Here it is Sunday night on the 18th of January 2009. Two days ago I turned 53, and since November I’ve been in a state of decompression. Finally, I feel like I don’t have to pretend I’m Canadian if I travel. Finally I feel like I’m starting to wake up from the horrible nightmare of these last eight years. Eight years of watching this country go down the slippery slope to fascism and take the rest of the world with it like a juggernaut of war, greed, oppression, suppression, regression, recession, and depression. Finally I feel as if I can breathe again. The winds of CHANGE are blowing like breezes of fresh air coming off the sea, and bringing with them a spark of hope to ignite a fire throughout the world. Not a fire of destruction, but a flame to light the way to new beginnings, and to light up the dark corners so we can see clearly enough to pick up the pieces of our broken dreams and clean up the mess that the fascists have made. Realistically it’s going to take decades to bring us back to where we were before the disaster that was the Bush regime.
But with HOPE come new dreams to replace the ones we’ve lost. I feel it in my bones. The world began to be a better place to live last November 4th 2008. Bless you, Barrack Obama! You’re not alone, we’re all going to pull our weight on this one.

Insight strikes as fast as lightning. 

Painting the Pictures

Paint your word-pictures
Use the florescence oozing from your mind
a silken thread shimmering
the umbilical connection to your primordial self

shine the black light of your own shadow
and make them dazzle

words that seem much larger than life
but that is a false assumption
word is genesis, is life

we denizens of the shadowlands
suck dry the shallow mud pools
hungry for the mirrored rainbows
the scintillating, psychedelic Real

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Beloved people,

You have struggled so hard and for so long to maintain integrity and righteousness in your professions, your relationships, your diverse faiths. The Enemy is at the gate of your hearts. Its names are many: despondancy, regret over life choices, frustration, anger, rage, indignation, doubt, fear, hopelessness, helplessness, loneliness, depression.
They blind the heart to make beauty drab and ugly. They sour the disposition so that nothing is sweet.
They rob you of joy, of childlike wonderment and trust. They trample your inheritance of happiness. They remove hope and make your mind and body ill.
Like Jacob wrestling the Angel all night, you fight this enemy until you are worn and weary. It seems the harder you fight, the more powerful they become.
Beloved people, there is a way to fight and win. Forgiveness, acceptance, relinquishing the need to control, remaining responsible yet detached, allowing love to really heal you. These are the building blocks of an impenetrable fortress that no enemy can enter.
Forgive yourself. For not being the person you thought you would become, for the things you have done and not done, for the choices you have made in your life, for the frailty and mortality of your body. For the times you have disappointed yourself.
Forgive all who have loved you and whom you have loved. Forgive them for not being what you had hoped for or expected. For disappointing you and seeming faithless or untrustworthy.
There are some who would throw away a bag of precious sapphires because they wanted diamonds. Better the sapphires in one's possession than the diamonds unobtained. Forgive the ones who have betrayed you. The ones you thought were friends or collegues. The ones who have abandoned you, or relinquished their own integrity. Forgive these blind and erring children of God, and release them in your heart that they might perhaps find peace and paradise in due time. Drop anger away from you and release this needless heavy load. This release frees you to find the peace you long for.
Acceptance is a key to peace. Accept this current chaos in your life and in the world at large. All things must pass, and surely will. Light is coming and will overcome the darkness. Accept that people in this world do what they do. You can stand in the gap and defend the weak as the Wise before you have done, detached from any anger, attentive to need, and with no rancor in your soul.
This is the seeming impossible prescription for powerful healing in your life. It is the same prescription for all who would undertake to be the catalists of change in loving service. The One you serve, serves you. Washes your feet with the healing power of divine unconditional love. Love is always here. Forgiveness, Acceptance, and release are the keys to opening the floodgates to water the garden of your heart, that you might have peace, childlike joy, lightness of spirit, and true happiness that no one and no circumstance can rob you of. If you want it, you can have it. If you ask, you will receive the strength to accomplish it.
I truly bid you Peace,

your brother, the Elder

Never underestimate the power of the “invisible” woman.

In our crass, materialistic, youth oriented, and truly unspiritual, and unbalanced patriarchal society, a woman who hits that milestone of 40 and above seems to suddenly become “invisible.” Invisible to men, undesirable to potential employers, of no account, not considered as a potent force to enact change in the world anymore, “over the hill”.

