Beyond Thankfulness

   Thanksgiving seems to evoke a variety of visions, feelings and hopes in all of us. For some of us tradition itself creates a comforting and predictable day of family, turkey and football. For some it is a day to dig a little deeper into our thankfulness, donate time and maybe indulge in a nutroast. For others it is a day to boycott all together because it has become a lie and a shame.  For others still it is a serious day of mourning.  It pushes an ancestral button of betrayal, displacement and slaughter.  This unfathomable loss must be a pain that is woven directly into their DNA. Without reiterating the details of this holidays origins I’d like to address what it has become and humbly suggest what it might be. 
    At the heart of this day we have a celebration of monumental compassion given to the Pilgrims by the wise Indigenous peoples of this land.  Many of us tap into this deep gratitude while partaking in our laughter and libations. We share our abundance with joy thus acknowledging it. We “pay it forward” by reaching out happily to give to those in need. It is as if we have some unconscious remembrance of a life saving kindness woven into our own timeless being.  For many others it is a symbol of betrayal and possibly a squelching of faith in goodness being returned for the benefit of all.  It is a reminder of homelands being savagely taken through trade, tricks and murder.  It could make one wonder if sharing is even safe.
    What is missing from this day of plenty is precisely what it is supposed to be a symbol of... a coming together of everyone...  to share and be grateful together.  When we celebrate this day of friendships forged while sweeping the brutal betrayal under the rug we fracture our souls with it’s inauthenticity, cheating ourselves out of an incredible potential for evolvement. Could we simply admit the mistakes and even teach them to our children.  Can we forgive the pilgrims and offer our sincere apologies in their names?  Can correct the past with right action today? What if we could be forgiven?  Humans are fragile and when ruled by fear we are dangerous.   The pilgrims were ill prepared, arrogantly religious and horribly greedy.  They were also teeming with courage, dreams, hopes and faith.  We can forgive them and we can celebrate them and we can apologize for them.  We can reach our hands out and use our beating hearts to direct us.  A true apology is a laborious kindness in action.  We can ask our indigenous neighbors how we can help.  We can do what is asked of us. 
    We can all celebrate the healing, the lessons learned and the love growing.  We would empower our beloved land as a beacon of healing with balance, truth and right action.  We would light up something wonderful within ourselves.  Something as simple a flower offered to a native American neighbor can plant a seed of acknowledgment that allows healing to begin.   Love your love light in action.

               Feel the magic.......

Permission to Play !

   Many of us are so busy trying to survive, we forget how simple it can be to thrive.  Our days may overwhelm us with financial and social obligations, nurturing our family/friends, household duties and 'saving' the world but our moments are ours.  When we tweak our perspective a bit to realize life as a series of moments we create opportunities to 'dance' our own power into our day.  We can choose to pay our bills in stark coldness with an attitude of lack or we can plug in our favorite instrumental tunes while we write each check with gratitude.  Being able to pay even some of our bills is worth a little thankfulness in today's economy.  We can run through our list of household chores breaking a sweat while cursing the dirt or we can make up our most 'dancable' playlist and rock out with our mop mic.  Just invite the dust to salsa into your eco-friendly swiffer. ( Link below ) Our moments are ours.  My favorite time out of time is when I'm able to string many moments together into a long line of playtime with my daughters.  A friend recently brought over a mini mountain of old magazines and poster board suggesting we make collages.  Soon the dining room suffered the great paper clipping storm of 2011 with thigh high paper drifts and sunny satisfied smiles.  We all believed we put Picasso to shame.  How will you decide to spend your next precious moments?  Let's give ourselves and each other permission to play.

                                                 FEEL THE MAGIC  . . .

