November ThanksLiving with Appreciation Vibration!

Namaste Beloved Hearts of Grateful ThanksLiving!
As pictured above, we had a wonderful ThanksLiving dinner celebration here last week, a few days ahead of my birthday and this week’s ‘official’ Thanksgiving. Jeremiah was back from 10 months of international travel and our old dear friends and ETV cohorts Rev Karene and Big Don celebrated with us. Karene thankfully brushed me up with a live gravy tutorial and all was SO delicious ~ a true celebration of appreciation!

While I often run behind, it is wonderful to be ahead on Thanksgiving this year! I am baking a pie and making mashed potatoes for Thursday of this week for another family dinner elsewhere yet this one really filled me up! Sharing and caring well spent in the loving vibration of appreciation. Having Jeremiah back home has been a full circle celebration of life in all of its turnings, yearnings and earnings.

This month of ThanksLiving has had so many elements of life! Jeremiah sang with me yesterday at Unity Spiritual Community ~ neither of us could pin down the last time we did this, YEARS! While our lives tend to cycle in chapters, we have choice points along the way of returning, staying, or forging new directions. I find myself doing all at once as I continue to sift and who I am and who I am becoming.

Also years in the making, Jeremiah helped put another bandaid on a building at my dad’s ranch last week. Covering holes with the ranch iconic sheets of metal was a job well done with the spirits of the ancestors and Jeremiah’s willing hands and heart. Another of the gifts of mijo and time, I am grateful!

Though gifted a night at the ocean for my birthday, I stayed local and will go seaside on a sunny day. Jeremiah and I walked all the way around Lake Tabeau which was that much more special after being not able to walk at all last birthday!

As I often do around my birthday, this month of ThanksLiving has had an extra heaping helping of darkness as I look within and explore the crevices. Still and always, I choose to align with the shine of my divine design as I vibrate and appreciate all the goodness that is. Our free will and transformational toolbox can take us anywhere we want to go in life’s playground of dark and light.

After the church service yesterday, I dropped Jeremiah at the airport as he flew East to honor a wonderful soul at a memorial today. Celia was a woman who radiated kindness and appreciation for everyone. I’m glad that Jeremiah could honor her and see his dadio for a few days. I returned home and had some more emotional shifting to do so I walked in this ahmazing town I live in, truly grateful for ALL!

No matter what darkness we ever face, there is a path calling us forward.

After doing music with a room full of 2 year olds this morning, I returned to the ranch to do this ThanksLiving vlog sprinkled with a few of the songs we sang yesterday. The drum, the affirmative lyrics, the spirit of song all helped me align with divine design appreciation vibration. I hope it can do the same for you. The Vlog, along with ThanksLiving daily calendar and much more are found @ New Thought Families.

I also speak to honoring our Natives, I wear feathers because they free my Spirit and also in honor of the indigenous people. As I say in the vlog, I do not in any way want what I wear to be seen as anything other than an honoring.

Whatever ThanksLiving and Thanksgiving celebrations you are up to this week, may you be yes blessed in ALL of it! May you find appreciation for any and all aspects of your celebrations … appreciation ever beckoning you into higher vibration! Aho!

ThanksLiving: Appreciation Celebration

Namaste Celebration of Life and Love Expressed and Blessed!
Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Thanks Living!

It is in the Spirit of Thanks Living every day in everyday ways, I greet you with this invitation to keep growing your appreciation and thereby life celebration. With Turkey as our Feature Creature Teacher this week, our Spirit guide offers much wisdom irrespective of its place at the dinner table. Turkey is the give away bird who in many native cultures is a shaman gateway to enlightenment. Transcending the ego need to be thanked for service, Turkey’s give away is whole and completely selfless. This non-attachment to outcome is cause for celebration as it brings ultimate freedom.

Turkey also helps us with our life celebration reminding us to bring our attention and appreciation to all the little things. As we facilitate and communicate all that we appreciate, we cannot help but magnify the good and feel happier in our every day experiences. What are you appreciating in this moment? This day? This season? This oh so intense year of 2020?! Even in the midst of challenges, we can choose appreciation. We can choose celebration. We can choose inspiration. Look up, down, all around. Look within. What is calling you to an inspiration appreciation life celebration?!

Join us with Turkey and our other November Feature Creature teachers on the Leaping Literacy Library Free Shelf! We are fully embracing Thanks Living and appreciation as we work with Christmas and advent offerings coming next week. There truly is always something to be grateful for and lots of goodness to recognize here and now as well as look forward to in the days and weeks before us. With the vibrant, celebratory, appreciative energy of Thanks Living, we embrace the gifts of this holy season and life. I embrace the gift of you with great gratitude, and a yippee skippee appreciation celebration! Namaste, love!

