Cosmic Gardener – Cultivating a Life

Our life experiences are a part of the curriculum in Earth School that teaches us how to develop our potential for the divine.

Gratitude is an elixir for life’s ills, challenges and disappointments. When we find gratitude in every encounter or experience, in the moment or on reflection, we invite its healing.

This month’s elections in my homeland asked those of us that voted to make choices about matters of importance in our states and communities and in whose values and vision of America to support. Many who voted were disappointed about some of the outcomes.

The resulting reassessment of personal values and priorities has led many to take some action to support those people and issues most personally meaningful. Voting with our lives, changing what we can, to make the world a better place.

A friend received a voice-generated text (without spell check) of one example. The sender wrote about being motivated to get involved with “Green Speak or maybe globular worming.” In case neither of those options work out I understand that Green Peace welcomes support and I hear that global warming is also a big issue.

Grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can and
The wisdom to know the difference.

Sometimes when I am feeling particularly grateful I think to myself ‘how blessed I am.’ Not in a religious sense, more like gifted from a benevolent Source.

If you change the “e” in bless to an “i” it becomes bliss. When you change the “i” in bliss to an “e” it becomes bless. It’s a continuum. To bless life, all of life, is to know bliss. Albert Schweitzer (a Nobel Peace Prize recipient) called it reverence for life.

In Life’s Garden
Plant with care
Cultivate with love
Harvest with joy.

“All work is a seed sown; it grows and spreads,
and sows itself anew.”   Thomas Carlyle

“Work  is love made visible.” Kahlil Gibran

Planting Seeds: A Song to Live By Nimo Patel

“It’s good enough” is one of those slippery phrases like “It is what it is.” It can be spoken to mask sloppy disrespect, in haste or out of carelessness. “It’s good enough” can also be said with satisfaction, or as a way not to succumb to the drive for perfection.

It’s a matter of intention.
Go with your best. Whatever it is. Whatever you do.
It’s good enough.

Can you name your core values?
Does the life you are living claim them?

We are most alike in that we are all different.

In that we are all different we are alike, not different.

This treat was on my seat, and those for several aisles around me, when I boarded a 6 hour cross country flight over the weekend. As it turns out Ezekiel did have a hard inaugural flight and was pretty vocal about it. Although the family was right behind me there was so much LOVE reverberating among the three that it drowned out the extraneous noise.

Love, joy and peace. A friend signs emails and texts that way.
Simple concepts, yet complex in their nuances.
Koans, each in their own way, and worthy of contemplation.

It’s summer and in hot weather most folks uncover a bit more skin to keep cool. The other day a friend of mine, wearing an attractive dress and sandals, explained that she felt the need to cover her bare legs with makeup to mask her scars from skin cancer surgeries and other life mishaps.

Being human leaves its marks on us all, some of them not visible. Earth Marks. We all have them.

When Life hands us one of those pesky pop quizzes often our default response is to ask, “Why me?  or “Why this/now?”

At these times I think better questions are, “What do I need to do to manage this situation and not give away my peace of mind?” and “What am I learning?”

Ever the student, my friends are often my teachers.

Treat others the way they want to be treated.
From a friend involved with developing a culture of excellence in his diverse workplace I learned that to treat others the way we want to be treated presumes that we all have the same cultural and personal values and priorities.

See others the way they want to be seen.
From another friend who facilitates workshops on diversity, equity and inclusion I learned that while being blind to another’s external identifiers (e.g. race, age, physical capacity, etc.) might at first blush seem enlightened vision, in reality could discount someone’s core identity.

Sometimes I think we need to be brave enough to ask others how they want to be treated, and how they want to be seen.

The experiences in our lives are the building blocks of our existence. We can use them to either build walls or to build bridges. Love builds bridges between people, isms a wall that separates them. Birthed from the same raw material, our hours and days and years, how we use them defines the quality and nature of the relationships we form on our life’s journey; the ups and downs inherent to any path, what we cross over or leave behind and the barriers we encounter along the way. Sometimes in its stillness time reflects our passage.

Recently I listened to an interview with Andrew Harvey, author of “The Hope: A Guide To Sacred Activism.” I went on to read the book and have come to understand his vision of sacred activism as an answer to the call, What are you doing to make the world a better place?

I don’t think it matters what our cause, or how we serve it but that we have at least one to which we give our time, talent or dollars or some combination thereof. Our efforts don’t need to be grandiose or Gandhi-esque to make a difference. In fact I believe that sometimes our best contributions are gifted by just showing up, being authentic or sharing our earth school homework.

Of course all this made me wonder what it is that I care enough about to get involved with, for or in, and risk what Harvey calls “being reborn into a peaceful passion to put love into action.”

If not now, when? If not us, who?

“To think that everything that you do has a ripple effect,
that every word that you speak, every action that you make
affects other people and the planet changes the way you live.”
Victoria Moran

For what am I grateful this day, and in what ways have I been kind?

It seems to me that having animal companions is in many ways like having a primary human relationship. Having entered into such a partnership implies caring for and being available to it. All our relations deserve such focus. The First People tell us that everything is our relation, an idea expressed beautifully in “a video prayer honoring our oneness with all living things” by modern mystic Jan Phillips.