This poem is from my body resting on the beach by the Point Hudson Marina in Port Townsend.
​8/23/2015

Being adopted, "nature, nurture" is always been interesting to me, and it continues to have many layers. The soul quality and the active circumstance, the personality and memories, the tendancies and patterns. 
​
My friend Paul Crawford, reflects on this poem:

     "I feel the grains of sand beneath me and they are ancestors going back dozens or hundreds of generations  They're all there.  Every one is propping me up as needed.  And other grains are experiences, my own and those of all those ancestors.  Places we've been, things we've done, things we've learned.  Family and friend, those past and those still with me. Wild places.  And music.  Always music.

     "Oozing out of the firm conforming sand is LOVE.

     "It's a question of whether all those grains are molding me or whether I'm doing the molding.  Are those grains of sand conforming to me or I to them?  The answer must be "Yes"."

Writing this was prompted by an e-mail exchange about "Sustainability" that left me with a nag, like a sticker stuck in my sock. I want to outline a few reasons why I see that sometimes focusing on what we can do as individuals to be "sustainable" is over-emphasized to a point that we forget what it will look like on a larger scale to live in a culture that is truly thriving. 

For example, on the level of individual choice concerning water usage, hot topics of division tend to be (1) bottled water / access to potable water (2) domestic water use and (3) outdoor. Where do you focus your attention? Outside the issues surrounding whether "outdoor" means you're tending a garden or lawn, let's consider the other two. If you commit to reducing your shower time, saving an average of 2.5 gallons per minute (with a low-flow shower head), in 10 minutes, that's about 30 gallons of water. Water-bottling facilities waste thousands of gallons of water per day in the manufacturing process, not to mention nearly 20 million barrels of oil per year, claim horrible working conditions, a trail of pollution behind them, and a trash and transportation nightmare in front of them. So the choice of reducing your shower time and not buying bottled water are not choices that have equal impact. 

The point of this example is some choices have greater significance because they have more inherent leverage. 

There are many hidden aspects of "sustainability" that often do not get talked about... for example, with water bottling facilities, what else are we missing out on, culturally, by the factory's existence? Are there even bigger leverage points that we are missing because we are focused on a view that is too narrow in time? 

We have a cultural habit on wanting to consider the most "efficient" way for things to be. Especially in the "sustainability" movement, we see an obsession with efficiency. How do we consume less energy? Of course it's an important question, yet it is not usually coupled with actually changing our lifestyle. It thinks about systems strictly from an economic kind of lens of energy inputs and outputs without remembering the importance of our Spiritual Renewal. Okay, now we're using less energy, we're using less water, etc, but are we really living our life purpose? Conversely, there are those who have tuned into the value of healing and self-care, and may spend a bunch of money on personal growth retreats, work with alternative medicine practitioners, or take extended trips in the wilderness, but there is little regard for integrating these reconnecting practices into the landscape of every-day life and sharing their gift with the immediate community. To begin the conversation about "sustainability", at the very least we need these two things - efficient energy systems and spiritual renewal - to merge.

Yet we have a cultural habit of separation. We say "wilderness and spirituality" is over here, and "water bottle factories" are over here. We might say we need to make water bottle factories less toxic, more efficient, and still distribute clean water, and contribute to the economy. We might say we need to preserve the natural environment and let the wildness be completely untouched. In fact, neither of these scenarios are an effective answer on their own. 

For a week in 2013, I stayed at a Sufi Community several miles out of town from Silver City, New Mexico called "The Voice of the Turtle". It was not until three days into my visit that I met the creek for the first time because there had not yet been a reason I needed to go to the water. I loved the creek, when I went. It was beautiful, and being with it filled me with peace and joy. The diversity of experience, from being up on the hill, or down in the garden, viewing the trees, or then visiting the creek - was enriching. Why had I not been there yet? On one hand, it was convenient to have a pump that brought the water up to the kitchen, and on the other hand, I experienced directly how convenience was replacing communion. If there was no pump, we would need to visit the creek every day in order to bring the water we needed to the kitchen. The kitchen would probably be oriented in a location that was more receptive to a natural flow of water thru the landscape. Technology had replaced the wisdom of nestling into a relationship with Place. 

