What We All Long For

The most beautiful voices I've ever heard are here on Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir. The sound of humanity's yearning to connect. After you listen to that, scroll down and check out "Lux Aurumque" and "Sleep."

My Dream Last Night

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. --One of my favorite quotes. It's from Albert Einstein

Here's another:

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. (also by Einstein)

I had a dream last night of a chalkboard drawing that came to life. It was of a hand with red fingernail polish. The fingers were waving at me, and the palm cradled a galaxy. The drawing below is an approximation. The dream has lingered and colored my day. I think it has to do with my despair about the dying planet. Maybe someone is telling me that everything is as it should be. That it's all right. Just like I don't digest my food or keep my heart beating, some force is guiding the course of the universe. It's out of our hands. I don't know.

She's got the whole world in her hand

A Tentative New Direction

So, this poor blog has been neglected for quite some time. I'm thinking it's a good time to begin to blog about my deep sense of loss and longing about the state of the planet as well as the connection between the feminine principle and the planet. I'm not an anthropologist or a scientist of any kind. I just go by my own intution. I have a healthy skepticism of science as it is. I think it can only take us so far. And anyway, what's true today in science is not so true tomorrow. I'm going to post links to sites that move in these directions here.

Here's one:  RSOE EDIS (Hungary) "Nothing happens unexpectedly, everything has an indication, we just have to observe the connections." (Tracks real time updates on disasters and climate change)

After all. Homecoming means a lot more than driving home for a good meal and a shower.

A few thoughts

The truth will take care of itself.

In a silent space I sometimes glimpse the presence of a mysterious spirit of goodness that permeates life around me.

If we actually slowed down long enough to examine our lives, we'd probably forcibly reject most of what we accepted as indispensable before.

I can't justify overindulgence and hoarding as long as there are people in need.

Everything belongs to everyone. What I have I'm obliged to share.

It's intolerable to me that a moral value is placed on someone's wealth...or lack of it.

Morality is outer-directed; ethics are inner-directed. Guess which one is more likely to get you into trouble?

Things I Typed on Sunday Afternoon

As you continue, which you will do, the way to proceed will become apparent.
--John Cage

We move to Oregon on August 13, leaving the life we knew behind as well as most of our material posessions. You learn to let go. You learn to flow. You learn to exist in the moment. It's better not to be too settled. I have no idea what we will do or how we will do it. We have no plans, no clear directions, no itinerary, not even a place to lay our heads. It's better that way. Life becomes a haiku with syllables that become your breath, sleep, and laughter, as ephemeral as leafy shadow as evening falls.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit beneath.

Fork in the Road

These are the days that must happen to you.
-Walt Whitman

It's like stepping over this huge internal divide. One foot is in the past where we've all been hypnotized and asleep, on our knees and obeying masters of the matrix. The other is tenatively touching the other side where all is potential and possibility. Scary and exciting at the same time. Here is the fork in the road where true freedom and unified yet diversified humanity is what we've always sought but didn't know it.

• We're taking leave of the manufactured reality they forced on us and creating our own
• We're leaving behind the old oppressive regime
• We can do this because we're on to them now
• The tides are turning, the wheel is shifting, the veil is lifting
• The oppressors are losing their control and they will clamp down on us with the most vehemence they can gather; but they can't control us if we know their game
• But they won't let go until we cut off their grip on us, sever their hold with our sword of truth, which is awareness and the awakening human consciousness
• Hold on to your truth. Resist their attempts to instill fear
• Never let them touch what you really are: infinite love
• We will be re-unified
  

I know what I write is true because of a burgeoning rise of wonderful change is being censored and ignored more strongly every day. For example, one of a million points of new light: Permaculture Across Borders shines with astonishing beauty. It opens up a huge window of new life for "third world" and "first world" peoples alike. Check it out! Here's another: Rebecca Solnit's speech to graduating English majors at Berkeley, Welcome to the Impossible World.

Soapmaking

Sampling of my handcrafted soaps. Clockwise: cold-process sweetgrass soapballs; orange shampoo bar; glycerine cucumber bar; black glycerine bar; cold-process lemon-cedarwood bars.

I have this thing about plants: trees, herbs, seeds, gardens, fruits, vegetables, natural healing, aromatherapy, soapmaking, and all of nature. I guess I passed this thing down to my older daughter, because she's going for her Masters and PhD in ethnobotany: The study of how plants are used by cultures world-wide. She is presently doing her Masters thesis work down in Guatemala. For an idea of what she's up to, you can visit her site.

One of the most satisfying things I love to do with plants is to make soap. You haven't experienced luxury until you've bathed with rich, fragrant, homemade soap. Sure, you can go to a retailer and pick up a wide range of commercial soap products, or better, to a health store and buy bar of aromatherapy soap for a sensuous experience. But when you make your own soap, you infuse it with care and love and your own special ingredients.

There are many sites and books that teach how to make soap. I learned from a woman who owned her own soap store about ten years ago. I was working for a local daily newspaper and assigned to write a business profile about her. When I went to interview her, the incredible aroma of hundreds of aromatic botanicals flooded the air even before I entered the store.

A few days ago I made the cold-process sweetgrass soap balls you see in the photo. To me, making and using homemade soap is one of the most satisfying things to do. The colors, the texture, the aromas make commercial soap seem like a handful of harsh and synthetic chemicals. Once you use hand-crafted soap, you'll never return to commercial brands. Sure, they cost more, but that's because the ingredients are usually from natural sources. Also, it's one of a growing number of things I'm doing to wean myself from the stranglehold of corporate consumerism. It gives me a means to become self-sufficient.

And one day I know I can barter/trade my soaps for other essential needs.

Headed into Elsewhere

Links on the sidebar are all oriented toward a change in vision, in possibility, in change. My intention for this blog is as a signpost to leave the old patterns behind, as if you were seated in the back of a car accelerating down a highway into the unknown and you turn to look out the back window. What you see is a diminishing, fading picture that has less and less influence over your life and over the Earth. This to me is an apt metaphor.

I would appreciate any and all links that relate to this metaphor. I ask myself lately, "Do I need that anymore?" If I don't, I mentally sort it from my list of necessities. If it's a material thing, I sell it, give it, or toss it. If it's an old attachment or pattern, it's not as easy, but I'm working on a means to let go of these too.

It seems obvious that if we are to build a new world from the roots, we must first gently delete those things that will confuse, crowd, take up precious space. Let them go with gratitude because they taught us something we needed to know. At any rate, my next post will have to do with my thoughts on something called the "gift economy" and why we need it instead of laws that say corporations must make a profit above all else and instead of the slave economy that uses pieces of paper and metal, symbols that dehumanize and destroy.

Found this great poem by Wendell Berry:

How To Be a Poet

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.

Standing Down

You can't change anyone, you can only inspire them. It's futile to try to "win" someone over to your side. This only serves to fuel the hatred. Instead, practice celebrating diversity. Then engage in dialogue and trust that truth will bubble to the top.

Paraphrased from a radio show called "Ceasefire" which proposes that " We ask Left and Right to lay down their arms & engage in civil discourse."