Photo via Pinterest. “I am large, I contain multitudes.” ~ Walt Whitman

We live in an increasingly masculine world. I don’t mean a world where feminist women have not made extraordinary gains and I certainly don’t mean a world dominated by men, although that is the case; I mean a world in which the dominant expression of energy is still masculine. Both men and women adopt a rigid mindset, worldview, and experience that is influenced by this pervasive, ugly thing called patriarchy.

We are sucking the soul out of our lives and not replenishing it.  And yet we feel that something is missing, yearning for a different kind of experience of wholeness that deeply feeds, awakens, and revitalizes our souls.

Are you longing for intimacy, deep communication, and connection? This is an invitation to notice, liberate, express, and experience the feminine: the feminine dimension of our being, the feminine dimension of space, the feminine dimension of the sacred.

Since I can remember I yearned for a different kind of space, a different kind of flow, a different kind of sacredness. I didn’t find it in the churches that dominated the land, I found it in the wild gardens of my home and imagination, in the realm of the feminine.

Feminine energy, architecture & space

We are permeable, living, breathing, conscious beings, so why are our constructs not evolving with us? I have grown tired of boxes so I’m spilling out. I am tired of suffocating straight lines that suck our souls dry, dessicated by glass and steel. I want the sensuous softness of curves around me. I am feeling the pull toward the sacred contours of body and earth.

Feminine space is space in flux.

…psychoanalysis sets the human being in motion, rather than at rest. It calls on him to live outside the abodes of his unconscious, to enter into life’s adventures, to come out of himself. And naturally, its action is a salutary one. Because we must also give an exterior to the interior being. To accompany psychoanalysis in this salutary action, we should have to undertake a topoanalysis of all the space that has invited us to come out of ourselves.
~ Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Not all spaces invite us to resonate in our signature hues, nor to fully inhabit our yearning for self-expression, nor to come out of the self and shine through in all our glory. For this, we need another kind of space, feminine space.

Feminine space is space with heart and soul. Feminine space is fluid and offers a different kind of experience—one that is restorative, responsive, engaging, deep, intense, poetic, embodied, sensual, organic, dynamic, receptive, intimate, emotive, fertile, fierce if necessary, and so much more–well beyond the use of stereotypical ‘feminine’ elements. Feminine does not mean subdued nor cerebral, neither does it mean submissive nor serene. Feminine space is intuitive, imaginative, playful, expressive, healing; it cradles one’s being, essence, and whole nature.

Feminine space engages our emotions, awakens our heart, tells our evolving story, invites us to come out and play with life in dwellings that embody our dreams and harness our potential. Spaces to savor, nurture, and develop our soul’s gifts. Spaces to unwind, decompress, get in touch with our own soul, come into deep remembrance. Spaces that celebrate our own unique place in the cosmos, where we can engage the fullness of our being in harmonious flow with the universe.

Imagine: spaces that dwell in harmony with NATURE, with the power to celebrate the soft voice inside us amplifying as heart song. Spaces made with curves and materials that respond to our organic nature. Places to dream, vision, cry, create and come home. Places where competition, greed, ignorance, exploitation and indifference give way to collaboration, exploration, discovery, caring, integration and synergy.

More human, sensual, joyous

Ronchamp plan by Le Corbusier

Here is what Gaetano Pesce, an Italian architect whose work was the subject of a retrospective at Milan’s Triennale in January 2005, said about anonymous, monolithic, masculine structures, which to him suggest a host of negative adjectives such as in rigid and totalitarian.

“Had the project been done with feminine values,” he said, “it would have been more human, more sensual, more joyous.”

Bravo, Pesce! I share your sentiments. There is a deep need for a space revolution movement to spread like wild fire and liberate the feminine from the shackles of patriarchy in the architecture of our psyches, dwellings, spaces, and lives.

From ideas that embody our most precious visions to emotions that want to flow from the most pristine place in our hearts to physical places that allow us to harness our potential and reveal the inherent luminosity of our being, we need dreams that pulse and breathe in containers that welcome the world into our hearts and spill our souls out into the world.