The Dance Of Abundance

Wow! Whooshing Whale! Wonderful World!

Namaste beautiful, abundant expressions of the divine!

^{_{I greet you in the Spirit of co-creation, manifestation, grateful awareness and infinite abundance! This sacred Sunday’s OmHomETV is centered in abundance with prayer, song, transformational tools and Pumpkin as Feature Creature Teacher:}}

With grateful awareness, we do the dance of abundance!

Grateful awareness of abundance is a recipe for happiness! 2020 has been a year like no other with it’s challenges spotlighting seeming places of lack; lack of freedom, lack of ‘normal’, lack of justice, lack of truth to name some of the big players. Yet! As spiritual beings in this physical manifestation, we know that our Creator and all of creation is infinitely abundant. Our human pain, often caused by the insanity of humanity, may rightly show up as lack yet always, inherently, any lack is an invitation to re-imagine, re-invent, revise, revision, redo. We are always and ever invited to co-create more fully our divine expression in this world. As such, we can bring our transformational tools to any situation to raise the vibration and change the manifestation through our prayerful activations and interactions. Yes we can and yes we do!

Abundance says YES!

What is abundance to you? What do you say YES to?!

As I continue the messy dance of abundance I spoke of last week, I am ever reminded that all of it, all of life, is spiritual practice. And as I keep showing up and saying yes, abundance is on the ready to dance! No matter my confessions or the (national) refusal of concessions, there is a higher order of abundant Love ready to heal, harmonize, energize, revitalize!

I drove away from my beautiful home and stacks of work today for an annual life celebration at the beach. My hotel is covid compliant and welcomed me with a free upgrade to suite. Sweet! My abundant jacuzzi tub awaits. The roses I brought are a beautiful 3 smiling at me. I dance with their beauty as I center in the knowing that our abundant Creator is loving us fully every moment. No matter what.

Wherever you are in your abundance dance, just keep taking steps with trust, knowing you are loved beyond comprehension. The Love of you on the move is natural expansion. The Love of us is the next phase of humanity’s potentiality. We are, necessarily, the dance of abundance!

Yes we can and yes we do!

We are the divine expression of abundance born to co-create more of the Love we are made of! I celebrate life with you abundant YES expressed! Thank you. We are so blessed. Namaste, Love.

And! In addition to OmHomETV’s Abundance, this week’s Leaping Literacy Library ETV is full of birthday cake! Celebrate with me here, on the sites, and at famlit.tv! Yippee!

Awareness Of Goodness

Namaste Harmonious Goodness Expressed!

I greet you this Transformational Tuesday with deep awareness and an abundance of appreciation. As we all know, it has been an emotional week here in America since our election last Tuesday. It has been an emotional year that has brought all of us to our knees. As Spirits in these physical, emotional bodies, it has been a constant invitation inward to connect with our Source, our higher knowing, our highest selves. Thus, we align, realign, repeat. In this alignment we know the truth of goodness, of harmoniousness, of blessedness, of yesness, no matter what physical circumstances surround us.

From this place of inner alignment, we are called to take our physical actions in this world, to show up for what is ours to do. The goodness I most want to share awareness of in this space on this transformational day is the renewed commitment and actions that are in place and coming to fruition for New Thought Families. Designed to support those called to spiritual family literacy, these resources are re-aligning into consistent calendarization offering heart and soul centered celebrations and invitations. Yes, we continue our daily Play & Pray Calendar , our ABC pages are finally being revised and slowly finalized. And now, we are ready to relaunch our weekly offerings as well.

In September, I launched the Sunday Celebration Om HomETV shows vowing to be here each Sunday. As with other failed promises in the past, mid-October found the production schedule de-railed and me feeling too failed. The phoenix rising awareness from this is the clarity, organization and next phase of yesness in showing up to this life’s work in a way that I can make work as well as share with the people, children, families, playful hearts that are called to play and pray and be in fuller awareness of who we truly be. We are spiritual beings yet like all of life, we deepen this awareness and practice through literacy. Our Leaping Literacy Library spiritual literacy offerings are taking on a new phase of clarity.

