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Once upon a time Sarah went to a plant swap to exchange some of her own lovingly grown vegetable seedlings for others that she did not yet have in her greenhouse. There she met a pleasant young woman who offered her a fairy tale eggplant in exchange for one of her young zucchini plants. She looked down and smiled at the new little potted seedling in her hands, but when she looked back up to thank the young woman she was gone.
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APRIL 3rd, 3-5pm. Join me by zoom for a celebration of Reiki! Free. Details and tickets https://humbooking.as.me/reiki-100-year-celebration
What started with one man’s incredible spiritual experience in March of 1922, has become a force for healing that is practiced by millions of people around the world. That in the 100 years since the establishment of the Reiki healing method its power has not been corrupted or lost is, I believe, due to the clarity of purpose of its founder, Mikao Usui, and the love and sacredness that was woven into its use right from the beginning. At equinox time, the balance of light and dark gives us all a chance to notice where our own imbalances are. This is good, as individuals we should always strive to have balance in our lives. However, as we move out of the very limiting story that has been passed on through our collective field since the dawning of the patriarchy – that of prioritizing individual gains at any cost to the collective – it can be increasingly difficult to separate where we feel light in our own lives from where so much darkness exists in places outside of ourselves. In these past few weeks I have lost track of the number of friends and clients that are feeling guilt as they confront their own privilege in the face of what unfolds in Ukraine. To live with so much ease and abundance while people elsewhere are either fleeing or fighting in an effort to survive can be hard to reconcile.
The Cailleach (pronounced Cal-ee-yuk) is a Goddess from Irish (and Scottish & English) mythology. She is most often associated as the Hag or Crone who brings winter. She is frequently portrayed as old and withered, but powerful and fearsome, without compassion or remorse. The bringer of darkness, cold and death. The stealer of warmth and light. In many stories she rules the 6 months of darkness, handing over the reins then to Brigit, the Goddess associated with spring, who takes charge of the 6 months of light.
We have been so focused on the physical poison that is COVID-19, that many of us have forgotten all about its medicine.
Without a doubt this virus is having many direct and indirect detrimental effects to our physical and mental wellbeing, some of them extreme. That people are losing their livelihoods, and in some cases their lives, is no small measure of the potentially deadly side-effects of COVID-19. But if we broaden our view and look to our global organism, does COVID-19 come as a messenger of life? Is there medicine for us and this broken system of ours, that scientists were already warning was threatening to collapse the entire biosphere? Scientists warn that humanity is driving our biosphere into imminent collapse (1). Yikes.
As I scientist, I believe in science, and it has been a struggle for me to accept the science that I know to be true, while staying true to the life path that I have chosen – that of supporting humans to awaken to their innate potential and to the possibility of contributing to planetary transformation. In the words of Pema Chodron “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
If you are reading this, chances are that like me, there were many times over the past four years that you wished Donald Trump would just go away. Today, November 7th, with the election of new President of the US, I hope that we have learned what we needed to learn from him. Truly, he is the greatest mirror for the collective program of greed, separation, violence, and abhorrent misuse of power that we could have possibly asked for. July 16th, Greta Thunberg and three of her fellow climate activists launched an open letter (https://climateemergencyeu.org/) demanding EU leaders take measurable, immediate action to genuinely tackle the climate crisis.
The letter’s demands include that the climate emergency is treated like an emergency, and with that comes the immediate halting of all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, and an end to fossil fuel subsidies. The letter also demands that EU member states make ecocide (extensive damage to Earth's ecological systems) an international crime, and that climate policies be put in place that reduce racial, economic, and gender inequality. Almost every morning I walk through some nearby trails in a beautiful forest. The trails are extensive, and I readily get “lost” - although “lost” isn’t quite the right word! I follow the guidance of Spirit, who tells me what way to go, through what feels like an instinctual pulse in my gut. The feeling says “Go this way”.
A couple of weeks ago, I came to a usual crossroads where four ways meet, and was about to go my preferred route which takes me deeper into the forest where more unknown choices emerge, when the voice was clear “No, go that way”. On June 16th, 1944, 76 years ago today, 14-year old George Stinney was executed by the electric chair following a 2-hour trial that found him, an African American boy, guilty of murdering two young white girls in South Carolina. His court-assigned lawyer offered no defence, and the all-white jury pronounced him guilty after 10 minutes of deliberation. In 2014 a judicial review overturned his conviction when a court ruled that he had not received a fair trial.
This is a horrific and heartbreaking story, but it is just one of hundreds, no…thousands, of stories of the incredible injustice that people of colour have lived (and died) through in so-called “modern” history. |