horse and a mule

In the distance the shelves rode three shadows of blue

And the river bank talks of the waters of March

It's the promise of life in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone, the end of the road

The rest of a stump, a lonesome road

A sliver of glass, a life, the sun

A knife, a death, the end of the run

And the river bank talks of the waters of March

It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart

— CARLOS ANTONIO JOBIM

Here it is . . .the whole ten verses of this, my favourite Jobim song and in fact at the top of my all time hit parade. Originally written in Spanish of course

It’s just so juicy.  Life IS messy.  It hurts sometimes.  It’s dark.  It’s light.  “A thorn in your hand and a cut in your toe’.  But despite it all it’s the promise of life and the joy in your heart. 

The yin and yang of life is so captured in these simple lyrics that each time I hear it, it enraptures me all over again. So I thought that with humanity hurting so much right now, it would be a sweet thing to share.

Today I sat on the riverbank and listened to aguas de marco.   It is full blown spring in my corner of the world.  A wee garter snake curled up beside me and we listened together, The spring sun warmed our skin.  Yellow skunk cabbage bloomed in the river.  Pond frogs sang.  

                                  It’s the end of all strain.  It’s the joy in your heart.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=antônio+carlos+jobim+águas+de+março&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ca&client=safari&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgVuLVT9c3NEzLKCkssywqfMRowS3w8sc9YSn9SWtOXmPU5OIKzsgvd80rySypFJLmYoOyBKX4uVB18uxi4sgvSy0qy0wtX8SqlphXcnhLXma-QnJiUU5-sUJWflJmrsLhhemlicUKKakKuYlFh5fnAwDoRCGtgAAAAA&ictx=1&ved=2ahUKEwjn6O6Ut-z2AhXeJzQIHXEiANsQyNoBKAB6BAgEEAA

 We’re in an infinite game, playing a finite moment.  As particle beings and expressions of light energy we are witnessing the dawn of a new era of human thriving never before seen on this planet.  If we choose to stay and play, we could witness something more beautiful than our human minds can ever imagine.

                                                                                                —    Zach Bush MD

I definitely choose to ‘stay and play’.  How about you?

You may have heard the bird of flight story that has circulated these past few years.  I first heard it years ago from Lynn Twist while training with Pachamama Alliance.  She learned it from the Achuar People, an Amazonian community living on the Ecuador/ Peru border (that story for another time).

The shamans tell of the bird of humanity that has been flying in circles since its beginning, because only the masculine wing has been engaged and propelling it.  But we are now, at this time, seeing the feminine wing begin to unfold, and everything that was impossible before will become possible.  The beautiful feminine energy  (common to both men and women) that had all but been abandoned, will surge and the bird will fly straight and perfectly balanced into a new, enlightened world.

And to support this, we are entering the lunar Year of the Water Tiger, having just completed the Year of the Metal Ox.  

Think about it.  Even just pronouncing the words, the energy shifts radically with both the animal and the element.  This is not simply “the year of the tiger”;  it is much more nuanced than that.  

Water expresses the feminine.  The yin.  Powerful, but soft, non combative, able to flow around objects in its path rather than confront them.  Water expresses life and love. It supports us and purifies us.  

Was that strident, rigid, metal ox unyielding in your life last year? It absolutely was in mine.

It is exciting for me that the cosmos is pointing  to the feminine for the future, while suggesting we draw on the courage, strength and confidence of the tiger.  What a dream team!

We were born in love but weaned in fear and have all but abandoned feminine energy on a global scale.  Now is the hour to return to love, joyfully connecting to one another, stepping from victimhood into empowerment.

Patricia Cota Robles describes ‘the law of the circle’: we are co-creators of our experience here on Earth with every thought and deed. The frequency of these thoughts and deeds creates electro magnetic energy that exits our personal circle and, like a radio wave, flies into the ether.  Then as we know, like attracts like, and that same frequency of thought wave returns to our personal circle and creates our ‘life’ as we know it.   I would tell my young students that “life is a boomerang”. What you give, you get.  And they had no problem understanding the boomerang principle.  They saw it at work in the classroom and on the playground everyday.

The portals are open.  We are supported right now and humanity is ascending into new levels of consciousness.   The light on Earth is increasing. This will be a powerful year.  Let us claim it!  Let us show up as beautiful, shining, sovereign beings, stepping into our destiny and co-creating our world — with every thought, word and deed.

Shift from judgement to observation.  Disengage.  Shine the light and detach.  Stay in Loving Awareness.  Keep your words soft and sweet (for one day  you may have to eat them!)

                    When you feel a peaceful joy, that’s when you are near truth.

                                                                                                     Rumi

                                                   

                                       

                                                    

 

                  

                                                   

                                       

                                                       

                                                                                    

                                                   

                                       

                                                        

                                               

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Yes, more O’Donohue, but this poem was sent to me last week by a friend.  She said that to her it expressed a spirit of adventure and growth when the external world can seem closed and stagnant.   John O’Donohue seems to be the man of the hour.

