Our Family Soul

 

During this time of Covid-19 and our attempt to begin both to return to our working world and our social and cultural pastimes, we are reminded often to pay attention to “safety” for ourselves and others. In fact, not only to pay attention to this safety but to feel our responsibility to be faithful to safe practices, like mask-wearing and social distancing. We hear often, and it is reinforced in commercial ads that “We are in this together.”  And “We will get through this together.

While there is some dissention about  clinging to our individual rights and freedoms, the larger picture and message is one of concern and even some fear of the unknown and left-over effects of both the Pandemic and our individual actions.

There is an upturn of care and thoughts of our family and neighbors; our health care workers; our first-responders; our grocery personnel; our food supply chain truckers who have kept food on our tables. Things could already be so much worse without the bravery and commitment of these people who work daily among the invisible enemy of this disease.

In my soon to be published memoir, Journey Girl; Steps in Secrets and Sanctuary, I reveal how an invisible birth mother, who was never fully explained to me, nor honored in my home growing up, affected me to the point I had to “complete her” in my adult years and make the truth of her a present part of my ancestry and my children’s and grandchildren’s lives going forward. While there was no ill-intent in the secrecy, it was bound and complete, until I could figure out who I could question and where I could search for answers. She was part of my Family Soul. Just as we are now gaining more insight on: We are all part of the Human Family Soul. The call is for each of us to build that up in the way for us most open to do it.

Journey Girl

From: Chapter Eleven,  — Island of Silence:  “Remembering Your Birthright

Science recognizes that we have a family soul. It is evident in our reliance upon DNA. It is required that we give our family medical histories in all new patient interviews. This gives the medical professionals pertinent information they may use to compile a profile of who we are based partially on what was present in our mother and father. They can then use this information to help them determine a satisfactory physical profile of their patients and make medical decisions of treatment with an awareness of possible threats to their physical wellness that arise from history. Science and soul are not at odds.

The fields of psychiatry and neurology and writings in classic literature suggest a longstanding belief that we are more than what we think we are—and this points to our relationship with who came before us in more than a nostalgic sense. Noted psychiatrist Carl Jung said “our souls, as well as our bodies, are composed of individual elements which were already present in the ranks of our ancestors.” This is a partial description of what I mean by a family soul. We often read that the eyes are the mirror to the soul in religious text. Author Ralph Waldo Emerson sounded his agreement by writing, “the eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.”

Jung also advised, “Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.” Maybe our whole human being-ness is a theory that evolves along with the miracle of the soul. You sound or look like your mother (only I did not). You notice he stands just like his father or you see your own likeness in a newly discovered photo of your grandmother. Through spirituality, psychology, and science, the miracle of the soul is full of new discoveries.

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It’s Heart Time on the Planet

 

Couple jumping dolphins, blue sea and sky, white clouds, bright sun

 

 

“The full potential of the heart and its intelligence has is yet to be fully unfolded and understood. Much like the electricity changed the outer world, learning to harness the power and intelligence of the heart can change our inner world.”  

During this time of rapid and massive changes, due to the presence of the world-wide Corona virus, Covid-19, we all have a chance to look outward into our external world and inward to our soul, heart and value system. Many people from different backgrounds are experiencing an impetus for positive change in ways they never had before. Other people are desperately sick with the virus itself and very near their last breath. Many families are encased in a private grief of lost dear ones and distanced from others who could give them physical comfort.

These are enormous changes — over a time span of which we do not yet know.. What do we do with this rapidly changing world in our food and goods delivery systems, our at-odds and feisty political parties, our religious worship practices, our education and health systems, our jobs and financial structures? All of these things touch us daily and will be changed forever even when the virus is gone.

One of the most important aspects of the changes taking place is a rediscovery of what’s been hidden in plain sight all along…its the heart. Along with the chaos, there is a new emergence of heart-based awareness and intelligence. I studied some of this in 2012 with Barbara Marx Hubbard, an evolutionary visionary and with the HeartMath Institute.

A unified message is emerging in public service announcements because of the gigantic way of delivering help, services, and companionship.  “We’re all in this together,” and never has it been more clear how inter-connected we are to one another throughout the world. There is a human presence of using the vast internet programs and platforms to build up the human and the human spirit from its loss of many things including free mobility by air, sea, or car. There is a recognition of the sacrifices and struggles of all of the world health care systems, and the nurses and doctors closest to death on a daily basis.

