Stepping Through the Threshold
If you follow my writing you’ve been reading about this Threshold I’ve been at for way over a year. I could feel a part of my work and life here on the Gulf Coast winding down but the next step wasn’t getting clear. It has been an intense time of waiting, listening and waiting.
Recently clarity about my life’s work has come and it came very powerfully in a sudden ‘whoosh‘ of awareness. It felt like the puzzle pieces just clicked together perfectly and it felt absolutely right.
About that same time the women’s circle I facilitate met and one of the members said the most beautiful invocation for selling my home and moving forward with my life’s work. Three days later, before yoga practice on the front porch, I said, “Hey there Great Spirit. Please give me a clear sign that my home will sell soon.” A few hours later I met the people that want to live here, in this amazing live oak forest and in this beautiful home.
Everything is coming together in perfect, Divine order. And not just for me. A friend of mine in New Mexico has been going through a similar struggle to find her place and life’s work and just today everything finished coming together for her move back to Alabama. We were sending smiley face and heart texts this afternoon….lots of them with gratitude to the Universe for the support and love we’re being shown.
So, what will I be doing after I move back to the NC mountains? I want to help people find ways to cope with our increasing grief, fear and frustration over climate change and social changes. I will be offering retreats and one-on-one consultations for those wishing to find healthy coping methods and who wish to deepen their connection to Nature. We need support during this intense time of change with so many unknowns and I suspect the most important action we can take is to listen to the Earth, to go deeper in our connection with Her.
I’ll be updating my website soon and details will be forthcoming. Tonight I am simply grateful to finally…..finally be stepping through that Threshold time of waiting and listening. I can feel the movement after a very long time of stillness. Thankfully, my dear friend and wholeness coach Rose was an amazing witness and guide through this process of waiting. I am truly grateful to her…and to all those who have encouraged me, supported me and sent up prayers for me.
I am ready to step through.
Every night I go outside on the screened porch with my dog and two cats and we sit and listen. The frogs in the pond in the field sing their froggy songs. Insects drone and click and make the branches of the ancient live oak trees come alive. Barred owls call in the branches overhead. The more I let go and just listen, the more relaxed and at peace I feel.
In the mediations on the front porch, with nature’s music in surround sound, I have come to understand that the vibrations of nature are not just beneficial to humans, they are vital to our health and wellbeing.
A recent report says up to 1 million species are expected to go extinct soon….out of 8 million species. More than 10% of the species on this planet are expected to soon be extinct. I have tried to avoid this report and yet it keeps coming up on NPR, in articles on social media. I know it’s bad news and could I possibly just pretend one more day that it’s not so bad?
Tonight I had a vision of my passion and love for the planet growing and spilling out of the pitcher of my heart into a clear stream as it flows and joins with others whose love and passion for the planet is also flowing from their hearts. I saw a clear river that is growing with love for all life and is filled with pure intention. I saw Oneness growing into a wave of love.
We as a species have exhausted the old ideas…war, power, money…none of that works nor will it ever work or be a solution. If we repeat the same behaviors we get the same results. So it’s time my sisters and brothers to start trying something different…I believe an answer is to recognize our connection to everything and everyone else…Oneness. Once we recognize ourself in everything else, we come to value everything….every thing….else.
Go outside and listen to the vibrations of nature….feel them and allow them to take you into the flow. I’ll meet you there.
It was dead in the bike lane
“The spirit of Walter Anderson thanks you.” This comment, while I was documenting the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010, meant more than any other. It fueled me to keep going when the fumes, death and poisoning of sea creatures weighed me down with unbearable grief.
I’m not concerned with only the technical aspects of a good photograph. I want to connect with the essence behind form. When I am in nature…underwater or in a forest….I simply show up and ask to be shown the light behind the physical manifestation. I have no agenda other than to be an observer wherever I find myself…with a camera, notepad or stripped of anything but my heart and mind to receive whatever gift is offered.
