There is fire and determination in this powerful moon. It is best to do something physically active and moving centered during this time. Use your action to represent your desires and intentions. Stay away from toxic people, arguments, heated discussions that don’t go anywhere, and your own fruitless worries and obsessions.
Bring in the element of emotional healing through music and other creative expression. Express love and gratitude and make sure to do whatever it takes to keep your frequency high and to stay away from any negativity. An eclipse always opens up a more powerful portal and initiates change. Use this energy to fuel changes that you want and be ready to jump into action when they happen. Wait for right timing and allow for things to unfold instead of effecting at them. This is a powerful, wonderful and exciting time. Use it well.
Another notable:
V O X
This total lunar eclipse will happen during the second full moon this month — a bonus event known as a “blue moon.” Such a coincidence (and it is nothing more than a coincidence) has not occurred in 150 years. Topping things off, this moon will be a “supermoon,” meaning it will appear slightly bigger and brighter than average.
I begin to realize that in inquiring about my own origin and goal, I am inquiring about something other than myself. In this very realization I begin to recognize the origin and goal of the world.
-Martin Buber
“Meditation or contemplation helps us to know how to find the spots of spiritual stasis on which we can rest. There is deep satisfaction and sometimes a safe port in life’s storms to be found, even in the simplest of spiritual practices.
We believe that all things have consciousness: mineral, animal, plant, human and Divine. We believe that that consciousness is everlasting and immortal and that it is constantly expanding and evolving. We believe that the perfection of being is within us and that we can experience it to the degree that we are conscious of it. The ultimate goal and purpose of life is to discover and manifest freedom in everything, and everyone can attain this.
We trust in the unity of all life, and that everything in this Intelligence is unfolding back to where it originated, which is spirit Itself.”
-Science of Mind
“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains.”
-Walt Whitman
“In loving ourselves, we love the world. For just as fire, rock, and water are all made up of molecules, everything, including you and me, is connected by a small piece of the beginning.
In this way, I’ve learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world—our own self-worth.
All the great moments of conception—the birth of mountains, of trees, of fish, of prophets, and the truth of relationships that last—all begin where no one can see, and it is our job not to extinguish what is so beautifully begun. For once full of light, everything is safely on its way—not pain-free, but unencumbered.
I realize—make real before me—that this moment, whatever it might be, is a fine moment to live and a fine moment to die.”
Our dread of both relationships and loneliness … has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.
I’m not sure I could give you a steeple-fingered theoretical justification, but I strongly suspect a big part of real art-fiction’s job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what’s dreadful, what we want to deny.
Really good work probably comes out of a willingness to disclose yourself, open yourself up in spiritual and emotional ways that risk making you look banal or melodramatic or naive or unhip or sappy, and to ask the reader really to feel something. To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I’m scared about how sappy this’ll look in print, saying this. And the effort actually to do it, not just talk about it, requires a kind of courage I don’t seem to have yet. Maybe it’s as simple as trying to make the writing more generous and less ego-driven.
In her passing, we are beautifully reminded again that words, and how we use them, matters.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
-Ursula Le Guin
#resistance
#change
January 23, 2018
“We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.”
I sat across the street from my childhood home on the cold curb in the dark and watched the party as if it were a TV on mute. Adults moved in and out of the frame of the big picture window, glasses in hand, laughing, touching one another jovially. The warmth was palpable, even though I was shivering a little bit. It was my parents’ 40th birthday party — a joint blowout to mark the arrival of middle age. Friends brought gag gifts about how “over the hill” they now were and made jokes about their waning eyesight and hearing. I remember, my 10-year-old self thinking they must be getting really old.
I just turned 38. It has been nearly three decades since I sat on that cold curb and watched the merriment inside, trying to wrap my brain around what it all meant. I don’t feel old at all. Some days, in fact, I feel like I’m younger than I’ve ever been — a kind of Benjamin Button, temperamentally speaking. I’ve always been too serious. Aging has helped me lighten up in all kinds of ways. I’m humbled by how hard life can be, how complex. Where I used to jump to judgment, I am now more likely to feel solidarity or sadness. That at the tragic part of the human condition or even wonder. How broken are we, and yet, how beautiful? It boggles the heart.