The most important journey you will ever take is the journey from your head to the unknown territory of your heart. What would a space imbued with heart look, and most importantly, feel like? In praise of the feminine, in praise of another kind of sacred form and space,

Some timeless pieces of architecture across different types, eras, styles and aesthetics,  including some vernacular architecture animated by the feminine.

Ronchamp by Le Corbusier

Park Guell by Gaudi

Iguana mosaic. Park Guell by Gaudi

Casa Mila by Gaudi

Sensual details by Gaudi

Casa Organica. Interiors Now by Angelika Taschen

Bless those elegant curves of a bridge by Calatrava. Bilbao, Spain

Gate to Osun-Osogbo Shrine

Goddess Osun Osogbo sacred grove in Nageria.

Love this photo composition of Le fameux escalier de la Galerie Vivienne

I am feeling called to offer Make space for joy —an online sacred circle of women dedicated to unveiling hidden treasures in our spaces and hearts (July 8th – August 6th). Please join if you feel the pull to make space for joy in your life through a soulful journey of feminine experience, spacious release & awakening.

Luminous leaf at the university of Miami

“I need to be silent for a while, worlds are forming in my heart.” ~ Meister Eckhart

I find myself in a space of pause and contemplation. This pause does not feel like death. It isn’t painful; it is fertile with a torrent of ideas and emotions surfacing & stretching my heart and work in all directions in a new spur of growth, movement, and conscious expansion & evolution.

I am experiencing a creative hiatus to listen to the oscillations of my heart.

All creative edgewalkers come to experience this liminal, evolutionary space at various points of deep contact. In a world that keeps on pushing for production, how can we reframe this feminine pause as positive, nourishing, life-giving? Get intimate with the ebbs and flows of our own rhythm. Become aware. Notice all that can happen in this space of high vibration, energy, and frequency. May you:

Gestate your vision

At the risk of going off brief here, can I just ask: What’s wrong with creative block? Might it not just be that periods — even extended ones — of productive hiatus are essential mechanisms of gestation designed to help us attain higher standards in our pursuit of creative excellence?” Alexi Murdoch (via brainpickings)

Trust your process

Oscillate by Daniel Sierra

I don’t believe in writer’s block…The creative process has more than one kind of expression. There’s the part you could show in a movie montage — the furious typing or painting or equation solving where the writer, artist, or mathematician accomplishes the output of the creative task. But then there’s also the part that happens invisibly, under the surface. That’s when the senses are perceiving the world, the mind and heart are thrown into some sort of dissonance, and the soul chooses to respond.
That response doesn’t just come out like vomit after a bad meal. There’s not such thing as pure expression. Rather, because we live in a social world with other people whose perceptual apparatus needs to be penetrated with our ideas, we must formulate, strategize, order, and then articulate. It is that last part that is visible as output or progress, but it only represents, at best, 25 percent of the process.
Real creativity transcends time. If you are not producing work, then chances are you have fallen into the infinite space between the ticks of the clock where reality is created. Don’t let some capitalist taskmaster tell you otherwise — even if he happens to be in your own head. ~ Douglas Rushkoff on creativity and breaking through creative blocks (via brainpickings)

Trust your gut & heart

Oscillate by Daniel Sierra

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there. ~ Henry Miller, Henry Miller on Writing

Heal the numbness. Oscillate

Oscillate by Daniel Sierra

Life isn’t flat. There are healing flow undulations, sound emanations that pulse visible. I have been interested in the relationship between sound and form for years, especially through my work with the medicine. This project Oscillate is a luminous thesis animation by Daniel Sierra:

My goal with “Oscillate” was to visualize waveform patterns that evolve from the fundamental sine wave to more complex patterns, creating a mesmerizing audio-visual experience in which sight and sound work in unison..Whether in the hypnotizing swing of a pendulum or the waves of an ocean, periodic motion can often have a very relaxing and trance-inducing effect on us. (via colossal)

Feel. Share the love. Let it flow

The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life, flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our love is less ecstatic…The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies. ~ Joanna Macy, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory & deep ecology

Genius is the ability to receive from the earth and the universe as the A Guide to the I Ching wisely counsels us. There is a bottomless well of love, creativity, and imagination deep inside all of us. It never dries up; we just need to reactivate its flow, realize that if too contained, the wild seeks to overflow in between lines, spaces, stories and into the rich soil of our yearning.

