Well, I do that every day with you.  I write here and now from notes taken there and then, transcribed with Divine comments.  You read them, if you do, over there and in your time.  I plan to extend this even more.  As I won’t be here for a week while I travel on the road with a 7 year old child, a mom and a gramma through the canyon lands of the southwest. 

We will explore red rocks and sacred spots.  Faced with a wonder of the natural world, we will peek into the Grand Canyon.  And driving and riding and talking and living together for a week.

Along with me is coming the Goddess, the Divine Friend and my heart to learn more love.  While I’m breathing the dust, sitting in the sun, climbing the craggy hills, each day at this site will publish writings from a year ago.  Thus another mobius strip of time manipulation.

Proving that all there is, is the here and now.  Thus I practice each moment as long and as beautiful as I can.  Magic carpet, here I come!

You might like to bungee jump, or dive out of a plane into the sky, but
not me.  I’m not a rock climber or yearn to go up in a balloon.  I do
fly thousands of miles above the earth in a plane, defying gravity and
seeing the earth from an astounding height.  Life, really, is about
free falling.

The only relief from the fear of doing something
wrong, making a mistake, taking a wrong step is to be exquisitely
myself.  What if the Divine decided to try out human life as me today? 
What would Ganesha do as me today–or Christ–or Buddah or Kwan Yin? 
They, he, she, it would certainly make every moment last–those
illusionary earthly things called moments.  Each breath would be an
adventure in the game of limits.  All encounters would be dear chances
to see the other Divine inside those eyes.

In your eyes it is me I see.  There is only One of us.  Hello world!  It’s God here!

There is an angel in charge of cloud scribbles right before dawn.  She sends out her best devas who soar across the sky and leave divine designs in the soft blue.  They are the opening act before the starlet appears, sending swatches of coral strokes and delicate calligraphy across the sky.  Then they sit from a cafe above a glacier on the Little Tahoma ridge watching their art work morph and spread like watercolor fades into the day.

Seagulls patrol the soccer field evenly paced and intent.  Honking geese beyond the ridge trumpet the path of the season.  Trees are still lanky, spindly and bare.  They don’t understand “hope” with their inner workings of inevitable green.  Festering red hairy buds bumpin out of rigid empty branches.  This is life continuum–empty,.full and all that is in between.  Then from full to empty again.

What a gift to see beyond the mind-imposed duality, cause and effect nonsense to the everpresent alpha & omega point of the now.  It is only dawn because I stand right here and catch the sun’s easy constant stroll over the globe.  Even more delightful–she never moves!  It is me twisting and turning, dancing and orbinting her that creates my round square dance of being.

Let’s dance!

There is a well in our hearts that is deep.  It is dark.  It is scary.  When you yell into the hole, the blackness sucks up your voice like endless death.  I’ve tried to fill in this gap with drink, drugs, food, shopping and relationships. I’ve taken my children and partners hostages and tied them up in ropes and lowered them down into this chasm so gently they didn’t notice the dank smell of dead things.  Somehow they rescued themselves, appeared dancing on the surface and I was stuck with my head in the void screaming how they were unfair to me.

Phew, well, nothing real fills up this hole.  But it is already full and overflowing with moisture, feelings, sweet fragrance of rich soil and Spirit.  I empty a wheelbarrow of flower petals into the opening in thanksgiving.  I sing soft chanting songs and hear them echo in harmony back to me.

I look deep into the waters of this well, and if I am still and unmoving, I see the Spirit smiling back at me.  “In the mirroring light of my love You are revealed.”

Living in the Pacific northwest of the US, the sun is not a regular visitor.  Sure, during the summer months it can actually get hot–for a day or two here and there.  But the lovely gray clouds and soft nourishing drizzle are the norm.  It keeps the moss soft.

Thus I am deficient in vitamins from sunlight.  I have never been fond of the unencumbered sun.  A blistering burn as a youth left its mark on me that that harsh light and heat was not friendly to my delicate porcelain skin (aka cheap Irish skin).  From that time on I’ve stayed in the shadows and fed off that cool shade.

Now I’m off to the desert and, coincidently, urged to let the sun flow into me, rouse me, energize me, heal me and balance me.  Making friends with the alpha energy, eating the yellow to make healing green, allowing the heat of the Radiant One to draw me like a magnet.  Running down the sunny path of heaven.

The longer I live, the slower I walk.  There just seems to be more and more to see.  I walk the same neighborhood year after season after rain and sun.  Like a snail-slow movie I am given a sneak peek of red-fuzzed buds wrestling open to layers of transparent white petals.  If angels got married, these are the flowers that would be in their bouquets.

All of a sudden trees are turning pink.  Called cherry trees, many of them never droop with fruit, but are man-made for flowers only.  Courtyards obscured with pink pink pink.  What is pink, what does it mean to be surrounded in pink?  Red and white make pink, the color of humanity.  Fire and openness.  Passion and willingness–certainly that describes our human dance.  I see myself, some kind of angel, flailing my hands at the Teacher: “Pick ME!  Pick me for that challenging life you have on that pretty planet!  Pick ME!!”