We can be forgiven if we look to the year ahead with less than shining enthusiasm, given the news feeds of the day.  “But then your courage kindled,” he says, “and you stepped onto new ground.”  Perhaps we just need more kindling for our courage, to fire it up and look at it with new eyes and energy.  At least according to John O.

I ushered in 2022 relatively quietly, with a few friends and family and six ‘passwords’.  That, at least, is how I describe them.  Here is what happened:

It was a snowy, sun drenched afternoon on Cortes Island, as we sat around a table sipping mulled wine. We were asked to select a word — one word — that described the trait or quality that we felt would be required for the coming year.  I loved the challenge and knew instantly what my word would be.

However I am going to list the words here in the order in which they were presented. 

FAITH: This is a rather all-encompassing word which can mean different things to different people.  Faith in our self, in God, in goodness and love, or even in the system that seems to be failing us currently.  However, knowing the author of the word, I think it was not the latter but perhaps more a faith in God that she intended.

ECCLESIA: This comes from ancient Greece and means ‘to gather in community.’ We will need to gather, and community will be our strength.  Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk, has said that humanity will be saved by ‘sangha’, a gathering of community and not one supreme being.

TRUST: Again, what or whom do we trust?  Is it our own strength and power?  Or is it the power of Love?  I have learned to trust that above all else, but this word was not chosen by me. I think the author of this word was more invested in trusting our ‘self’.  Interesting what O’Donohue says about it: “Though your destination is not yet clear, you can trust the promise of this opening/ Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning / That is at one with your life’s desire.”

PRESENCE: This was my word so I can say exactly what it means.  This quality is so needed in today’s world.  It means to be exactly here and now — with another sentient being or with a situation.  Giving all of my attention in the present moment.  It’s a beautiful gift that we can bestow whenever we wish, not just on another but for our very self.  It keeps us living in the now where the action is.

NOT-KNOWING: How counter-intuitive is this trait in today’s “fear-of-missing-out” world? But we absolutely do not know nor can we know all the truths of daily living on our planet.  And accepting this in a spirit of not-knowing and being content with it will serve us so much better than needing to know the answers to all the questions on a daily basis.

KNOWING OURSELVES AS FREE: This may be the most challenging to explain and to understand because we assume that we are ‘free’.   But humanity has never been without the yoke of some kind of ‘power over’.  We learned to live as a kind of ‘slave self’.  But this is not our true identity.  We are sovereign beings, and in a new and better world we need to imagine our Self as our soul sees us — free to be who we came here to be.

And that’s it.  After each of us offered our thoughts, we toasted it with bubbly as we watched the sun set behind the mountains and slip into the sea.  A memorable, thoughtful closing of the year that was, and a hopeful look at what’s to come.

This is when we need that last verse of A New Beginning, ringing in our ears:      

                             Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk:

Soon you will home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

                             I wish you, dear hearts, a beautiful, new beginning.

..

Winter Solstice Dec. 22, 2021

This is the time to be slow,

Lie low to the wall

Until the bitter weather passes.

 

Try, as best you can, not to let

The wire brush of doubt

Scrape from your heart

All sense of yourself

And your hesitant light.

 

If you remain generous,

Time will come good

And you will find your feet

Again on fresh pastures of promise,

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

—John O’Donoghue

I am reading John O’Donoghue’s work at the moment and opening to his radiant world view.  On the darkest, longest night of Earth’s trip around the sun, he warns us about losing our ‘hesitant light’, and to ‘remain generous’.  

Don’t doubt that, especially in the darkest of times, our light shines — burns — within. And therein lies the miracle, the beauty and brilliance of powering light into the darkness, which I believe we are being asked to do right now.  

But, it is the time to be slow, he reminds us, until the bitter weather passes.  It seems so obvious. But not to the majority of humanity apparently.  Rather, we hustle and bustle, consume, combust, careen hither and yon, to-ing and fro-ing, doing the ‘Countdown to Christmas’ shuffle.

 Mea culpa.  

We must take the cue from our Earth mother.  In the northern hemisphere she has closed her beautiful eyes to ‘lie low’.  Nature. Is. Never. Wrong.   It is only our hubris that would convince us otherwise.

I sat around a bonfire last night on Solstice Eve.  The sparks flew into the air above the circle of humans who heeded the call to come together to celebrate community on this auspicious date.  We offered our songs, our poems, our hopes and dreams, amid tears, laughter, and an abundance of love.  The White Feather travelled from hand to hand around the circle.  It circled once and then again.  

I was touched by the candour and vulnerability.  Male and female, elders and youngers, even a babe in arms joined in presence.  And ‘presence’ was the other quality that I felt so intensely.  No one was pretending.  Each one offered his or her gift with intent and purpose.  There is something about the dark that encloses us, brings us together, pulls us into the vortex of heart space.  

