resting...

the blog is not forgotten...

the fire is burning still...

poems.. flowers...mosaics... paper mache goddesses... clay sunflowers....painting with the girls.... woman, love, life seminars...

flowing...

making wine...

from

living, loving

living

life.....

I'm here!

dancing the crest of the wave

I am inspired by so much.. today it is pouring through me as the sunshine streaming through the window and steaming the early morning's frosty grass... I'm steaming too!

is it a dilemma to be so inspired? sometimes...

like today.. I am called to so much.. so much I'm still sitting here in my dressing gown.. the morning shower has subsided under the calling to go visit my babies in the greenhouse...spinach emerging, tiny specs of green peeping through the soil.. such a thrill to see life birthing the potential of juicy salads.. mmmm! now I am inspired to write of inspiration.. still attired in pink fluffy dressing gown.. bathing in the morning sunlight.. with a steaming good cup of yummy Black Adder tea by my side..

can inspiration be too much? this is my question this morning as I feel myself called in so many directions.. there is a dance in my veins that is pure life flow surging.. like the waves on the ocean it is incessant....pulled up from the deep and pouring its vibrancy onto the shores of this life.. I am sleeping less and less .. yet still it seems there is not enough time for everything that is calling... yes, everything is calling... I see that is what is calling me deeply.. that everything is calling - calling to be given life through this one... human being.. woman.. mind, body, soul and this One... humanity

this morning this calling is an explosion and implosion.. I feel I could burst and end up splattered all over the planet.. could be messy! yet in this fire there is another more subtle thread.. it is a pulling in.. into the deep silence.. and as that awareness dawns.. there is a more quieted place of vibrant tension.. every cell in the body pulsing like a star..

is this ecstatic inspiration too much for a human body? it feels it but clearly it's not.. for it's happening.. the Mystery of the day and what will birth is enticing..so thrilling... for all ideas of what it holds are shattered in this place.. I am riding the impulse.. dancing the crest of the wave.. consciousness surfing creation and source...intangibility becoming form.. wow!

Tilt

an utterly new experience on many levels tonight as I went with friends to 'Tilt' contemporary dance performance.. this work is based around the experience of more than 8000 earthquakes and aftershocks since September 2010 and is powerfully visceral.... the choreographers use of music.... body movement.. space.. light and lack of light.. created a raw presentation of the multitude of powerful emotions and the shattering experienced by locals in this last year...

what struck me more than the performance - which was astounding - was the inner experience... I realised within the first few moments of dance the futility of searching for the meaning of what was happening on stage, I came into a powerfully new embodied experience .... the power of full presence to a sensory experience without the use of mind in any way..... fully tangible in the body.. heart wide, wide open.. passion pouring through into the belly and womb... a fire of fully engaging the power of the moment..

I know presence..... and I love to dance.. without mind... fully feeling the flow... the beat.. rhythm.... movement.. yet this is something else.

this raises some BIG questions ... how would it be to live without needing to know the meaning of any experience?

what if the only meaning... of any value... is full presence to this moment? to allow everything to fully touch and penetrate places within .....without needing to know anything more than that touch?

is this the doorway to the utterly, fully alive experience of what it is to be consciously human?

certainly something has changed within this one's experience...


click for Tilt

taking care of my self

I am discovering an utterly new level of 'total embrace'... one that is shaking my roots ( for those of you into astrology I have Chiron transiting my IC) and quivering the foundations of this life in a BIG way... there is a raw roar sounding in the belly of this humanness and it is calling like never before to be totally held in the arms of love....in the Heart of God... it's like every place I have visited before is pounding on the door of my heart... the calling is insistent, persistent, compelling....

forget about healing this is something else...

I'm discovering there is no healing... just a respite...this final onslaught of self is the great teacher... and what is it teaching? that healing is not required.. there is nothing to heal in the unreal..

of course I can spend lifetimes in that pursuit if I wish... moving energy from here to there.. this is something else.. this is the learning to love in another way .... this is truly taking care of my self.....where hell and heaven walk hand in hand through the door of the heart with a roar of unity.. where human and divine melt and merge in the tender ache of loving the lack of love.. where standing alone is falling utterly into the lover's arms ... where the storm of earth life meets the sparkle of solar radiance and makes universal rainbows.....where I'm walking in the dark on tiptoes along a golden gossamer thread of connectivity.... Self to self...

it's terribly beautiful..

the guides? tenderness with willingness...

the sustenance? knowing only 'I' can do this...

the gift? knowing this is absolutely unavoidably necessary..

the joke? God is found in hell... and heaven... and everywhere in-between

How can She/He not be anywhere everywhere 'I' am?

WOW!

the imminence of death

the imminence
of death
finds me hungry
for life,
heart-bursting LIFE!
where a moment
of joy's
brilliant uprising
wipes me away;
where the glance
of a stranger
penetrates
walls and shells
of self,
piercing heart tender;
where the norms
and storms
of habitual living
are shattered
by Mystery's emergence;
the imminence
of death
is the edge
where brilliant clarity
meets
impassioned heart-felt
reality;
the pulse
giving birth
through earth
into body and flesh,
emerging
and
returning....

Wanaka poems

Otago landscape

Raw landscape;
mountains kissing sky;
light piercing dark clouds;
hawk resting on air,
still, watchful
ready to dive;
vibrant
liquid turquoise lake,
mirror for light and form;
rock poised
at the brink,
as if to fall
at wind’s breath;
Her golden sensuous ripples
of land;
soil, grass, stone,
tear my heart
open
with desolate beauty.
Something in me screams
‘too much, too much”
empty, stark
yet full of
bleak beauty.
Heart’s pierced
into tenderness
by God’s
earth shattered
Otago landscape.