My mentor Mia Van Meter adds, from Ram Dass, [Sustainability is...] "not simply to rebuild the land, but to be rebuilt by the land, by the work itself."

Wendall Berry says, “We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.” 

These are lovely sentiments, and yet, they are still only ideas. They're only ideas when it exists as a thought in our mind, 1-dimensionally.
 
In this culture, we've become hyper-focused in the realm of 1-dimensional ideas. 
"We can't change the world"
"Water bottles are harmful"
"We can heal ourselves"
"I can make a clay pot"
"We can build a bench in our neighborhood"  

At best, we share our ideas with other people, and they become 2-dimensional. In conversation, suddenly there's another perspective. In words or pictures, it can be communicated and shared. 

It is when things take 3-dimension form that we are starting to fulfill our capacity as adults living on this marvelous planet. When we actually build a bench in our neighborhood, we have a physical, cellular feeling of what it is like to change the world. When we create rain gardens or water catchment systems, we learn more from our new relationship with water. When we make a clay pot, we know our actions have form. 

When objects exist and start to take on memory, we begin to see how 4+more dimensions unfold. This is where Placemaking begins to shine. A bench exists, and hundreds of people may use it, but not all at the same time. The bench experiences rain and sun and develops its own character. And if - during the "2-dimensional" stage of the process - many people have input as to what it should look like, where it should go, and so on, then even before a bench exists 3-dimensionally, it has Love imbedded into it that comes at it from many directions. Placemaking is, at its highest expression, a multi-dimensional process that encourages multi-dimensional interaction in this way. Not just a 1-dimensional way of having personal ideas, or even only a 3-dimensional way of building something, but many many dimensions, when invested with memory and meaning. 

The same is true for people. We are not just 1-dimensional brains moving our ideas from one meeting to the next. We are even more than our 3-dimension physical bodies. We are the action of energy, emotion, memory, and Love. When we interact with the physical world, EVERY SINGLE TIME, we interact with it as multi-dimensional beings. No matter how great our 1-dimensional ideas are, maturity of our own unique relationship with spirit develops when we move beyond the vision. 

I believe there's a country western song by Toby Keith that may put it more simply: "A little less talk, and a lot more action." You may or may not want that one stuck in your head. 

Move beyond "sustainability". When we imagine a new civilization, we must be conscious of how our every action is contributing to the collective potential for a multi-dimensional experience. This has very practical implications for simple things like whether or not to buy bottled water. Consciously and honestly looking at everything that goes into bottled water - before and after you use it - from a multi-dimensional perspective would make the decisions obvious. But it should always be a decision you make for yourself from your own consciousness, not just because someone told you should do it because it's the "green" thing to do. Your development of consciousness is the greatest gift to the "sustainability" movement, because it was the movement away from consciousness and love that got us into this mess. The physics of consciousness is something that exists without us, but all have access to it, and not just human beings. And I'll betcha with certainty, at the top of this economic chain of madness, is a bunch of hurting hearts - not measurable by their contributions to the national GDP - and every one of those hearts feels the effects of this culture of closure. 

Choices that influence our experience of a world in a multi-dimensional way - in a way that is meaningful to us in our every-day landscape - have incredible power. I think it is more important to work with your neighbors to build something together in the place where you live than it is to keep track of your individual water usage - or even to stop buying bottled water - because of this necessity to open hearts again. Because Placemaking projects are public projects that touch the essences of who we are as we live, rich or poor alike, within the physical world we are a part of.  

It's more important to keep change close to home because all conversation of "sustainability" is within the context of that physical world!  And the reason we have to even consider the implications of our individual impact is because we have individuated ourselves. Yet we are not so individual, physically or spiritually. We are of the landscape, and we are of each other. Not just "each other" the people in our comfortable friend group. Not just the "landscape" of pristine wilderness. Not just the "spirit" in sacred space. Every person we interact with. Every square inch of our neighborhood. Every moment of God.