                                                                            Eden

                                                                           Lili

                                                
                                                                           Momma



http://www.etsy.com/shop/Earthfriendly4u

Going Within

 "Meditation refers to any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit." - Wikpedia

    Don't let the pseudo-spiritual media hype fool you. (That is a whole separate blog entry!  Coming soon!)  Meditation is as simple or as complicated as you want to make it, but it is ALWAYS beneficial!  Everyone meditates in one way or another.  I wonder what your meditation practice is.   Do you take quiet walks or baths?  Do you garden, knit, paint, play an instrument or do your housework with a quiet presence?  Do you sail, hike, or swim with your attention fully on your body, on your experience? Do you get where I'm going here? You meditate.   Now if you add the understanding that when you are fully present in a moment with one activity you can access your intuition, your stillness...... your sacred inner peace.   You can crowd out all the worries or responsibilities by concentrating intently on what you are enjoying.  Give yourself to the feelings your activity inspires in you.  You may find that you crave more peace.  You may want to try doing even less.  You can find a view, a sunset or even a simple flower and allow yourself to get swept up in the pure inspiration of it until nothing else exists.  When you do this consciously you set up a new energetic pattern for yourself.  The deeper you go the more you reset the level of contentment you are able to call forth when you need it.   It gets easier and easier.  It's important to take moments in the nothingness.  To take moments to let go of all the outcomes you are struggling for.  If you haven't yet..... take a breath.  Your power is in your breath.  Inhale and exhale slowly and deeply until you feel yourself at one with that sunset.  It has been said that prayer is speaking with source and meditation is listening to source.  I'm hoping to inspire you to ground, breath, open, be thankful and listen.

                           F E E L  T H E   M A G I C . . .


Going Within

Wanting to hear you
Fill my space
I'm empty, waiting
Blow the sail on my soul
with your sweet whispers
Know I hold no fear of your stormy gusts
I crave your tipping of my boat
and know that soon
I will ride the energy waves
While balancing the universe
 on my own head
So soon.... so soon.....
The grace is astounding

By,
Angela Light

Happy 11/11/11

I'm sharing a couple links to inspire us all to roll up our sleeves and put some elbow grease into this wonderful world just brimming with potential!  Enjoy your day!

http://thrivemovement.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ThriveMovement#p/u/3/s4ga9FCHSKc

Baloney Compost Revolution

    Change is in the air.  We all feel it.  We are all fighting it and bathing in it, in our own ways.  Change highlights the unknown, and ultimately pushes us to expand into a growing faith in the universe, and even more importantly, in ourselves and each other.  We can take up our own brand of prayer and belief in a higher power, but I dare say, nothing is more settling than trust in our own ability to cope with the mysterious unknown.  “Hands that help are holier than lips that pray,”  advised Sai Baba.  We have it all within.  Yes, the world is a mess, but we are capable.
     I remember contemplating the meaning of life as a teen and having many a heated a discussion with my dad.  “You know Dad,” I would start, “Really...... all everyone wants, is to be happy. All we need to do to be happy is be treated kindly. Yet, we seem to be to preoccupied or stupid to treat each other with kindness.”  What I didn’t understand at that tender “All anyone has to do to be free in a communist country is stand up and BE free,” age was that treating people with kindness creates happiness.  Even being treated unkindly creates happiness.  Happiness is ours to have.  It is a gift we give ourselves when our tolerance becomes compassion and finally grows into love for our aggressors.  Love with solid boundaries of course. When we let our hearts move forward into love for those whose own unhappiness motivates more injustice, we reap the rewards.  We begin bathing in love.   I was often kind back then but I didn’t have compassion for those who were unkind to me.  It seemed so unfair that they could exclude me, judge me, or speak cruelly of me when I was intending to lift the world.  Actually, they’ve helped me lift myself into a deeper, more steady space of love.  The funny thing about love is...... baloney just composts..... it actually grows more love.  Love makes you feel happy and motivates you to make the world a better place.   It really is that simple.  I certainly haven’t always been quick to compost the hurtful baloney, but eventually it happens, and I find myself more easily growing soul flowers to share with everyone I encounter.
     We really are an inventive, naturally humane, and capable lot.  When we are in fear we create chaos.  When we are in love we create paradise.  I believe in us. This change is love.  In the spirit of this revolutionary time I’ve recreated one of Gandhi's famous quotes.  Be the LOVE you wish to light up the world.

