Last weekend, I learned that I’ll have to leave the house I’ve lived in for the past three years. Its owner, a lovely woman, wants it back for her own family as a vacation home.

Not today, not tomorrow, but sometime in the next few months, I will have to say goodbye to this exquisite place that has taught me so much about love and belonging.

Goodbye to this bay, whose shifting sands, impromptu rainbows, floating islands, and shot-silk waters are an unfolding story that fills me daily with delight and joy.

Goodbye to my friends, the great bald eagles who teach me about power, commitment, vision, and what it takes to stay aloft in the wildest winter storms. Their diligence as they rebuild their nest each year in the tall cedar tree at the edge of this property. The patience, skill and fearless love with which they teach their little ones to fly.

My spirit companions, the golden eagles, nest a short distance away too. They show up to celebrate each threshold crossed, each passage navigated in my life, by swooping in widening circles in front of my house—an unparalleled dance of power and support.

The non-physical beings that overlight this landscape are my friends and teachers too. They tell me that love cannot be lost…that wherever I go next, their blessings travel with me.

I’ve been grieving, these past few days. Letting hot tears flow. My relationship with this place is as deep and profound as any human relationship. And yet there are no rituals in our culture for honoring such a relationship, for mourning its passage.

So I make my own rituals. Shaped by the changing colors of the sky. By the ebb and flow of the tides. And the pattern of this landscape that lives in my heart.

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I’d love to hear about the places you love. And your own rituals for honoring and leaving these places of the heart.

SUNDAY POEM

You gods and bearded prophets, go squabble
in the pub for a while. I’ve heard enough
of heroes and lightning chariots streaking
across the sky. My companions are Cassandra
and Cordelia. They cook with me and wash
dishes afterwards. This chipped blue bowl
into which I dip my spoon is the
goddess’s face. The hand, which caresses—
its tendons and veins and miraculous
fingers—works her threads of light into
muscular days. I kneel to scrub the floor.

Yes, bubbles.

Big ones, little ones. Bubbles that float and merge, shimmer like rainbow globes and dissolve into thin air.

Start with a jar of bubble solution, or make your own with dishwashing detergent and water. Make or buy a couple of wands of different sizes.

The next time you find yourself stuck in a mental loop that goes something like…

I knew this would never work

or

I just want to stay in bed and hide under the covers until roots grow out of my hair

or

What’s the use? Nothing ever really changes

or

I should lose weight/eat more vegetables and chocolate/exercise every day/stop hanging out on Twitter all day/find a more decorous way to pick my nose

…get out your bubble solution and wand and blow bubbles.

It’s hard to hang onto fixed beliefs when bubbles are shimmering, sparkling and popping in glorious rainbow colors all around you.

Thoughts, beliefs, mind-loops, are patterns of energy.

And energy is infinitely malleable. It changes quickly. Your intention and imagination are your allies in transforming energy.

A pattern is more resistant to change because the energy of which it is composed is locked into a rigid structure that seems impermeable to change.

Blowing bubbles is both a metaphor for transformation, and a means of creating rapid change in an energy structure. Energy is being created and destroyed and re-created constantly. Bubbles remind us of this.

They destabilize a rigid structure by following the natural flow of energy, which is in a constant state of flux.

The patterns you despair of ever changing because they seem so stubborn and intransigent are in fact composed of energy quanta that dance and twirl in a continual stream of fission and fusion, creation and destruction.

Bubbles.

Their airy transmutability is at the heart of the dark goddesses: Kali, Inanna, Demeter.

So the next time you feel stuck in a familiar groove, create and destroy and create and destroy by blowing bubbles. Literally. Or in your imagination.

Either way, the energy will shift. Old patterns will dissolve. New ones will emerge, to dissolve in turn…

Bubble therapy!

SUNDAY POEM

Show me in your emerald heart, in the
current of your river. Show me how
to open my hands, your laughing light
trembling between my palms.

Tara, show me

I have left the house with no roof. Hands ache
from clutching water, gripping air. No
ground, no walls, no rooms. I have left them all
behind. See my boat leak. See the boatman
return to our ruined village. My clothes

left on the river bank. I don’t know how
to swim, how

I have forgotten my name

SUNDAY POEM

You opened your mouth and swallowed it all
believing purity of heart could transform
mercury into mead by some
mysterious alchemy of the spirit.

You sucked in poisoned milk; you swallowed stones
disguised as potato soup. Bullets rumbled
in your belly, which grew round as the full
moon stuffed with shattered rabbit bones.

Heart without wisdom is a blind woman
boiling lentils in acid rain.

My friend Michele Woodward, who lives in Washington DC said, on Twitter, last week that the atmosphere in the city was heavy with dread, the way it had been after 9/11. A series of unexpected blizzards on the East Coast left many people feeling fearful, uncertain of what was coming next. This harsh winter weather, following on the heels of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, brings home the realization that we’re vulnerable to Nature’s awesome power. It reminds us forcibly of our mortality.

There are powerful planetary energies at play right now that exacerbate polarization, division, fear, and friction. At the same time, there are available energies of wholeness, radiance and peace.