I want to be one of those people that widens, not narrows, as I age. And yet, as I inch closer and closer to that picture window of my parents, it is the finite nature of life that hits me hardest. Sometimes I will be sitting on the rug in the living room, listening to my youngest daughter pound dominoes (her latest obsession) into our coffee table while my oldest wraps her baby doll in a suffocating number of layers of blankets, my husband banging around in the kitchen making pasta, and time will suddenly halt into a sort of freeze frame profundity. I’ll lose my breath for a second as I think, “Wow, this is it.”
It’s not a sad “this is it.” It’s a happy “this is it.” And yet, it’s interlaced with bafflement — “so really, this is it? These are my daughters? This is my person? This is our house? Huh, amazing.”
The same sort of bafflement creeps into my workday, too. I’ll be hammering away at this keyboard, trying to put a sentence together, and I’ll realize — “Wow, this is it. This is what I do. This is what I am going to contribute to the world in this lifetime.”
I’m not a small town mayor or a nonprofit director or a judge. I’m not a single woman with no children who travels the world investigating war crimes. I’m not a portrait photographer or a chaplain. I’m not a woman who plays the blues harmonica at open mic jazz nights in little clubs in New York City.
Those were all, believe it or not, versions of myself that at one point existed in the future. And then days and decisions accumulated and I kept moving further and further into that future and these women started fading, one by one, from the potential story of my life.
And I would be lying if I said that I didn’t feel grief over their disappearance. Even Robert Frost admitted to sadness over his road not traveled, though he was sure he did it right. We are practiced and very convincing at creating the fateful narrative in reverse — everything always happens how it is supposed to. Unless it really doesn’t, in which case we pretend it did anyway. That’s what we do as humans — if we are resilient and adaptive, which most of us are, we tell ourselves the stories we need to hear in order to take the edge off of our mourning at the lives we’ll never lead.
Although… what if we might, in fact, lead them, just not this time around?
My friend Sandy, who is on the other side of 40, recently taught me another adaptation that I am reveling in. She said that after a period of feeling acute sadness over all the versions of herself she would never be — “I’ll never be a Russian painter!” she exclaimed — she decided to throw down for reincarnation. When she has a pang of sadness over a version of herself that likely won’t exist, instead of trying to banish it from her brain as quickly as possible, she delights in it, adding it to her file of “next lifetimes.” While feeling genuinely grateful for all that she is packing into this impossibly little life, she’s also conjuring and collecting these potential future versions of herself. Sandy won’t be a Russian painter tomorrow, but what if she is in another century or two? How is she to know that this is or isn’t possible? How exciting!
I don’t believe in reincarnation, per se, but that’s beside the point. I believe in the magic of what I don’t know, and I don’t know that reincarnation isn’t possible. So I’m starting to build up my portfolio of next lifetimes. I know there is beauty in limitation. And this life, with the husband banging around in the kitchen and my babies stumbling around the living room, this life with the sentences upon sentences — well, it’s a tremendous gift. I feel even more capable of recognizing that when I allow for the possibility that during some other journey, I’ll be an NBA basketball star or a labor organizer or a painter with a giant studio somewhere overlooking the water.
‘If you want to be truly understood, you need to say everything three times, in three different ways. Once for each ear…and once for the heart.’
-Paula Underwood Spencer
☾
‘I’ve learned that true dialogue requires both speaker and listener to try several times to get at what matters. So much depends on timing, and so, I’ve learned not to repeat myself, but to play what matters like a timeless melody, again and again, if the one before me is honest and sincere.’
Ghost lights in theatres are traditional symbols used for safety, to energize a space left unoccupied that would typically be dark. Last Friday night at The Spot theatre in Ketchum, it was cold, and it was dark, but there was light. The Spot joined hundreds of theatres across the country on January 19th to encourage a safe space for those who feel targeted because of their race, class, religion, country of origin, immigration status, disability, age, gender identity, sexual identity, or dissident actions. The idea started in theatre companies across the country post the 2016 election when many suddenly felt unsafe in their beliefs and identities.
