Tis the Season

It’s hard to believe that there are only 12 days until it’s Christmas! For me, the middle of December has always been a magical time – everything looks, sounds, smells and feels different. There is this unspoken expectation hanging in the air that magic is about to happen – a creative tension of childlike wonder and joy – familiar and simply impossible to ignore.

Looking back now from January until December, I see an exquisite and intricate brightly colored quilt sewn and embroidered by the hands of those I have shared 2009 with. Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring have cycled through these months connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting a diverse catalogue of faces, hearts and souls. Standing from this seasonal vantage point, I feel outrageously wealthy with appreciation for the colors and textures that each of you has added to my year.

This is the season where we review all the moving parts of our lives and make a list, check it twice and appreciate, value and buy gifts for those in our lives who have added to the wealth of the year. This is the season for retailers and businesses all over the country to encourage us in this gift buying frenzy by hanging mistletoe, tinsel, hiring Santa’s and piping carol music throughout the centre in symbols, language, images and music that celebrate a northern hemisphere Winter Solstice, Yule, Saturnalia and various “stories” with origins in other times, cultures, mythologies and belief structures.

Here in the southern hemisphere, it is summer - the night is short, day is long and the temperature is humid and hot. Yet we annually put men into hot red and white fluffy Santa suits with boots, capes, furred collars, long jackets and pants. We stuff them into these suits and pay them to sit in air conditioned North Pole decorated shopping centres, while outside under the harsh Australian sun, the mercury boils over 40 degrees Celsius and the only ice we need cools the beer that we swill as we sit watching the cricket in our boardies and thongs.

Year after year we decorate our green plastic trees, drape our houses with thousands of twinkling fairy lights, sing songs about snow and covet traditional Christmas turkey, plum pudding and egg nog all from the comfort of our air conditioned homes while outside, our gardens are burning and melting under another scorching southern summer.

So what are we actually celebrating here?

Life is a series of natural processes that appear to be following a continuous cycle. The passing of time and the progression of birth, life, decline and death, as experienced in human lives, is echoed in the progression of the seasons through the solstices and equinoxes. Winter solstice is the midpoint between Samhain and Imbolc – the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring and many Christmas symbols appear to celebrate this process.

I know - let’s set up a global public debate between the finest academic scientific brains and get to the bottom of this story! :-) Like those in the centuries before us, we will simply add our own perspective to the meaning of this human celebration – this expression – this holi- day. Perhaps our willingness to continue to celebrate such a paradox of stories perfectly illustrates how the human heart wishes to express magic, joy and love in unrelenting and infinite creation, connection and celebration?

So from me - Merry Christmas. Happy Holi-days. Kool Yule, Season’s Greetings – whatever you wish to call it!

In December 2009, in an age where 50 is the new 30, grey is the new black, old is the new young and the mythology of race, religion, culture and sex merge and blur from the many into the one, I wish you an appreciation of the colours and textures in all the stories you have collected and created in your lives, wrapped in boxes and placed under your tree. Enjoy – in joy – as you carefully unwrap these gifts on Christmas morning ripping through the paper and the ribbon as you celebrate what’s inside the box.

xxx

We are the Ones we are waiting for

The following is a quote from an unnamed Elder of the Hopi Nation in Oraibi, Arizona.

For me, questioning the quickening of life in this week of full moon and winter solstice, it says everything. Please ask yourself these things to be considered and answer each one. Then take a step back and take a look at your life.

"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered . . .

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader."

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, "This could be a good time!"

"There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer greatly.

"Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, Least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

"The time for the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from you attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for."

-- attributed to an unnamed Hopi elder

Hopi Nation

I watched the Elephant story by David Attenborough on Sunday. It struck me when he said they were superior conscious beings. This was my thought – just popped into my head – that like the Red Indians who could not see the ships sailing down the river because they had no visual reference for them, perhaps Elephants live like THEY are the humans and in control of this planet and only
See THEIR reality – what they eat, other animals etc. And they only see us when we enter into their realm and somehow cross over into their vision. Then I though that perhaps aliens and ghosts (and millions of other beings of whom I have no reference point - were possibly like this and lived here right now with us on this planet. It is only when they cross over into our realm, that we see them? and then only as a dream or a glimpse or a trick of the light.