The Free Shelf for the Library has multiple offerings from our more traditional FUNdamentals with Laurie’s Stories as well as the spiritual literacy resources centered at New Thought Families. As our Free Shelf picture above depicts, we are spotlighting weekly, thematic offerings for each part of the Library separately. The week’s resources are based on our ETV. For New Thought Families and spiritual literacy, it is Om HomETV:

With Owl as our Feature Creature Teacher, we are seeing through the shadows and seeing with the eyes of our heart. On our Free Shelf, we have the songs and book, Sebastian Wakes Up, from the show + more. We have our Owl power point, as well as Owl centered new offerings with ask and affirm cards and Your TruEBook templates for further exploration of awareness.

As I make this announcement, I stay aware that I am continuing to live the prayer I have been called to for so long. For any who have been with me on this journey or read any of the blog posts here over the last 8 years, you know my struggle is real. Yet! As I reckon with my inner demons and dance with the divine, I do indeed continue to intertwine a huge body of work that is further and further aligned. I embrace it as mine. I embrace messy me and all my failures. I embrace all that I am here to serve. I release the chaos that has swirled for too long and I vow to stand strong, singing my songs and inviting you along.

The center of the apple holds the eye and the star. It is always up to our perception to overcome deception, see clearly with reflection, and co-create with seed conception!

The creation of ETV is a long, long dream for me. This pandemic, shift your priotites year gifted me a tipping point. While definitely still reckoning with all of it, I am on better track now for the weekly ETV and Om HomETV shows speaking to FUNdamental, life, heart, and Spirit literacy. I have a birthday next Transformational Tuesday and I am more committed than ever to see with the eyes of my heart the shining star that lives in me and inside each and every one of you. We are here to shine. We are here to love. We are here to yes express our goodness and to transcend our perceived limitations in grateful life celebrations! I am so grateful for you sharing that affirmation with me in this right now moment. I am so grateful for your goodness blessing this world.

I will return to this space with this Sunday’s Sacred Celebration of Abundance. Pumpkin will be our Feature Creature Teacher as we grow all the seeds of divinity within us. If you want to see ETV, visit our famlit.tv and along with Owl teachings and resources on our Free Shelf, you can access past ETV shows.

May you continue to see with the eyes of your heart, an increasing awareness of the exquisite goodness you truly be. Namaste, Love!

ThanksLiving Greeting

Namaste Friends! Welcome to our Nestled November in THE year To Remember! While 2020 has pretty well brought us each and all to our knees, let us surrender and center now in all that is good, all that is kind, all that is soothing to our hearts, souls, and minds. Let us be cradled in November’s faith feathered nest of goodness, of kindness, of  Remembrance. We remember who we are as Love’s breath expressed. Filled with awe and  appreciation, we breathe deep. We awaken all the dreams that went to sleep and we fly into ThanksLiving! This November, we remember. Life is a gift. Every breath. A true celebration we can embody with appreciation. Happy ThanksLiving!

Solitary Visionary Seeing Plenty In 2020

Namaste 2020 Visionaries!
I join you in the duality of the double 20’s on this most auspicious palindrome day, 02/02/2020! This being a rare 8 digit palindrome not seen since 11/11/1111 (909 years!), it heightens all the other life celebrations of this weekend. The groundhog or woodchuck shares this day with the Christian Candlemas which was originally the purification of Mary 40 days after the birth of Christ (hugh?!), now seen more as the presentation of the baby to the temple. Both of these celebrations stem from the deeper roots of Brigid Day and Imbolc in the Pagan tradition. Imbolc falls on this date (2/1 or 2/2), as the mid-point between winter solstice and spring equinox. The solstice being the longest night and the equinox, equal light, first day of spring and time for planting seeds, the woodchuck is perhaps a more male version of the ancient goddess tradition?!

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From the darkness of winter and the womb, may we see with the eyes of spring seeds and a balance between light and dark. Nature is the great equalizer and needed tonic for the insanity of humanity. In our national politics, we remain a divided people as the impeachment trial of President Trump draws towards completion, without witnesses or evidence allowed in the courtroom. (Hugh?!) Oh where oh where do we find truth?! Always within. And always in Love. For those of us on the conscious spiritual path, divine Love is the only place to find ultimate truth, especially now in the swirl of this world and the birthing pains of the next level of humanity! We can only and always keep aligning with the Love that created us and calls to us to keep co-creating more LOVE!
From that place of Big Love and deep appreciation, I want to honor all the presidential nominees with special attention to Marianne Williamson who stood in her truth and spoke powerfully to the collective evolution. Her spiritual wisdom permeated her presentations and her pillars of moral repair, full of common sense and conscious spirit, are still up at her website. Thank you Marianne for speaking your truth and standing tall in it especially when the masses demeaned you for it. You are a warrioress of Love expressed! May we hold your vision with Love in action!