Those who gathered with their lights Friday night were symbolizing hope for the coming year, wanting greater inclusion, participation, and compassion. “Keeping inclusivity at the forefront of everybody’s mind. And kindness. That’s what this celebration is about for me”, said Kevin Wade, Creative Director.
If you’re not represented fictionally you feel like you don’t exist.
Jordan Ford, a visiting actor from Boulder, Colorado who lives in New York City believes empathy is important for communities to share. “Exploring the world through another person’s point of view, that’s what’s magical about the theatre; inhabiting their circumstances and the situations that they’re in, I think that’s something the world can learn from.”
Many of the creators at The Spot believe that the theatre can be an impetus for conversations. They want to encourage people not to hold discomfort inside, but for the theatre to be a safe space to inspire engagement and active listening through their productions. “Communication is so important”, said one young participant. Added Wade, “Be inviting. Be ready to talk with somebody new. And just be loving.”
Aliki Georgakopoulos of Ketchum shared, “I know so many kids in this community who struggle with their identity. I like the idea of them feeling loved, you know?”
Molly Page, Indivisible Blaine County, reporting tonight more than 600 people marched this morning in Ketchum.
The Advocates’ Social Change Coordinator Darrel Harris shares what the Women’s March represents and her hope for the community in 2018.
“America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without. Always inform yourself; always do the best you can; always vote.” -Walt Whitman
Idaho Democratic Senator Michelle Stennett
Idaho Sen. Michelle Stennett reminded the crowd that women were the last Americans given the right to vote. Let’s not squander the efforts of so many suffragettes and others, she pleaded. Voting makes for a strong nation, and votes matter.
“We recently celebrated the legacy of Martin Luther King whose powerful words remind us, ‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,’ ” she added. [Eye On Sun Valley]
At the march Muffy Davis announces her candidacy for Idaho House District 26 Seat A!
Muffy Davis was one of the top ranked U.S. Junior Ski Racers in the late 80’s. She was poised to not only be named to the U.S. National Ski Team but, her racing ability would have allowed her to have the chance to attain her childhood dream of competing in the Winter Olympics.
Until early one morning while training on her home mountain in Sun Valley, ID when a freak accident changed the life and course of this Olympic hopeful forever. Skiing at over 45 mph, Muffy went through a safety fence on a downhill training course and hit her head and back on a tree. Miraculously she survived the accident. Once she arrived at the hospital the radiologist on duty was none other than her dad. Horrified that his daughter arrived at the hospital in this condition the news continued to worsen when he found out that Muffy had crushed her back leaving her paralyzed from the chest down. Muffy, her family and the skiing community were devastated. All thoughts of Olympic Gold were gone in a instant. Muffy was at a serious crossroads in her life, she had to make a choice: to simply survive or thrive.
Davis added that it was unacceptable that 78,000 Idahoans can’t get health insurance, nor is it acceptable that Idaho is 48th in the nation in education.
“Here, a year ago in this very location at the first Women’s March in my own community I was motivated by all of you,” Davis said passionately and forcefully as she looked out across 600 men, women and teenagers huddled in Ketchum Town Square.
“I’m running because we need more bold, impassioned voices in Boise speaking out for us today,” she said to raucous cheers. [Eye On Sun Valley]
Professional singer & yoga instructor Tyria Wilson sang the National Anthem, ‘Imagine’, and ‘We Are The World.’
‘There’s a choice we’re making We’re saving our own lives It’s true we’ll make a better day, just you and me.’
When Nazi planes dropped bombs on London, Edward R. Murrow climbed to the rooftops. Despite personal risk & the fear his signal would lead bombers straight to him, he brought the horrors of Hitler’s war to the ears of listeners around the world.
[Stand Up Ideas: Founded by Evan McMullin, & Mindy Finn to strengthen Americans’ commitment to democratic ideals & norms through civic education & leadership development.]
Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.
Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved.
“This is the often-quoted phrase engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty. For more than a century, the statue with its inscription has been a beacon of hope for immigrants — many without “merit” — who have fled to our shores, seeking a better life in our country.
We would do well to reflect on what this inscription means to us and what the Statue of Liberty represents before we give our assent to building walls, limiting immigration to favored foreigners and kicking Dreamers out of our country.”