             Feel the magic . . .




Sundrips

Move my soul
to the beat of LOVE
Open hearts
Open minds
Get down to business
Crack open the SUN
Let the rays fall
into our mouths
Let us eat together
Sharing it all
while it drips
off our chins

By,
Angela Light

Lost Blog

I have been unable to access the blog I started with 4 years ago so I created a new one.  Here is the link to my original Blog.  http://loveyourlight.blogspot.com/

Sudden Silence

     Tina, Your deeply soulful and bravely naked blog inspired me.  Your story , the sacred offering of your lost child, validated my own pain. By you loving and honoring  the child you lost from your womb, you gave me permission to do the same.  My hope in entering this blog  is a sort of healing “Pay it forward” effect. Perhaps I will inspire yet another story to be shared as a statement to the power of openhearted sharing linking us all together.

http://alwayswinginit.blogspot.com/2011/11/all-saints-day.html?spref=fb

     On a morning in October 2005 I awoke with the acceptance of my pending divorce.  This acceptance opened me up and expanded my thoughts...... as acceptance does.  It had taken me three weeks to settle into the idea of a terrifying and exciting new future. Doors closing.  Doors opening.  I had suddenly realized, while bathing in that sweet early morning space between worlds, that I was pregnant. 
     While heading to the drugstore, for the opinion of science, with my three and half year old twins all buckled up and busy, we passed a colt...... nursing. That was the moment doubt reluctantly, but dutifully, wandered off.  I knew I was pregnant.  “This is impossible,” I reasoned with the universe, “I’m going to be all alone.” How will I physically meet the demanding needs of my child with cerebral Palsy, care for an infant, nurture Eden and put a roof over our head with food on our plates?  Everyone is going to lose.  Can I even carry infant gear, while maneuvering Lili’s walker and comforting her when she falls?  Will I have anything left for Eden?
       After three home tests I was convinced of new life stirring inside me.  Within hours, love had melted away fear and logic was replaced with faith.  I hoped he was the boy who had tapped on the shoulder of my soul when I was 24.  I had felt him hanging around but never breathed a word to anyone until two different intuitives volunteered the same information out of the blue.  My partner had refused to allow him to come through at that time so I felt it only fair to honor the fathers desire.  Within a year and a half I could no longer feel his nudges... he had left.  I couldn’t help but wonder if he was back.
      Feeling like a ridiculously emotional and unreasonable woman I was slightly terrified to share the news.  I was delightfully surprised by friends and family offering such loving support with hugs, encouragement and faith.  Everyone was happy, everyone except his father.  His father was more than unhappy, he actually accused me of conceiving on purpose to save our monumentally unsupportive marriage.  It was quite clear, when the audience of friends and strangers were absent, that he never wanted to be a father at all.  In our ten years of childless partnership I had perfected Fertility Awareness which afforded us much sexual freedom.  F.A. is not effective right after the birth of a child and the mother has to be getting at least 5 solid hours of sleep every night  before it can be  a safe method again... I had averaged 2- 3 hours for years.  Knowing I never wanted another child with a man not wanting to be a father, I began suggesting he get ‘snipped’.  A vasectomy is such a simple procedure compared to what a hysterectomy takes from a woman's body.  I left one informative brochure on his pillow and mentioned it one more time, but it was completely rejected.  So, I began exploring all the other modern methods.    Each new method I tried was systematically rejected by the same man who was begging me for constant sex.  This kind of situation was a familiar corner my husband constantly pushed me into on many levels of our lives.
      The reality of being pregnant, while going through a divorce, was cruelly highlighted by the baby’s father clinging to the notion that I had done this on purpose .  After the days upon days of accusations had finally settled, like an airborne virus that dies and falls to the ground ....... came the nagging.  This was intense pressuring, from my husband and his manipulated ‘allies in abuse’ to have an abortion.  This increasingly angry request came as a never ending, daily missile strike in front of our twin girls.  I was used to these missile strikes regarding whatever the issue of the day was and towards the end of my marriage I found I could not find a shelter far enough under ground to avoid the barrage.  After he gave up on the abortion he began reading my old  herbal pharmacology book.  I found it ear marked to all abortive herbs and he even read  pages out loud to me in an attempt to convince me to take some of these herbs. No meal, play date, phone call, project or game  the girls and I were in the middle of was safe from his one man mission to convince me to take these herbs.  He eventually moved into an unrelenting demand that I go to Seattle for a naturally induced miscarriage.  He even charmed a woman from the clinic into trying to convince me to have this procedure done and forced me onto the phone with her. 
    This campaign culminated one morning when he woke me up at 5 am telling me to get ready to go to Seattle because he had made me an appointment.  He was posturing in a threatening manner and raising his voice in front of our sleeping girls.  This was a typical and effective way to control me.  I meekly whispered “Okay,” in my own tired survival language  and followed up with the worn out request, “Please don’t wake the girls.”  His voice softened in triumph and he ordered me to get everything together while he took a shower.  My mind was a rush of adrenaline that directed me with a steadiness my shaking body didn’t feel.  After listening for the shower water I ran quietly back to my girls.  I prepared the car while my limbs turned to Jell-O and than ran to my children simultaneously bundling each sleepy form at lightening speed while sing-songing about our crazy early morning adventure.  I doubt  I took a breath of oxygen until turning out of our driveway towards a girlfriends welcoming home.
      I came home in the evening to infuriated yells, accusations and a strong swift kick to the stomach that I managed to block.... all in front of my girls.  I spent the night in tears and by the next day, the violent carping had stopped. In the wake of this sudden silence things were back to ‘normal.’  He brought more gifts of delicious fresh juices and homemade milks.  Eventually, I did suffer a miscarriage.  Yes, I did wonder.

