I ponder how this very day had been a kaleidoscope view of the joys and irritations of life all jumbled together but ultimately creating a memory of beauty. Life is certainly a mix of irritation and pleasure. We try to fool ourselves into thinking that we can create or buy a life full of gratification but the universe just doesn’t work like that. We must accept the light and dark. This is surely the case at the beach.

Just a few hours earlier I had been the queen of the sea floating like a mermaid in all her beauty at the back of the breakers. There in the gentle rise and fall of the blue green water I float and gaze up at the sky. Every so often I roll over and frolic with the waves, diving into them and feeling their energy. The water surges over my body right down to the last pull of the wave over my toes. My muscles soften and release from the daily woes of life and I become one with mother nature. I am no longer preoccupied with work or the lengthy to do list stuck on the fridge.

I playfully curl into a ball and mimic the seals somersaulting backwards and forwards. Hair swaying around me like seaweed. I keep my eyes open and the salty water causes them to sting and the world to become a little blurry. I realise it’s not so important to always be focussed and know where you are going in life. Sometimes you just have to trust your instincts and feel your way through the dim times. I
move from the seal to the dolphin, diving down to the depths rising only when my lungs signal I must. In these moments lightness fills my heart and radiates through my whole being. If only I could stay in this cool haven, buoyant and free. But evolution has long disposed of our gills and Mother Nature demands I must return to the shore. As I make my way back through the breakers my buoyancy falls flat and I am dumped into the white wash. It was here the irritation begins. In life there is a myriad of little things that get under your skin and irritate your mood. The list can be endless traffic, supermarket lines, tying children’s shoe laces but at the beach there is one primary irritant. The sand.

I try to appear elegant as I grapple towards the shallow but generally look like a whale flailing amongst the surging waves. During this process the sand makes its advance and is relentless until it works its way into crevices hidden from the general public. I try not to get to bogged down by life’s little irritations so I try a discreet sand dance. This is a rather unsightly mixture of shaking the hips and rear whilst flicking swimmers as you try to loosen the wet sticky sand free from its new nylon home. The dance is partly successful but some sand always remains firmly embedded until shower time. I sit on the towel fidgeting slightly but choose to not let this irritation interrupt my afternoon of relaxation. I wish I was so resilient when it came to the morning ritual of tying shoe laces. A relatively patient person I can be taunted into a ranting, bellowing witch when it comes to getting out the door on time each school morning. The juggle of bags, brief cases, hats, keys and the clock ticking away are more than I can bear.

In comparison to be able to sit on the beach with a sandy bottom and look out to sea is pleasure . It is these rare moments of quiet and stillness that are pure bliss. I am learning how important it is to savour each moment because when you have children time never stands still. Movement on the edge of the water catches my eye.
It is not dolphins but the advance of my 2 children and husband fresh from their afternoon rest. I sigh and smile all at once as they run towards me smiling widely and dragging their collection of surf boards, buckets, spades, towels and balls behind them. There goes the moment of quiet bliss. I am now caught in a whirlpool of disappointment and anticipation. I love to jump waves, explore rock pools and swim with my children but feel a tinge of resentment as I pine for the days when the beach was mine alone to soak in and laze upon. This momentary self pity is quickly interrupted by the fast chatter and pulling at my arm persistently requesting help to ride their boards. I quickly apply another layer of sunscreen over my scratchy skin and jump to attention. No time for idle reveries now, it is all hands on deck. I skip off toward the ocean sand flicking around my legs. Smiling I remind myself to enjoy this moment because tomorrow it’s back to shoe laces.

I hope that your “emergence” will find you well rested and ready to take on the outside world again! Thank you for sharing yourself and your thoughts last June in Denver and again, just a few weeks ago, here on your blog. I’m getting old and there is less and less (other than children and nature) that produces a sense of awe in me, but I am in awe of your ability to put into words what is felt in your soul.

Happy New Year!