Wishing you an auspicious New Moon & Solar Eclipse dear ones! May you let your deepest intention surface and light the way. Tonight I will be in ceremony, celebrating the oscillations of my heart. With luminous love,

Whoosh! Holi,the Hindu festival of colour from holi celebration of color

“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~ Khalil Gibran

The Earth yearns for each and every one of us. This post is about the transformation, restoration and renewal of our relationship to our community, our environment, our landscape, our home, our spirit. Ah, it is so healing and grounding to get back in tune with the soil & soul of the earth. Let’s nourish our souls from the ground up with:

Artful, soulful, spirited wild gardens

Gardens are healing places, lush environment that feed body, mind and soul; they are much needed pockets, moments, offerings of vitality. The idea of garden as a place of contemplation is beautiful, but a little useless if it fails to participate in the cycles of life.

We need more awareness to create gardens beyond decor. Gardens with purpose, like nature intended. There has been some hesitation in the design world slowly experimenting with native and edible plants for fear that they would look rough, primal, ugly. I think we are learning that they express, transmit, offer another another kind of beauty, the real kind, one that embraces aging, decay, death, rebirth and regeneration.

Have no extra space? Walls, roofs, abandoned parks can be transformed into life giving places, breathing rooms for wildlife, spaces that feed us whole. Imagine if we could turn both the water-consuming manicured lawns that offer very little support to the biodiversity of life of suburbia and the neglected spaces of the city into sustainable edible gardens, lush green spaces; from barren to life-giving, from monochrome to full of radiant colors. Think bountiful, delicious, pesticide free, organic, at your fingertips, sun ripened fruits of the earth. Wildlife in your backyard, roof yard, wall garden.

How we treat the earth, the seeds, and the food we eat affects our consciousness. I love that we are cross-pollinating and blurring the lines to actually reaveal the continuum between seemingly disparate fields in an interdisciplinary fiesta: agriculture + urbanism, design + nutrition, and more…

Sanctuary for life

“The passion in the earth’s whisper grew so loud I woke.” -Meister Eckhart

I have always had a passion for gardens as real places and symbols of our inner life–see Make Space for Joy. I miss my secret garden of my childhood, where I first experienced creative intimacy with nature, sculpting the earth with my hands. While I admire the clarity of the zen garden, the flowing nature of the Chinese garden, the structure of the French garden, the intelligence of the Pre-Columbian garden, the whimsical nature of the Italian garden, the loveliness of the wild gardens of Berkeley; it is the primal nature of the Amazon rain forest–Earth’s natural garden that made me feel the deepest sense of reverence.

I feel a collective yearning to restore space for wildlife, for gratitude, for the healing of our environment and ourselves.  Blessings to all the beings that graciously cultivate Mamapachita, this magical land, this kind and fiercely feminine Earth. May we experience our relationship with her in a sacred way, every day as Earth day. May we feel the flow of love in her heartbeat bringing us into deep remembrance. May we offer and receive her fruits as medicine.

Support your local growers, community gardens & farmer’s markets.

Edible wall by Go Green Gardeners via AT

Athenaeum Hotel, eight-story forest by Patrick Blanc

French botanist Patrick Blanc designed this vertical wall for Caixa in Madrid Spain. “It was installed on an exterior wall of a former power station, which was renovated by famous architects Herzog & de Meuron. The garden and the building have been braving the pollution, hot sun and elements for four years and  are doing well in this …urban oasis.”

Grace Restaurant, Adaptive Reuse by Sander Architects, is “sheathed in a vertical garden, using edible plants. Passers-by will literally be able to pick fruits, vegetables, and herbs from the building.”

I love these beautiful cottages nestled against the hillside, beautifully integrated within the landscape. Architects note: “Green roofs are heavier than normal roofs, so you have to build a structure more stoutly. We don’t take our green roofs lightly in earthquake country.” Feldman said.

