Monday, November 16, 2009

it's a mystery.





we watched shakespeare in love the other night. hadn't seen it in so long that i'd forgotten one of my favorite lines, "it's a mystery..."
everything is. it just is. even the genius of tom stoppard and marc norman working with shakespeare and capturing every bit of glorious and bawdy and romantic feeling of the bard and showing what bards they are themselves. they capture it all. the huge giant messy mystery of life!

in the full version of the oxford english dictionary there are two whole pages of a BIG book dedicated to the word.
the definitions at the outset are divided into two categories. theological and non theological. to me they are saying virtually the same thing and the not theological is more appealing so that's where i'm going...

"a hidden or secret thing; a matter unexplained or inexplicable;something beyond human comprehension. a riddle. or enigma."

and with that goes the feeling. for me it's a feeling of tremendous expansion almost as if my consciousness can actually have a party because it has found a place that my small little brain cannot explain. can't reduce to the flat, hard place of logic.

lots of things can trick me into remembering we are all from this giant mystery. and there are places on the planet that bring me right to this place. right into the mystery. two of them have been built by humans to explore this very idea. whole cities dedicated to exploring the mystery. or that's what we imagine. we don't really know because, well you know, it's a mystery...
we get to look at images or actually go to places on the earth like this and feel it. and then carry that home with us and for me everyday i try to remember that place. and more than that i try to feel it. let it take me, that crack in the sky that lets me get between here and there. where it seems the deepest creativity falls from. where real love abides. where we are from. who we are. that's what i feel.

above are two of these places. Teotihuacan in Mexico. the second largest pyramids in the world and Machu Pichu, in Peru. the last image is putacuse (yikes sorry about the spelling) the happy mountain. the mountain of joy. she is the mother and there is a little doorway in the side of her that if you let your brain slip will open for you and you can fly right out into the vast vast mystery. lovely....

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The Way of the Heron.







a few weeks ago my beloved friend Emily came to herondale farm from her home in teotichuacan mexico to co facilitate with me a workshop focusing on creativity. (check out her amazing blog,www.livingwithpyramids.blogspot.com), this workshop led us deep into the mystery of transformation and creativity. it was big magic. and like all things magical, the energy began swirling days before emily even arrived. the workshop centered around the grace and peacefulness of the heron spirit. days after the workshop i found this passage in a book called, Native New Yorkers:

"the Lenape, as part of the Algonquin world, were inheritors of what Eunice Bauman Nelson, an elder of the Penobscot tribe has called 'The Way of the Heron.' in the lenape the translation would be Aaney Talika. It is the way of the peacemaker, and it is a great tradition through out the Algonquin world.... the Lenape were the Grandfathers, the elder statesmen of the realm."
Evan T. Pritchard
Native New Yorkers. the legacy of the algonquin people of new york.

so it seems the land once again spoke to us. leading us deep into our own hearts and deep into the heart of this place. and perhaps we have all been called to "the way of the peace maker."