There is singing. There are thank you’s.. There are pep talks, “We will get through this, together.”  There is a remembrance of forgotten populations of our society, the poor, the sick, the elderly and individual efforts to give where it is needed. The commercials from the banking systems, retail, personal services all point toward, “we’ll be back” but in the meantime , “take good care of yourself.”

All of this points to a fundamental fact. Goodness and health is based in the heart. And the heart knows what is best in both our actions and our thoughts. I have signed up for a short course summary of the HeartMath Experience. It will be a good precursor for my cardiac evaluation coming up this summer. I intend to put some of the summary reminders on Napkinwriter so my readers can attune their hearts to wholesome practices and communication. Good nutrition is a great baseline, but there is so much more your heart is asking for.

 

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A Total Eclipse of the Heart

 

When I studied SpringForest QiGong with Master Chunyi Linn, he gave us a very beautiful meditative and healing verse to repeat:

“I am in the Universe.
The Universe is in my body.
The Universe and I combine together.”

 

So there are many spiritual and faith traditions and ancient learning that come from long ago that teach us to know there is union between all. I and the Universe are One. In God, there is only One. In God, I live and move and have my being. The Universe lives, moves and breathes as ONE.
I just recently caught up with the fact that there is a solar eclipse today on November 13. I was looking forward to this date for another reason.

In December 2011, I, with Sara Houseman, presented three workshops based on the writings and work of Barbara Marx Hubbard at Unity of Kalamazoo, Michigan.  The purpose of the meetings were to simply acquaint others with the life and the work and the grand vision Barbara Marx Hubbard had for Conscious Evolution.

She, too, in her pursuit of the “pulse of Evolution” came to the conclusion that there is only One and our earthly time is spent within that One. She has studied the history of Evolution and says whenever crisis and chaos appeared in the chain of evolution, that the species has always moved forward. That has been true, she says, since the time that the first single cell needed to grow into two cells to survive. It did so, and it did it again and again changing species along the evolutionary timeline to today.

With the global pandemic of  the Corona Virus – Covid – 19 racing across the globe, claiming thousands of lives in it’s wake, and in a way we never thought possible disrupting our lives, work, family interaction, school and business closings, and social isolation, we are at another crisis point of evolution.

Marx Hubbard calls these current times a “chaos point.” Things are broken. There are many things systems-wide that need change. The way we communicate and lead needs changing, in order to grow past the chaos today into what she calls a “Universal Being” — a species we homo sapiens are all capable of being.

But first, we need to become more familiar with our heart. Indeed, we must learn to breathe through our heart. We hear the beat of our heart, and without our heart, there is no breath. This is the exact muscle, we need not only strengthen for fitness, but for our very life, itself.

All outward appearances point to this being the type of change — Universal change — that she foretold in 2011. A global happening which required a global response. A response that was heart-led.

And as we await the eventual physical cure of this with a vaccine, the American health system is overrun, food suppliers are over-worked, first-line responders are over-taxed, children are confused with the changes and not being able to go to school, and businesses hope that in the long run, they do not lose their business, and people are generally stressed to keep on time with their bill paying, while they protect their families as best they can.

Amid these catatrophic changes, the human heart is out in front beating just for the present moment with love. Also concern and attention to who needs help and how to give it. This is the prediction of the Universal Homo Sapien being born right in this troubled and unprecidented time. Our hearts are beating as one. Our eyes are tuned to the needs of others. Even when groups cannot come together, the actions of one are spreading out over and over into this world of need. The common question is How Can I Help? What Can I Do?

HeartMath Institute, under the direction of Doc and Sarah Childre has studied the workings of the heart and the effect it has on ourselves and others. We are encouraged to “lead with our heart”, to become aware of heart resonance, which beats with the pulse of the Universe – with all that is.

They have a measured Science with convincing data, that our hearts produce an electro-magnetic field of about eight feet extending from the center of our being. When filled with heartfelt peace, acceptance and resonance, this field CHANGES the interaction and the space it is holding – for the good.

Long ago, we heard the story of “one little candle” at a time being able to light up the whole world. The same is true with heart resonance. It is a practice that benefits us physically (it is more than just being calm, it is a frequency that the Oneness in which we exist recognizes and beats in harmony with us).

I will write another blog on the actual practice of Heart Coherence and how you can easily put it in practice and accomplish immediate results with it.
An old tune comes to mind. (by Dusty Springfield or Rusty?)
“Once upon a time I was falling for you
Now I’m only falling apart.
Nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart.”