However we question and have fear and our brains reject what we see as there is no acceptable platform for them. It’s as if billions of conscious beings live around us. They conduct their daily lives as we do, some aware most not.

I “FEEL” the pulse of earth beneath me to be quickening at a rate never before witnessed in recent history. It’s always quickening but we don’t see it as it happens over time. Now it seems to be escalating and everyone is feeling a shift – financially, emotionally, and physically. It is as if in order to survive we must let go of what we THINK is True and open to what we do not yet know. How we do that is to have faith in ourselves and not allow FEAR to influence our thoughts and lives.

Perhaps we are in an Intensive for Life and training for some future event – This is survival training. We either sink in fear or rise to the challenge and find new muscles we never knew we had.

I do not know if something is changing - or maybe it is just ME that is changing. All my friends and family FEEL this. Perhaps that is simply my illusion that is evolving?

Whatever this is - or isn't - perhaps we cimply consider all those things mentioned above and let go of the shore - and just float, knowing that we are already here and WE are the ones we are waiting for.

Organic Process

Winter is in the process of ending and Spring is looming before us. Trees whose leaves went reddish yellowish brownish purple in April and then fell in June will begin to bud and bloom again in September so that by December they will be a brilliant green.

When we isolate principles of structure – like we do when learning music or dance or programming software – the series of lessons in natural order and organic forces – like the observation of trees in the cycles of life – provide us with the greatest of holographs.

New forms emerge from the disintegration of the old. Moss growing on dead tree trunks and seedlings sprout through dead leaves. Forests hold an organic order through growth, maturation and decay processes. We don’t hold onto the old leaves and attempt to glue them back onto the trees. We appreciate their life cycle.

Yet we beat ourselves up by being in one cycle or another.
“I need to move forward.”
“It will be ok when I get there.”
“Now I have updated my model and have improved life is better.”

mmmm.............

Wherever we are and whatever pattern/story/trait/value/belief we own forms part of our life cycle. There are times when things come together and times when things fall apart. This is the organic process of nature. Yet we hold on to one side because we don’t want things to fall apart. We negate our masculine or feminine OR our predator or prey - (keep going there are endless metaphors here) as we try to fit into someone ELSE’s cycle and paradigm – thinking it is better than ours.

WHY?

How can you answer this question? How can you possibly deduce the billion structures weaving and playing out together to create this end result?

When we appreciate the seasons of us as reflected back to us by the hologram of nature, we learn how to hold tension and from this point we learn how to create while sitting in this tension of seasons and cycles. In other words, knowing that we will feel every emotion in the spectrum, every thought in the cosmic unconscious and every sensation in our body without wanting to justify it, explain it, understand it, logic it or change and avoid it, is the ability to hold the tension of the both sides of life. Robert Fritz calls this Structural Tension and from this appreciation vantage point we assimilate and create.

So perhaps instead of telling our stories of how we are one side or the other, we can merely say to ourselves “Ah this is how I am at this moment. I am also the opposite – and can think, feel and sense that too. There is no why, this is simply one of the many HOWS I will experience in my life”

Someone once said “there is nothing to change but much to love.”

Winter in Brisbane

Late afternoons watching wet weather adds texture to any day. Standing in the rain, you can see the dark clouds over you, hear the patter on the earth, feel the drops sliding over your body and soaking your skin. There is a definite smell to athunder storm, an orange dusty tinge that floats into your nostrils, teasing them and sending it into your mouth and onto the back of your tongue.

It’s delicious!