Finger pointing

A real poet
is a finger
pointing to the beauty,
inner
and outer;
to the roar
of the raw
penetrating
heart and soul.
Word magic
onto page,
flowing
from the subtleties
of life, love,
earth,
God and death.
Opening doors
to inner wordless
space
with eyes
that see beyond
even the tragic beauty
of each moment’s
demise
into the next;
death, birth, death
and everything in between;
nothing is too much or
too little for the pen,
for the heart and soul
of a poet.


Sunrise over Lake Wanaka

Inky sky
with a tinge of pale,
lone star sparkles
and Venus
glows
her morning radiance.
Silence
broken by
tender ripples
of wave on
glassy lakeshore;
light and dark
merge;
pink glow hits
mountain peak
as sun reveals
His face
to empty sky.
Day emerges
resplendent
with potential.
All of life awakens.
I bow inside
as life
meets life
in radiant
sunrise mirror.


Human beings

Like nature
we are patterns,
light and shade,
colour and hue,
every moment
a different tone,
unless we limit
and hold
ourselves
tight
to one colour
one tune
and in so doing
fail
the unique artistry
diverse creativity
of human being
and beyond.

Stories and beyond the stories

A new way of being emerging from the rubble.....

We’d finally got our earthquake emergency kits organized the day before the earthquake struck on Tuesday 22nd. Unlike the quake in September, which happened in the middle of the night, this one hit at lunchtime – older kids at school, little ones playing in the garden, some of us in the top office, some in the chocolate kitchen, one of us in the central city……. By that evening, knowing we’re all safe, we’re looking at ‘What can we do?’ We’re both shattered and inspired by a city thrown open by an earthquake.

The first team was in the city 24 hours after the quake – to Hagley Park where a temporary building erected for the planned Ellerslie Flower Show was being used as accommodation for stranded tourists and locals made homeless by the quake. Chocolate was definitely a great entrance card! Within a half an hour hot chocolate, truffles and chocolate spoons had found their way into bodies hungry for the smallest comfort and sign of normality. The sweet taste of chocolate was bringing smiles to people traumatised by life’s capacity for sudden change.

Knowing the power of touch, I was inspired to offer shoulder and hand massages where I could. So many stories emerged as hand met body, heart met heart and trauma began to surface from the ocean of experience….

A 14 year old boy with the mental age of 4 would have made himself sick on chocolate if I’d let him, instead I offered to massage his hands. His experience emerged as I touched him.

He was in Centennial swimming pool when the earthquake happened. He told me graphically how the water came out of the pool like a tidal wave, taking him with it; then back in, swamping him in deep water. He was pulled out of the pool by lifeguards. In the September earthquake he and his father were buried under the chimney. They were dug out hours later. The effects of such experience were clear – his survival mechanism was on full alert.

As I massaged and talked with him an aftershock shook the steel building. In a split-second he was under the bedcovers (no seats in this shelter, just plastic mattresses and lots of blankets). He did emerge, shaken and chattering wildly ‘another one, another one’. It was only as hands touched his head with love that he calmed.

There are many more stories…. both tragic and heartening.

Radical action naturally emerges in a crisis when there is willingness to drop preferences and give. We are called beyond all boundaries to give birth to something authentic. In the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake everything we have learned within this teaching is challenged to come into a radically new living way of being, not only in our group here but also within the local community and wherever we venture. Over these few days we are seeing the expression of a spirit of unity that has not been here before – not just to survive and meet the basic needs of water, food and loos but to bring forth selfless giving to the calling of this moment. Flow happens very naturally in such a place. So does challenge to old ways of being.

Here is a small taste of what is emerging:

• She’s Chocolate Bus travels around the city with the Clown Doctor on board – lighting up faces and hearts with laughter and chocolate at relief centres. A team visits children in hospital with the funny man.
• We have received over $3200 in donations for the ‘She Chocolat Relief Fund’ and it’s growing daily. Donations are coming in from Japan, Sweden, Denmark, UK, France, Australia, New Zeland, Spain, USA & the Netherlands from She customers and BPF supporters.
• 250kg of the finest Belgian chocolate has been gifted by APS in Auckland (distributors), thousands of paper cups by a local company, hot chocolate urns by a ‘She’ supplier.
• A nationwide store has donated 3 large screens, DVD players and speakers. This enables us to show films at the relief centres where people spend days just lying on their mattresses.
• Our older children ask to learn The Form. They fall in love with it. We see the potential for other children, perhaps more traumatised, to become part of this opening.

Without intent a small gesture to take hot chocolate and chocolates into the city is evolving into something much more. Where that will take us who knows? One thing is sure however – it will always be over the edge of personal comfort.

So much is opening now; it is changing from moment to moment as vision expands. The calls for help come in in so many ways. We are struck by the potency of this time and our need for absolute response-ability in our relating and actions. As inspiration fuels the vision, the old patterning naturally arises to be embraced and transformed. It is a time of challenge to be utterly real: a time of huge potential, both inner and ‘outer’.

The shattering effect of a 6.3 earthquake is clearly being seen in the radical change within daily life. People are letting go of comfort to live on the edge of the unknown, embracing the new - newness that is clearly enforced by circumstance but with potential to bring an evolution of human connectivity and community. At a gathering in earthquake epicentre Lyttelton, held instead of the weekly Farmers’ Market, we saw the wheel of the world turn its face away from money. Local traders & farmers gave away coffee, chocolate & food; musicians & entertainers gave their gifts in a complete celebration of life. A commercial market has become a field of giving.