In the movement of Birth 2012, we wanted to get beyond the feeling there is nothing we can do to fix the things in the world that are now falling apart. We believed we could do something, within ourselves by recognizing our soul Essence, our Oneness, and joining what Marx Hubbard calls “our genius” with another or others and then — see what wants to be born within us in the new year as a new world.

Now, in 2020, eight years later and one year past her death at the age of 89  on April 10, 2019, the woman who is credited with “the birthing of the human” over the long, long time of evolution, would see for herself the appearance of joining “our genius with one another as scientists, business leaders, entrepreneurs and   philanthropists and common citizens indeed “join genius” to make forever choice of evolution to MOVE FORWARD, and birth a new reality. Most serious commentators agree, life will no longer be what it was, something new is coming, but we are working in a time unknown for that something NEW to be GOOD for us and our neighbor.

 

In times of crisis and chaos, we have ALWAYS moved forward. We can move forward into the world, leading with our hearts, within the spheres of family, church, community, and even bigger stages. It all depends on what “is waiting to be born” in us.

A new moon….a solar ECLIPSE…..a TOTAL eclipse of my heart.

Namaste.

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Acknowledging What Came Before…Suzy Baum Banks

GUEST BLOG 

Dark Journal 
writing.ritual & art making

Suzy Banks Baum

There is not a day that passes without me doing this:

I set out to bring the veg scraps to the compost. I pass the majestic oak. I pass the ancient maple stump that was 250 years old when the rest of its tree self fell 20 years ago. I walk on the mossy grass and murmur prayers of thanksgiving to all the spirits who hold this land. I send prayers of honor to the people who inhabited this place before me. Before the people who built our house in 1898. Before the white settlers came to this area and called it Great Barrington in 1726.

The traditional Native inhabitants of this area were Mohican. Stockbridge Mohican, as I learned from my friend Jimmy, who is a member of that tribe. Long displaced to Wisconsin, the tribe has a presence here in Berkshire County, no matter how many years have passed since they hunted, traded, and lived here. Just to the north of where I sit, stands Monument Mountain, a sacred place for Mohicans. My children went to high school in its craggy shadow. We have hiked it more times than I can recall. A few miles east is the confluence of the Umpachene and Konkapot Rivers. That land was a special meeting place for the Indigenous inhabitants of this territory. We go to those waterfalls for sanctuary in every season.

By my estimation, that Sugar Maple stood while the Mohicans still populated what is now called Berkshire County. This fact alone causes me to stop and say thank you for the shelter that tree provided then, and for what it gives to my family now.

How does the land you walk on nourish your day? How can you give thanks and acknowledge those who came before you? How does the act of breathing, step by step, connect you to yourself and help prepare for the coming winter season?

If you find yourself edgy and twitching from seasonal sensory overload, here is a small gift. It comes to you without cost, for it is the freshest and most readily accessed gift we can find every moment.
It is breath.

Place your right hand on your belly.
Place your left hand on your heart.
Begin to breathe so that you lift the belly hand slightly with your inhale, while your heart hand stays still.
Continue to breathe in this pattern, slowly. Inhale, move the belly hand. Exhale feel your belly fall toward your spine.

Continue in this breathing pattern for at least ten rounds of breath. If you feel lightheaded, please stop and try it again later.

This practice quiets my nervous system. I awoke this morning worrying about my daughter. I put my hands on belly and heart and breathed slowly for ten rounds. As I did, I saw her with plenty of strong solutions to the snag she is in right now. I saw her swimming forward in her life with strong brave strokes. I continued breathing and noticed how my mind, so quick to enter the day agitated, instead relaxed.

I hope you will consider joining me for Advent Dark Journal, a nourishing 6-week self-paced guided experience with writing, art, and ritual prompts delivered to your email every Saturday morning.

You can read all about it here.

Or go ahead and register here.
With love from my heart to yours,
Suzi

Copyright © 2019 Suzi Banks Baum, All rights reserved.
Via SuziBanksBaum.com, or at LaundryLineDivine.com
Our mailing address is:
Suzi Banks Baum
Post Office Box 224
Great Barrington, MA 01230

Add us to your address book

TO Suzi from Napkinwriter:

I needed this in this exact agitated moment, dear Suzi. I will share on Napkinwriter. Hearts and blessings to you, dear friend. I am breath…
Sue
aka Journey GIrl

 

 

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A Star in my Heart

 

My post today is my most beloved poem of all the poems Joyce Rupp has written. It touches me deeply at the soul level as being the poem of my own birth. Indeed, gathered together am I from history-held mysteries.

