To Quieten Our Mind

 Wishing to share thoughts with you but totally preoccupied with weeding my flower beds!  Here is a post a friend on FB posted...10 Great Reasons to Meditate.  I think I like #6 best...or maybe 9.  Enjoy....or relax!

On time with your Self

Spring view from my 2nd floor window

Sometimes it actually happens: being on time with my Self.  This morning, before reading Solar Seal White Wizard I posted this comment:

Yesterday, In my neighborhood the trees burst forth in spring green, and today was the first morning I woke before the birds and the cat with a desire to actually get up! Windows are open, the air is warm and moist. I think winter is over. Natural Time clocks have reset.

"Being receptive to your inner autonomous sense of timing ~ being on time with your Self~ assures you will naturally be on time with your outer reality; Enchantment emerges from receptivity to the expanse of the present moment."...actually does happen!...sometimes.

The Lunar Tone for Today is #12 the cooperation of individual ~ community ~ individual ~ the collective....hand and glove working together.

That's it for today.  The birds are singing like crazy, it's 6 a.m.....time to get outside!

Arise, then, women of this day!

Mothers' Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. 

This link will tell you of her activism

 Julia Ward Howe ~ 1819 to 1910. 

Below is the Proclamation she wrote in 1870 .

          ......................................

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,

whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by

irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking

with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be

taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach

them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another

country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From

the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.

It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance

of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons

of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a

great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,

to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the

means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each

bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a

general congress of women without limit of nationality may be

appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at

the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the

alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement

of international questions, the great and general interests of

peace.

Julia Ward Howe

Boston 

1870

Seeds

Untitled

Dawna Markova

May I, may you, may we
not die unlived lives.
May we choose to inhabit our days,
to allow our living to open us,
to make us less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen our hearts
until they become wings,
torches, promises.
May each of us choose to risk our significance;
to live so that which comes to us as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which comes to us as blossom
goes on as fruit.

2009  My Seeds
Zora, Me, Alison (w/Scarlett), Hillary holding Stella

This poem crossed my path this morning.  I read it at dedication ceremony when we mixed the ashes of my parents together and put them into the ground in Gunnisonville Cemetery.

1944 ~ Columbia, S.C.

Here are a few of my favorite photos
of my Mom and Dad.
With pictures following
of Alan and Gail.
Our family of seven
has been reduced to three. 

1952 ~ Palmer House Hotel ~ Chicago

1980 ~ Gulf Shores, AL

1978

2006 ~ Thanksgiving Day


Alan Bryce Henry ~ September 3, 1957 to May 19, 1979
LeRoy Jerome Henry ~ September 15, 1923 to December 15, 2007
Lois Ophelia (Butts) Henry ~ January 23, 1922 to February 7, 2008
Priscilla Gail Farrell ~ July 18, 1949 to March 31, 2014

....and that which comes to us as blossom goes on as fruit!

2013 ~ Scarlett, Zora, Stella

Detached or Dangling?

At first blush this affirmation seemed an encouraging lofty ideal, but the more I thought about it the more complicated it became.  What is this assertion actually saying?

It strikes me that owning nothing is not detachment in the first place.  Owning nothing likely has more to do with lack... of income for starters, of education, of access to a living wage, of a support network (family, friends or community), of good health, of luck.  It might also have to do with lack of....energy, ambition, encouragement, self esteem,  hope.  All of these being an essay unto themselves.

So owning nothing might not be the focus here, but detachment, and if so, from what? Are we to detach ourselves from persons, places and things?  Distancing ourselves from people, does that eliminate love, friendship, family?  Can we be attached to kindred spirits and yet be detached? Where might the line between attached to the point of suffocating and detached to the point of nurturing be? Do we carry on, marching to our own drum and avoid friendships of people, care nothing about our partners, children or parents. And what about the death of a person we are attached to, do we slide into a deep depression, toss them aside with the attitude...people die all the time.   Do we give a wide berth to the security of place: home, church, community or even loving a vacation spot or treasured vista?

And what about things? Detachment to the point of not going into deep depression when something is lost...as in stolen, broken is not as difficult a task as losing someone. ( Death takes a toll but it too can be calmed with time and does not own us.) However all too often we can become attached, desperately, to things, as in possessions or the accumulation of them.  And attached to actions, beliefs, efforts, can also destroy our lives if their intent becomes contrary to the general good of humanity....which too is up for widespread disagreement!

Being owned, ourselves, by our own attachment to situations is a personal demon we continually struggle against. Or perhaps we don't struggle, but simply flow with the current of time and events and become the person we are with little resistance to our circumstances.  And sometimes we are happy. And sometimes we are not.

Which brings me around to my on going frustration with the citizenry..that being us!...being owned by big money. Big money which seems to own our Democracy, which maybe was never a democracy in the first place, we just were to naive to notice. Hasn't the top 1% been the ruling class all along? Which is the third topic for another conversation!

I would like to think I'm owned by a few important values and have solved a few of my own attachments. I have no answers, only dangling questions for your own thoughtful minds.

Blue Spring

One of my favorite Solar Seals is  the fourth archtype, Yellow Seed ~ Kan described by Ariel Spilsburg in her Mayan Oracle, "all seeds hold the holographic power of their completion." We've gone from Imix~birth; to Ix~breath; to Akbal~dreams; and now Kan~ flowering.

In just the few days this blog has existed I've learned the difficulty or life span of a flowering!  Know I will continually be working on this site but the unlikelihood of a daily post is becoming a reality.  I hope you will read the Pages which continue to grow.  Each of us have a unique ability to glean our own inspiration from the thoughtful words of others.  We are a complete flower from the day we are conceived.  All we have to do is bloom as the blue flowers of spring:

Chionodoxa luciliae (glory of snow)

anemone

lungwort

It has been a bit of a blue spring as we have waited not so patiently for the earth to warm. Today it seems everything is growing, desperate , more likely determined, to get on with it.  Perhaps we have something to learn ....

mystery lily

These flowers are all in my yard (however the images are from the web!)....and does anyone know exactly what the white flower is...note it does have a white stripe in the leaf??? ...and it has not yet blossomed, just curious.