What if there were a prayer like an incantation, one to be recited, or sung—if you could carry a tune— echoing around the world like the wood pigeon’s call, five notes radiating as light rays fill the sky announcing: “Morning has arrived”.
What if, I ask, because I wonder what might bloom in our hearts if we held five words to lift us into the dawn— could they luminate our path through starless nights of change, surprise, and dread where daily news suspends us in silent, trembling pause?
Focus. Sing out. A clear message.
One that says: Lift your hearts today. Let love be your guide. My joy illuminates.
Could we, in unison, each in our own language of hope, sing until certainty rises that dawn has arrived, and all are bathed in new light.
Could we sing together and dispel the darkness that seeps through shadowed corners, permeating rooms of despair? Could we try?
There lies hope: Our one honest prayer of life. Together we could light the universe.
Just as the winter winds come and go, so too the dreams that seek to be born. Some come alive in truth while others fall after deceit is near. What is the heart’s desire if not to be alive in love and longing for the day when all arises in beauty, and we believe in all that we are, beyond this physical form, beyond these fears, beyond all being into eternity.
On this solstice, the energy of light returns to guide us into what we wish to be: to see, to taste, and live as we set our intentions clearly, and birth anew into possibility, with dreams created from the heart. We are told, you are what you dream. Be all that is your dream and live into the wholeness and the wonder of who you are— light, cosmic love, and truth. Within it all, be you.
(image: Winter Winds by Janis Dehler
“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future.”
-Margaret Atwood
“The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.”
-Gary Zukav
“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.”
In this season: love abounds, the full moon rises, lights shine, candles are lit, while we draw near.
We wonder: How do we enter? How do we gain?
We remember: there is no gain, there is no loss, in an endless supply of love, joy, and compassion.
Always and ever: as we need, as we open, as we allow and release that which is not needed, does not support, does not bring life.
We open to All: to life, to love, and rejoice in the season of light and love, which is now and always, never ending, in endless supply.
(Image my own)
“You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are.”
-Eckhart Tolle
“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
-Rumi
“Under the anger, under the fear, under the despair, under the broken heartedness, there is a radiance that has never been harmed, that has never been lost, that is the truth of who one is.”
Hidden in the depths, we seek to know the light that shines within to the life that unfolds out. To make whole, to make one, we dive in, then return with a jewel found here, a gem unearthed there. Scattered on the ocean floor, waiting to be gathered, wanting to be brought home— all one through love. No longer within or without. Simply eager to be lived.
“You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth”
– Henry Louis Mencken
”Like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing abundance of creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming.”
– C.G. Jung
“The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.”
The sun appears out of darkness, rises above the trees, floods the earth with radiant light, teases me to come outside, to see the day, after the rains, the wind, and storm clouds.
See the red tomato in fullness ready to be released from a hardy stem that supports growth. See the way the black and white Downy Woodpecker rests on the railing taking a gentle breath of reprieve.
I set feet into moist grass with rainwater absorbed in every blade while wonder rises, and jewels made of sun and water glisten. Realize this moment of peace, resounds from within. It is yours.
“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.”
-Steven Hawking
” I firmly believe nature brings solace in all troubles.”
In these high summer days, light shines on life before me, enters my body, to heal and transform. Light rules and tickles my senses. Basil is ready to harvest for pesto. A deep red cherry tomato catches my eye then pops in my mouth. Darkness is late in coming. Sunset arrives to say, rest. Tomorrow, I will rise again, into the light.
“I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.”
-Toni Morrison
“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.”
-Og Mandino
“Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.”
Rise from slumber. Fling open the curtains. View the world after whipping wind, and pounding rain unfold a newfound calm.
Hummingbird flits, flower to flower, dining on fresh nectar made from an offering of digging, planting, and attending.
Produced in co-creation, a feast for an unknown and welcome guest. Joy rises to meet this day, and spirit unfolds before us.
“We exist in a co-created reality in which we cannot always choose all our circumstances. But how we think and feel about a given situation is always our choice.”
– Anthon St. Maarten
“The time is now for transformation. It is a new era and we are poised with the opportunity to bring in new consciousness, and co-create a new reality. Why? Because the light within each of us has been turned on and it’s our job to turn that light on brighter and brighter until all false thought forms dissolve in the light of our truth.”
-Dr. Michelle L. Casto
“Feeding birds means feeding yourself! Birds are part of nature and feeding nature is nothing but feeding yourself!”
Light entered my world today, not from the east, solely from the north. A swath of blue and white within a sky covered with dark clouds. Instead of the window I look out to see the expected, I choose an alternate window to see the unexpected. The same light seen through a different world view.
“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”
—George Eliot
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man [and woman] as it is—infinite.”
—William Blake
“In this treacherous world, nothing is the truth or a lie. Everything depends on the color of the crystal through which one sees it.”