https://www.marianne2020.com/

Living large in Love this 2020, we surely see in the circle of hindsight and clear forward vision. As we see with the eyes of our heart, we can and must live the Big Love that is the Spirit yes within us longing to be expressed. As the chaos of our times continues to be a daily assault on our senses and sensibilities, we continue to reach high and to reach within for the highest Love ever omnipresent calling us to truth, to home, to happiness, to Love itself. What we see and hear, sense and feel with our intuitive GPS is the vision that is ours to express. Staying anchored in Spirit, we can and will live this higher calling of truth and Love expressed in whatever ways are ours to do. With daily awareness, we can center and re-center in higher Love. It can be a messy process yet there is always peace in the center even as expansion stretches us into our fuller expressions and new manifestations may come kicking and screaming!

Leaping Literacy Library Free Shelf is in LOVE!

For my part, I continue to be filled with Spirit Love and daily devotion to finding the best ways to be in sacred service. Unfortunately in the realms of the Leaping Literacy Library, this has been a huge challenge to reckon with the thousands of files I have generated over the years. Our non-profit has received a donation that has allowed me to have some help yet I still feel some of the chaos and a lot of the overwhelm that has the Leaping Literacy Librarian in me wanting to hide between the books! I have had to prioritize and leave much of New Thought Families’ revisions on hold as I tend to my first love, Laurie’s Stories and the hundreds of Laurie StorEBooks on the website I first started 20 years ago. In twenty, I have indeed generated plenty! My intention is to revisit and renew some of the old and (finally!) move forward with the new. For New Thought Families, old visitations and revisions include Joy Boy and the long stagnant ABC pages. Most all of the thousands of pages are set for a reface or a final archive which is the process that the pages at Laurie’s Stories have been undergoing. The whole Library will be offered for a Leaping Wee Fee Membership this month (Just $29 from 2/9-2/29!) along with a special New Thought Families anniversary celebration on 2/20/2020. And! The debut of Leaping Literacy eTV is set for Leap Day 2/29! Stay fine tuned!

On our New Thought Families Inspirations page, we have links to AHmazing Reconstructionist African American women; Sojourner Truth, Ida B Wells, Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks. Talk about warrioress women who stood ~ and sat!~ in their truth! There are videos there on the Inspirations page too with vintage Valentines and the Laurie StorEBook, Happy Love.

http://newthoughtfamilies.com/Inspirations.html

Whatever visions aplenty you are seeing for 2020, I wish you clarity, courage and conviction in the seeing, the knowing, the doing. Thank you so much for being here this moment and visualizing with me and Leaping Literacy! We can and we are living Love. It’s all there is. And so it is. Namaste Love!

ThanksLiving In Total Trust

Namaste Trusting, Thankful, Truth Tellers of ThanksLiving!
I am truly thankful to share this 11/11 moment with you, whenever that is for you! I greet you in the name of trust and deep gratitude expressed as a way of living, a way of being, ThanksLiving! Thankful for all things, great and small, joyful and painful, planned and unplanned, loved or not. Thankfully trusting that all is always working out for our highest good and the highest good of all.November is generally the month to remember gratitude; home to Thanksgiving and today’s tribute to Veterans. We rightly express our thankfullness for our abundance and for the service of generations who have served our nation both in war and at peace. As we collectively become more ‘woke’, necessarily more layers of truth are woven into such tapestries of remembrance. For Native Americans, Thanksgiving is not a day to celebrate. Though veterans are to be thanked and honored, the purpose of military action and war is the ultimate insanity of humanity.Can we employ our grateful ThanksLiving even in the face of injustice? Can we trust ourselves to feel grateful even when things are all ‘wrong’? In New Thought, we often bring big spiritual principles back to ourselves, where we have some measure of contol. Famously, “Peace begins with me” sums up this practice. When we are at peace within ourselves, we show up to injustice or any other ‘wrong’ with compassion, forgiveness, and yes, the trust that all is well. This doesn’t mean we don’t act for justice and the changes we want to see in the world yet it does mean we have a sense of peace and grace flowing through us. And as Colin Tipping’s Radical Forgiveness incorporates, we are even grateful for the painful situations that surround us. As Lightworkers and Light Bearers, gratitude helps us keep a higher vibration that makes flowing Love, Light, Peace, and Grace possible. Hence, we move and breathe and have our being in the Light, embodying and flowing that Divine Light. And so it is that we are actively ThanksLiving more goodness in this world!As we navigate these globally turbulent times, with so much unrest worldwide, and our very planet in dire need of reverent attention and social action, we do well to come into harmony with reverent awareness in our ThanksLiving. Our Great Creator gifted us with an infinite array of beauty and wonder. What would happen on this earth if all being aligned with the shine of the divine design of all life? If we lived in reverence and deep gratitide, not just for a moment over our dinner plate or before going to sleep or waking in prayer (all great practices by the way!) but what if we lived in this way as a way of being, of ThanksLiving! And yes, it begins with us. Any and every moment we can do so! Our November ThanksLiving Calendar has daily invitations and celebrations!