It was weaving baskets that taught me I couldn't control. It was growing food that taught me abundance. It was building that taught me manifestation. I currently live in a cabin that isn't plumbed, and a 5 gallon tank of water above my sink teaches me limits, about every day and a half, when I have to fill it again. 

The beautiful thing about it is this: if you try to build a bench with wood, it lets you do it even if you are not completely aware of every molecule that makes up that wood and its history. You are allowed to use the wood without complete consciousness toward it. The physical world is absolutely surrounding us with grace and truth in this way. It is more perfect than we can fathom, although modern science is starting to catch up on what we have always known about nature's complexities. This grace that surrounds us in the physical world is consciousness. It teaches us. And we will only learn more by interacting with it directly. Why else would we bother to incarnate? We see what we do to the physical world as a mirror image of how we treat ourselves. We pollute, subvert, and dam water. Water is our emotions, -- on a cultural level -- we know we bottle them up, try to change them, and pollute their integrity. Air is our thinking mind and it's full of noise, full of the clatter of machinery, and full of the business of distracted thought. 

We know when we do healing work, it ripples out to the rest of the cosmos. We know that when we do simple physical tasks, it keeps energy flowing. Let's put these ideas together more often by aligning our conscious desire for healing with practical actions that may otherwise seem impossible because of our social fears. If all of this is way too esoteric for you, start with the dishes. Something about dishes is deeply sacred, (I have a lot of ideas about this task)... but what's it about for you? A pile of neglect? A sparkling phobia of germs?

It is this very physical world that we ignore when we think only in 1-dimensional ideas about what is right and what is wrong for "the environment" - forgetting that it is "the environment" that surrounds every square inch of the inside of our lungs and relentlessly demonstrates the miracle of life thru every "weed" in the cracks of concrete. We need to move beyond 1-dimesional ideas and into multi-dimensional experiences. We need to enhance the meaning and memory we give to our every-day landscape. The metaphor is completely unique to our personal perspective. 

So, what can YOU do differently? BE COURAGEOUS. "Courageous" comes from the root "cour" meaning, "heart" - to live from the Heart. No matter where people fall on the political spectrum, or whatever, everyone senses the world could be better right now. How can it be better? There is no right answer. None. The right answer should be startling different to every location on a hyper-local level. How does the landscape of your neighborhood capture light and water? Where are the wildlife corridors? Who has space for tool storage? What are the practical boundaries for personal space and collective space? Where are the places for public interaction? How much land would it take to feed everyone on your block? And on what kind of diet? Is there road space that could better be used for something else? Are there bigger social blockages that prevent safe places to sit and observe nature? What does your neighborhood need? 

We have replaced culture for consumerism, and become individual instead of collective. The collective includes the physical world of your immediate environment. Not the disaster in a place you never visit. Not the turmoil in a country you've never been to. YOUR physical world. To send prayers is helpful. To want to effect change elsewhere is violent. It is only another branch of consumerism. Consuming the drama, perpetuating distance. There is inherent violence associated with trying to solve other people's problems and putting the solutions away from the place where you live, outside yourself, and the people directly involved in your immediate life. A new civilization means restoring the fabric of healthy relationships. In order to do so, we need to remember that we do not need corporations to "solve" our problems thru false convenience - for we know there is not really convenience when we consider all the harm that is done behind the scenes. 

We instead must face a world of relating with real people that have skills and resources, as well as personalities that will challenge us - and the fact that our personalities might challenge other people!! 

In any case, we need to let our direct actions (not just our ideas) reflect our understanding of how to change the world.

Then, change the world. The physical world. Where you live. To reflect your values, your freedom. The world is changeable. Look at a clay pot and tell me it's not changeable.

