A little holly tree, about waist high, caught my attention so I stopped and pulled out my native flute to play it a tune. I started doing this on some of my hikes into the forests of the Smoky Mountains a while back. I play as a thank-you to Nature. 

As the first notes of the flute floated over the tree and out into the woods, I paused. I do this to create space and allow the notes to drift. Today, in that first pause, I heard a magnificent echo that resounded from the bottom of two mountain ridges I stood between. It was a most magical experience listening to the mellow, resounding notes drifting back from their journey to the mountains on either side of me.

As I walked on the echoes stayed in my mind. Up to the top of the ridge, down the other side to the beautiful creek below, I thought of how what we put out in the world comes back as echoes. 

Perhaps the echo of one effort returns immediately and the results shine quickly. But maybe something else we did decades ago just begins to return as an echo long after we remember doing it. Sometimes we may not even live to see the echo return.

Moving further down the trail I reflected on recent events in our country. The echoes put out by a man are returning now, some that started over five years ago are returning as violence and unrest and meanness. I will never forget him making fun of a reporter with cerebral palsy and mimicking him. That should have ended his campaign but somehow the meanness and ridiculously bad behaviors he repeated only grew a fanatical fan base that finally felt free to outwardly be mean and violent. Those echoes are returning now through violence and death and threats. 

What we put out returns and in the going out and coming back, makes ripples in the world. Never has there been a more important time to be clear about our intentions and the energy we put out. For whatever we send out will return. 

Now is the time our skills are needed. Many of us have been waiting and diligently working on ourselves, healing our wounds, going deeper into our pain to become clearer channels of light and love. We have been in the background, working where we can to make a difference but knowing there was a greater work we were called to do. We have experienced frustration about not knowing what it was or how we would know or when, if ever, we would be able to do what we came here to do.

Make no mistake. Now is the time for which we were born. Lightworkers, healers, teachers of love and compassion, wisdom-keepers, scholars, gentle souls, artists, strong souls, scientists, those who stand up to hate and violence, Nature-lovers, priestesses, empaths….now is the time. This is the moment for which we have prepared, for which we incarnated.

Let us send out the echoes without attachment to where they will travel or how they will help in this transformational time. Let us send them out anyway. May we gather the fierce love within and allow it lead us to share the gifts we arrived with and have developed as we waited.

Some echoes return immediately. Others are eternal.