“Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking.” Antonio Machado
I love this quote because it reminds me that we don’t need to see the whole path before we take our first step.
What first step is waiting to be taken, in your life?
Waiting
My neighbors keep honeybees, and the bees are waiting right now, inside the hives.
They are waiting for the warmth of Spring, when they will go out of the hives and begin their work of gathering pollen and nectar.
What are you waiting for?
Quiet and Stillness
As I stood outside sketching, it began to snow.
The world became quiet, as it does when the falling snow muffles everything.
I was being invited to quiet, and stillness.
What are you being invited to?
The Goddess Tree
This is the Goddess Tree.
We call her that because she is a majestic Walnut tree, easily the tallest and largest tree presence on our five acre property.
When I look at her, she reminds me to take a grounding and centering breath.
What grounds and centers you?
Your Valentine to Your True Self
On February 14, we think of all the people we love. It’s a wonderful opportunity to send them love from our hearts.
I’ve been thinking lately how delicious it would be if we sent some love to our own true selves on Valentine’s Day.
Download my free Valentine for My True Self here.
And, much love to you on Valentine’s Day,
Lynne
The Way Home
A few days ago, I saw this fungus at the edge of our pond. This is one of the many surprises of a mild winter this year.
It reminded me of a scallop shell.
Scallop shells are significant to pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. The scallop shells symbolize the many ways, or routes, which all lead pilgrims “home” to Santiago. They are also commonly found as the wayfinding signs along each pilgrimage route, showing pilgrims the direction to go at critical junctions.
These shells also symbolize our own inner journey home, to our true selves, or spirit, or soul.
I loved seeing this symbol on my walk. Connection with Nature is one of my ways home to my true self. Nature shows us our own true nature. What Nature is, you are.
What are your ways home to your true self?
The Dark Soul of Potential
Just before winter every year, I fill a pot with potting soil and plant some seeds in it. These are seeds that I have collected during autumn, usually along the road where I live.
It is fun to see what emerges when these seeds are given some light, water, and warmth. It is also fun to have some new growth in the darkness of the winter season.
But mostly I plant them to remind me of the power of being in the darkness, as these seeds are when they are planted, and before the plants start to emerge.
There is a lot going on, beneath the surface of the soil, in the darkness.
These seeds are preparing themselves for growth. They are putting down roots, and then developing their root systems, which will, of course, eventually be the mechanism by which they take in nutrients to grow.
These root systems are what keep them stable when their foliage starts to push up above ground.
These seeds teach me about the blessing of the darkness.
I am comforted to know that the darkness of winter is not just a dead time for me to get through.
It is instead an essential time of being in the darkness, and putting down roots for the creative energy that will grow and emerge from me in Spring.
What is the darkness about for you?
Choosing to Be
I’m not going to go into the politics of the American presidential election. That was yesterday.
Today, I get to choose something else.
I get to choose who to be in all of this.
For me, this is a call to live a conscious life even more, and to choose love, even more.
My job is, and always has been, to do the best that I can do to live consciously, and to choose love over fear, anger, and hatred.
My sense of well-being is and always has been an inside job.
No one and no circumstance can take that away from me.
If I let them take it away, I am being a victim, rather than being the resourceful person that I was born to be.
Viktor Frankl reminds us of this, from the voice of one who was in a concentration camp in World War II. He said that all freedoms can be taken away from us, except the freedom to choose our attitude and our way.
I am not saying this is always easy. I’m saying I get to choose.
I am also not saying that I am going to deny my feelings. I am saying that I am going to acknowledge them and feel them, and then I am going to move onto a place where I can do some good.
I can do some good by choosing to be a loving person.
This may not be every person’s path, but it is my path.
It is who I choose to be.
Who do you choose to be?
What is your right path?
When You Need a Bigger Bus
I often think of the metaphor of a bus when I think about how I am being in the world, and about my life.
“Who’s driving my bus?” Is it the scared little kid, or the empowered, resourceful adult? I welcome all “inner parts” to be on the bus, but some of them…well, I don’t want them driving the bus.
Then there is the question of how much I’m carrying on my bus. You know…beliefs, assumptions, physical stuff.
The bus above is a Hay Bus. It is a converted School Bus that a farm in Marengo uses to deliver very large loads of hay to local farms, for horse and cattle feed.
When I saw it, I knew I was given a gift: When you need a bigger bus, it’s time to look at how much you’re carrying around. so the question came to me, for me: What can I offload from my bus, that I no longer need to carry around?
And I offer the question to you, too: What can you offload?
The Inbetween Time
Today it is cool, rainy, and I am shivering in the damp as I watch the leaves being blown off the trees. Yesterday was a cool sunny day, with a crisp, blue sky. The day before that, a hot, muggy wall of heat enveloped me as I walked out of the house.
We are in a transition from Summer to Fall.
We are in The Inbetween Time.
Every year, when we move into this transition time from Summer to Fall, I feel ambivalent, and, at first, a little disoriented. It always seems to me like it arrives suddenly, when I wasn’t looking.
I find myself wanting to hold onto the long days of summer, and the bright colors of growth.
I can feel the resistance in me as I am dragged into shorter days and brisk winds.
In The Inbetween Time, we are living some of the old, even though we know it is being dismantled. We can see and feel some of the promise of the new, but the details aren’t clear or sustained. The new is a wisp, rather than something we can hold onto yet.
In this time, if I let it, Nature is teaching me how to be with uncertainty and change, how to be an explorer and an adventurer, and how to come to life with openness and curiosity.
The Inbetween Time is a powerful space of creative potential, if I can let go what I expect and where I think I am going, and instead be open to surprises and the gifts of the new season.
Most of all, I want to feel grateful for the gifts of absolute uncertainty and surprise that The Inbetween Time brings.
I want make space for what is coming, even though I don’t know what it is yet. In the last few weeks, I’ve had an instinct to clear my office, and my mind, for new possibilities.
For me, it takes faith to welcome the abyss, and to let the unknowing and the space just be, until clarity begins to form. I have to hold myself back from filling the space with what I know, in order to leave room for the unexpected. Nature gives me this faith, because Nature is a model of rhythms and cycles.
The Inbetween Time is a threshold, a suspension. It is a luminous time of transition, between what we know and what we don’t.
How do you want to be, in The Inbetween Time?
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