Curling up in bed, these days of dark weather are a reminder of just how sunny Brisbane usually is – even in the dead of winter. Compare our weather to Europe and the UK or even New York and we realise our winter is almost the same as their spring. How good is this that we don’t have enough dark weather to ever feel oppressed by a gloomy day every so often? Today, a grey dull dreary winters day, the rain fell in large heavy drops that held the promise of spring inside revealing a pale light green glow upon the grass, and a shimmering glistening on the leaves of the soggy trees, as if they were bouncing back some of the summer sunshine they had absorbed in the months previous.

"The best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain" — Longfellow

Today, I walked outside for the first time in weeks to check the garden and the wind whipped around me teasing my hair and clothes. Like an electric charge, it was somehow reminding me of impending adventure, the life I had put on hold and how it was all still waiting for me.

I actually stood in the rain and squealed loudly and for the first time in ages, breathed easy.

Hello 2008

I wonder what you've got in store for me new year? My wishes for all my friends:

I wish you Health... So you may enjoy each day in comfort.

I wish you the Love of friends and family... And Peace within your heart.

I wish you the Beauty of nature... That you may enjoy the work of God.

I wish you Wisdom to choose priorities... For those things that really matter in life.

I wish you Generosity so you may share... All good things that come to you.

I wish you Happiness and Joy... And Blessings for the New Year.

I wish you the best of everything... That you so well deserve.

This is what I will be wishing you all when the clock strikes twelve in a couple of hours and we will be fighting hoardes of freezing people on the Embankment Pier listing to Big Ben chime and watching the London Eye fireworks.

Traditionally people all over the world cheer and wish each other a very Happy New Year and will put up with extraordinary hardship to do so - finding baby sitters, spending a fortune on club tickets, drinks that cost more than furniture, fighting public transport queues and barring that perfect spot outside in the harsh winters air.

For some, this event is no more than a change of a calendar. For others, the New Year symbolizes the beginning of a better tomorrow. So, if you look forward to a good year ahead, spread happiness with these wonderful New Year wishes.

Traditional Irish Toast - May your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, never in want.

Minnie L. Haskins - And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied: Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.

Movie: "When Harry Met Sally", Harry Burns - And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

Edith Lovejoy Pierce - We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called "Opportunity" and its first chapter is New Year's Day.

Charles Dickens - A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to the world!

Sydney Smith - Resolve to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment.

Anonymous - Your Merry Christmas may depend on what others do for you. But your Happy New Year depends on what you do for others.

William Makepeace Thackeray - Certain corpuscles, denominated Christmas Books, with the ostensible intention of swelling the tide of exhilaration, or other expansive emotions, incident upon the exodus of the old and the inauguration of the New Year.

Aisha Elderwyn - Every new year people make resolutions to change aspects of themselves they believe are negative. A majority of people revert back to how they were before and feel like failures. This year I challenge you to a new resolution. I challenge you to just be yourself.

F. M. Knowles, - A Cheerful Year Book - He who breaks a resolution is a weakling; He who makes one is a fool.

G. K. Chesterton - The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.

John Greenleaf Whittier - We meet todayTo thank Thee for the era done,And Thee for the opening one

T. S. Eliot - For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.

Emily Miller - Then sing, young hearts that are full of cheer,With never a thought of sorrow;The old goes out, but the glad young year Comes merrily in tomorrow

Martin Luther - Glory to God in highest heaven,Who unto man His Son hath given; While angels sing with tender mirth,A glad new year to all the earth

Walter Scott - Each age has deemed the new born year - The fittest time for festal cheer

Benjamin Franklin - Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man.

Edgar A. Guest - A happy New Year! Grant that I May bring no tear to any eye When this New Year in time shall end Let it be said I've played the friend, Have lived and loved and labored here, And made of it a happy year.

William Arthur Ward - This bright new year is given me To live each day with zest To daily grow and try to be My highest and my best!

