Mother Moon Supermoon
Mother Moon is drifting high Silent in the starry sky Feel the shadow of her eye Moon is on the rise. — Mother Moon chant* The full moon tonight is called a supermoon. Evidently, there will be two of them in this first month of our very new year. It’s heartening because it feels like the heralding of a turn for the better. 2017 has been tough for a lot of us and we could use some relief from the chaos and destructiveness of our world. Mother Moon’s power is subtle yet strong. It’s beautiful. She lights the night sky like a giant lamp, pulls on the oceans to create tides, and calls to us to awaken to ourselves. She influences the healthy growth of plants according to many gardeners. I have a personal relationship with the moon. I love her and look to her to help me through difficult times. She reassures me and reminds me that everything will be alright and to stay present with the way things are. She sits up there in the heavens looking beautiful and wise, and sometimes that’s enough. Many of my interactions with her have been spontaneous and surprising. They are always uplifting and empowering. There was the day I was feeling sorry for myself and feeling like no one understood where I was coming from no matter how much I explained myself. I strolled along feeling a little sad and lonely. It was morning in the wilderness a number of years ago, and the moon was on her way to setting in the day bright sky. It can be a little startling to see the moon in daylight, and I hadn’t realized she was there. I just happened to glance upwards. Moon shrugged her lunar shoulders and communicated gently and matter of factly. “I’m the only moon,” she said, “and it’s okay.” Oh. My God. Thank you, I responded, breathlessly. Thank you so much. So obviously right on. I certainly wouldn’t dream of wanting the moon to be different from the way she is. I adore her uniqueness, so perhaps I could appreciate my own as well. No reason to feel bad because you’re the only one like you. In other words, it’s okay to be just me and not necessarily understood by anyone else. My loneliness and sadness faded. Mother Moon’s message to me that morning was visceral. It bypassed my mind and went straight to my heart. It instilled the kind of knowing that resides in the tissues of the body and floats along in a sea of humility. It feels so true and right that all you can do is relax into the truth of it. There’s nothing intellectual about it and so it requires hardly any thinking. It is experienced as a gift. Tonight we will be treated to a full moon, a supermoon. May you be graced by the power and promise of Mother Moon. I wish you good tidings and a Happy New Year full of love and peace. *an arrangement of my Mother Moon chant was recorded by Sound Circle and can be purchased here....
Read MoreThe Quest Work
Open to the Spirit… open to your heart… take time to listen… take time to be in the Heart of the Mother… “Joyful medicine.” That’s what I said to a friend who asked me how the Day Quest went yesterday. Joyful medicine is the essence of what I call “the Quest work.“ I go to the mountains to seek solitude, rest, and renewal. I consult with the land about life’s conundrums and difficulties. I have done this for thirty years, ever since my first vision quest with David LaChapelle. During the summer months, I escort others to do the same. We sit in circles on the ground. We sing. We sit quietly. We pray. We engage in reflective exchanges called mirroring. We sit in the lap of the Earth Mother and come back to our true nature. The painful splits in our being are given a chance to heal. You can talk to the trees, I say to my people. You can ask them to help you. You can welcome the more than human life forms into the circle of your heart. If you walk and sit quietly without thinking, you become open to the love and communication that is always present in and amongst the hillsides. If you listen patiently, you can receive the bounty that is available there. It feels like magic, but really it isn’t. It’s reality. The gifts that flower from this practice enrich the lives of the participants. They also hold the promise of a better, more peaceful world, as the people bring back stronger, clearer versions of themselves and apply themselves to what life is asking of them. My Quest season is almost over for this year. It will renew itself next summer as long as I am still blessed with good health and there are people who heed the call to come home to the Heart of the Mother. A bow of gratitude to...