2018 is an 11 year which means it’s less about our own ego needs and more about what is the best for the collective. It is also a year of Justice so we can, and should, focus on balance. We need to balance our own needs with those of others. Balance between work and play will be a theme. And, perhaps Justice… in the cosmic sense… will help restore the balance that has been tipped way out of range this last year.
As the Moon increases in light, let your feelings surface, unjudged, to simply flow from you to the Youniverse. Remember, little acts of self care & nurturance become giants as our numbers grow. We Are healing the Divine Feminine through our be-ingness and She is in deep gratitude.
☆☆•*¨*•.¸¸☆☆
From Joyce/Skyfire:
“If you’re in need of a session, I am still taking appointments for Fridays through Sundays. Give me a call to book a time.
Enlightening & educational interview with Dave Davies speaking to the importance of identity, community & purpose, combined with vulnerability. Excellent dialogue.
‘A Former Neo-Nazi Explains Why Hate Drew Him In — And How He Got Out’
“…after eight years as a neo-Nazi, Picciolini began to question the hateful ideology he espoused. He remembers a specific incident in which he was beating a young black man. His eyes locked with his victim, and he felt a surprising empathy.
It was a turning point. He withdrew from the movement and in 2011 co-founded Life After Hate, a nonprofit that counsels members of hate groups and helps them disengage.
So it was the fear rhetoric. … I can tell you that every single person that I recruited or that was recruited around the same time that I did, up to now, up to what we’re seeing today, is recruited through vulnerabilities and not through ideology.
In fact, I had never in my life engaged in a meaningful dialogue with the people that I thought I hated, and it was these folks who showed me empathy when I least deserved it, and they were the ones that I least deserved it from. I started to recognize that I had more in common with them than the people I had surrounded myself for eight years with — that these people, that I thought I hated, took it upon themselves to see something inside of me that I didn’t even see myself
Here we are in 2018 and we have a lot of hallmarks coming from political figures, the administration and policies that are very similar to what we espoused 30 years ago. … It is a white supremacist culture that is being pushed.”
[A couple of weeks before the end of President Obama’s White House, Life After Hate received a $400,000 grant to continue their work. After the new administration took office in 2017, the grant was rescinded. Comedian Samantha Bee brought awareness to the situation and helped raise $500,000 for the organization.]
The next day I left for the fields where silence reveals to the soul that which the spirit desires, and where the pure sky kills the germs of despair, nursed in the city by the narrow streets and obscured places.
‘I affirm that this is the day that God has made, that it is good, and that I find fulfillment in it.’ Psalms/Science of Mind
’The more spacious and larger our fundamental nature, the more bearable the pains in living.’ -Wayne Muller
’The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you ar e in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.’ -Mark Nepo
Even if we don’t get a thunderbolt to the mind, we can know that wisdom walks with us every step of the way. -Rev. Dr. Margaret Stortz
The qualifications of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. It is generally a personal choice to hold oneself to consistent moral and ethical standards.
His last sermon, on the evening before he was shot down outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. offered a conclusion that serves well as starting point for 2018. After declaring that America was sick in 1968, facing troubling times, King made this resolution:
Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school—be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Nothing would be more tragic than to turn back now, because we have seen the real possibility that, in the middle of this dark night of the American story, a Third Reconstruction is possible. “We made the world we are living in,” James Baldwin said, “and we have to make it over.” Imperfect though we are, we can do this work together in 2018 and move forward toward the more perfect union of our common creed.
[…]
Fifty years after Dr. King and many others launched a Poor People’s Campaign to demand a Marshall Plan for America’s poor, inequality in our nation has reached extremes we have not seen since the Gilded Age. As the Dow climbs and the wealthiest Americans get a massive tax break, 15 million more Americans are poor today than in 1968. In the same time period, the rate of extreme poverty has nearly doubled. Because of the systemic racism of voter suppression, which has been implemented in 23 of the nation’s poorest states since 2010, our political system is held captive by extremists who deny workers health care and a living wage, undermine the equal-protection clause of the constitution, attack public education, and encourage poor white people to blame people of color and immigrants for their problems. All the while, more and more of our collective resources are dedicated to a war without end.
