Transformations Through Transgressions

Namaste Holy Heart of Humanity!
I greet you in the name of divine order right timing after a summer away from this sacred space. It has been a summer of surrender and creative birthing in the midst of 2020’s turbulence and suffering. Like you, my heart aches for social justice and for the pain of so many adversely affected by humanity’s insanity, the global pandemic, political lies and division, and the ongoing health crisis’ of our Mother Earth. It has been a smokey three weeks here in California as a reminder of beloved redwood forests and homes still burning. It has been another season of elder care for my dying parents with such strong Spirits somehow sustaining their failing bodies. It has been six months of my Jeremiah living back home and once again preparing to fly off for his third year of college, living just off campus with his buddies as planned last February in their signed lease. It has been a summer of seeing the power of small wonders. It is now another September of softening sun, equinox balance, and seasonal release. Centered in grateful oneness with all of this and more, I anchor in sacred remembrance with you now in this miraculous moment. As Tolle and other spiritual teachers speak of, there really is peace in this still moment. The ability to see life with reverence is a transformational tool that brings us into the present moment, into our grateful, wondrous heart, and away from, or at least a step removed, from the constant overwhelm, exhaustion, and dramatic suffering all around and perhaps inside us. In peaceful Presence, we are able to more readily forgive and accept the transgressions of ourselves and others. Remembering that the word sin means to miss the mark, and that all things can be viewed as on purpose ~ even ‘mistakes’ ~ we can forgive and accept, even the transgressions that appall us most. Life is full of transformation, always, and in all ways. 2020 has given us a powerful dose of unprecedented change that has left so many in deep pain. And so we pray for their comfort and resolutions; we pray for peace and for perspective. We pray, with feet on the ground and in motion, for justice and sustainable change for the most vulnerable among us who are hardest hit. We prayerfully align with what ours to do with the visionary spotlight of 2020.
And so it is that I offer you now the latest and upcoming invitations from all that is mine to co-create for children and families, for holy humanity. At New Thought Families, we continue our daily resource for remembrance; the daily Play & Pray Calendar where we are revisiting our year long calendar, For Humanity. Today is the 247th day of 2020 and your playful invite is to wrap yourself in rainbows! As reported last spring, our biggest creative adventure is Leaping Literacy ETV web shows that will be coming weekly this September! And! After saying ‘no’ to Spirit all summer (never a good idea!), this Sunday, we begin our weekly OmHomETV. These Spirit centered weeklies are playful, prayerful offerings to build spiritual family literacy for families and (inner) children of all ages!
In keeping with stepping more fully into the spiritual family literacy work of New Thought Families, I will be here on Thoughtful Thursdays to help re-anchor our weekly spiritual practices. It is not lost on me that my own special brand of humanity insanity is to create (so much!) content and seemingly have not have any who participate. So! I begin again with renewed discipline ~ discipleship ~ to consistently show up and invite any and all who are called to spiritually play and prayerfully practice.

Our hindsight process of sifting through literally decades of content production is an ongoing process to produce purposefully with clear vision; a life’s work that goes on and on! Our Transformational Summer’s Reverent Reverie of Resources remains on our Leaping Literacy Library Free Shelf through Labor Day, 9/7. Join us there! You can also just visit our family literacy tv page directly:  https://familyliteracy.tv/
Now! Jeremiah and I are headed back to the studio today to finish the next CD, Circle Of One! The young and talented engineer, Cameron Lawson who recorded our last 2 CDs, We Are Called and Timeless Spirit is doing this one too. What began last fall with the ‘leftover’ songs from We Are Called is finally being finished. No transgressions, just divine order transformations!

As for you, my holy hearted friend, I hope whatever you are going through is something you can ultimately be lifted up by, like the phoenix rising from these ashes of alchemy. The feelings of despair are real and should be honored yet I believe we can keep inviting in new, higher energies to repair and help us release into our highest expressions of all the possibilities that live inside us and all around us. This transformation is indeed the biggest of our lifetimes yet we are wholly supported by the holy heart that created us. May you reverently remember the sacredness of who you are and all that is as we rise from any notion of transgression into inspirational motion of transformation. Thank you for being here at this revolutionary time of reflection and resurrection. Rise and fly! Namaste, Love!