These past couple of months, I have been in prayer and healing ministry for so many of my family members and friends suffering from illness and grieving the loss of a loved one — each one “so ordinary, so unique, so simple, so complex”…

Each one given the gift of life and each one exploring the ways to live that as a life of love.

Each of us is surprised into life and each, the blessing of eternity passed on.

I seek out this poem often, to bless myself and the others that I love.

A Star in my Heart is a beautiful read.

 

 

From A Star in my Heart – Joyce Rupp

Revision date: 1/8/2018

gathered together am I
from a history-held mystery,
a bundle of memories am I.

caught from smiles and heartaches
of faces and places past cherished
given in love from the heart of life.

from kisses and love making,
from caring and growing,
from vibrancy and vitality,
the gathered memories
of my own named person
have been gifted into existence.

surprises from seeds and secrets,
gifts from unknown voices and events;
here am I, so ordinary, so unique.
here am I, so simple, so complex
knowing that the seed of my self
has the touch of gathered memories;
gleaned from the ages of another time,
seed and sperm seeking, making known.

a birthed bundle surprised into life,
light filling the center of a new spirit;
the blessing of eternity passed on:
urgency always to seek the face of God,
first gatherer of all good memories.

Joyce Rupp – A Star In My Heart

Lura Media –

 

 

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Stunned

Tears reside in the corners of my eyes, dripping down my cheeks ever so often. I don’t have to be watching news on TV, or looking at photos on the Internet of innocents, just barely beginning their own big lives. I don’t have to hear “semi-automatic” one more time. I don’t want to see terrorized parents outside a school building, waiting news of their child’s safety — or not.

Tears and a flu-absent stomach that broils and turns and is connected to a head that throbs, knowing the story has shattered…for all of us. Sending children to school today in America, a new residing consciousness of vulnerability…one we don’t want, need, or ask for.

Is there any comfort in starkness? I do not know.

There needs to be a new story…for us. How long will it be before that story comes into being? None of us know. No one can say anymore, “I never thought that would happen here.” That story is gone forever. No one can remain personally unaffected by the large mass of grief being experienced by the loss of our young children. No one can live and believe as they once did…it seems…so long ago now.

I stop my own words and share some words from Jean Houston, from a writing course I took a few years ago. About Re-Storying your Story.  Humanity is at a place in time where, being a writer or not, it must learn how to do this.

 

From Jean Houston: Finding Strength When the Story Shatters

“There are circumstances that must shatter you;
and if you are not shattered, then you have not
understood your circumstances.
In such circumstances, it is a failure
for your heart not to break.
And it is pointless to put up a fight,
For a fight will blind you to the opportunity
that has been presented by your misfortune.
Do you wish to persevere pridefully in the old life?
Of course you do: the old life was a good life.
But it is no longer available to you.
It has been carried away, irreversibly.
So there is only one thing to be done.
Transformation must be met with transformation.
Where there was the old life, let there be the new life.
Do not persevere. Dignify the shock. Sink, so as to rise.”

Written by Leon Weiseltier, Kaddish, page 226.

From Napkinwriter

Sometimes life hits us so hard, so unexpectedly, that we drop the ball and story shatters. I stood by close family friends, who in one shattering moment on a dark night on a Georgia Interstate, one woman’s life was snuffed out, who was daughter, and mother and wife, cousin  in a family that lost all those relationships and love in one indefendable freak accident in the middle of the highway, returning from family vacation. Lives shattered, dreams dashed.

A life-defining moment where, existing with the shattering, having to create a new story including what just happened to one family.

Shattering events are all around us and we are not exempt from them happening in our own life. It interrupts the everyday story is what Jean Houston writes.

Yes our personal and worldly story is in a state of INTERRUPTION.

Our shattered story needs rearranging.

Do we start with….”Once upon a time…”

God bless all the families and school personnel, who have been shattered by this latest vicious attack on our school children.

And God help us all. Please.

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Is Something New Awakening in You?

Barbara Marx Hubbard and a whole lot of other people (Humanity’s Team) think a new species is being born onto Earth. A wiser, more peaceful way of living in a world that works for all. A new species called Homo Universalis.

I studied one year with Hubbard, in which she explained the natural evolution of the cosmos to the point we are at today. That was back five years ago and the things the teachers described happening in our world in the near future, have between 2012 and 2017 certainly happened almost to a tee in the way they were forecast.

This is not a downer. It is a WAKE-er-upper. Humanity needs to be aware of things that are not working anymore and work together to create new ways of being together on this earth.