“The rooftop’s seven undulating green hillocks pay homage to the iconic topography of San Francisco and blurs the boundary between building and parkland..The more typical black tar-and-asphalt building rooftop leads to a phenomenon called the ‘Urban Heat Island’ effect. The endless swath of black rooftops and pavement trap heat, causing cities to be 6 to 10 degrees warmer than outlying greenbelt areas. One-sixth of all electricity consumed in the U.S. goes to cool buildings. The Academy’s green rooftop keeps the building’s interior an average of 10 degrees cooler than a standard roof would. The plants also transform carbon dioxide into oxygen, capture rainwater & reduce energy needs for heating and cooling.” The Living Roof Garden was designed by Rana Creek for the San Francisco Museum of Sciences

“Our goals are to inspire our community, gather together to grow our own food, and to rehabilitate our local ecosystem.” “It’s Not a Fairytale, it is the first edible public park in Seattle grounded in the concept of permaculture, which means it will be perennial and self-sustaining, like a forest is in the wild…”

Resources

Do you live in the SF Bay Area? Flora Grubb Gardens in San Francisco supplies a variety of modular panels and hanging pockets for large and small walls that can be planted with decorative or edible plants.

Parick Blanc is the author of The Vertical Garden: From Nature to the City (Revised and Updated). From the article “No space? Go with a vertical garden tapestry:”

Such striking, artful “murs vegetals,” as Blanc calls them, are comprised of plants grown on two layers of water-retaining polyamide felt attached to 1/2-inch-thick plastic shields affixed to a metal scaffold that allows air to flow between the building wall and the vertical garden. They emulate natural “gardens” on cliff walls and mountain slopes that are fed by sunshine, wind energy, ambient moisture, trickling dew and rain..Blanc’s wall gardens also require little but consistent care…He is developing ways to create rooftop rain-fed reservoirs to make an even more sustainable ecosystem.

Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy. Here is an article on Rosalind Creasy, where she is described as one of the trendsetters in edible landscaping. Creasy has been edible landscaping her suburban home in Los Altos, California, giving talks & helping design edible landscapes for more than 25 years.

From the founders of landscape design firm Star Apple Edible & Fine Gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area comes The Beautiful Edible Garden, teaching how to artfully incorporate organic vegetables, fruits, and herbs into an attractive modern garden design, artfully blending edibles and ornamentals together.

The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden by Soler offers step-by-step instructions for converting all or part of a lawn into an edible paradise; specific guidelines for selecting and planting the most attractive edible plants + ornamentals.

Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture sparked the imagination of America’s home gardeners, introducing permaculture’s central message: Working with Nature, not against her, which results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. For urban and suburban growers.

Dear ones, I’m excited to collaborate with beings of all realms for this healing vision.

“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.” ~ Rumi

With love,

        “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” ~ Attributed to Plato. But what does it mean to be kind, to show kindness to ourselves, to each other, to this sacred earth, to all those who came before us & to those brave ones yet to come?

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
~Naomi Shihab Nye

“The tender gravity of kindness”

Kindness is liberating medicine; it is the hidden language of the heart that flows and reveals itself in a soft whisper, a smile, a gentle touch, an encouraging word, a moment of recognition, a gesture that extends our heart in the expression of the oneness that we are.

Dear ones, today my heart feels the story that spins its web from the “tender gravity of kindness.” The heart is vast and can hold space for so much: the pain of so many around the world, the beauty of compassion born in moments of kinship, the prayers for the healing of the human soul.

May seeds of kindness blossom in every heart. May they be nurtured and lovingly protected, for the benefit of all life..

Wishing kindness to all our relations,

{{{{{ ♥ }}}}

In sacred waters, her element. Reverie Magazine | Photo by Erich McVey

Happy New Moon dear ones. It is time to notice the seeds that are sprouting in our consciousness, in our hearts, and in our spaces. So much is possible..Here are some thoughtful articles that sparked my imagination with poetic words on beauty, flow, healing, collaboration, tree wisdom and more:

Spark your imagination

This is the year of the snake! Ax+Apple Spring 2013 | Photographed & hand painted by Alexandra Valenti. Via Prism Of Threads