And so our journeys go, moment by moment, step by step. Sometimes we are reverent, peaceful, shining rays of Life’s Lovelight and sometimes we feel something (far) different than that. Yet! When we can thankfully trust that our Creator loves us more than we can fathom, we return to more of our true, divine essence, even, and especially in the midst of our transgressions, big or small! Total trust insists that everything is always for our highest good!So! For my own transgressions in this blogspace … I vowed in September to be here every week until yearend and I let a month go by. On 10/11, I published my 300th blogpost here; the first being on 2/7/2011.  This milestone set with many recent challenges like multiple power outages stirred up my sense of purpose in being here ~ or not. This journey of life is filled with twists and turns so I just compassionately and thankfully return, here and now, with a grateful honoring of this space and a few other milestones. I have been in my house for a year ~ it was a big move here at the time of the deadly Camp Fire for our Northern neighbors in Paradise. At this anniversary, we have all felt such a myriad of fear, grief, Love, trust and gratitude. I am immensely grateful for this home. And for our Leaping Literacy Library home that continues to grow and change with compassion in action, always trusting divine order ThanksLiving!Behind the Leaping Literacy curtain of creation, are many videos and the co-creation of spiritual eTV. My friend, Rev Karene Piccolo is showing up as Gramma K and you may remember her as Owlive with little Owlet. Here they are:

And in the Spirit of evolution, here’s where we started: Password: OTOO

Ah, it is a wonder to co-create and though we (I!) often need to know our words are heard, our Creator knows when we show up in trust and gratitude to do what we are called to do. Along with the Leaping Literacy Library and eTV revisions and expansions, I am in the process of bringing our first group of student authors (state grant) to the publisher/printer this week and the journey has definitely had many unexpected turns! This, as all things do, has given me so much practice in being centered in trust and ThanksLiving. Total trust. Total gratitude!My wish for you is that you can be joyfully surprised by the unexpected goodness ever waiting for you as you trust life’s flow every day in everyday ways … living a life of ThanksLiving as shining light YOU! Namaste, Love!PS! Join us by the sea? A playful retreat! See if your soul is calling you to be with us!

Expansive Gratitude

Namaste Expressive, Expansive Spirit Givers!

I greet you with the belated posts planned for last Thursday’s Thanks Living Thanksgiving, and then yesterday’s Giving Tuesday … ah, deep sigh of shifting commitments and continued life overwhelm. Thursday was a good family day and yesterday spent unexpectedly at the hospital with my dad. My dedication to being here each Tuesday until yearend morphed into Wednesdays and then last week, not at all. Such evidence of my struggle for balance. I continue to give and over-give in the endless cycle of never being enough. Our Black Friday society continuously blares the message (buy) more, more, MORE! All the deets of our lives aside, Spirit always beckons us to go within. Spotlight on self examination.

Look Within!

And so it goes, that wherever we are, there we are. After 8 and a half years, I am in a new home finding some forgotten fragments of self, I am not that fond of. Much of this is directly related to Jeremiah being away and my new life beginning as his does. He was in our new home for 2 nites before I drove him back and stayed over to see and hear him play the Rose Bowl. He is in the UCLA ‘solid gold sound’ of the band and happy. My YES for him has me reshaping my own views of my new co-creations here and on the horizon. And re-learning my tools of Thanks Living and choosing happiness.

This world teaches us that our existence is defined by the outer circumstances of our lives. Spirit allows us to know a different truth … one that is based on seeing, feeling, knowing, being the divine thread woven into every aspect of who we be and what all of Creation is. We certainly look to others for meaning and inspiration, even explanation. Yet in the end, all answers are within.

Recipe For Life!

I have been reminded of one of the elder teachers I have known and wrote a song about on our Trust What You Hear CD. The chorus of the song, Still Walking, says:
Love the Creator & the Whole Creation,
Give of yourself wherever you’re set down
Put your heart & hands into loving service
and always know you’re walking holy ground

When we align with Love and service, the reverence of walking holy ground often follows and guides our way. Yet! As so many of us over-givers know, Love and service can be depleting and lead into overwhelm, burnout, ill health of body, mind, Spirit. Again, self examination and correction of our energies is the crucial factor in keeping ourselves balanced, healthy, holy.