Ella Wheeler Wilcox - What can be said in New Year rhymes, That's not been said a thousand times? The new years come, the old years go, We know we dream, we dream we know. We rise up laughing with the light, We lie down weeping with the night. We hug the world until it stings, We curse it then and sigh for wings.We live, we love, we woo, we wed,We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,And that's the burden of a year.

Charles Lamb - Of all sound of all bells, the most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.

Make your choices, hold on tight and enjoy the ride. xxxxx

My Christmas Gift

To my family and friends - old and new:

There is a lovely story of the romance between journalist-playwright Charles MacArthur and Helen Hayes, famous American actress. When they were young and about to be married, he bought her a bag of peanuts, presented them with a flourish, and said, "I wish they were emeralds." Years later, as he was dying, he gave her an emerald bracelet and said, "I wish they were peanuts."

Each year I face the same challenge keeping my peanuts and emeralds in perspective. I loved it when my babies were little and they enjoyed the box more than the toy that box contained. I had been frantically running around trying to find that special gift, within whatever budget we deem appropriate, for that special person for a myriad of reasons. I wonder of the importance of being instead of having or doing and if maybe the best gift of all is to simply BE who you are with everyone in your life that is important to you. Expensive and fancy gifts, even if they satisfy wants, rarely meet genuine needs. Christmas gifts to family can be expensive distractions enabling us to perhaps avoid or postpone the gift of self. I havent seen you all year but here's some chocolate. mmm.........

Its not the money that we spend on the gifts. Sometimes we tend to think that money can buy anything. But it doesn't. Money is a very important tool which we use according to our personal value system.

Nature itself charges us with ambition, which prompts mankind to cultivate, build, establish cities, and to invent and improve all the sciences and arts, which ennoble and embellish human life.
Earning more $ will not give any one of us lasting happiness. It is in our nature that we adapt to improvements in our lives, whether those improvements arise from more $ or other desirable things, so that the additional happiness they bring is temporary. There is much wisdom knowing that the journey is more important than the destination. Human happiness comes from striving for improvements and from the sense of achievement gained by overcoming the challenges we face along the way, not from docile dependence on others. The happiness gained from struggle and achievement may be temporary, but fortunately our insatiable desire for more of life’s good things guarantees that new struggles and achievements are always available for replenishing our happiness. Furthermore, we can take pleasure in knowing that when we struggle to improve our conditions by pursuing $ in an enterprise, we are increasing opportunities for others to improve their conditions as well.

During the year, I played The Prosperity Game. You set up an Accounting Package - QuickBooks or MYOB or Excel spreadsheet or just print fake deposits and cheques for your PROSPERITY BANK ACCOUNT. Every day for one year, the Universe makes a deposit into this account. $1000.00 on the first day, then $2000 on the second day, then $3000 on the third day and so forth until on the 365th day the deposit is $365000.00. Each day you have to spend the entire amount of the deposit. I think in total it is $66Million. You can do daily or just do as much as you can each day until you spend one years worth. I got to day 87 and became qiote disheartened as I realised that the $ would not buy me what I truly wanted. Love and Relationships. It’s the people in your life that money cannot buy. It’s the YOU in your own life that money cannot buy.

It is in the taking a little time out from our daily stuff to appreciate how much we have achieved already and how blessed we are that we are most wealthy. It is in the seeing that we already have everything that we want and need. It is in the gratitude for our lives just as they are that we truly are rich.

So in the spirit of the Solstice or Christmas or whatever you choose to celebrate, I cannot give you anything for you already have everything in abundance. You already have my love and friendship and gratitude. My gift to you is the reminder of what you already have that money most definitely cannot buy.

Childish Wonder
Community
Contentment
Dreams
Family
Friends
Health
Hugs
Intelligence
LOVE
Nature
Perfection
Respect
The bit of you that is YOU that no one else can see – your feelings, your thoughts, your ideas, your YOU.
Time
Talent
Sunrise
Sunset
Patterns in the Clouds
Tomorrow
Today
Yesterday
Your breath
Your Life

Enjoy the box these gifts come in...................