This short video does explain how she came to think this way and to continue to work for the awakening and evolution of humanity.

 

https://awakeningnewspecies.com/video-1/?inf_contact_key=a0da3efc1db9f95d0fd23e0c13705883bfffd97f3e81f08ddb33927763621239

 

Again, this is a pretty accurate graphic of what the Homo Universalis “creature” will look like.

 

I think I am becoming this.

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TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART

 

August 21, 2017

On this date, several years ago another miracle occurred in my life. I gave birth to my second daughter. I love her with all of my heart. I have snuggled with her, played with her, laughed and cried with her. I have witnessed her two miracle births and wondrous young children, my grandchildren.

This is a fully open heart occurrence in my life; one that beats through every moment of my life with gratitude and sheer wonder — yes wonder — that the life given me is filled with the awesomeness of being a tender-hearted mother, who enjoys life focused on family.

This is what love is…not always understanding, not always quiet, but always resolving how we are in relation to one another and how the love that beats below the base line centers us and creates our purpose.

Today in a few hours, MOTHER EARTH will experience a Total Eclipse of the Sun.  This mother has been having a tough time of it lately.

She knows and I know that much of humankind have open, loving hearts and intentions that serve her lands and waters with respect and care. But the SHADOW side of humankind is right now getting all the attention.

SHADOW likes to argue, cause ruckus, destroy, intimidate, hate…yes even take pride in being hateful…claiming the right to BE hateful….SHADOW’s time appears to be NOW in the turning of the planet.

I am not versed nor educated in the astrological physics, but I think I understand that there is a principle that’s been in existence since the Big Bang and that is that our Universe is continually expanding.  I have studied further that we are in the universe and that the universe is in us. Meaning that the same atom particles of the exploding stars are the same materials found in the human body that have existed since the beginning of time. (or was there a beginning?)

So, today, I want to think about this. If the universe is expanding and I am expanding, I choose to expand with all that looks and feels like LOVE.  I choose to leave behind and cut myself away from the shadow of anything that inhibits that free flow of love within me so that this expression can enhance my own life and the life of others.

THAT MEANS, to me, to continue to do things I’ve been learning all along to do: forgiveness of self and others is primary. Then working in harmony to accomplish what is mine to do. I can think small in order to accomplish big things…a simple smile, a word of grace, establish orderly living, and free myself for time into creative endeavors I feel called to.

This will be my Total Eclipse of the Heart. My intention for living in this manner. I hope, that like the sun that will once again shine through after the passing of the shadow moon, my life will contribute to the light of the world.

I do believe the darkness will never overcome this light.

 

 

GUEST BLOG:

from

Mark Kolack.

THIS ECLIPSE IS AN EJECT BUTTOM FROM UNIVERSE

Beloveds,
Tomorrow between 1:22pm – 4:17 pm Florida time, peaking at 2:54pm on August 21, 2017, people across the USA will see the Sun disappear behind the Moon, turning daylight into twilight, causing the temperature to drop rapidly, and revealing massive streamers of light streaking through the sky around the silhouette of the Moon. On this day, America will fall under the path of a total solar eclipse.

This is the first total solar eclipse visible from the continental USA in 38 years. It is the first Total Solar Eclipse in 99 years to be visible in its totality across the lower 48, and the first in 1500 years to be ONLY visible in totality across this region.

What does this eclipse mean? Reset: this celestial event will wipe the slate of your life, past, shadow, clean and set a new direction in your life parallel to what intention, vision, direction you set for it. What we visualize and focus on will be set into motion for years to come!
Make the choice to go deeper: admit what you really want and believe you can have it: face what you have been running from, good and ‘bad’ and embrace them both so they manifest and dissolve respectively. Ask God as yourself to free you and to fulfill your heart’s desires. Pray this into the vortex between 1-4pm.

On a psychological / metaphysical level a Total Solar Eclipse (TSE) blots out the conscious mind and allows the unconscious (INTUITION, as well as repressed emotion) to emerge. This is one of the best uses of the energy of a TSE: allow your ego to be blotted out and allow your Divine Knowing/Intuition to be revealed! We do this through prayer and affirming that this is what you are intending, what you are doing, and then it is what is happening! Then ask and listen and reflect.

On the flip side, any skeletons in your closet will dance when the moon (unknown, subconscious, repressed shadow material) takes over, but this is for the best. Dance with your shadow remembering that what you choose to release under an eclipse will disappear forever. It’s an eject button from the Universe.