On January 1, 2015, a day in the icy cold woods with friends led us into marvelous circumstances. Each time we'd go somewhere off trail to play, stop somewhere beautiful, move on, 'find' something else magical, and continue, appreciating - over and over - the time-wittled magic of so many elements that needed to come together to create what we could notice. We could have stayed hours in one spot and remained spellbound. The anthology of enchantment seemed to permeate us deeper and deeper, making the four of us feel an incredible sense of Love. 

I have not often marked the gregorian New Year to be of much importance to my life. Solstice feels special. Dark. Deep. But so reflective that the process of understanding the year continues far past the turn of the date. The new year always felt like it happened in early Spring, for me. But there is something quite real about writing the new number in my journal. If 1/1/2015 is any indication of the kind of year 2015 is due to be, I am likely to be sweetly surprised and embraced by mythical rapture in ways that will completely stretch my concept of Love. (2014 definitely stretched it already!)

My friend Shay Hohmann remarked, "We've been going through this dark time, from the 21-31 feels like the peak of darkness, and January is like dawn. If the New Year is a day, January is the Dawn."

His comment went straight to my heart because the current poem I have been memorizing to perform tonight begins in this way, 

"My only faith in technologies are in that which are old. 
I trust in the "breakthroughs" of a seed through soil. 
This is a Revolution readying the heart
to rest under the morning blankets of frost
under the thinnest layers of snow
melting
just as the sky turns blue before dawn
and the landscape begins to refresh its colour..."

The poem continues, exploring concepts of darkness, before we break out of the soil in the end. This week, the poem has put me through several haunting initiations. I had no idea when I wrote it that it would effect me so deeply, but as I've been memorizing it, it has revealed many secrets, and brought up a lot of emotions. Synching up its story with events in my life in un-planable ways. Just once, yesterday, I was speaking the words of the poem in my mind - not aloud - completely through concentration, my body not able to be on autopilot because I wasn't using my mouth or voice. It's a nine-minute poem, and I felt, even through the concentration, my awareness of the three other human souls with me, the forest spirits, the cathedral frost, epic cliffs and icicles, and the music of the Little River. The pulsing Life from the huge trees around us. It felt like channeling. Like shamanic journey work. The same level of attentive concentration and openness to cosmic whispering. 

And if January is the dawn of the day that is the New Year, then this truly is the Revolution melting. It is ready, and it has made each and every one of us ready by putting us up to some really intense challenges. No way around it, 2014 was a year of extremes.

Astrologically, the Pluto-Uranus dance that has been happening since late 2012 will have its final exact square in March. Until then, we'll remain within 1 degree of the two being in this intense aspect with each other. A Square in an aspect of tension... the tension being: 
Pluto - Death and Rebirth. In Capricorn - Earth. Social structures and governances.
Uranus - Revolution, sudden changes in consciousness. In Aries - Fire. Initiation.

This is the global revolution. 

The darkest part of the year just passed. "Solstice" means to Stand Still, so we can bring together and focus our inward attention. We gather, reflect, tap into, and contribute to global healing energy potential. Intentions for focusing our collective structure on building a foundation from Love (rather than corruption) of designing social systems from a directive of collaboration and listening (rather than control).

Saturn moved into Sagittarius two days later, relieving the intensity of the last two years as Saturn plowed through Scorpio. We're beginning to understand where each person's heart is within the greater context of healing the plant, healing society, healing ourselves, by bringing our awareness into loving, caring interactions with every person we meet, inclusive of our interactions with our environment to create a new system of interaction altogether. Sagittarius is the fire and passion of society, and now this is the arena of our lessons. (More on Saturn in Sag. from Michael Schultz.)

This means we are - we have the capacity to - dream in a new world. Traditional astrologers see "squares" - such as the square between Uranus and Pluto currently - as bad luck. Evolutionary astrologers consider "squares" to be the greatest gift for action and growth. It is not easy. Especially with Pluto involved. I have heard others describe Pluto as the "astrological blowtorch" and they're not far afield. Pluto is digging out the deepest level of corruption in our social system and bringing them to the surface -- from governments to families to our own personal value structures, fracturing through all levels, together, we are revealing what needs to change. And yet the trick is not to focus on the problem.

