Inspirations: Ritual & Celebration

In the four expanded crossroads of summer/winter Solstices and fall/spring Equinoxes, we are made more aware of our connection to earth, either through breathless equilibrium, or the unbalanced tilt between Sol and Lady-Dark. We reconnect modern lives to ancient pasts where we built sacred stone ‘cathedrals’ to catch first moments of light at these quadrants of change. It seems a human condition that we are more glad in longer days, and that we turn toward darkness regretfully. Have we always preferred the light? If we did not, could we be more alive with her stars and secret shadows? The spinning arc of the moon, with silver skirts held high, begs sacred recognition at this numinous crossroads. If we stand still, ancient parts of us re-connect more easily in a Solstice night. When not blinded by the light, we see the dark in all her magnificence. Perhaps the black outlines the light, teaching us trust, as each spinning moment blossoms into the next, shape-shifting hopes and dreams we’ve woven from the dark yarn of long nights. Asana: A partner pose, sun and moon to one another, releasing, trusting, taking turns holding the power for each other. Moon lies on her back, legs up to fit into the hip crease of the sun, who faces her. Luna places her hands on his chest, and Sol places hands on the floor, either side of her head. Breathing together, the moon bends her knees and lifts the sun up over her head, where he lies relaxed, trusting, letting legs hang heavy. When the partnering feels secure, sol can lift the legs up and out, and lift the arms off the floor to open out and fly. He can also bring his soles of his feet into Baddha Konasana. When ready to dismount, clasp each… Read more »

Crazy families notwithstanding, all of us sit to feast with a few odd-balls at Thanksgiving. Perhaps those around the table reflect back some aspect of self, warts, beauty, and mania. They may simply be metaphors or symbols for lives inside that cannot find expression within, except through another. When the obsessive auntie, or pedantic brother in law make us flinch and want to leave, consider what dis-owned part is being aroused to action this year. They only have power to drive us bonkers when they represent a part we haven’t loved, encouraged, or allowed into our parameter. If so, we could easily laugh and enjoy their fringe benefits. Consider the options to not sitting down at all. What is the alternative to Joe’s dirty fingernails. OlePa’s snore over dessert. Maggie’s see through blouse with no bra. We always have choice to not show up. Yes, these choices bring ramifications, but consider if you had no family to turn toward, no friends with whom to lock arms, or lock horns, no home, no table, no turkey… no pie! Them apples are available. We can also sit deaf and dumb year after year, thinking there is something wrong with everyone, never changing, never looking up from the green beans almandine. And once again we leave the family table anguished and angry, swearing never to return. Another fabulous choice. When things got really crazy in our family, and they did, we served up small mirrors, and when someone behaved outrageously, we held up the mirrors so they might see themselves differently. Sometimes it worked, often it didn’t, but we laughed ourselves out of some bad places. May you do the same, as we lock arms, facing the future, counting manifold blessings, garbled and grace-filled. Asana: Find the pose offering deep repose. Use it…. Read more »

Does anyone love doing what they have to do? How do you do that? I can do what I have to do…sometimes, often grudgingly. I can always manage to do what I want to do. Having been superbly controlled as a child, I find discipline to be a thing of no small horror. I want to change, have tried to change, it is time, I must change. Wayward ways—-Be Gone! My new contract is with enacting ritual, instead of discipline. I’m calling a sow’s ear a silk purse, and as I drop my coin of the realm into its silky interior I pray it holds. Rituals speak of magic, of transformative elixirs, and beauty. Discipline is Saturn’s hold of being burdened in responsibilities and hard work. Hmmmm let’s see, which one do I love? Perhaps I need only turn ten degrees to the left to see that what I loath can be/is a thing of beauty? Is my mind that powerful? It can be, despite my lax and loathsome ways. My job, no my opportunity, to create renewal lies before me. I can choose to make a ritual of taking vitamins, drinking water, eating vegetables, doing paperwork. Each time I choose with attention and love, which is all ritual requires, my energy connects me to the task with joy, and expansive gratitude. When marching under discipline’s guidance, I do these things because I should. My energy in doing so obeys, and shrinks, feeling controlled. Which of these nurture and take my body into health? We are all aware of other’s energy, if not our own, even if it doesn’t come to full consciousness. You know instantly the moment someone is happy in helping, and when they do it because they feel obliged. Our energies are powerful and pervasive, and I… Read more »

