EASTER MUSINGS
from my heart to yours
“Overwhelmed. Too much. Fighting for life in an age of destruction. Abundance. As I drink my coffee, on this glorious spring morning, blossoms burst in color from their winter cocoon. Hope arrives in the hug of loving conversation with Uli, with friends, with my garden. Soulful promises for renewal whisper up from the depths of authentic reciprocity. Wait in hope.”
These are the first words that arise as I sit down to write this morning.
At times it feels like a war zone rages between hope and despair. Are you feeling the same struggle to find the resilience needed to stand and not waver from the depths of all this reality? Holding polarities this season feels like never-ending work. It is way too easy to swing wildly into chaotic swirling when we are caught in the tide of our own and so many other excruciatingly complex stories.
It’s not just the ‘daily news’ war bulletins that gut me. Today, like so many recent days, I just heard one more dear friend tell me that once again, life-threatening cancer is growing in her body. Death feels so close. Closer than it did at 25, or 50, or 70. That’s reality. Our human networks start to fray as we age, yet there is something about getting closer to Spirit when we can lift our heads up out of the Earth’s pain and find our cosmic connection through death.
Taped to my desk I read a recent message to myself about empowerment – “Invest in yourself, laugh and be light-hearted. Choose to relish your existence in this singular human body.” Yikes – in some moments it’s impossible to find anything to laugh about. But joy is always there – somewhere!? Like the joy of this mountain cactus in bloom.
Like last weekend when I reveled in a circle of 12, up in the mountains with Gene and Lauren, soul guides who opened the path of reconnection – through gratitude, grief and going forth into the world. Powerful, life-changing moments. Thorns and flowers.
The Work That Reconnects - Joanna Macy “helps people around the world discover and experience their innate connections with each other and the self-healing powers of the web of life, transforming despair and overwhelm into inspired, collaborative action.”
If the climate apocalypse threatens to undo you, I highly recommend this 2014 interview with Joanna, a true global elder. The Climate Crisis as Spiritual Path.
Another person who continues to offer me and so many others inspiration is Thomas Hubl – if you are interested he is offering a free webinar April 27th
“Resilient Presence: Cultivating Inner Strength & Connection In Challenging Times. How to stay engaged, present, and resourced while navigating personal and global stress. “If you’ve been feeling more exhausted, overwhelmed, or disconnected lately, you’re not alone. The stress we’re experiencing isn’t only in the headlines—we carry it in our bodies, our relationships, and our daily interactions.”
Part of my work in the world is to connect various webs of living community. That’s why I offer you readers these supportive networks of elder wisdom out into world. We need high octane doses of resourceful communal energy to thrive during these days. YES?!
Where are you finding others to pour your heart to? Do you share a place where safe and brave community space is offered every time you arrive at the door?
Maybe you’re a hub of connection that is ready to burst onto communal action like the spring blossoms.
Think about all the many ways you’ve been resourced over your lifetime. You are the energy of life, often waiting to be poured out.
My soul medicine for this weekend is, along with reaching out in writerly ways, is to garden up a storm with beauty, dance at our local library with neigbors, and meditate with the cruel execution of Jesus that cosmically opened a Way to life that after millennia, still resonates with the heart-opening paradoxical power of extreme Love. A man who surely knew his call.
It’s Good Friday tomorrow – a day to find goodness along the path of constant surrender to all the extremes of the journey of both life and death.
Let’s join together in all our varied ways and be a communal resurrection of hope, as we acquiesce to this reality of being human. Let’s never forget that we are each a beloved part of an exceedingly awesome cosmic Beauty.
SEEDS OF LIFE I ate a pomegranate last week, Its lush, red, ripeness cracked open before me. Full of life. Spilling hundreds of seeds before my hungry eyes: tiny, nutty grains, floating in wine-colored juice. Each capsule of turgid strength encased by elastic membranes of fleshy skin inside. Hiding room after room, full of more seeds. A storehouse of seeds, cavernous and rich with the ripeness of summer. You cannot bite into a pomegranate, you have to eat it seed by seed. It is my nature to want to stuff my face with handfuls of goodness, until juice pours from the corners. Extravagant, wasteful, luscious abundance. I want to gorge myself on this lush remembrance of wine and flesh. But today, the pomegranate calls me to eat, one seed at a time, slowly, reverently. Taste and see. This is my body broken open for you. Spilled across the ages - from time immemorial: Take and eat I become seed. FIBER Today the pomegranate seed is bittersweet. Gritty-edged pieces of flavored sawdust stick like pea-gravel to my tongue. I cannot swallow I cannot speak In the paralysis of this moment, I cling to the sweet wine of yesterday, but my mouth is full of fibrous residue - the wood, hay, stubble of my life and your life Clogging the simple flow of my desire to eat and drink I forget the juice, that baptism of joy that kick-started my soul back into life Would I starve this friend again when before me still lies the same uneaten feast? A feast of fiber and a wine festival There is no choice They flow together Spirit, digest in me the empty residue of bitterness This cup of bittersweet today This moment becomes a seed of mystery I eat I drink Your broken body in me One more time. Carol Kortsch