This is where we are being asked to live from now — our heart space.   Are you feeling it?  We are invited to say no to fear, that crippling, binding emotion that holds us down, and to open to love.  No to blame and guilt  Yes to vulnerability and compassion.  As O’Donoghue suggests, ‘remain generous’.

Our planet is pining for this upon our ‘midnight clear’.   We are the ‘angels bending near the Earth’ if we will wake up to this truth.  We are not here at this critical time by accident, nor just for the ride.  We are crew.

We are the Ones.  

Let us show up and ‘touch our harps of gold’.

And you will find your feet 

again on fresh pastures of promise

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

..

“We are stardust

We are golden

We are billion year old carbon

And we got to get ourselves

Back to the garden.”

        — Joni Mitchell

Joni had such a way with words.  And obviously she gets it.  She sees our magnificence, under all that skin and bone.

Remember how it felt when someone ‘saw’ you?  Saw the miracle that was you? Believed in you? Sang your song back to you when you forgot the words?  That is what good parents, good grandparents and good teachers can do for us.  Maybe we are lucky enough to find a best friend or partner to fill that role.  To mirror  our true potential.

Each of us arrives on Earth ‘trailing clouds of glory’ but we have fallen asleep to who we really are.  We really are one with God/ Life/ Love — choose your name.   And we are one with each other, like the waves on an ocean.  All of humanity — like one beautiful, big ocean rolling along.  

This is not easy to grasp when we’ve been taught from early childhood that you are over there, and I am over here and possibly that I should be very wary of you, because you look different, dress differently, speak differently.  We cannot be too careful.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late

Before you are six or seven or eight

To hate all the people your relatives hate.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

                            — Rodgers and Hammerstein — South Pacific

It’s all a great big boogy-man story.  And it’s time we put an end to it.   When South Pacific was written and produced in 1949, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were pressured to remove this song, especially when it toured the American South, but they clung tenaciously to their vision.  I salute their courage and leadership. Back in the 50s this was enough to kibosh the show.  But it didn’t.  Instead it moved ‘the  brotherhood of man’ a few notches forward and the doomsday clock a few minutes back.  

The show was an immediate hit playing almost 2000 performances, and going on to make two films, 1958 and 2001.

Like Joni, these guys got it too.  What would we do without our songwriters, poets, playwrights and painters  to show us the way?

Imagine if a wave knew not that it was a part of the wild ocean.  Poor thing would be terrified.  It’s a perfect metaphor to help understand the human condition.  So carrying this metaphor forward, you and I are part of the universal mind, bouncing around in the same ocean.  Therefore what I say or merely think about you, slips into my subconscious (universal mind) and registers either negative vibration or love vibration.  How many times does a loveless thought reverberate through my mind/ body/ soul in a day?  In a week?  In a lifetime?

Or let’s imagine the opposite: what if our thoughts were loving and kind? That is one heck of a lot of good karma. 

A Course in Miracles says, “When you think a loveless thought about someone, imagine a sword falling on their head.  But it’s falling on your head as well.” 

There will always be ways to divide us.  Religion has been a favourite. Politics may be edging it out of it’s elevated position. And now we have the pandemic to create even more divisiveness — a two-tiered population.  Dangerous and damaging.  A good government will not do this.  It will look at history and remember the words of Abraham Lincoln: A house divided against itself cannot stand.   But it has given me a new sense of compassion for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to be vaccinated.  

We are star beings, sent to Earth for one reason:  to love and forgive.  Everything else is distraction.  You can ‘sense’ what I feel for you, even if I say the opposite, because our minds are joined.  We can call it a ‘vibe’ or a ‘sense of’ or try to describe the discomfort we felt.  However, in truth it is our connectivity that we brought with us to this planet, then when it was not honoured, we forgot.

Life is lived inside out.  It’s what is happening on the inside that counts.   Our thoughts direct our actions.   If we meditate in the morning it can change our entire day.  

Do not be distracted.  Eyes on the prize.  Heart driven. Choosing to see unity.  It will transform your experience of the world.  We will swim in perfect synchronicity in an ocean of love.

Stop acting so small

You are the Universe

In ecstatic motion

Set your life on fire

Seek those who fan your flames.

                      —- Rumi

 First, let me apologize for the posts assailing your inbox this month.  It is not a trend.  We have moved to another carrier and this is to ensure that it’s working.

It gives me an opportunity as well to express my deep thanks for your faithfulfollowing, in the dry periods and at times like this when the well overflows.
To make this worth opening, i will enclose a little Sanskrit piece that I kept years ago on my bedroom mirror and had forgotten, until it showed up again yesterday. 

Look to this day,
for it is life, the very breath of life.
In its brief course lie
all the realities of your existence;
the bliss of growth,
the glory of action,
the splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is only a dream,
and tomorrow is but a vision.
But today, well lived,
makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
and every tomorrow
a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.

                        - Kalidasa

 Walk in beauty, dear friends.