MAGNOLIA LOVE

 International Woman’s Day Art Show 

OMAH Orillia Museum of Art History March 3- April 9th, 2011
30 Peter’s Street South Orillia  10 -4 each day.

Magic Calls to Me

Magic calls to me from canyons
Rivers
Valleys
Shore
Glimpses I catch in sunbeam
Moon shadow
Hollowed out log

Magic whispers
Taunts 
Follow me
Dance along
The edges of now

Magic laughs
Smiles from faces as yet unknown
From friends
Friends everywhere I turn
Magic smiles back

And when
When in
Quietude I still and observe

I then see ever truly
Magic graces my whole world.

While visiting the west coast last summer this  beautiful magnolia almost past it’s prime, compelled, drawing me closer and closer. Leaning farther over a high balcony, I almost toppled to the ground attempting to catch its radiant light!

Later looking at the photo, only then did I see the true gift offered me. Its perfect heart center, reflecting  nature’s magical love, took my breath away. 

Profound messages grace my world from everywhere, when I but choose to see with new eyes, listen and follow.

From what magical place might  love offer its gift to you today, stirring your heart into new and exciting awareness?

Will you be ready to listen, follow and open to receive love’s bounty?

May you be graced with anticipation and wonder this day~

In lovelight Linda

Our Greatest Gift

I’ve seen two impactful, empowering movies lately:’The Soloist’ and ‘My Name is Khan’. Their message is profound and played a part in the creation of the prose that follows.

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE

Let your light shine
Lightly whispering of new vistas ahead
Like sun sparkling diamonds on water

Let your light shine
Lightly sun kissing snowflake in frosty air
Like gentle caress on baby’s cheek

Let your light shine
Lightly tip toeing each musical note
Like glinting smile in Irish eyes

Let your light shine
Into depth of darkest night
Beaming rays of promise toward pathways of joy

Let your light shine
Lightly upon all lost and in hiding
Those curled inward hugging bone chilling cold

Let you light shine
Lightly on the long forgotten
Those perhaps masked as neighbour family, friend or foe

Let your light shine
Lightly on those only awaiting
Softened edges of anyone’s smile

Let your light shine
Lightly dancing on the edges of time
As together we create world be coming

New world shining
Light filled
Lightly~

Let your light shine~~

Now is the time, this moment is the place, we are the ones who may freely offer our greatest gift.  Our loving light~

Warmest loving wishes

Linda

When the ‘Creative’ is Everywhere….

“How come God doesn’t want you to see him Linda?” questioned my tiny but very wise friend, 3 year old Ronnie. I stopped painting the trim on the door and looked into his deep brown eyes, wise beyond his years.  Eyeball  to eyeball  he pierced my soul unblinkingly.

“Ummm, well Ronnie, that’s a good question. I’ll have to think about that one for a minute”, I responded. 

Looking back now, I know that I most likely missed a wonderful opportunity in my speechless state.  Often I would respond to a child’s question with:  “Well what do you think” and from that query, have received some amazing insights. 

Ronnie, son of my friends, had been in my life since his birth. However after his father died when he was the tender age of 2, he became part of our family day care. I held him close, day after day, as he sobbed from the depths of his being, now also separated  from his mother who needed to go back to work.  Over time, we became deeply connected, this tiny sage and me, as we shared in common a well of deep inner quietness and contemplation.   

From this place, Ronnie had posed an ageless philosophical question, debated across the ages. I am not certain I remember how I finally answered him. I do know that it resonated within me from a similar place of seeking.

Ronnie was the echoing voice, the mirror of my own searching: a construct I could share with few others at that time. 

How come God doesn’t want to be seen, Ronnie? From my awareness today, I would now respond to him in this manner.

‘Ronnie, I believe that God /dess,  Source, Great Spirit, Creator ( insert your own words for the universal life force energy) from a great sense of humour gave us a most precious gift by not showing us the ‘Divine I Am ’.  Seeing God would be too easy and you would miss all the really important stuff like how God sounds and feels and how God talks to you and loves you, always.

And you might be looking in only one direction ~ when God is here and there and in the sunshine and the trees and peoples smiles and splashy rain puddles, the dancing music notes, in puppy dog kisses and fairy forests and rainbows, in laughing dolphins and fuzzy warm blankets and ‘specially inside your beautiful heart.’

And I would say to him today:

‘And it’s important to know too, that  ’God’ is with you also  in the sad times, and the scary: always there in the dark and the light.  The ‘God’ source never changes, it’s only us who may choose to move away from the eternal light and love.

We are also then invited to see the wonder of all the universe, whatever that divine energy is called, through the eyes of our own heart and soul,  just like you did then as a small child, since one must be able to see deeply, to pose such an insightful question.’

For the Creator of all is found in all things. 

 Even in you and me, my precious one~!
 

Help us Divine All Knowing  to see clearly with wonder, like that of a child: to sense deeply your Presence always.  Open our hearts to the abundant  ‘awe~ someness’  of life that surrounds us, reflecting back to us the reverberating wonder and intrigue of our bounteous world.