A small group of us were on a photography trip to Bimini to photograph a friendly, resident pod of spotted dolphins. At some point during one of our days with the pod I stopped, as is often the case, to drink in the beauty of color, light and form. My friend Susan was preparing to photograph approaching dolphins. The reflections and light were surreal and I lifted my heavy, underwater housing and fired off one shot. The dolphins were so fast and Susan was swimming fast so there was one chance to capture what I felt as I communed with the sea and Her creatures.
That shot now hangs in the Water, Water exhibit at Walter Anderson Museum of Art (WAMA).
John said his dad was shunned, a sort of outcast in the Ocean Springs community because he isolated himself and lived on Horn Island. It resonated with me. So deeply am I connected to nature and the energy behind it all that I rarely feel as if I fit in with this consumer-driven world. I could happily spend my days and nights exploring woodlands and shores, climbing trails on mountains…so profoundly does solitude appeal to me. It’s only in the quiet and solitary ways of observance that I feel home in my skin.
Another new exhibit at WAMA focuses on Walter as Artist, Naturalist & Mystic. Yes! was the only word that came to mind as I reflected on my own life.
I remembered a morning surrounded by humpback whales in the pre-dawn darkness anchored 90 miles off the Dominican Republic. Fishy exhalations of the whales were illuminated in the moonlight and kissed my skin as they drifted in the warm air. As I did morning yoga the whales came closer and closer to the boat. I felt myself open to the Universe, ocean and whales–there was no separation, only perfect communion. Since then I have known that communion to be as sacred and holy as any experience. It is my touchstone to purpose and presence here on this magnificent Ocean Planet.
There was no conscious memory of how Walter Anderson influenced me, but as I reflect back after viewing his murals and sketches from Horn island, it was as if he was a silent mentor riding an underlying current with me on the journey with whales, dolphins, sea lions, manatees. It is like he has been encouraging me simply from his audacity to do what called him to life.
Who knows how this life journey works. Something guided a friend (can’t remember who) to send me information on the exhibit. And the entire process brought me full circle to a place where I felt the spirit of Walter Anderson saying, “Well done.”
And then…Our Lady, Mother Earth came to mind and heart and I cried harder…tears of grief as we watch our Earth Mother become more polluted, abused, raped and Her children….human children in cages in the USA, dying whales, dolphins, manatees, wolves. The tears continued to flow and since then I’ve been in a place of deep grief.
Sometimes it is difficult to look at all of this and stay with it. It’s easier to turn away, to pretend everything is just peachy. But my dear sisters and brothers Our Lady, Mother Earth, is suffering greatly and humans are perpetrating the abuses.
I cannot help but ask….where is that depth of passion and love for our planet? Why have we turned away and allowed Her to be treated so poorly. Why haven’t we fed the hungry? Or sheltered the homeless? Our Lady burns indeed, with temperatures that increase every year. Sacred art is destroyed on Our Lady…as Native American holy sites are destroyed for mining or oil and gas exploration and production.
In my mind there is no difference between the cathedral of Notre Dame and the cathedral that is wilderness and yet who among us rises up to protect that cathedral. I bear no ill will toward anyone that helps rebuild a beloved structure. I simply wonder why the Earth isn’t treated with the same reverence.
I know why…I know the history and it’s not pretty. I know how the Divine Feminine was cast aside, condemned and how Mother Earth and all who honored Her through spiritual practices were annihilated (or attempts were made to annihilate) and called savages and witches and pagans. But we know now who the real savages are….those that defile and destroy our Mother, Our Lady.
Grief grows every day as I watch while She is defiled and Her children cast aside still. Who will light a candle for Her? Who will stand up and sing songs to Our Lady Mother Earth? Who is willing to devote their hearts to Her healing? Who will join me in the magnificent outdoor cathedrals to raise our hands and voices with love and gratitude for Our Lady Mother Earth?