When earth takes a human voice it flows through the flowers of my garden. Each morning they open to bless our time together and later, they offer balm to the closing of the day. In our cycles together a potent relationship of student and teacher grows. These are a few of the lessons I have come to absorb. These blooms are delicate, fierce, wry, and so attentive in their detail I am forced into total awareness, less I miss their life. Our relationship speaks to me of paradox and patience, frustration and trembling anticipation. I harvest dreams here. When I meet with failure, ‘there is always next year,’ the gardener’s mantra. They have knighted me with stewardship; the high honor and passion of mentoring their landscape, harvesting their beauty. They offer their lives to my learning, and applaud my efforts, even my failures. The garden teaches me scale. Running my fingers through her rich soil, I know there are more microorganisms in one cup of dirt than humans on the face of the earth. Fondling this warm life, uprooting weeds, moving earthworms from exposure, I know myself a tiny, and oh so important, microorganism indeed. Gardens are always in motion, even under three feet of snow. They are planning, laying themselves out for future splendor and betrayal, preparing to inform me in the spring. If you are fortunate enough to live in a garden you become a lover first, and a dancer second. In planting her seed I become the visionary of great things. On hands and knees, a true supplicant, I drop tiny black seeds, one by one into waiting earth. I envision their life. I can almost smell their grown leaves wilting under August sun. The seeds inside me are waiting to be dropped into fertile soil, imagined… Read more »

How big does our ‘Big Daddy’ live within us? How did his dreams forge our days? Have we come to terms with his mythos? Do we hear his voice in our own? When that young man, freckled and feckless or freckled and faithful, decided to have a child, was he ready? Or did he haplessly create life unconsciously, sweetly, accidentally, remorsefully, angrily? We, in our turn, continue that sacred ancestral dance: mother/father-child,father/mother-child. How do those patriarchal-steps go? Be we fathers or not, if we cannot find a way to have our father live handsomely within, we cannot change the patriarchal two-step and it becomes impossible to enter either the outer world, or the inner as the good king, the good husband of the feminine. Without Daddy holding correct alignment in our psyche, we struggle to understand true power, to feel success of our relationships, or to attain ‘peership,’ for these constitute the role of true fathering. “Big Daddy” energy leads the successful way out only when our full relationship with him dwells consciously within. Bringing that tangled relationship to the light of understanding is a lifetime’s ‘onion- work’, peeling layers year by year. Few of us have the dreamed-for-father, and I suspect those that do, have as difficult a time as those with impossible fathering. Cutting that over-sweet, binding, umbilical cord can be as daunting as for those with the fathers they never thought to choose. It is our responsibility to bring them into inner alignment so we do not spend our adult days arguing, fighting, resisting, weak, blind, chewing away at the old childhood relationship. This Father’s Day, as we face our fathers, alive or not, as we call the myth of the father we have created, let us practice our Yoga… be still and accepting, breathe belly-breaths, become… Read more »

So much to be said about mothers; choosing one, having one, being one, not being one, leaving one, her leaving. The umbilical cord of DNA connecting us to a known-stranger, who feeds us by & with transfusions, implantation, information, transformations….so that link by link, bone by bone we birth ourselves into being. The parental axis forges desires to either become who they desire, or… who they don’t, who they know & understand, or someone they’ll never understand…and everything in between. If you do not think there is something hugely karmic in choosing to live inside someone’s belly for nine months, emerging only to be totally at their mercy…think again. What is karma other than, ”The continuous working of every thought, word, and deed throughout eternity.” Thus what we do and think, and become, actively creates past, present, future. ( And if you really want to think like a Meta-physician, consider that it is all happening at once…boggling). It does serve to teach us to be fully responsible for each thought and action. The soul of the child choosing the parents is an interesting karmic situation. Can’t you see it? Sitting ‘off-site’ saying, “Eeeny meeny miney mo?” Ironic as that lacksidaisical view is, life is not that haphazard, much as it appears to be. The fateful free-fall of a soul into its karmic lap is as good a reason as any to celebrate Mother’s Day. Let us make it a day of connection, soul to soul dancing, celebrating this life-time together; loving, hating, torturing one another, but always learning. The fabulous invention of this earthly existence as an enormously haunting and powerful school room, where we agree to come not be saved, au contrair, but where we fight for a connected learning experience. Other planetary existences are not as rich in… Read more »

