10.07.2024. Get Out Your Bulldozer
“Get out your bulldozer and knock that path down.”
We all know the voice of shame that ties our heart in knots, keeps us tucked under the covers too long in bed. ‘Get out your bulldozer and knock that path down!’. These were the sacred words gifted to me by a dear friend. We tend to live alone, isolated in the shadows, in silence, in loneliness with our sadness, grief, brokenness, and shame.
Getting out the bulldozer and knocking the ‘path down’ –the obstacles and habituated patterns that informed our life from early on – the first step required is reaching out, sharing, even if it is as soft as a mouse whisper. Go public. Knock on your neighbor's, a sacred trusted friend’s, door saying,
“Hey, come see. Check this out with me. I am not sure but I think I may need a bulldozer? There are these stones in my field blocking my path, preventing me from building a labyrinth with a bench to sit and unwind”.
Right there in the ‘togetherness’ is where healing and redemption live. The heart opens and softens, kindness and gentleness arise. Standing together in our shared unknowns, our vulnerabilities, hurts and fears, the miraculous is born. Grace pours her unrelenting nectar, joy insists and love prevails.
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Below, lovely offerings for your Heart: 2 Poems. 3 Quotes. 1 To-Inspire. 1 Poem to Listen to. 1 Exciting Share. 1 Closing Joy-Song.
🌸🌸Two Poems to Share 🌸
The Jewel | James Wright
There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.
Nature rarer uses yellow | Emily Dickinson
Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets,—
Prodigal of blue,
Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover's words.
🌿 I cannot help but think of Nature offering us her gorgeousness hues of yellow, sacred and rare, precious as a lover’s whispers in our ears. Breathing into us the smells of yellows of dawn and dusk, found in flight on finch and butterfly, along roadsides in daisies and ‘Julia Child’ garden rosebush. Lining the miraculous and the awe.
🌸 🌸 🌸Three Quotes | Alex Banayan. Earthschool Harmony. Pam Muñoz Ryan. 🌸
“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.” — Nikos Kazantzakis
"When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life." – Jean Shinoda Bolen
“I trust so much in the power of the heart and the soul; I know that the answer to what we need to do next is in our own hearts. All we have to do is listen, then take that one step further and trust what we hear. We will be taught what we need to learn." — Melody Beattie, the author of Codependent No More.
🌿 Good to know about Melody Beattie’s profound pioneering work out in the world and in the recovery world, learning to discern between healthy dependency and codependent behavior that is destructive.
“The longer this lifetime goes, the more convinced I am that our primary responsibility in life is to find a way to make peace with ourselves, our past, and our present– no matter what we faze and no matter how often we need to do that.
It’s also our job to mindfully practice self-love. Every day. For all our lives. It is not a narcissistic or obnoxiously selfish attitude toward life and our relationships. Self-love is a humbler, quieter thing. You'll get used to it. I like it; you may too.” —from the revised edition of Codependent No More
🌸Something to Inspire | Omid Safi 🌸
“The hidden secret of fall: the leaves don’t actually ‘turn’ colors. With the winter season coming, and the process of photosynthesis being without the key ingredients of warmth and sunshine, trees begin to break down chlorophyll.
With the “green” gone, the other colors that have been there all along—the magical reds, golds, and oranges—begin to express themselves…The beauty has been there all along. And we human beings are like this. Each one of us contains hidden jewels inside.”
I bow to this reminder of Nature as Scripture,
illuminating the radiance-vastness,
the grandeur, the essence of our being, the hidden
jeweled tone gems of the ground of our being
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🌸 Something to Listen | “The First Step” Poem 🌸
An instagram share. Make sure volume is turned on. This wide gentle poem by Sophie Diener read by Stage Door Johnny, is something we all need to hear, a reminder poem.
Who does not know this place of ‘too’, “too late, too small, too scared”. We all have a ‘too’ that attempts to stop, block us, keep us tight and dimmed. Read the full poem here.
“You have to begin.
Go, do it badly at first
with sweaty palms
and shaking limbs
and gaps in what you know….”
(And her closing lines which could be prayer)
“Please begin,
Because the world craves your light.”
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🌸 Something to Share | One-Day Embodiment Retreat 🌸
Save-the-Date. Things are coming into form, Megan Dunne-Krouse, Courtney Riley and myself will be offering a one-day, Embodiment Body, Breath and Soul Retreat on Monday December 9th.
We would so love you to be there!
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Add your name to our list. You will be the first to know when we finalize details:
time, cost & how many people.
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🌸 Closing Song | “This Joy” by Resistance Revival Choir 🌸
“Joy Is an Act of Resistance” –Toi Derricotte
This song arrived into my life from two different directions, two weeks apart. When something like this happens in life, whether it be a song or a word that keeps arriving on the wind in your life. It is something to take a pause with, to pay attention to.
Some may call it synchronicity, some may just shrug off as interesting but either the case, I would say it is something wider, something unknown is trying to reveal itself to you as magic, as medicine, as mystery.
The Resistance Revival Chorus (RRC) is a collective of more than 60 women, and non-binary singers, who join together to breathe joy and song into the resistance, and to uplift and center women’s voices.
“This joy that I have
The world didn't give it to me
This joy that I have
The world didn't give it to me (don't you know that)
This joy that I have
The world didn't give it to me
Ooh I said, the world didn't give it
The world can't take it away”
(Insert: strength, love, pride, peace)
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Listen here YouTube (3:48 min)
Spotify here (3:24 min)
🌸Have a blessed day 💖
🌿 Thank you for reading, a bow of gratitude for being here!
This Metta Newsletter is a Love-offering, it is…
…an offering to bloom more Light ✨
…more Goodness 💞
…more gorgeous tenderness on the planet.🌎
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