What Do You See, when you search for the Creator ?

What do you Sense, Feel, Hear, Intuit?

How does this feed and nurture Your Spirit ?

Warm wishes as you journey ~  Linda

Know Thyself, Saith The Oracle 

Of Delphi

Today June 21, 2009, is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year; the largest amount of light, solar rays, available to us in the Northern hemisphere. Throughout the ages, people have celebrated this day in reverence, joy, anticipation, according to varied cultural traditions. 

The symbolic essence of the Solstice invites one to look toward the play of inner light and darkness.  It is said that at this time metaphysically, the veil between the worlds is thinner, more easily allowing the richness of self awareness and self discovery. 

Facilitating a workshop yesterday on varied aspects of ‘Soul Talk’ a participant, who knows me well, said: “You are all about self awareness, aren’t you.”

I heard this comment in a new way and easily responded, and now enlarge on my truth, by expressing it thusly: “Yes, since it is my journey, my responsibility, my soul call to deeply know and love me, I am all about self awareness. It is vital to me to honour and get to know all parts of me, since I have been created divinely, as we all have been. This is my soul growth path, my spirit leading me back to my authentic, Higher Self. The more I know, the more I know I have yet to know. And then the more I have to let go… (however I digress~!) 

I do know that I can only change myself and through this process my heart opens to more clearly connect to my Self,  Source and Others and my life shifts, amazingly.

Solstice is a powerful time for seeding new awareness’s, intentions, paradigms: preparing for new growth and a new harvest, both within oneself, and in ones everyday life. 

I offer prose today, from a mentor I have never met in person, who had a profound affect on my life years ago. Her name was Virginia Satir, a family therapist a forerunner in family therapy. I immediately resonated with her book PeopleMaking, and its wisdom helped me through a challenging dissolution and loss in my life.

MY DECLARATION OF SELF-ESTEEM
            
                                                         I AM ME

In all the world there is no one else exactly like me
There are persons who have some parts like me, but no one adds up
Exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me
Is authentically mine, because I alone choose it
I own everything about me:  my body, including everything it does
My eyes, including the images of all they behold
I own my feelings: anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement
My mouth and all the words that come out of it
Polite, sweet or rough, correct or incorrect and my voice, loud or soft
I own all my actions, whether they be to others or to myself
I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears
I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes
Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me
By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts
I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests
I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me
And other aspects that I do not know
But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously
And hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles
And for ways to find out more about me
However I look and sound, whatever I say and do
And whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me
This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time
When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did
How I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting
I can discard that which is unfitting,
Keep that which proves fitting and invent something new for that which I discarded
I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive
To make sense out of the world of people and things outside of me
I own me and therefore, I can engineer me

I AM ME AND I AM OKAY

VIRGINIA SATIR c 1975

What a wonderful day to celebrate the beauty of who you are…

 And all that you are becoming~

Solstice Blessings to you~

HAVING FUN

 Mirror, Mirror, what do I see reflecting back at me…..?
 
Annoyance, humour, AHA moments, all full of possibility~

 

Years ago strolling along a beach crying not good enough tears, I painfully came  into the moment as I stubbed my toe on something hidden in the sand.  Reaching down, I picked up a small heart shaped rock with a chunk missing from one corner. 

Its metaphorical and metaphysical message struck me profoundly.

Since that day, I have been aware that my most important life’s purpose was first, remembering to love myself deeply;  then from within, I have much to share and offer in love to others.  

In my life, pre-the toe stubbing on the broken hearted rock, the messages blaring through my perceptionary field spoke illusive  concepts of always being good, quiet, sweet, pretty, the perfect size, using the right products, trying hard to own the right stuff and above all pleasing the people cared for, to get love.  These messages led me deeper and deeper into confusion, self doubt, frustration and depression~ de-pressed energy~ since of course, I had wandered a long way away from the real beauty of me~!

As I began to remember my way back to myself by listening to my soul call, things began shifting deeply within me.  AHA’S after AHA continued to drop in; deep understanding of self caring, self responsibility, self forgiveness,  the power of conscious choice, healthy boundaries, mind body spirit connection and the true empowerment of shaping my own life were the universal sign posts leading me back.

As I continue to follow my Soul Song, my life responds and mirrors back to me the beauty and love that has always been in the world, when I hold the willingness to see with clear eyes.

The following quote continues to inspire my adventuresome life.

” The world would have you agree with its dismal dream of limitation but the light would have you soar like the eagle of its sacred vision.”   Cohen~
       

And the playful part of me  just HAD TO TRY the  ‘take your own picture in the mirror’  trick I have watched children do for years. I am so glad I had the sense of fun to do this; however, I see that  I have photos in TWO  places and I can’t seem to delete one of them. 

Guess My Inner Child Really Wanted To Play

HAVING FUN

Since fun and playfulness all raise our vibrations….

HOW HIGH CAN WE ALL SOAR TOGETHER ?