Care Giving!

Giving Tuesday is indeed a nice balance point for Black Friday & Cyber Monday as we pay attention to where we flow our money ~ for who & what … when and where. Perhaps the biggest invitation is to the examination of how we care ~ for who & what … when and where. As I was re-committing to a long list of work projects yesterday, my dad called to say he had just gotten up from a long night (and morning) on the floor. He sounded alert and ‘with it’ saying he had gotten himself into bed so I grabbed a shower before heading over. In shifting all priorities, the shower seemed reasonable and he was sleeping like a baby when I got there. The disarray of the house and his body took us to the hospital where tests showed his CHF was out of control. They are keeping him for a few days to ‘dry out’. As the hours rolled by at the hospital, I marveled at the nurses and doctors who so lovingly give their hearts and hands to service. And I fused waves of inspiration & motivation, with frustration and dedication returning ~ over and again ~ to the holy ground I am walking.

Choosing Expansion!

My new home is all about expansion for myself and for Creative Spirit Families ~ both the Online Library and the local community. This big place is definitely feeling full of promise and potentiality and in turn, sometimes overwhelming and lonely. I have been feeling another elder so strongly ~ Faith Petric! Like her Victorian in SF, this will be a music house full of singing.

The mixed intuition I had all along was pointing to more old dirt than I wished to care for ~ yes, my own but mostly having to clean as I go … some of it grimy yuck I cannot and will not live with. And! I was getting increasingly a bit phobic about dirt so this place is allowing some lower standards 🙂 I am choosing to expand in all kinds of ways, some of which is not inherent in the square footage! I will be bringing videos to life in the near future and the house will be open for Solstice!

Thanks Living = Holy (Wholly!) Living!

The darkness ~ like all of life ~ is an ever present, omnipresent invitation to the Light. The Light invites us to be bright! Shining through the shadows is what grows our souls. And so it goes that with deep self examination and divination, we can align with the shine of our divine design. For me, that brings me back, time after time, to the Leaping Literacy Library! Creative Spirit Families mission is to support traditional, creative, and spiritual family literacy. The dreams I have for expansion have not gone away yet rather patiently wait for my scattered attention. I am choosing to focus and allow grace to guide and assist me in this labor of Love ~ especially through all the labor pains!

For us to live holy ~ and wholly ~ we must remain mindful, grateful, willing … and thereby able to be response able (responsible!) to live our highest callings! Just say YES!!

And so dear ones, when and if you are reading these words, I wish you ease and grace in knowing yourself, giving yourself care and knowing the holiness in all of it. We are infinitely blessed by this gift of life. We give our best, when we gratefully express our YES, whatever that is for you in any given moment. And so we grow in the light! Blessed be! Namaste, Love.

Reverent Reality

Namaste Reverence Expressed!

Let us take a deep, honor filled breath of respect and reverence … for what it is to be here now, for what it is to be alive in these bodies individually and in the sea of humanity, and for what it is to be living on this AHmazing planet of beauty. Today’s post offers the transformational tool of reverent reality.

Also known as sacred awareness, reverent reality is living in a state of appreciation, respect and honor. From a spiritual perspective, I would add to standard dictionary definitions, the respect inherent in reverence is holy. Appreciative awareness of the sacred presence is indeed a divinely reverent, holy experience. The scale can be tiny or it can be grand … Let’s practice now! Here’s today’s (now yesterday’s!) daily Play & Pray:

Play:
See with the deep respect of reverence today! Start by closing your eyes and holding your hands over your eyes. Think about how good it is to see everything … call on your grateful heart to energize and activate your mind on just how good it is to see everything! Next, spread your fingers and open your eyes to just peek out … whatever you see, say, “WOW!” with the reverent reverie of an appreciation celebration. See how many times you can see and feel this wow vision of reverence as you go on your way today … Remembering just how good it is to see everything!

Pray:
Thank You holy One for the expanse of beauty in this life. I am in grateful awe at how beautiful everything is on this planet home. Our sacred mother earth is always bursting with beauty as are all the animals and people as we live Your Love expressed. I pray to see and know everything today with this deep respect and reverent appreciation as well as the reverie of celebration! I also pray for all beings in our global family to awaken just even a tiny bit more to see You and all Your beauty this moment, this day, this life. We are all so blessed in Love!