Not a celebration in sight. We should be screaming “help.” What happened to the May Pole? The ribald spring rites of procreation, and consecration of the land? In the power of celebration lies community. In the haunting sounds of shared laughter, we remain connected. In the primitive power of the circle, implicit in chant, song & dance, we reach out to embrace one another. Where have all ‘those flowers’ gone? Long time passing. When will we ever learn? When shall we re-seed May Day once again? Unortunately, we have come to view celebrations only as large, special occasions, costing time, energy and money. But if we hold to the original intent of the word, ‘celebrate,’ from the Latin root meaning, ‘frequent,’ celebrations can be created at a moment’s notice in order to take note of the grandeur in everyday life. The Balinese consecrate small pieces of each and every day as an invitation to ritual Put on your celebration costume, and nurture with the daily bread of beauty and ritual. When complexities and concerns overwhelm, nothing lifts spirit or nourishes soul like a heartfelt celebration, small or big. Perhaps we should categorize them? ‘Petites’ for the garden variety, such as creating a tea ceremony, or taking time to appreciate and grow a friendship. Then we have the large, abundant variety, like Solstice gatherings, full of ritual, Yoga, chanting, drumming, fire, strangers, and other animals. When complexities and concerns overwhelm, nothing lifts spirit or nourishes soul like a heartfelt celebration, small or big. Whenever we choose, we can invite ourself to life’s banquet, a table where Spirit serves ritual. Asana: Eka Pada Sirsasana, One Leg Behind the Head Pose. If you can do this pose, you have big reason to celebrate, and if you can’t, celebrate the fact you are showing… Read more »

Gaia is in her glory—as are we who tend her. Eternal female, she appears on her day/Earth Day dressed in a rainbow of silks, flowing chiffons, with a halo of daffodils twined on long curling tresses, and pedicured toes sporting silvery moon-rings. Her Venusian beauty vibrates, giving off rich scents of possibility. After her winter-crone desiccation, she, and we, breathe ‘la vida loca.’ Laying herself out in chartreuse Goddess-green, her bosom pulsing spring, closed portals, open. It is as though she takes a wand and color-wishes the air, pushing branches into laden arms of grace. Her breath/my breath, our cells interchange thought and feeling, cell information. We grow from, into, with, and around one another. When I lie in her arms, my core connected to hers through our umbilical cord, my life flows. When I listen to her Spirit whispering in mine, I do all things wisely. From there, the knowing; earth/air/sea/thee/me, a single cell sailing through time and space. Great Mother, as you hold and nurture us…how do we repay your generosity? How do we honor your gifts? More cement and asphalt into your pores? Ripping last forests out for paper plates? Tossing plastic into your sensuous waters? Heavier pesticides over front lawns and golf courses? Ahhhh yes, we are unbelievable stewards…… terrorists as it were. How can you support our churlish-childish behavior? How …..do you continue to love us? Oh Great Mother, send us your consciousness, give us your Grace. Asana: Any pose, especially a simple pose, where you stand, kneel, lie, with, on, beside Gaia. Take a moment to worship the Green Goddess. Let your Practice be one of conscious connection to feeling her Grace, and thanking her. Tadasana/stand still, Savasana/Corpse Pose, Sirsasana/Headstand, Uttanasana/Standing forward fold, Ustrasana/ Camel…are a few ideas.