Jeanne, thank you . What a beautiful surprise to see your words when I came here today.
This community you have created uplifts and restores us all.
It allows us to be lights and receive light, offer words of wisdom and hear words of wisdom, comfort others and be comforted. I guess one could say it offers balance in an unbalanced world.
The blessings I have received after becoming actively involved here continue to multiple and grow. As I visualize this community, it reminds me of a thriving community garden.
There are the seeds and bulbs which lay in the rich earth waiting for the sun and rain to foster their growth. The trees. bushes and flowers grow in their own time, sharing their gifts throughout the changing seasons. They are aided by the earthworms and ants aerating the soil, the bees and butterflies pollenating flowers, and wind and birds transferring seeds to new soil, spreading beauty beyond the community base.
The caretakers nurture, while weeding, and cultivating. Hope abounds that the fall bulbs planted before the first frost, bloom gloriously in the spring, That the spring vegetable plantings bring forth rich summer and fall harvests. There may be damaging winds, flooding rains, and parched dry periods, but the caretakers continue to tend to the gardens with love, faith and hope, for the garden gives back what it receives and even astonishes from time to time with the gift of unexpected surprises.
Jeanne Mayell, just look at what your garden is growing.
Love your metaphor. I love gardening too.
Nathan Phillips.
When I first read what happened to this beautiful Native American, on Friday in DC ( link at bottom of this post) my soul hurt. I was also pretty angry, for a short period time. But then I thought about his character and all he has done over the years and my emotions been to shift.
He is an Omaha Elder, Vietnam Veteran ( Marine), former director of the Native Youth Alliance, Keeper of a scared pipe, and Water Protector at Standing Rock. Every year he honors Native American Indian Vietnam veterans in a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
As I watched videos of how he was taunted and mocked, and read accounts of what transpired, I thought that he must have been guided by Spirit. He must have had a reason to have been there at that moment, in this time we are now living. It was soon after this thought (which began to warm my heart) that I read an account from Marcus Frejo, a member of the Pawnee and Seminole tribes and Elder Nathan Phillips:
"They went from mocking us and laughing at us to singing with us. I heard it three times," Frejo said. "That spirit moved through us, that drum, and it slowly started to move through some of those youths."
Eventually a calm fell over the group of students and they broke up and walked away.
"When I was there singing, I heard them saying 'Build that wall, build that wall,'" Phillips said, as he wiped away tears in a video posted on Instagram. "This is indigenous lands. We're not supposed to have walls here. We never did."
He told The Washington Post that while he was drumming, he thought about his wife, Shoshana, who died of bone marrow cancer nearly four years ago, and the threats that indigenous communities around the world are facing.
"I felt like the spirit was talking through me," Phillips said. https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20190119/news/301199883
Once again, the light shines bright when there is darkness.
Loveendures,
Thank you for sharing this! The article expressed so much more than just a news event.
Shining light on so many shadows of our collective and our growing awareness that we are all connected as a nation in so many ways beyonce even racial, cultural, and political division.
Nathan Phillips has a strong connection to spirit and his role in this time in our changing world
May we all send him love and support in the days ahead that he may continue to grow in purpose and direction. We have not heard the last from or about him.
Scottish Doctors Are Now Issuing Prescriptions to Go Hiking
"For everything from high blood pressure to diabetes, anxiety, and depression, the medical community is learning (though lots of us have always known) that many ailments and diseases can be treated with activities like birdwatching, maybe a little kayaking, perhaps combing a beach for shells, even skipping pebbles across a slow-moving stream. Even just sitting silently in a forest, meditating (see: Japan, forest bathing)." https://www.adventure-journal.com/2018/10/scottish-doctors-are-now-issuing-prescriptions-to-go-hiking/?fbclid=IwAR2X29-T4HdLNMnRmnLm0oNgoFmVYspJxp7oMn0HVMyHS6zq348UKUPf_0s
Love this! I'm getting a picture of life down the road that is simple and preventive healthcare cheap and effective.
Oh Cdeanne,
Thanks for bringing this up! I love forest bathing. It's the most intense but right to the core natural energy I've ever felt. The trees and other life forms become one. Walking under a waterfall is similar as is (I've heard) swimming with whales, dolphins and other sealife.
But for housebound, elderly or city dwellers, at least breathe in fresh air and the sun and stroke a pet in a meditative and calming energy of that life and heart connection. Or holding a new baby and it doesn't even have to be your own or even related. Any oh yes, laying in the grass and connecting with the clouds, angels, and all of their messages.
Just love everyone and everything and connect with that deep inner smile we all have. See, feel, appreciate the true innate beauty of life.
But trees, especially old growth, or 100 year old trees are just the best!
I'm glad to see I'm not the only fan here of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing). In fact, I'm in the beginning stages of training to become a licensed forest therapist through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapists.
Coming from a background of medical complications stemming from a pre-existing condition, I alway intuitively suspected that something was missing in the conventional model of modern healthcare. Even observational studies have show that hospital patients with a room overlooking a garden will heal faster than patients who only have views of a parking lot/built environments. Happily, those Scottish doctors are not alone. Health professional in Nordic countries and East Asia have been increasingly turning to nature therapy as a supplement to treatment plans, and I hope to do my part to carry that cultural shift over into the US.
Coyote, I'm very appreciative of your thoughtful and inspiring message, and for the link: https://www.natureandforesttherapy.org
Living where I do, I find near-daily beach combing and ocean gazing are essential for me to feel and re-feel deeply and joyfully calm and connected.
Michele, I love your nature reverie. Lying in the grass and looking at clouds and sky is guaranteed to be uplifting!
One of my all-time favorites while out hiking is to find a kinda flat-topped boulder (or even a cluster of large stones) to lie face-up on and feel myself relaxing into...the combo of stone upon ground beneath me, and open sky above, never ceases to remind me how deeply good this life on Earth is.
Speaking of stones, and because it is raining hard in usually too-dry SoCal today, here's one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, "Lingering in Happiness," from her book, Why I Wake Early. The last two lines always knock me out:
After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground.
where it will disappear--but not, of course, vanish
except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushions of moss;
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel;
and so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.