This is a time for centering, visualizing, believing, asking, affirming, decreeing, commanding, surrendering and being grateful. Imagine if you were given a series of wishes from a beneficent genie: and all she required was that you got real with yourself, touched your heart; admitted what hurt you, asked to have it removed: and then asked for what your heart truly desired:

This is what this eclipse is: on a grand planetary scale of personal and epic proportions. Get real. Admit what’s up with yourself. Pray and affirm it into the eclipse vortex. Then go in peace.

We are going through the eye of the needle into the New World tomorrow. Don’t bother packing. Only self-love can fit. Leave the rest. Unhook your seatbelt for maximum effect!

Fly!
Eternal Love and Blessings,
~mk~

 

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Harvest Moon Rising

Harvest Moon Rising
Susan Heffron Hajec

A shimmering moon came down
from the sky
and touched her soft earth
in the Wildwood.

“Will you take a ride with me?”
asked the moon, gentle and soft.
Intrigued by this lunar visit, she sat herself
in the welcoming center womb
of the moon and it rose
once again into the high reaches
of the swirling color creations
of her moon-lit sky with no ceiling.

“Where are we going?” she inquired
as stars, like lightening bugs, flicked
all around her.
“To your harvest,” replied the November moon
as the horizon widened below her.

She looked down and she saw millions
of seeds of her love, planted over the varied
seasons of her life span.
They had fallen deep into the soil, seeking
both the heat of the earth’s center
and the touch of the sun above.

And risen to the surface were bountiful fruits,
many of which were random and scattered —
unplanned, spontaneous seedlings —
some, such a simple seed as to have been
forgotten by her.

Now, they spread across the Wildwood,
seeping out into the wider world and
enriching and abundant for all that they touched.
She, the author of kindness and creation,
relaxed by the kaleidoscope of color-filled purpose,
breathed into the movement of Harvest Moon
and now, opened even more
to the discovery found in journey.

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Remembering Christine Whitelaw

Photography by Christine Whitelaw

 

Remembering Christine Whitelaw

My last words on Napkinwriter from Christine were posted on June 28, 2014, in response to my post on our 3 day family vacation on Mackinac Island in early June. Just a mere  five days before she passed.

Just for the Family Record, June 28, 2014 archives: ” what a fabulous holiday Sue, I loved the butterfly house, and the pic of you three in rain gear … truly such fun and love to remember!” dadirri7

The sweet lotus was her favorite flower and her photographs reflect this. Christine, a flower of perfect sweetness.

“In the late afternoon we sat watching the lotus. A cool breeze took the edge off a hot day, but the water was still…Dancing in the afternoon light, pods and flowers together, celebrating the lowering sun, turning their heads to whisper sweet secrets to each other. We bow, united, our dance concluding with the sunset.” Christine Whitelaw. Dadirridreaming.

We entered into our friendship through words…blogging…..and our hearts met across time and space, her in Australia, me in Michigan.

Christine Whitelaw and I met through my Napkinwriter blog nearly three years ago. She was one of the few who commented on my writings. Then she began blogging herself which grew into a wondrous photographic blog. Through her writings came her light, compassion, and “stretching” into the wonder of life itself.

That’s what she said. “We ARE it, whatever IT is!”

Through her photography, we shared nature’s embrace and brilliance as gift to us. She opened my eyes to always include my horizon, always respect my environment and always LISTEN to its teachings. I thank her for that.

Light….in her words…..and shining in her photography.

I wanted to go to Australia, but I wanted to visit Christine when I did. I wanted to walk on the beach with her, each with our cameras, each with our sharing about life with eyes wide open. I wanted to go to Australia and attend one of Christine’s Yoga Nidra classes. I wanted the grace to participate in one of her annual Women’s Weekends.

We daydreamed about that…..Dadirridreaming and I….we did. We looked forward to that happening.

Christine and I shared a love of poetry by Hafiz. Christine, too, quoted Hafiz on occasion and the poem she selected below gives us a glimpse of her acceptance of the “impermanence of the body”.

She posted these words on March 20, 2014 by dadirri7 — Christine completed her travels of this mysterious existence quite abruptly on July 2, 2014.

She wrote:  “More on life and death from Hafiz: do you like the idea of being simply “a midair flight of golden wine”?

Photography by Christine Whitelaw

Deepening the Wonder by Hafiz

“Death is a favor to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.
The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes
Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.
If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks
And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that

We are just a midair flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world
Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.”

 

Through the permanence of our words, Christine and I now transcend the impermanence of the body.

I remember the fun and love of our friendship.  Like the treasures she found on the beach.

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