Au contraire mes amis! Nothing could be further from the truth. A woman of “that certain age”, even without means, or socially suitable sexual attachment, or of the non-caucasian persuasion, is an incredible dynamic force ready to be set off, waiting for the motivational “fuse” to light the incandescent spirit within.

Fueled by the sight of social injustice, by seeing the horrific place that “stupid white men” have brought us to, by seeing the decay of families and the erosion of economic opportunities, by the sight of the atrocities of unconscionable illegal war, by seeing the suffering of her sisters and all the children; the fuse is lit, and the timebomb is ticking.
There will be nothing that can be done to stop the tide, when women “of a certain age” come together and flex their muscles, strengthened by righteous dakini outrage, commitment, and that talent peculiar to their age: the ability to cut the crap, see and speak the truth, and not take the bullshit from the “stupid white men” anymore.
You see we’re not waiting for “Prince Charming”. We’re not trying to please anybody, especially not men, or to “fit in” and be nice and quiet, or “shut the f*** up, and be grateful” or “know our place”…
We’re not fashion victims or addicted to consumerism, we’re not that worried about looking “good” to anyone else so long as we look good to ourselves and have our souls intact. Many of us are struggling and poor due to the very real “feminization” of poverty. We work hard if we have jobs. Many of us have been screwed over once or twice by the men or others previously in our lives, so we are enured to the societal pressures to be or think a certain way, or to feel we can’t be “whole” unless attached to a partner. We don’t take any shit from anybody, especially those phallically challenged male individuals in our current government. Those of us who do have partners in our lives have the few good ones if they’re men. They are supporting and loving partners, because we will no longer accept anything less than that.

Ahh, Yes! Cronehood has it’s power and privilege, and being “invisible” gives it that much more power.
Ever see a snowball roll down a mountain? First it’s so very small, almost invisible, and the mountain so very formidable, seemingly insurmountable, then soon you have an avalanche that can wipe out anything in its path.
That’s what we “invisible” women are, and by the time those “swm’s” who think they’ve got the power realize it, it will be way too late and they’ll be rolled aside, voted out, removed through persistent direct non-violent action, and they’ll have nothing to say about it and nothing they can do about it. Now THAT’S power!

Under the surface of things, the surface of all the religions, all the politics, all the cockamamie ideas that fly around there’s this “thing”. It’s a wild thing, a strong thing, a very connecting thing, like a heartbeat, or a fast flowing river. It’s like I may express the current “belief du jour”, but underneath, the reality, the “thing” feels more real to me. It may contradict the popular dogma of the day. It may fly in the face of all the “us and them” attitudes, it might even corroborate some far fetched “not so mainstream” avant garde belief or ideology. But it will ring “true, true, true” every time. It’s that gut level communication that reverberates in your soul. It’s that “thing” that ilicits nostalgia, unknown rememberance, and longing. It pulls at the corporate heartstrings of our hungry weary culture. When I hear certain riffs, usually aeolian or pentatonic it wakes up that “thing” in me. I feel it a lot when I hear stuff like Vaughn Williams, or a lonely celtic ballad, or even when I pull out my guitar and sing my heart out. It jumps out of hiding in the music from a lonely bagpiper on a hilltop at sunset. It lives in sunsets and sunrises, silverlinings of rainclouds, fields of golden wheat after a storm, and on the frosty breath you breathe on a cold early morning in a redwood forest. I see that “thing” in the eyes of the very old and the very young, those who are closest to immortality. We in the middle too easily forget just how close eternity really is. I just took a break and stepped outside my door and there it was, right here and now, singing to me on the wind in the trees. That “thing” tells me: Everyone is precious, life is precious, everyone gets to go to heaven, because hell is what we make of our lives when we’re learning that it’s heaven we really want. Life is short and eternity is always just one step away into the arms of God. And the song of God is everywhere to be heard and enjoyed if we just listen. I’m all ears.

I dreamed last night I was on a metaphysical tour of the steppes of Eurasia. There we were, about 15 of us (of course there was nobody there I’d ever met) walking along in the middle of nowhere, being “now here” as it were. The steppes are stark, vast, grassy, and perfect for the equine species and those intrepid souls who love them and raise them. Pretty vivid dream, feeling a cold and crisp wind and hearing the sounds of horses in the distance. I was almost expecting to start hearing a Tuvan throat singer. Beautiful at sunset and sunrise and even in between. I miss the open spaces. I miss the high desert and its wonderful summer thunderstorms. It’s nice to know my soul can wander where she will, unlimited by the constraints of the waking hours.