Read MoreMoving Forward Into the New (and Trusting)
The longer I live, the more I learn the beauty of each being’s way of navigating life’s changes and the spiritual openings that come to magnify and deepen each life. How are you doing with the choices and changes life is bringing to you? Isn’t it amazing how caught up we are in the continuous movement of the Forces? For many of us here in Colorado, it’s been all about the Great Flood of 2013. We’re still recovering from the powerful waters that moved through our area in the form of the thousand year rains and the 100 year flood. For a while it was hard to think about anything else. But life reasserts itself and moves on regardless of shocking events and traumas. It doesn’t allow us to stay any one place very long, but rather, commands us to continue on, receive healing, and apply the lessons we are learning from our experience. Life asks us to trust even when we feel like everything is going wrong. I wrote a guest blog post about this recently. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. The essay is also on my counseling website here. The underlying theme of my book, Life Choices, is the importance of exploring and understanding how life on Earth really works. Choices made by women and men about sex and pregnancy are part of that, but the overarching teaching of abortion and its related issues is the way life is in relationship with itself through birth, death, and everything in between, and how individual conscious awareness comes into being through experience. I can’t think of anything more important than learning how to trust. It’s almost impossible to navigate the twists and turns of our lives if we don’t. Trust often grows from surviving challenging experiences. Our experiences are tailor made to allow us to become more conscious and aware on all levels. As we open to what our experiences have to teach us we become more trusting. I’m speaking of deep trust here, the kind of trust we have in the changing of the seasons and the rising of the sun. Moving forward into the new, I have created a workshop called Trust the Sacred-Trust Yourself. It will debut on Saturday, December 7 in Boulder at Holo Being, LLC as a HoloLive! production. You can find more information here. You can sign up here. I am excited about this new form because it brings together the teachings that I share with private clients and out on the land during the annual vision quest trip. Learning to trust the way of things gives us a key to connection with ourselves, with each other, with earth, with sky, and with the divine. ...
Read MoreGratitude Then and Now for the People and the Teachings
I want to share with you my gratitude for some wonderful people and their work in the world. Here is a piece of writing that is both playful and serious thanking NASA (yes, that NASA) for using the word abort correctly. Accolades to Peg Johnston for this and other articles and for her ongoing steadiness in advocating for the health rights and empowerment of women. I’ve received tremendous support from Peg for the message I’m bringing through in Life Choices. She is someone who knows how to welcome everyone into the circle of care. Thank you, Peg! Charlotte Taft is a brave leader in feminist thought. She and I are of the same generation and share a depth of understanding and love for the emergence of women’s consciousness world wide. Thank you, Charlotte, for your perseverance and leadership, and your long term personal support for me in the writing of my book. When I hear the word Texas my mind goes immediately to Amy Hagstrom Miller. Amy has been in the news a lot lately because she is the founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, a national provider of abortion services that began in Austin, Texas in 2003. While I don’t know Amy personally, I want to thank her for being strong and clear during the grueling fight in the Texas state legislature over abortion rights. She is an inspiration for all of us and especially for younger women looking to be part of the movement. There is an incredible group of people who put out “the newsjournal of Catholic opinion,” aptly named Conscience. The group is Catholics for Choice. The journal is published three times a year. I’ve been aware of it since the 1980’s and it has kept me informed and uplifted through its progressive, thought empowering news and opinion. Thank you, Conscience! I’m sure you’ve noticed how the current political climate in the United States is becoming increasingly hostile to providers of legal abortion. I am deeply impressed by the courage and fortitude of those who are isolated in states like Mississippi and North Dakota. Unfortunately, it continues to get worse in many places. Not so in Boulder. Our community continues to be solidly supportive. A few weeks ago, I was invited to attend a board meeting of Women’s Health here in town. Susan Levy, the center’s director, asked me to come to tell the story of the founding of the then Boulder Valley Clinic in 1973. Most of the current board members did not know the history or how it was at the beginning. There will be a 40th anniversary celebration this fall. Time is moving along! Speaking of time, it feels like I am entering a new period in my life. I’m approaching 70 and feeling an even greater depth of connection to All Life both personally and professionally. I feel it as a writer and a healer, but also simply as a person living on this Earth. I am lucky to be blessed with good health and a widening community of friends and colleagues. The Quest work I do (wilderness rites of passage for women) seems intent on continuing probably until I’m unable to walk the land anymore(!). Deep gratitude for this. The work in wild nature is truly the living edge of reality consciousness. Kudos to those who found the courage to join us for our most recent 9 day journey in July and also those who have come in past years. My only wish is that more people would avail themselves of the experience. By the way, dear activists and health care workers, this sort of retreat could be a great renewal...