    A woman’s soul seems to be ever expanding,  it plumps with pains and overflows with joys we cherish.  Go ahead and feel.  Feel everything. 

                            FEEL THE MAGIC....
 
   Below is a poem I wrote minutes after the miscarriage.


To Noble

You came in the dark of early morning
The space you filled was only open
after finally accepting my divorce
Your first whispers were of Nausea
denied chicken cravings
and a familiar softly growing - glowing power
with the unexplainable fullness of a busy womb
My soul reaches out to stroke you
Are you really there?

Fear strangles me
as the twins and I run to town
 for the opinion of science
Logic grabs a loud speaker to reason with my heart
“I can’t have another child right now!”
My breaks screech as I’m drawn to a nursing colt
lapping up momma’s joyous nourishment
Now, I know you are there
Three plastic white scientists are in positive agreement
so.... you and I seek time to be alone

“Everything will be different for you.”
Rants my river of reason within
“Your father isn’t interested.”
Your answer comes in a calm, “It’s okay.”
“I think you’ll need a crib rather than my bed.”
“I may wean you at a year old.”
“Naps will be expected not bargained for.”
“You’ll have leftover pink blankets!”
“It’s okay,” our merging answers, “It’s okay.”

Our love fly's up
into the center of the sun
It sears the fears
their only ashes, raining down
while we dance in the blue light
“You’re my baby boy aren’t you?”
Somehow, through the weak boundary of skin
my hand embraces you
Our walk begins - Mother and son
Through my belly button, I tickle your toes

You were 7 weeks of pure, solid and sure
True faith, is smiling into an unknown future
We shared our dream
Beloved ones cheered and
embraces took over the world

...... until

The blood began to drip
“Will you stay?”
Faith crashes into mans cement
“Will you stay?” is the silent scream in my heart
Pain drowns our dance in blood
It flows - It flows
Until the world becomes red and you are gone


For a moment....
the silence
threatens my existence


You were never just a thumbs worth of gray matter
I needed you
You brought strength, wisdom and empowerment
When I needed it most
Thank you,
 Mom

By,
  Angela Light