Each of us is both an individual being–our singular self–and in relationship with all other forces on this earth. The energies of entropy affect us because they are in the atmosphere around us–we swim in them like fish in the sea. But they also exert pressure through our connection with others in our lives who may be susceptible to them, and through our energetic connection to the earth.

So…here are some ways to stay strong, centered and calm in the midst of fear and chaos:

1. Connect your grounding to the purest, clearest energy source in the earth–the Soul of the Earth. And connect also to the Soul of the Cosmos.

2. Bring yourself back to your own center.

3. Connect with your soul, through the back of your fourth chakra. It’s more important than ever to fill yourself with your soul’s vibration. (You can listen to the audio of a teleclass on how to do this, here.)

4. Clear energies and emotions that are not yours, out of your chakras and energy field. Create a state of harmonic resonance in your own energy field. This is your inner world. Fill it with the qualities you want to experience, and work skillfully with the energies that disrupt it. Practice sovereignty.

5. Stay in touch with your own emotions, letting them flow. Call a conference of your selves, giving each part of you a voice, practicing emotional skillfulness.

6. Stay in present time. When you find yourself caught in catastrophic stories–characterized by phrases like “always” and “never” among others–breathe, ground, bring yourself back to center, and into the present moment.

At times like these, when there’s so much fear on the planet, it’s easy to get swept off into the future, and since your body can’t follow you there, it’ll leave you feeling more and more fearful.

Your senses help you connect with your body, and connect with what’s real right now. Move in ways that bring you joy. Feel the solidity of the earth under your feet.

7. Confusion is almost always a sign that you’re dealing with energies–or emotions, or pictures or beliefs–that aren’t yours. Clear out anything that doesn’t belong to you, and then see how you feel.

8. Remember to ask for help: from your soul, from the people you are close to, from your community, from the Universe, and from allies and helpers in all dimensions.

You are not the small, scared, isolated self you may feel yourself to be. You are a vast, multidimensional being, and you have capacities and resources you can barely begin to imagine. They are real. They are powerful. And they are actively invested in the success of your incarnation–they always respond when you ask.

9. Remember, too, that you are working within cycles of time and space. Give yourself the gift of spaciousness– separate from the high levels of fear that are haunting the world right now.

10. Get out into Nature if you can. Connect with your body, with the earth, with what’s real. Connect with spirit, which moves in dimensions of timelessness. Attune to the essence of the qualities you need to help you–strength; patience; fortitude; safety; humor; stability; wisdom; power; inspiration.

11. Make clear energetic separations from everything and everyone else, and return to the simplicity of your own being, as it is right now. Your senses bring you into the present moment, so tune into your breath, your body, what you taste, smell, touch, hear and see.

12. When fear comes knocking, with its stories about impending doom, ask yourself: right here, right now, am I safe? Am I dying? Or deathly ill? Or about to be eaten by a dinosaur? Is what I’m afraid of actually happening right now?

13. Manage your energy. Bring a pink-gold vibration into your reptilian brain (at your brain stem), a clear gold light into your mid-brain. Close down your first chakra until it’s only as open as you can handle comfortably. Close down your trance-medium channels–the energy channels that are like an upside-down T, at the back of your head and neck, and across your shoulders, and fill them with clear gold light.

These practices will help. Remember, reality is always Whole, and always on your side. Even though fragmentation can be LOUD, its power is limited to volume.

Each time you recognize and name the fear and trauma around you, bring yourself back into resonance with your own soul, and into harmony with Wholeness, you contribute to the healing of the world. You bring calm, strength and peace to your own body, your life, and your community.

Times of uncertainty and change call us to the task of making meaning and wholeness within ourselves. You can choose to be a source of healing and blessing–your Presence is needed in the world, especially in these difficult times.

You are a source of love, blessing, positive energy and
sacredness in the world. You are more
than just a consumer of these qualities.

When you choose to be a source
you shape the world with your presence.

Take a look at your world.
The shape it’s in will tell you
about the quality of your being,

SUNDAY POEM

When it’s freezing in February
February and freezing

I’ll slip into my story quilt and dream.

emerald droplets fly into the night
from the cup of my hands in your cold,
swift waters. sky widens the arc of your
unknown

When it’s freezing in February
in February, freezing

my story slips quilted into dreams.

The sky has its own gravity. Fire-flies
streak like songs into the night; the eyes
of shooting stars.

When it’s freezing in February
and February is freezing

my quilt slips dreaming into story.

who are you?
naked
orphan?
egg

begin

When it’s February, February, freezing, February
story, quilt, dream.

……………………………………….

As always, you’re welcome to come play Poetry with me. Share your poems, responses and insights in Comments.

SUNDAY POEM: KALI

Kali, queen of the night-sky, your skull
necklace rattles on dancing breasts.
Blood stains the cavern and corners
of your mouth. Your obsidian face gleams;
your ruby tongue defies all who claim dominion.
Your many hands grip many lethal weapons—
swift swords and whirling discus; lightning
cracks open this labyrinthine brain, its convoluted
folds sizzle into mist. Silence returns
to the sky, to the heart.