Any way we choose to believe and perceive our reality, it most often takes practice to reclaim what comes naturally to us as children of the divine … living a holy awe, blessed YES existence of reverence is a practice. I find gratitude is the strongest set point and let’s face it, too many days, the default “ain’t it awful” wants to steer the ship that would otherwise sail on bliss. We must actively engage with the divine waiting to embrace us in arms of beauty, compassion, positivity & infinite potentiality! Reach for appreciation! Reach for reverence! Reach for rainbows!Rest assured dear reader, I remain aware of the current turbulence in our country and in this world … in fact, the life and death and political swirl of energies around Senator John McCain helped inspire this look at honor and reverence. My own personal world is still stuffed with honoring my parents and their failing bodies … Yesterday and today in service to my mom with a trip to AZ for her specialty boots. As any regular reader here knows, I could fill up paragraphs with my family commitments. In a few weeks, I will move Jeremiah into his dorm room and I am still riding the waves of grief that surface with that triumphant transition. I mention it all now in context of the reverent rainbow reach to say that it truly is how you believe and perceive your co-creations~! As my son moves on, and I listen deeply ~ reverently ~ to my soul and the compassion fatigue I have for the elder care, there are indeed new rainbow creations I am called to and reaching for! Yippee for me and infinite possibilities!

AND! Let me reverently relish in reverie the 2 big co-creations that have come to BE this AHsome August! For it is all too common for me ~ us?! ~ to focus on the pressing To Do’s rather than to pause for the Ta Da’s as part of the endless not enoughness that loves to be in the driver seat! For inherent in embodying a reverent, holy, blissful yes for life is to celebrate our isness and certainly our accomplishments and co-creations as fully as we can! In this way we honor ourselves and the Great Spirit that flows through us, as us. It is not I but the Spirit within me that doeth the work!

Feathers Of Freedom Family Camp!

This year’s Circle Of Love was spontaneously created by 2 of our teens (pictured below). With 102 signing up and showing up, my little Camp took on a whole new expansion. The Great Spirit of Love that guided us all made for a very happy, high vibe in our sacred Sierra playground! Here are a few pictures of circles, Teddy Bear Picnic, the zebra stop on the (Inner) Treasure Hunt, and Forgiveness Footprints Path. You can see more photos on our page.

Camp gave me such a heart start for the path ahead! I sincerely hope it did the same for the beautiful souls who came to co-create our treasured time!

And! As I mentioned in the last post, the new CD did make it out and we sang some of it at Camp! In the reverent reality of all my To Dos, I will perfectly, imperfectly be ‘releasing’ it here and in the greater cyber space more fully and reverently in the coming weeks. These ABC affirmations are indeed a singing celebration that joyously lift vibration! And as the cover speaks to, I was born for this!So! In holy reverence, I thank you for spending this sacred moment with me. I heartily invite you to open up to seeing with eyes of reverence. As you practice this, you will certainly feel more bliss! May we all continue to reach for rainbows as we co-create a more reverent reality remembering who we truly be. Namaste, Love!

 

Happy ThanksLiving!

Namaste Gorgeous Glimpses Of Gratefulness Expressed!

Happy Thanksgiving! Happy ThanksLiving! I greet you in the name of all that is holy this holy-day holiday of our November celebration post. November! The month that beckons us to remember our abundant blessings. When we live gratitude as a way of life, we are Thanks Living. Thanks Living Is Gratitude Giving! Let me sing that for you … ~!:

So the principle of trusting “that all of life is gifting me” is often easier sung than done especially when the ‘gifts’ of life don’t feel like that and can even feel like anything but! And this month, I personally, and we collectively, have had PLENTY of practice … in seeing the gifts and being in that trust. And yet when we give thanks for every little thing, it makes it easier to see the gifts in the yuckies. Life is always offering us opportunities to heal our wounds and fears opening and allowing more Love & light to live through us. Last month, we talked about the zealous yes ever calling us to be Creation’s breath of Love expressed. When our world and personal lives get increasingly heavy with pain body, rising up can be challenging at best. That’s why it is vital to secure a spiritual practice that keeps us tethered to our inner wisdom, strength, and innate ability to live on purpose, in passion, in happiness.From the national collective of mass shootings, environmental protection rollbacks in favor of cooperate greed and unsustainable dirty energy sources to the increasing threats of injustice towards the majority of people under the millionaire mark, and the #Me Too movement, there is a volume of yuckies we could dive into. For my part, I have too many #Me Too stories that have been shared in various measures over the decades yet my November moments have been reckoning with increasing overwhelm and over commitment that finally starting taking a toll physically and mentally. For weeks I have been striving for a “To Don’t” List as a means of self preservation. I will share the biggest story from this out picturing as an example of being in ThanksLiving in the midst of turmoil and pain.

