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ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: Take Stock
The video for today’s post not only has a message for you to consider it also announces that my husband, Richard, and I are taking some time to reflect. We are “taking stock” of many things during Solstice time, as the light here in the Northern Hemisphere dims and we retreat inward. With the Sun the MuseLetter and this blog will dim for a time.
My “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Take Stock:
Have a wonderful holiday time!
FRIDAY’S POEM FROM RHYTHMS AND CYCLES: Winter Solstice
This past Wednesday Rosemary and I hosted a meeting of our Consciousness Exploration Community for sharing some good food and excellent conversation. Our theme for the evening was sharing something meaningful about the holidays; a story, a song, a poem. So I wrote today’s poem which also fits my “Rhythms and Cycles” theme very well.
I hope you have wonderful memories of your Holiday Celebrations and are making new ones this year. Be sure to share them!
Winter Solstice
They say we are on a spiral journey;
We spin on the Mother,
Spinning around the Father,
Spinning at the edge of a Milky Way
Wheeling along the fringe of reality.
The effects of this circling seem small:
Summer Solstice spins through Fall
And on to deepening Winter.
As light recedes in lowered sky,
Spirit dips so close we feel the Love.
The cycle is grounded deep in Mother’s core,
The energy follows graceful lines of
Magnetic force, lifting consciousness
Along soft grooves of innocence,
Natural paths of vision and expansion.
Spiraling Consciousness follows
These graceful lines of attracting energy,
Mapping courses for the Transformations
That continue to carry us higher,
But never away.
Earth bound and sky grateful, we rise,
Ever seeking, always believing there is more;
We are more.
We stretch our plastic minds beyond,
Resisting brittle breakage on our destined way.
Each turn reveals more, creates new
Perspectives, new vistas pulling up,
Onward to next dreams, exposing
Even then, the next turn, inevitably ahead
Around the bend.
Solstice deep to Solstice high
We spiral from choice to choice
Knowing the journey, seeking
The cycle through consistent course, yet
Rising through transformation with every change.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
THANKSGIVING TRANSFORMATION: Richard’s Commentary
The title of Rosemary’s post of her poem, Butterfly, holds deep meaning in itself. Thanksgiving and Transformation aren’t words that go easily together, but if we give the pair a bit of thought there is more there.
We are now moving well into the last month of 2014. All the turkey trimmings are gone or put away. Is your sense of “thanksgiving” also put away with the November decorations, thrown out with the bones of the bird? Or do you practice gratitude all year long?
Rosemary’s second butterfly in her poem says: “Nothing is static. Nothing stays the same. The only constant is change.” Can we be grateful for every change? Can we look at every change as part of a greater transformation as explained by the third and smallest butterfly? This is the challenge the poem presents. It is the every day, small changes, moment to moment, that generate the transformations of our lives. And gratitude every day, moment to moment for those small changes leads to “thanksgiving transformation.”
Can you hear the vibration that rings between these two words? There is an echo between them, they are “light shadows” – we are thankful and we transform; we transform and we are thankful – every day and in every way. Thanksgiving Transformation is a state of being – continuous gratitude for the continuous state of change we experience. Thanksgiving Transformation is Life!
There is another pairing of words the squirrel of the poem brings to us: Presence and Preparation. These set up another vibration, the echo between being present in the moment, experiencing it fully, and being prepared for the next moment, that moment of change. It’s almost asking that we exist in two states at once; the dynamic about being prepared for tomorrow’s change while being fully present today is the challenge.
And this dynamic, this vibration is present in every breath, every heartbeat. As we inhale we breathe in appreciation, gratitude, thanksgiving for everything, especially the change of our body chemistry with the intake of fresh air. As we exhale we prepare for the next breath, exhausting the stale, used up air and the byproducts of our metabolism.
From the smallest change in our body chemistry, moment to tiny moment, to the great transforming changes in our lives, day-to-day, year-to-year, we are blessed. At the microcosmic level every moment is a miracle. And at cosmic scales, the beauty of the remnants of a supernova, as just one example, pictured here, are mind-boggling! I am in constant thanksgiving for all of it and all the blessings. I may not always be prepared for the coming changes, transformations, but I can truly give thanks for them!
Thanksgiving Transformation. You can’t have one without the other!
ROSEMARY’S INSPIRATION: Start with Gratitude
Now that we are in the full swing of the Holiday Season Rosemary offers some good advice for the whole month of December in her “Two-Minute” Video for this Week: Start with Gratitude
ROSEMARY’S EXPLORATION: Thanksgiving Transformation
A little something different from Rosmary for this week. A poem for you!
BUTTERFLY
A butterfly flits back and forth
Then back and forth again
Before my face
And perches gracefully on the grass at my feet.
It says, “I am the symbol of change. Accept me.”
“That’s funny,” I think.
I had just been thinking about what the future would bring.
Another butterfly, smaller than the first,
Flits by my face and settles on the grass at my feet.
“After each change comes the next one,” she says.
“Nothing is static. Nothing stays the same. The only constant is change.”
“OK, I get it,” I think.
A squirrel joins us, posing on the fence post to look at me and says, “Prepare.”
Now I’m wondering if all of Nature is conspiring to get a message to me.
Have I wondered overlong about the future and forgotten to be fully present in this moment now?
Am I somehow blocking the changes to come by not preparing today for whatever tomorrow brings because I refuse to focus on today?
Am I lost in concern for a moment that hasn’t happened yet while missing the gift of the moment at hand?
I start to walk back into the house
And the third butterfly appears, identical in markings to the other two but tinier than they.
She says to me,
“It is not mere change that we represent.
It is TRANSFORMATION.
Right now, right here, IN YOU.
Be blessed and IN-JOY.”
I get the message.
©Rosemary Bredeson
September 19, 2007
MONDAY’S POEM: Qigong in Winter
From corn planting under Butterfly Maiden’s watchful eye to deepening winter my poems Friday and today span the seasons. Qi, too, spans the seasons and all that we sense and know. Let the Qi rise and flow through all the seasons of your life!
Qigong in Winter
Relax shoulders, take breath to belly,
Slowing and expanding with each intake,
Holding;
Releasing downward through body,
Feeling the cleansing exhaustion
Of the stale and spent.
It feels good to sink into self,
To become aware, at the cellular level,
That the Qi is alive
With Light,
With Love.
If feels good to be home,
Fires burning, caudron bubbling,
Steam rising upward.
As the snow falls heavy like moths
Fluttering to Earth, Heavenly Qi
Feeds wooly worms
In some strange reversing
Metamorphosis:
Renewing, shifting, transforming,
Always new!
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
Please enjoy!
Men and The Goddess 