Around a demon’s hair, your hennaed hands
are curled; his severed head swings above
the earth; ragged droplets drip scarlet from his
neck’s stump. Broad, black feet—your feet—stamp
on his headless body; your eyes are fierce
coal-stars, every eyelash a cluster of
constellations. Such power, milady, I
am breathless at this naked red display—
my own long shrouded in seemly white.

I’ll strip off these penitent robes, unpin
my hair, let it float above my roaring
chest. And shout, a bawdy barker bellowing:
come, take–enter if you dare!

……………………………………………………

In Hindu Tantra, Kali is the consort of Shiva–the power that makes consciousness manifest.

Her wisdom is that there is no life without death, no light without dark–all things and their opposites co-exist on this plane of duality. And underneath them lies the unmanifest world of unity and wholeness.

Responsibility.

Ta-duh.

The word lands with a heavy thump of burden and obligation. It stands hunched-over and stiff-necked with shoulds and expectations. A painfully bristling virtue that leaves us feeling bad about ourselves because its standards are so high, we’re afraid we’ll never be able to live up to them.

A grim Troll of a word with a Calvinist edge to it, its arrival strikes a sting of reproach–our failure to meet its exacting standards seems inevitable, built into its structure.

So what is responsibility, really? Who or what are we responsible for? Do we get to choose? Or do our responsibilities arrive pre-ordained—the mighty Troll who casts a long shadow over family, work, relationships, business, life…

Part of the confusion we feel arises because responsibility is both a body energy, and a spiritual quality—and the two are very different from each other.

As human animals—particularly if we’re female human animals–our bodies are genetically programmed to be responsible. This is Nature’s way of ensuring the propagation of the species, of making sure we’ll take care of our children through the long years it takes for them to grow to maturity and be able to survive in the wilds of the world.

It’s this Responsibility Troll that brings my whole being into a state of instant alert when I hear a child’s panicked voice calling: “Mommy!” at my local grocery store. Even though my sons are grown men, happily living their own lives, that cry of “Mommy!” raises the atavistic hackles of my body. My heart beats a quickstep and adrenalin surges through my arteries. Mommy is ready to leap into action—to protect, shelter, comfort, respond to a child’s distress.

Because the Responsibility Troll is a body energy, you can’t will it away—it has its own purpose, its reason for being. To function effectively, we must understand its nature, honor it, and negotiate a working relationship with it.

When there’s no obvious place for the Responsibility Troll to direct its considerable power, it fixates on work, or on the people around us. It’s convinced it knows what’s best for everyone, and also convinced the world will fall apart without it.

When it’s doing what it’s meant to do, it’s an evolutionary and useful being. Not so helpful when it lumbers in where it doesn’t belong.

You can experience the Responsibility Troll by thinking of something or someone you feel responsible for. That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach? That heaviness, that sense of overwhelm? Or that punishing self-righteousness—all point to the presence of the Responsibility Troll.

On the upside, it is hard-working and reliable, determined to make things work no matter what.

If the body energy of responsibility is a troll toiling in a coal mine, the spiritual quality of responsibility is a creature of sunlight and wings. Because it emerges from wholeness, as all spiritual qualities do, it understands that you–and the situation and everyone involved in it–are a radiant soul, filled with infinite power and potential. It knows that each of us has everything we need to be whole, healthy and fulfilled. No-one is broken; no-one needs to be fixed.

The Angel of Responsibility knows this. So when you fill yourself with its presence, you naturally respond to people and situations in ways that honor your own sovereignty and that of everyone else as well. You experience yourself and everyone else as already whole.

This doesn’t mean you turn a blind eye to pain and suffering. Suffering exists. You meet it with kindness, honoring your own and other people’s vulnerability and need as aspects of wholeness.

When you become the Angel of Responsibility, you respond with empathy, support, respect, and love–offering what your heart calls you to offer. Knowing that the person you are offering help to is also helping you–that you are in a dance that weaves together call and response, love, support and kindness, giving and receiving.

Both you and the person being helped are Angels of Responsibility, learning the steps to the dance so you can dance it more effortlessly, with greater joy.

Ultimately, our responsibility is to cultivate those qualities within ourselves and in our lives that bring us to our natural state of wholeness. This requires discernment and choices.

We choose what we say yes to, what we say no to. And our yes-es and our no-es shape who we become. They also shape what we offer to the world.

If you work on your business hunched over as the Responsibility Troll, gritting your teeth to make it through that next project, pushing yourself harder, you add to the suffering of the world. Each time you treat yourself unkindly, telling yourself the end justifies the means, you increase the sum of unkindness in the world. You contribute to a lack of empathy and generosity.

How you do what you do determines the quality of your life. So when that Responsibility Troll shows up, give it something to do that lets it fulfill its natural function. Then invite the Angel of Responsibility into your presence. Become its shining, winged self, and see what happens next.

Oh, and listen for the tune that brings the Angel and the Troll onto the dance floor together.

…………………………………………………..

I’d love to hear your stories. How do you feel when the Responsibility Troll shows up in your life? Do you have rituals for welcoming the Angel of Responsibility?