Love Making Nurtures Oneness, Opening Peaceful Possibilities Quietly

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary.
What we need is to love without being tired. ~ Mother Teresa

Namaste Breath Of Love Expressed!

I greet you in the name of the greatest power, Love! It is Love that calls me here, Love that calls me forward, Love that unites us in this right now moment, and Love that can heal our hurting humanity.

I open with a song; a music video made for those families separated at our US border. I wrote the song while on ocean retreat sharing it with many international visitors at the hostel where I was. Written from the perspective of a child, it has been a prayer of solidarity I have been singing to help my own hurting heart and helpless hands in this horrific situation. The song, Mama Where Are You? is here:

I have not posted in this sacred cyber space for 3 months due to so many other commitments including the weekly, pictorial news I have been doing for the Youth Ed at Spiritual Life Center. My own family life continues to be exhausting, intense and demanding. The last May day I posted here, my auntie had a cerebral hemorrhage and left her body 3 days later. She was able to hear us at times letting her know we loved her and I sang to her multiple times including as she took her last breath. Song helped bring sacred awareness to her death. That reverent moment still opens my heart to peace. Both of my parents are in heart failure and too often gasping for breath as my one and only #1 son prepares to leave for college after being away adventuring most of the summer. Deep breath of yes allowance … Our transfomational tool of the day … breathe deep!

Through a deep, conscious breath we can come into oneness with ourselves, with another, our family, our world family. In the conscious yes breath, I align with the shine of my divine design doing what is mine to live Love, to make Love in this world. The life sustaining breath is an instant go to for nurturing oneness and practicing peace.

For any who know me or this place of sharing, you know there are millions of words for the last 12 weeks. So! In case you want to listen some, breathe with me, sing with me ~ pray and play with me, Owl, and Octopus, here is a (long!) Vlog:

As mentioned in the vlog, the Love making I do in this world that feeds me most is my work/play. Returning to my work feeds my soul and keeps me happier. We all need to feel on purpose by showing up for the truest callings of our hearts. For me, that’s music, the Leaping Literacy Library and our Creative Spirit Family events like our annual Feathers Of Freedom Family Camp. There are a few wonderful updates to report on all of the above!

The CD of short Spirit songs I began writing in 2016 is at the duplicators! Originally planned as ‘Children’s Chants’, it morphed and became an I Am exploration through the alphabet ~ Awake And Aware Through Zeal Zap! It is 37 songs (not all letters are created equal!) with a total run time of 54:22. I will continue to be in service to the songs by showing up here and elsewhere with links and samples and such!

The CD debuts next week at our annual Feathers Of Freedom Camp; some of the songs will be shared at some of our circles with my young master musicians, Jeremiah (18) and Cameron (17) who recorded, mixed and mastered the CD. Yippee!

Camp! I have been saying for years we will have 100+peeps and this is the year! Great gratitude for partnering with Spiritual Life Center; through their promotion and invitations, we have lots of new peeps of all ages joining us this year. And great gratitude for our wonderful crew who are also saying woo hoo! I am knee deep in feathers, tea cups and wings for Fairy Tea, Feature Creature Teachers for our (inner) Treasure Hunt and so much more! If you are called, we can still fit you in if you sign up this week!

And the Leaping Literacy Library! Yes the 2016 ABC’s For Humanity daily Play & Pray Calendar continues to be re-purposed and replaying for 2018. We are currently embracing Peaceful Quiet on our daily pages and the August Free Shelf: 

There are many aspects of the Library in what seems like a slow incubator. From the archives to the dreams and everywhere in between, here is a glimpse of some developing goodness with my supportive friend Rev Karene as Olive and me as puppet Owlet. 

I am celebrating this right now moment with a deep breath of gratitude for this space and especially for you sharing it with me at any mindful moment. Thank you. I know I have not been up for nurturing a regular connection here this year yet I am re-committing hopefully in service to others as well as myself. When our hearts keep calling, we can always begin again … in any blessed breath.

Whatever goodness you are up to, may you be blessed in it. May we all be oneness blessed in the Love that created us as we continue to make Love, live Love, do and be Love in our all too often troubled world. Thank you for the Love of you. Namaste, Love!

Believing In Breathing

Breathe deep in blessed belief!