If we refrain from focus on governmental and political problems in our social interactions, we have the greatest potential for healing at this time. What is "amiss" that needs attention is something we can apply to the structure, process, or ways of being through our Love. What kind of world will we create? Depends on how deeply attentive we can get. And it requires quite a lot of stillness among a busy "holiday" world in order to know what is right for us. Winter is a naturally slower time in nature, not a time of "doing", but a time of Listening.   

The reason to refrain from focus on the horror of all that in wrong, while it is important to be aware of it, to be angry at it, to feel the truth and frustration of injustice -- it is more powerful to realize these systems came from somewhere, rather than to stop your discovery at Anger and stay there. The next question, after the "what" is revealed, is "why". Why? It is not due to erroneous fault in individuals alone. It is not solely because of "greedy" rich people, "violent" police, "lazy" houseless folks, or the "silent" middle class. Human beings created large systems (Capricorn). And those Systems are being turned upside down and need to be transformed (Pluto). If we want another wold built upon Anger, then stay in your Anger. If we want to grow into a culture of equality, justice, freedom, health, and Love, we must choose to act out these qualities in our personal life. I find it is MUCH more interesting - and requires much more focus attention - to be perfectly honest with myself and seek Love and understanding for every person I interact with than it is to be blatantly Angry at the World.

And because of the work in finding that honesty everywhere, I will say I notice Life takes on a nature of radical beauty, as well as haunting neutrality.

It is wonderful to realize that some of the best days of our lives are yet to occur. Perhaps some of the worst too. Yet, equipped with only the wisdom we have gathered from our own experience, we know that Life goes on. And Love -- however we want to describe it or feel it -- will forever be the foundation by which we can let Life construct magic from the unknown.

The first day back on the build, I kept making mistakes in the brickwork and wanting to be more fluid in my work rhythm. I'm new to masonry, among people who aren't. I'm learning, but sometimes not up to my own standards. Sometimes I felt a little frustrated. 

That night I had a dream I was in a room with five or so people and a young woman in the room was very upset and had a gun. Someone I know in Port Townsend talked her down, but the tension was so high, and being talked down was so anti-climactic, that she felt she still needed to do something and decided to shoot two people anyway. Next in the dream, I'm in the river and I hear people talking about the incident. I felt they were not really understanding the event properly, and talking about it in a way that wasn't really true, but I didn't correct them because it was hard to find the words for the feeling I had being there.

When I woke, I wasn't sure at first where the dream came from, but that day, I somehow found myself remembering that Jacqueline Freeman once told me that as a friend painted their house, he was going through a rough time, so he would dedicate each wall he painted to someone - like Ghandi. I had a feeling like I wanted to dedicate my work that day to the girl in my dream. 

For the rest of the day, I felt incredibly productive. I was constantly and pleasantly busy, cutting bricks, laying bricks, filling water buckets, mixing mortar, keeping things moving on site... easy flow and purpose. 

It hit me later that day that the girl in my dream needed to feel USEFUL. She needed to do something, and do something productive. She needed healthy action. 

Sometimes I can get caught in a spiral of wondering if my contributions, connections, and work in the world are valuable at all. When Adam Lanza shot children at an elementary school in Connecticut last year, I was living in my hometown of Bend, Oregon at the time, and I felt connected to him one day when I was walking up Pilot Butte and looking out at the ugly-developed city Bend has become. I felt the gravity of the grind. The grid. The cars whizzing along as if we're not all whizzing ourselves off of a fossil fuel cliff, disconnected from the reality that is the poison on the grocery-store shelving and fast food fractals from hunger to health-care while a needless war rages  and 'schools' dehumanize our children. That our families were broken and our houses were built of toxic, subsidized, commodified materials, stuffed of possessions that do not fill the void of the death of our ancestral village, the loss of our cultural commons, and the connection with our Soul. The landscape seemed to me paved with a numbness of ancient wounding that wasn't being held or grieved, and I could relate to Adam Lanza's utter feeling of smallness - a desire to do SOMETHING that would get people to STOP and just PAY ATTENTION to anything different than the mind jumble that becomes the news, and the stocks, and whatever else we have chosen to busy our minds with. The desire for something dramatic in order to wake people up. 