• “I Wish I Could Talk in Technicolor..I’ve never seen such infinite beauty” – a housewife takes LSD in the 1950s. Via @RitaJKing
• Learning to see “the beauty that shines from within?” by @VivaLabonbon
• Amazing flow –>  Street Artist Paints Urban Calligraphy On Roof Of Abandoned Building. Via @WaltPascoe
• Unraveling flow, the science behind the sensations. “We are but at the nascent edge of flow discovery.” Via @jhagel
• Me first because “you have to love your self before you can truly love another.” Enlightening article by Jessica Shepherd
• The dna of collaboration. Remembering to come together in the midst of crisis and opportunity. Show up fully. “Trust is the foundation for everything collaborative.” Via @MetropolisMag
• Nature is an open book. What trees have to teach, if we are willing to listen and learn from them: “Neither yielding nor resisting. Just being still. Just being. ” A Year in Trees, a NYT article by @BillHayesNYC via @Holly59

Imagine immensities

Cosmic Flowing Skirt | Photo embroidery by Chilean artist Jose Romussi

Via literary jukebox:

Every once in a while — often when we least expect it — we encounter someone more courageous, someone who choose to strive for that which (to us) seemed unrealistically unattainable, even elusive. And we marvel. We swoon. We gape. Often , we are in awe. I think we look at these people as lucky, when in fact, luck has nothing to do with it. It is really about the strength of their imagination; it is about how they constructed the possibilities for their Life. In short, unlike me, they didn’t determine what was impossible before it was even possible.
[…]
If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now.

Debbie Millman in Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design

Begin now

Here is some magic. Whoosh! | Adalyn’s party trick 2 by hollie-o, via Flickr

Until one is committed there is hesitancy:
the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all aspects of initiative and creation
there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which
kills countless ideas and and splendid plans;
That the moment one definitely commits oneself
then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one
That would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision
raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen
incidents and meetings and material assistance
which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

~ W.H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition.

Whatever you do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

At home in nature. Photo by Emily Soto

I love that we have a whole month dedicated to poetry. I will be posting a poem a day until the end of the month. What will you incline your heart toward? What seeds of trust will you nourish in the garden of your heart? Life blooms in her own time. As Pema Chodron reminds us: “When there is a great dissapointment, we don’t know if that is the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a great adventure.” Here is to seeing the beauty that is already here. May it instill in us the commitment, boldness, and courage to steadily work for our life-sustaining dreams and desires. 

Blessed be,

There is a good thing on top of that mountain. I will make a straight line for it.” But the archetypal way is not like that; it is a serpentine way that wriggles and spirals its way to the top. We often feel defeated by it and brought to a standstill. It makes most people terribly impatient and even desperate when nothing happens and they get nowhere. They feel hindered all the time; they don’t understand that this is just as it should be, that it is actually their only chance of getting to the top. (C.G. Jung, The Vision Seminars, Book Two, p. 295) ~ From an article by Dr. Howlin on the serpentine way

Life isn’t a straight line, thank goodness! Curves are infused with mystery and add an element of surprise to our unfolding path for we never quite know or suspect what might be around the corner. The serpentine path we travel requires our full attention, presence, and devotion. We might crave the clarity and open views of the heights and yet find ourselves in the inner coils of life. This is what I hear:

Embrace the curves, the organic edges of the winding path that gently, reverently embraces your body and soul in motion, touched by the tides of all that is uncertain and unknown calling your soul to play, to spill over from the center of your heart.

Lean into the edges. Have the courage to risk, to nurture a sense of adventure, exploration, curiosity, experimentation and the willingness to play and fall and rise again. The ability to see in the dark with the light of your own heart.

Break through. Discover new layers of awareness and enjoy the ride along the way. This is what a tiny duckling with immense courage whispered in my ear this Easter weekend. Tiny and yet so fierce. This duckling was about a week old and its beak still had the signs of breaking through its shell to discover a new world.

