Dear Goddess, Thank you for awakening my heart, allowing me to grow and showing me the way of love.
Dear Goddess, Thank you for the opportunity to help other women who appreciate or need and want to hold my hand on this path to divinity.
Dear Goddess, Thank you for placing divine creatures and environments all around to encourage, support and enhance my spiritual development on this earth.
Blessed BE! And so it is, Namaste and Amen.
I’m sipping hot chocolate enjoying the fresh air on a May early evening up on our treehouse balcony. I am delighted it’s neither warm nor cool, it’s just Goldilocks right. There’s no kids or noise across the street. There’s no cars driving by our busy road. There’s no neighbors on either side.
I recognize the white bright light of Venus in the sky. It’s low between the sugar pine branches to the southeast of where I am lounging.
And just like that, in a snap of a second, in an instant and flash of time, something flies from behind the east side of the house and whizzes past me and smacks into the bird feeding tree trunk. It’s another flying squirrel and this time I see it glide in full flight and I think to myself this one has to be the male because this guy slams, thank you ma’am, scrabbles up and down and causes havoc.
The other beady eyed glider is still, steady, methodical in her bird feeder attack approach and technique and watches the male with I swear, a roll of her beady eyes. So I just assume inside my own judgmental brain, she’s the female.
Here’s the list of other plants: Poison Oak (no sampling but did you know it’s there to protect other plants from predators?),
Sticky Monkey (yellow flowers edible and it opens you up energetically making you vulnerable so it’s great for connecting to your higher self and intimacy with others),
Wild Cucumber (not edible but mature seed pods can be cracked open and inside are loofah type sponges used for cleansing long ago by indigenous people),
California Mugwort used as a spirit ally for lucid dreamwork and vision quests, CA poppy which has edible leaves and flowers that help with anxiety, showy penstemon, scrub oak which is not a real oak, Ca sage brush is great for smudging,
Mule fat used to drill willow bark back in the day to create fire, CA buckwheat which is not really wheatgrass at all and its tea leaves helps with headaches and its dried flowers makes reddish pancakes,
CA sage, CA gooseberry, Black Sage with its light blue flowers, Hemlock which as Socrates knows is deadly,
wild mustard which is bitter greens, golden chia that doesn’t look anything like a chia pet from the black seeded variety and finally, thistle which is a lilac colored spiny ball of a flower and grows profusely here in CA.
Yesterday I went to Hahamonga Watershed Park in Pasadena with V, J, J’s mom and I met I and K whom I have heard about since before Covid. What a pleasant late morning to early afternoon spent on a beautiful California Sunday – Oscar night no less.
This was a small group and a planned educational walk with a certified guide named Andrea who took us through several areas of concentrated native and non-native plants that liberally sowed themselves in plain sight. Her mission was to help us identify and give us background on its scientifically based medicinal benefits, what indigenous folks in the area used it for and even its metaphysical energy properties that have been bestowed on these seemingly weedy plants through the ages and common lore.
If anyone who knows me can testify, I am a devout plant lover. Just search herb in the search box. I am sure I have written on them and my HERB book was the very first book I bought alongside Thomas Maps and the Sunset’s Gardener Guide to plants when I landed in CA. This is back in the day when you actually went to a bookstore and actually lugged the books back to your car to take them home, circa July of 1986. Not like today wherein I just have them delivered on my doorstep so I have since accumulated way to many books (but I love them all) and have read at least 90% of them. But I digress….. Don’t get me started….
Anyways, we gathered some leaves and placed them in our small notebooks and after the third specimen my curiosity was peaked and my adrenaline flowed. I started writing their names down as if I had a report due. It’s contagious and we were all ok with being the studious types geeking out on taking notes and pictures like eager school kiddoes on a field trip.
Plants we were introduced to or familiar with (I don’t believe any of us were first time plant lovers): Oaks, Nettle, Elderberry – Ok this is when I knew I could not stop from taking out my pen and empty journal and start documenting this experience.
Tune in for Part 2 tomorrow
“Don’t forget that maybe you are the lighthouse in someone’s storm” – unknown
I am everything to Cindi, our dog. We’ve had her now for 9 years and she was probably 5 or 6 when we rescued and adopted her. She has taught me the true meaning of unconditional love. She is greyer, older, a bit larger and more needy than ever and never mind all that, I am so in love with her!
She has been one of the many catalysts in cementing my perspective that superficiality is just that – superficial and that LOVE is everything. Connection, relationship and being of service is the journey, at least for me.
Somewhere in April of 2019 I hit the wall. I must have needed the break and a year later we had it. Covid locked us all down. Three years have elapsed. Almost to the day. And, I realize I don’t need an MFA to write and to be fair, writing has changed. So has the operation of this website, so please bear with me.
Much occurred and many changes became the norm. You and I operate differently now.
In the air, grief, remains. Our lives and perspectives irrevocably morphed into distance learning and socializing. That has to leave a scar. I most empathize with whomever suffered, those mourning and the students who had their entire little lives shackeled.
There was division and fear and terror. It still lingers. It’s in the back of our heads and we have seen the traitorous in ourselves. The mirror doesn’t lie if you look with the lens of truth. And everyone seems to have their own true facts according to whom they listen to.
On the upside, some folks have found our time in a global pandemic an opportunity to delve into the spiritual, transform into their authentic selves and become more discerning. Those are my peeps.
“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” ―
Truth-telling is misused constantly, especially lately. The truth without compassion is an act of violence, it’s abusive but with understanding and tenderness, it is an act of love.
Similarly, love without trust, truth, respect, and loyalty is a lie. Yet unconditional love with honesty is freedom.
Religion is for those who fear hell. Spirituality is for those who have been through hell.
Find your own inner buddha.
What makes for a purposeful life?
If you can answer what makes you tick and have a passion for, you know.
It’s certainly not the fame and fortune unless you use it to help others in some way, like Oprah or Bill Gates. Otherwise, it’s shallow.
Same with your talents and gifts. What makes you happy is giving it to the world, expression of self. From birth to sending it forth, generosity is a powerful intention.
Viewing Love, forgiveness, generosity and gratitude as a power greater than greed, hate, anger, resentment, arrogance and envy as your goal, is a positive response.