Namaste Beautiful, Beloved, Believing, Breathing Beings!

I greet you in the name of the breath and yes expressed for the letter B and our ABCs of humanity! Can you take a deep breath of blessings with me? Here and now … this mindful moment … let’s just … breathe … our blessings. For sanity. For humanity.
Before I bombard you with the plethora of new and developing ABCs at Leaping Literacy and Creative Spirit Families, let’s breathe some more … big, bold, beautiful, centering breaths of yes … of Love expressed … of life itself.

The essence of human existence lives in the breath of life that breathes us. Whether or not we ever stop to think of it, we are always believing in breathing ~ without question! Ok, there’s asthma, and allergies, and colds, and other things that sometimes bring us into conscious connection with our lungs but mostly we just breathe day in and day out. Yet! Our breath can be one of our most powerful re-alignment tools ~ with our hearts, with our calm mind, with our blessings. Have you ever calmed yourself down with breathing? Have you ever garnered strength from a deep breath?
Taking a Brave Breath is included in the Believing In Breathing video in process for our expanding spiritual literacy library of transformational tools. So is making a Wish Breath … like you’re blowing out a candle on your birthday cake. Try that one now … make a wish aloud or in your mind and then breathe out. Then make your wish again and blow like you’re blowing out the candle … feels different in your body, mind, and Spirit … like a gentle gust of grace!

So! Bravo for breath and bravo for B! And A … and C! I am in the midst of them all at the moment as I stand my holy ground for balance … with plenty of aware allowance and conscious co-creation! With only 52 weeks in the calendar year, 26 letters and my commitment to getting to them all this sweet 16, I find myself on the brink of C already!

B meets C on tomorrow’s Play & Pray Calendar at New Thought Families!

The daily Play & Pray Calendar at New Thought Families is the one place where the alphabetic timeline is completely on track. I am loving all the (Pixabay) graphics, creating new calendar pages, and recording the audio with my teenage Jeremiah who turns sweet 16 himself in a few weeks. Arranged in 2 week increments, we fully embrace letter 3, the big C, this Saturday, the 30th. One of my goals is to incorporate lots of new, intergenerational voices into the calendar this year ~ how about you and yours?!

Our timeline is also clicking with some new songs breathing life into an old vision/project. Our Leaping Literacy Library Members can sing along with us as we add to a developing CD of Children’s Chants ~ Awake And Aware, Appreciation, Yes, I’m Blessed, Breathing … Ah!, I Believe, Creation Celebration, Centered … whew! We’re only 3 letters in … yippee!

And yes, videos too from the aforementioned Transformational Tools … Altars, Affirmations, Angels, Believing In Breathing, Blessing Box … Well, you get the picture. Lots at work and play.

It’s tempting to wonder about my sanity in all of this but I figure there are many ways to be yes Love expressed for humanity so why not play with ABCs of *spiritual* literacy?! And the truth is I feel most alive when I am (co)creating … even if I am mostly a bird singing in a forest not really sure *who* (you?!) can hear me!

January 30th Play & Pray Calendar!

And! If you can hang in with my Leaping Literacy Library updates a bit further, Physical Phonics songs A~Z have been added to the ChildSing section and I am SO happy to report more Laurie StorEBooks are being re-illustrated and newly initiated! Check out the old and new Dan as well as Animal Airplane!

OLD Dan!

Shiny NEW Dan!

Ooohh SO fun is this A saturation of animals flying with aviator Annie Alligator on Atlas Animal Airlines! Again, great gratitude for Pixabay where I was able to get gorgeous graphics to allow Annie’s airplane to come alive and soar! We’re still getting our Leaping Literacy Library formats done for Marvelous Members but you can see and hear more here and you can purchase it on Kindle if you want to ~ woo hoo!

Suffice to say there are A LOT of ABCs at work and play in all sections of Leaping Literacy Library … and I’m still trying to figure out the best ways to let folks know what we’re up to should our offerings serve them … not my favorite part of things … happy to be singing in the forest … yet my nest requires rent, utilities, etc. so maybe more tweets?!

By the way, have I mentioned to you that you can try out Leaping Literacy Library for free??!! If the content serves you and yours, it’s just $12 per month ~ wowie zowie!