And here we are, passion and pain, willingness and laughter.  Torn open with tears from love stories so very different than we imagined.  Twists in the path confusing and torturous.  Great successes and spontaneous miracles of personal spring.  Born again and again without dying.  Many times I feel like slapping my forehead and saying, “What WAS I thinking?!?!  This is hard and I want to go home.”

Today with the pink trees and puddles, I bow to the brilliant idea of having my little feet to walk this planet.

All paths lead me on.  None end, really.  Even dead ends make me turn around.  On earth some paths seem to stop at rivers, views, ledges, crevices and deper jungles where the path fades.  No one walks that way any more.

But in spirit, when we come to an “end” (like death or change), we fly or swim or a magic carpet appears out of nowhere.  Sometimes it’s not until I close my eyes and hold my hands over my heart and take that first step out there that the bridge appears.  Perhaps only with one step at a time. 

Fear does seep into my body and I can get catatonically frozen.  No matter.  Life inevitably kicks me in the ass and I stumble forward or find the next invisible indicated foot fall.

Looking behind me it is easy to see where the door opened, boats appeared, hands came out of the jungle to steady me.  I rest in Her heart today with paths leading everywhere.

What if death wasn’t real?  That would be a real joke on us, wouldn’t it? 

But it seems so real.  Imagining if you’re a caregiver for a dear woman for years whose body slowly solidifies into a grotesque statue and the light in her eyes dims forever.  How would you handle a brother who has fought off cancer for years and is now told that it has invaded his body and there is no further alternatives to stave off it’s hunger?  And what if one morning out of the blue your mother is rushed to the hospital half a continent away and you find out on a flight stopover that she has disappeared, died, gone?  Can you picture the pain and frustration to be near a dying violent father who has always used control, dominance and fear and watch as his screams falter in his decaying body.

Dear ones.  No matter the illusion of here and now, what is around the corner out of sight seems scary.  You are safe.  You are always safe.  Whatever beliefs we have to keep us going into the dark jungle of the “end”, we hold hands and pray for wings.  It is certain that our path home is guaranteed.  Every bit of nature confirms the truth of goodness, beauty and circulation.  All energy survives.  Love is the strongest force in the universe.  If we see with the eyes of love, the path, the companionship and the grace will be clear.

“And tears,” my mother said from beyond her grave, “is the way humans show love.”

It’s like archaeology to me.  With training and the tools, I can recognize that I’m walking over ground that hides a bone, or metal, or some hidden burial ground.  Leaning on friends around me who have done this before, I dig.

Black dead things, old garbage, dirt that gets into every crevice of my body and clothes, mud, stones and sticks that seem to hurt when I move them out of the way.  Sifting the sand for the smallest treasure of goodness and setting the unusable gravel to the side.

I uncover puzzling items, like arrogance as protection, rebellion as freedom, secrets as power.  It takes me time to brush them off, clean them and see how they were used.  It is a process of gentle discovery of the ingenuity of the child of me that formed these amazing tools. I have survived, I am strong, and now I choose to shift.

There are jewels that I set in stone, artifacts that I hang on the wall in fond memories.  There are tools I brush off and still use.  The warrior and her anger is now my early warning system.  She screams and I see–“Wow!–I am afraid of this change!  I need to slow down.”

And some items I bury like the dead.  The bodies are no longer useful, they have worn out.  The spirit inside them has moved them through an astounding journey and they move to that dimension beyond my eyes, my life, my present time.  With deep honor and respect, I put rage into the ground and plant roses and watermelons above this grave.

New life now, new land, new me and new view of you.

There is a phrase in one of my favorite spiritual books that says when we try regular self-examination, “Rebellion dogs our every step.”  Well this morning these dogs and I made a racket.

A couple months ago I got caught walking my dog in my neighborhood without a leash and got an expensive ticket.  Mr. Lucky the Dog is over 15 years old and hardly gets 10 feet from me no matter where we go.  The story, though, is how angry and self-righteous I was about getting this ticket that I–unique to the world–do NOT deserve!  And after all the illegal things I’ve done in my life, I should be ALLOWED to have this one little infraction.  Nice stories, huh?!

Walking this morning–with the leash–I found myself obstinate about going to the street where I “knew” the neighbors called the animal control police.  I did not want them seeing me bowing to this stupid law.  I kept imagining the laughable story that someone inside a house was snickering in victory that they succeeded in the battle to make me have my dog on a leash–which feels like I’M on a leash.

I realized that I was ashamed about being obedient to the law.  My rebellious attitude–built from the very youngest years–is defiantly antagonistic.  My self-esteem is based on being insubordinate and unruly.  I have relied on and have been proud of being eccentric, different and disobedient!! 

Watching this hysterical story unfold quieted the savage beast inside me a bit.  How can I get beyond this silly internal battle?  What is on the other side of bowing to this law?  (I mean, it is only a leash law for crying out loud!)

I’ve got to step out into that “off-leash” field that is beyond right and wrong.  Like water, following the Will of Heaven will come to a wall and simply turn.  I take these rebel dogs to the dog park and we wrestle with sticks instead.  What a gift to recognize that there is this open meadow of grace available to me, where I can set aside pride, victory, right, wrong, you, me, and all the hypnotic illusions of duality to walk in peace.