So! As told here, I opened a Creative Spirit Families studio a few months ago and have had some magical moments singing, playing, creating with kids and families. The demands of doing the classes, keeping the refrigerator stocked and all supplies flowing in the studio on top of caretaking the elders, shepherding my busy teen applying for colleges, designing and implementing Sunday programs for SLC + doing the supplies and admin there, left zero time and energy for the production work I had intended and the necessary marketing to get more participation in the classes to cover the rent, much less my time and talents. Whew! If that run on sentence left you in the least confused or overwhelmed, welcome to my breakdown! 🙂
Still, to get to the point of letting the studio go, the universe (and my ‘human behind the curtain’ co-creative subconscious) had to gift me with a very low turnout for the second session of classes. My ego was doing major tangos trying to dodge the blame and shame I was directing towards me instead of graciously accepting the clarity of the definite ‘To Don’t”! It culminated before school one morning fixing Jeremiah’s breakfast and getting a text from my ‘biggest supporter’ that had very real life conflicts resulting in her saying they were only doing the first half of the session. I started crying and at Jeremiah’s request spilled it all out with the spoken understanding that I knew it was for the highest and he replying, “Sorry you’re disappointed mom but I’m glad you’re taking it on the chin.” I thanked him and emoted some more which prompted him to come and put his man size arms around me and start singing the 3rd verse of Kate Wolf’s Give Yourself To Love. I tearfully joined in and we sang the 3rd verse and chorus together:

Love is born in fire. It’s planted like a seed.
Love can’t give you everything but it gives you what you need.
Love comes when you’re ready, Love comes when you’re afraid.
It’ll be your greatest teacher, the best friend you have made.

So give yourself to Love if Love is what you’re after.
Open up your heart to the tears and laughter.
Give yourself to Love. Give yourself to Love.

~ From Kate Wolf’s song, Give Yourself To Love

I thanked him from the depth of my being. We told each other “I love you” and my 17 year old man cub left for school. I breathed in a deep breath of divine order ThanksLiving feeling infinitely blessed that I had helped raise this human ~ I’ve done something right! And the truth is the studio was/is right in many ways and it is also right to let it go now. I will fully enjoy the next few weeks of classes being in my fullest ThanksLiving possible!

And so it is that all parts of life are working for good. The more we can focus on the good, all the little things, the more appreciation flows through us and the happier we feel! ThanksLiving, like all of our spiritual practices are just that … a practice that we nurture daily. Thanksgiving and ThanksLiving EVERY day!

At Spiritual Life Center, our youth program has been centered on abundance this November with Buffalo, Hummingbird, and Turkey as our Feature Creature Teachers. One of our activities last Sunday was to write some things we are grateful for on each finger of our foam hands ~ with more time, and as a home activity, it’s great to trace and cut your own hands for this. The added time and attention to your own hands opens up even more awareness and gratefulness for the lives we are thanks living! And yes, of course, big hands too! As pictured, the hands work as a wonderful turkey tail! Like always, we had plenty of options for the turkeys including feathers and paint dotted with fingertips or spread with a plastic knife for the feather effect. It is fun to be us! At SLC, at the studio and even at today’s family Thanksgiving celebration, I have been offering creative opportunities like this … just some crafty, shiny somethings to put heart and hands to, to express. Through creativity, we let our divinity and spirituality flow!

And so I go with a mix of new co-creations, traditions, To Do’s, To Dont’s, Ta Da’s, calendarizing with lots of trust, patience, forgiveness, allowance, and remembrance. Yes, we remember in November ~! This Sunday, Advent begins and so we sing with angels! Angels all around us and inside us, always ready and able to help center us!

Sing THIS right here and now! (Tune, What Child Is This?):

“What child is this who lives in me …

In my busyness lies sleeping.

Whom angels greet, singing so sweet …

The truth of the child they’re keeping.

This, this is consciousness.

Christ light awakening, shining bliss.

This, this is consciousness.

I wake up and I shine who I am.”

Our November Free Shelf for Leaping Literacy Library is up for another week with  lots of ThanksLiving invitations celebrating traditional, creative, and spiritual family literacy!

Whatever To Do’s and To Don’ts call to you this holy season, may you be aligned with your angel guidance for days and ways of true ThanksLiving! Namaste, Love!

PS!
I am making some progress on a long time vision and though this is a poor sample … I’m grateful for infinite possibilities!

Yes, I have a looooooong way to go with production quality, let’s smile anyway in some Turkey Talk ThanksLiving with the Piccolos! Thank you ALL for the blessing of you being part of holy Creation’s ThanksLiving!