Leap in consciousness. As Einstein said, “we can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” But we can open ourselves up to allow the sacred to flow through us, enough to make “a leap of consciousness ” into an amplified space, state of awareness. Gay Hendricks, the author of The Big Leap, reminds us that we often have what he calls an “upper limit”  problem that blocks flow in our lives. This is an invitation to leap dear wanderers. Because:

“Creativity takes courage. ” ― Henri Matisse

“Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.” ~Haruki Murakami

“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.” ~ Henry Miller

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~ Alan Watts

“I feel my boots trying to leave the ground, I feel my heart pumping hard. I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.”  ~Mary Oliver

I dedicate this post to all of you earth lovers, heart-centered edge walkers exploring the spirit of intimacy, creativity, and soulful living. Keep on leaping, growing new skin, unfurling like beautiful lotus flowers rising from the sacred waters of life. Savor the stillness that brims with life. Discover the magic that is the fabric of your life. Keep on saying yes to what you love,

With joy,

Art: Deliberation by Spanish Illustrator Mario S. Nevado via aegis-strife.net

“Make no mistake about it–enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” ~ Adyashanti

Here are your some of our wounds, some of our flows, some of the things twirling in my heart, stretching its edges to feel life on the planet.

The list you are about to read might seem arbitrary: meting icebergs, lost habitat, ancient fungi, forgotten stories, neglected places, misogyny, imperialism, war, violence against women & earth. In the midst of so many issues are opportunities: the discovery of Constructal Law, the preservation of seeds of freedom, our need for alternative women narratives, the call to enlightened action, the poetry of living mindfully.

• Here is a film I’d like to see, Chasing Ice, where a pioneering environmental photographer and global warming activist James Balog show melting glaciers and icebergs receding at fast speed due to climate change.  via Lisa Congdon
• Ancient fungi were discovered In 2.7 million year old mud at bottom of ocean. “Their genetic material indicates the microbes are dormant, but could be revived.”
• The time has come to protect our ‘seeds of freedom,’ and keep them in the hands of farmers. Vindana Shiva suggests that “diversity has to be the approach, there’s no magic bullet.” Indeed.
• Let your heart break open: “Two Years Later: What the ‪Syrian‬ War Looks Like” ‪‬
• 7 Sadly Disturbing Truths About [what our madness is doing to] Women’s Bodies.  I added the words in brackets because even though the article means well, the title is a misogynist remark suggesting there is something inherently wrong with women’s bodies. Paying attention to the nuances of language is essential to evolving our thinking.
• “My space is small. My life is big.” Living With Less. A Lot Less.”via @holly59
• A wonderful essay: “The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why it Matters.”
• Speaking of roads, of pathways, of narratives,  “There is a New Law in Physics and It Changes Everything” is an interview with Adrian Bejan, author of the illuminating book Design in Nature–my article here. Adrian is a man with a brilliant mind and heart, whose work on the Constructal law of physics is illuminating academia and by the nature of flow, beginning to reach popular culture. Bravo!
• Breathtaking. Naomi A Klein talks with writer, spoken-word artist, and indigenous leader Leanne Simpson  about “extractivism,” why it’s important to talk about memories of the land, dancing the World into Being, and what’s next for Idle No More.

Because we live in a web of life of interconnectedness where even the flap of a butterfly is felt miles apart, changes in a remote area already affect us in ways yet to be seen. Do we want to see? Here is a poem I love prompting us to see where we dare not, because it is time to heal those festering wounds:

Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying

her wounds came from the same source as her power.” ~ Adrienne Rich

We can’t deny our wounds; we can’t deny our power, not anymore. We are beginning to realize that their source is the same, that underneath the wound there is incredible power– a fountain of creativity, compassion, and wild nature waiting to free flow and overflow pass the imposed and internalized gates of oppression, to reach all of life. A feminine kind of power, one that calls for liberation, to be idle no more, to care for the web of life.

I feel grateful for the women and men around the world working towards giving birth to a new kind of system that dismantles patriarchy, but this truth has yet to fully percolate, awaken, and take root in the collective consciousness; for patriarchy is still operating, infiltrating itself in the depths of woman and from there oppressing her right to express the beauty of her womanhood. You might think woman is free, but she is not free of the forces, patterns and beliefs she has internalized, not yet. And man isn’t either, although I can only speak from my experience as woman giving voice to the feminine.