Read MoreHumanity’s Dream of Peace Depends Upon the Liberation and Advancement of Women
We must bring our human intelligence and compassionate judgment to bear on the nature and quality of Life on Earth. The planet needs our loving attention. All the technology in the world will not release us from our fundamental responsibility to be in right relationship with the world, with all living beings, and especially with each other. — Life Choices, p.158 HUMANITY’S DREAM OF PEACE DEPENDS UPON THE LIBERATION AND ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN. Seems obvious, but all over the world women (and men) are dying at the hands of men and governments controlled by men. And, the environment, our living breathing Earth, our precious habitat and the habitat of all the other plant and animal species, continues to be threatened and pillaged as though it doesn’t matter. HUMANITY’S DREAM OF PEACE DEPENDS UPON THE LIBERATION AND ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN. The liberation and advancement of women brings with it a nourishing and a nurturing, a caring consciousness for both women and men. This consciousness is more cooperative than competitive, and more relational than individualistic. It is more respectful and holistic. These are values and ways of living that benefit all equally. It’s not a matter of women or men; it’s about women and men. This has been said many times by the feminist movement over the years, but it bears repeating. The movement for women’s liberation and advancement is about everyone, all of us; not you or me, but us. HUMANITY’S DREAM OF PEACE DEPENDS UPON THE LIBERATION AND ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN. The coming of human equality is a force of nature. It is about the Earth as a whole. It is Earth righting itself, upgrading its consciousness to reflect its needs. The new consciousness that is being birthed is one that reveals choice making as a natural element in the flow of life. The legitimizing of pregnancy choice making in the fabric of society points us towards recognizing the place of women in that flow. When you understand abortion, especially legal abortion in this context, and you keep women in the center of the pregnancy picture, you begin to see that we have to change our thinking about how we view life as a whole. Our species needs to wake up and make the necessary shifts towards sustaining the good of the whole. Recognizing and respecting the power and legitimacy of women to make decisions about when and whether to bring life through their bodies is central to the unfolding of the new consciousness and to peace on Earth. January 22 marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the legalization of abortion throughout the United States. Click here for information about the celebration in Denver. Click here to read a recent article by Charlotte Taft. Lastly, I want to note the passing of a great feminist historian, Gerda Lerner, whose work formed the basis for my understanding of women’s history. MAY OUR HEARTS OPEN TO ALL OF EXISTENCE. MAY WE LEARN TO LIVE AS ONE BODY. MAY WE LEARN TO LOVE AS ONE BEING. ...
Read MoreAbortion Teaches Us to Let Go Like the Trees of Fall
If we are to survive as a species, human beings are going to have to accept that our bodies and the body of the Earth are one and the same. We must engage consciously with the life cycles—the coming into being and going away of life through death—and respect those individuals who are put in the position of making direct decisions about that in specific situations. Life Choices, p. 80 Every fall I am struck by the dying process evident in all of nature. It’s right in front of our eyes at this time of year. Fall is the perfect time to enter into an appreciation of death in life. Where I live the drama is most evident with the turning of the aspen. Quaking aspen proliferate in the mountains near Boulder. They are found on the slopes above 8,000 feet mixed in swaths with the powerful, prolific pines. You can take in the view along the Peak to Peak highway between Nederland and Ward, two small mountain towns about a half hour from Boulder. The trees announce their dying in spectacular splashes of gold. It’s captivating and we stand in awe no matter how many times we’ve seen it over all the years. I love these trees. I also love the way most women make choices about pregnancy; and choices about their lives in general; the way we carefully and deliberately let go of parts of ourselves that no longer serve in order to grow into ourselves anew. Like the trees in fall. Like everything in life really. The dying gives us our living and it is beautiful. When a woman makes a choice to end a pregnancy by having an abortion, she engages with the part of her consciousness that knows the importance of letting go. Sometimes it is difficult and emotionally painful, which is one difference between us and the trees. But, once a woman learns she can stand tall, she is able to step into a sturdier ability to let go more easily. This might happen right away, but sometimes it takes years for a woman to find her confidence and self-respect and to heal from distressing circumstances. Every woman has the potential to face down her fear and doubt and come to peace with abortion. Paying attention to more than human nature can accelerate healing. Go to the earth. Hang out with the trees, especially now during the time of changing colors. Let earth help you find the serenity you seek. If abortion is part of your current field of experience, let nature heal and guide you. The love and comfort you need is available for the asking. All you need to do is open to it. ~ ~ ~ It’s been a year since Life Choices came into the world and I moved into life as a published author. I trust that the book is finding its way into the hands of those for whom it is interesting and healing. However, there is no way for me to know for sure. I still need help and support from you to let people know about it. For example, you could check your local public and university libraries to see if it’s there and if it’s not, ask them to order it. The same with local bookstores, women’s health clinics, and women’s studies departments. You could invite me to participate in a discussion with your book group; or, to give a talk and/or webinar to your class or community organization. It’s not to late to write a review for Amazon or Barnes & Noble online,...
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