And! In addition to all of our Leaping Literacy Library offerings, early bird registration is open for our annual summer Family Feathers Camp:
How beauty blessed would you be to join us this Awesome August in the sacred Sierras?! Breathe into it! I would love to put your name on your cabin and hold your space in the Circle Of Love that is Feathers Of Freedom Family Camp!

So! Yes I am breathing and hope that you are too ~ whatever you are beautifully co-creating this moment, this time. Before I bid you adieu, I must make 1 conscious confession from last week’s blog ~ I wasn’t able to be impeccable with my word and post the For Humanity video ~ too much technical difficulty. So I did something I’ve never done before … went in and changed last week’s post! Whaaaaat?! Ya, you can do that and it was kinda fun and freeing! The song MP3 is there … if you’re called, scroll down, listen in and sing along! I love the thought that you might. I love you. If you are reading this, I absolutely love you. And I feel deeply blessed that we have breathed in blessings together, thank you, thank you. Namaste, Love!

 

Mysterious May Melting Away

Namaste glorious, free flowing, manifestations of goodness, changes, reflection & celebration!

I greet you in these fast fleeting, full yet mindful, May moments of memories & mysteries. As I continue to be in sacred service to Source, self, son, dad, family, Creative Spirit Families, the multi-facets of each of those can fill my days in sometimes exhausting ways. The energetic thread through all of it is what we have been referring to as The Mystery this month of May at New Thought Families. Our daily Play & Pray Calendar has been speaking to it with beautiful family voices; on each calendar page, there are the 2008 and 2015 God Spot music videos with my son Jeremiah and I as well as this incredible, anonymous audio, “The Mystery”. Did you get a chance to hear it? If so or if not, here it is in video. Yes, in these melting May moments, I finished and posted, “The Mystery” and it serves here and now as the main message of the week:

When New Thought Families first went live as a dot com on 2/7/2007, a friend had introduced me to this anonymous audio and it was a guidepost, a beacon for what it was that was calling me into being an interfaith voice for spiritual family literacy. Doing this video has been on the May list and after what was a disturbing Memorial Day experience, I knew it was an important one to finish here and now. Of the aforementioned experience, I will simply say for now that I took my dad to the local American Legion Memorial Day ceremony and lunch where I found myself witness to disturbing hate speech with the ‘patriotic’ rally cry of ‘taking our country back.’ In that occurrence and in the mindfulness since, I am practicing acceptance, non-judgment, and unconditional Love for those I found so offensive. And! I am, in the midst of the busyness, aligning & realigning with what is mine to do to actively bring Love to these voices of fear. In the end, we all have a voice, a heart, a perspective to share … and I surrender it all in conscious prayer that Love will conquer over fear. There is obviously a lot that can be told here but I am sitting with The Mystery and feeling the song(s) coming to be birthed as another aspect of the voice of my heart who cries for tolerance and fairness. I am also sitting with the questions … Is sharing these things with those that are open to them enough? Is that all I can do?! Is freedom truly the allowance and tolerance of all beliefs? What I do know is that holding a vibration of Love & oneness is always the right thing to do. And for all of us, there is always SO much to do!

I am a supporting band mom and retiring board member as Jeremiah is concluding his freshman year of high school, a trumpet player & a ROCKING bass player in the jazz band with a concert last night and 2 more this weekend. The caretaking with my dad is much like his overgrown cactus starting to bloom … the soft beauty amid the spiny, repelling needles.
As reported here earlier this month, I have been re-illustrating “Hazel’s Home” ~ picking up where I left off 15 years ago! While I think the re-illustration process will conclude this month, getting it into the sharable Laurie StorEBook formats will slide into June. And June is almost here! We’ll talk June soon, next post! Let’s breathe in more of The Mystery! Our Free Shelf this week is packed with mysterious goodness!The most mysterious & wondrous Luisah Teish shares with us her artwork and how it was *mysteriously* rebirthed! And our ABC Mystery Laurie StorEBook has the alphabet letters looking for our Action Ants in an alliteration adventure! Whatever life and heart adventures you are embracing or enduring, may you remember the Mystery of who you are, the power of who you are as co-creator of your gift of life and how the passionate perspective you choose, is always up to you. Namaste, Love!