“The liberation of the earth, the liberation of women, the liberation of all humanity is the next step of freedom we need to work for, and it’s the next step of peace that we need to create.” ~Vandana Shiva

May we explore this sacred space with grace. May we realize that women’s bodies are sacred and filled with mystery. Every one of us was born from the body of a woman, from the body of the earth. In the name of this untapped feminine power flowing sacred, conscious, alive through women of all colors, shapes, sizes, ages and paths; may she, woman, be honored, respected, cherished. May woman experience herself and the earth sacred. Therein lies woman’s freedom. Our freedom. I imagine woman reveling in her song becoming the voice of Pachamama, her actions joining others healing the web of life with the awareness that opens us up to feel life pulsing in each others’ hearts.

Today marks the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere. It is a day to celebrate ancient, dormant seeds awakening. May the flow of our hearts, voices, and paths reach greater expressions of flow as we dream, sing, and dance a new healing dream into being. I dedicate the ebb and flow of these words to the loving, fierce spirit pulsing alive in each one of us. This is:

“A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages.” ~ Tennessee Williams

In the name of all that we remember to hold and let flow sacred,

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a kind of magic that is born from the soil of experience, the magic of the mundane if you will, which under the light of awareness, shines sacred. I wonder if some of us are wired to experience life in a magical realist way. Asi parece. Magical realism is not just a literary genre; it is a way of living, of perceiving life, of engaging the world. How do we convey the way our hearts pound when we see a flower in full bloom, a bird in flight, the hungry eyes of another soul, the threads of dreams embedded in the fabric of our lives, the mystery of life revealing itself moment to moment–perhaps more slowly than we would like?

Here are a few images of magical places from my wanderings in the neighborhood of Wynwood in Miami, around my favorite cafe where I go write and drink the best coffee in town. I am grateful for the creativity surging through the surfaces, spaces, and beings of this tropical city.

 Time itself is a river that flows in circles that wrap around our hearts in spirals. Here you can see through the glass reflecting sky, a clock of flying birds cycling around, enacting the myth of the eternal return. Henry Miller said:

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

What are you divinely aware of? Go out, explore, find something beautiful that catches your eye, that sets your heart on fire, that melts your mind, that heals your soul. Now bask in that liquid wonder…

“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.” ~Henry Miller

New Moon blessings dear ones! Yes to riding the waves of flow and nurturing new life,

Isadora Duncan, photo by Léon Bakst via theworldbyus

We have come to be danced by Jewel Mathieson

We have come to be danced
not the pretty dance
not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
but the claw our way back into the belly
of the sacred, sensual animal dance
the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
the holding the precious moment in the palms
of our hands and feet dance

We have come to be danced
not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
but the wring the sadness from our skin dance
the blow the chip off our shoulder dance
the slap the apology from our posture dance

We have come to be danced
not the monkey see, monkey do dance
one, two dance like you
one two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
tearing scabs & scars open dance
the rub the rhythm raw against our souls dance

WE have come to be danced
not the nice invisible, self conscious shuffle
but the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
the strip us from our casings, return our wings
sharpen our claws & tongues dance
the shed dead cells and slip into
the luminous skin of love dance

We have come to be danced
not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
but the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath & beat dance
the shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
the mother may I?
yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
the Olly Olly Oxen Free Free Free dance
the everyone can come to our heaven dance

We have come to be danced
where the kingdom’s collide
in the cathedral of flesh
to burn back into the light
to unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
to root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced
WE HAVE COME

~ Jewel Mathieson

Praise the Great Mother flowing through the space of our hearts, dancing us alive in the belly of this wild, sacred dance. I am blessed with Her love and even in stillness, I dance alive in HER name,

P.S. Gratitude for the poem via @holly59 & photo via @walkingdreamart

The Sacred Earth basks in moonlight,

exhales serpentine trails of energy and light.

Ecstatic to share Moon’s fullness tonight & surprised to see what was revealed as I bathed in her moonlight (photo taken around 8:30 pm: no flash, no photoshop, just an open heart in love with La Luna).

“Ten thousand poets have viewed ten thousand moons,

this moon, just one.” – Soji (Gary Barnes)

Full moon blessings, dear ones!