Karyl Howard

I arrived back home two days ago exhausted and suffering from stomach flu. This morning I am getting back to my own life and entering with my partner Joan into a reflective release of 2008 and a peaceful welcoming of 2009. We have gracefully refused all invitations and are staying home for the next few days wrapped by the warmth of wood fire and dog Kai and cat MaChree. Silence is our Christmas decoration and best light.

For my own practice - I am taking these days to make Soul Cards (a contained collage in a card 4″x8″) of the year passing and one of my focused intention for the year ahead. It is a calming and interior practice that is bringing me back to deep inner life after a whirlwind of long, brutal weather, precarious travel and a close encounter with death and life in the space of a few days.

So good to be reminded of your beautiful practice. Pele and I will enter our own dreaming ceremony on the 27th and emerge sometime after the 4th.

We attune to you and send you Good Medicine.

And always

Love

FireHawk & Pele Rouge

Today is the Solstice and I’ve made a big pot of minestrone soup and invited a Mexican friend to come with me to the welcoming of the light that my neighborhood celebrates each year with noise makers, and wonderful, huge paper mache heads of birds and other exotic animals and fire eaters and carolers and Mummer’s play and a big big bonfire at the end. Then we will come back here to eat that soup and light our own candles to invite the light back into each of our lives and into the lives of those we love and those we don’t even know!

Ann

Halleluia for this sweet and powerful reminder to stop and take a good pause at this time. As fellow entrepreneurs, it is hard to just stop. There’s always one more tweak on next year’s strategy, one more conference call with the team, one more dear “client” who needs help. And then, you add the season when family and friends love to get together for this tea and that party.

Even reflection time is a call to gather in my community this year. Maybe it is the unseasonably colder weather all around or the tenderness of a changing time or the rise of no-longer-unspoken anxiety over financial losses and related insecurities, that snuggle and cuddle time with dear ones is taking on an extra special and heightened meaning.

On our blogtalkradio show last Thursday, the topic was the Sound of Silence — the power of this blessed practice in our midst. (www.blogtalkradio.com/The-Light-Show) Yet another great call to balance out the frenzy of activity, sweet and important as they may be, with that deep reach into our own true source of Life through silence.

So, we received a text last night to join dear friends for a Hannukah dinner tonight. We noticed the instant move to say “yes! it’ll be sweet!” Then we noticed how busy the next few days are going to be and how we’d so love to not do anything, stay in our pj’s till we no longer wanted to, catch up on reading…or on reflection. So, we’re sending back a rare “no, with regrets” but also with joy and anticipation that our mini-silent retreat brings rest and peace within our hearts, throughout our community, and into our world.

Sweet hugs across the silence…
Teresa

Now it is almost a year later and I have been blessed to have been able to stay home and reflect on many changes that have happened after that day. I was able to get up in front of perhaps 100 people and say a few words about my father. Up to that day, I never spoke in front of people unless I was forced to do so. (speech class in high school for one example).

Another significant change was that after 21 years of living in the same space, I was given the opportunity to move out of my apartment to another one just above it. It was a challenge to go through 21 years of stuff, move, and then find new places for the items I chose to move with me.

And then, at Thanksgiving, my daughter and son-in-law announced that they are expecting a baby (their first) in June.

As I think about all of this and will continue to think about this in the next 3 weeks, I am already impressed with my awareness of the circle of life and how connected to each other we all are. While I am disappointed that Dad was not with us physically to hear the news of a great-grandchild I am sure he knows. As one of my closest friends said “perhaps your father and the new baby are spending some time getting to know each other now”. I feel sure that they are.

I will be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family and otherwise I am planning more walks in the snow, more time going deep inside myself to discover what I feel called to do as I plan to go back to work. I am very conscious of now being one of the “elders” even though I resist being labeled that on a casual basis. I will be listening to lots of music, reading some special books and enjoying my cats as well.

Thank you for this chance to express myself.

Blessings,
Martha

Perhaps we all should take a break from being connected via technology but spend time really connecting with ourselves, those we love and our Mother, the Earth.