And in my dream, the desire for the girl to shoot two people in the room even though she was calmed down. 

But shooting people didn't help her, I could feel it. It left her feeling even more confused, empty, and hurt, and everyone else feeling horrified and sad. It's moments like these that I often find my body crying the grief others suppress, and feel the emotion of the World pass through, releasing itself back into Creation. This time, we - the girl in my dream and I - were transformed through our working together on the stove. I felt so much love for her, and for my working companions as an extension. 

During lunch the next day we learned about the plane that was shot down in Ukraine killing 298 people. 298 is an unfathomable number to take in at a glance. There's three of us on this job, and if one of us died, we would feel the impact in a huge way. Each one of the 298 people are a part of circles like ours, families, friends, groups, neighborhoods... the impact of 298 people dead is enormous. And we have a choice of what to do with this kind of information. Normally, we would not have known about the event... as far as the Stove Build in Grapeview, WA is concerned, it's a hot summer day and we're sitting on buckets eating lunch. The swainson's thrush has been twittering away all day and the water from our brick saw is making an interesting display on the driveway. We get online and see 'the news'... We can let it touch our hearts, to feel the ripple of the lives changed by the event, or we can track fear wondering if it will start another war, who instigated it and why, and what the repercussions will be. There's so much hopeless about a situation that seems so far away when we forget to bring it back to a personal level. Never to push it away, ignore the fear, or be numb to the losses, but to take the time to let the information completely sink in and find our own truth within it. 

Ultimately, we have full responsibility for how we let everything about our lives be the ritual we needed for the medicine we thought we wanted... for me, this week healership and stoves are hand-in-hand.

Between last week's work on the stove and this week's I wondered if a part of me was neglecting my studies as a healer by working so much recently. After returning from the Fairy & Human Relations Congress the week before, I felt inspired to focus my attention even moreso to healing, and I forgot why in the world I was building stoves. It dawned on me the evening before leaving again that... well, the simplest way to say it is: Time is not linear. I am not neglecting healership when I work on projects just as soon as I'm not neglecting the garden while I'm cooking dinner. Everything is a continuation on its own track in its own time. I know building home, creating community, placemaking... everything associated with these things is part of my work here. To me, building is healing, too. Placemaking is healing the landscape, the social fabric, and the spiritual connection to place. These stoves are a piece in the bigger story of the future of our relationship with the land, the future of a land-based community, a skill set used to bring fire to many people, as we learn and teach others, and build for others, bringing our Whole Presence to the job site with us, leaving good memories and a warm hearth.

As for our crew: while we were good at taking breaks for snacks, water, and cooking meals, I felt an absence of check-in times like I had gotten used to on the Living Prayer job site, but I was nervous to suggest we make time for them. The first day we arrived this week it seemed really apparent to me that even though we were working together alright, we were struggling to find a good rhythm because we had arrived at different times and none of us had really 'gotten there', still traveling in our spirits. I wanted to suggest we stop and check-in together, but I felt a little more time-pressure for this job, and a little more straight-forwardness of the tone of working together... but I asked one member of our team is he'd be into morning rituals, and he was, and so I asked the other, and he was, and we decided to. 

Our morning ritual is stretching, checking about how our bodies feel, and how we are emotionally and mentally. It takes us about 15 minutes and reflections on this check-in time included, "I'm really glad we did that. Just 5 minutes of stretching made my body feel so much better." "It really helped us arrive. I feel a lot more grounded and ready to work. A lot more focused."

The day of our first check-ins together was the day I worked with the girl in my dream, and all-together, we worked wonders into the stove the rest of the week. May it be that all changes we feel could benefit our most immediate circumstances will ripple out into the world through our work at a human-scale, wherever we may find ourselves.