Hello to all who follow my ramblings, I would like to say thank you and also wish you good things in your life during this new year, a momentous one I suspect.

For me I want to live in abundance in all things, in life, in love, in spirit, in creativity, in health, in grace, in courage and above all in my wildness.  The latter is so important to us all, for with this we can reach our true potential. My wildness can cause sparks to fly, to love with immense passion, it can steer me of course sometimes with hard lessons learnt but it has enabled me to find my true instinctual and intuitive self and believe in her!

I love these words by Clarissa Pinkola Estes,  they just might inspire you, I hope so………………….

The way to maintain one’s connection
to the wild
is to ask yourself
what is it that you want.

One of the most important discriminations
we can make in this matter
is the difference between things that beckon to us
and things that call from our souls.

We choose a thing because
it just happened to be beneath
our noses at that moment in time.
It is not necessarily what we want,
but it is interesting,
and the longer we gaze at it,
the more compelling it becomes.

When we are connected
to the instinctual self,
to the soul of the feminine
which is natural and wild,
then instead of looking over
whatever happens to be on display,
we say to ourselves,

“What am I hungry for?”
Without looking at anything outwardly,
we venture inward and ask,
“What do I long for?
What do I wish for now?
What do I crave?
What do I desire?
For what do I yearn?”

It takes spirit,
will,
and soulfulness
and it often means……….
holding out for what one wants.

White geese, nursery rhymes, childhood, play and laughter, cousin to the swan Louisa May Alcott said

“She knew she was not nightingale, 
Yet spite of much abuse, 
She longed to help and cheer the world,

Although a plain gray goose. 

She could not sing, she could not fly, 
Nor even walk with grace, 
And all the farm-yard had declared 
A puddle was her place.

But something stronger than herself 
Would cry, ‘Go on, go on!’ 
Remember, though an humble fowl, 
You’re cousin to a swan.”

Some say that The goose exemplifies a call to the spiritual quest, particularly in its migration patterns and behaviors. The geese leaving in the autumn stirs our imagination and makes us want to search out new worlds and dimensions. Their incessant honking seems to be calling us to follow them on the great spiritual quest. Their return speaks of the fulfilled promises that great quests bring.

Mary Olive wrote this beautiful poem `’Wild Geese”

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
 for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers.
 Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again.
 Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — 
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

The goose also is a totem of communication, especially through the use of stories. Its feather for a long time was the standard writing instrument. Individuals wishing to write can facilitate the process by working with the goose as a totem. It will stimulate the imagination and help move you through creative blocks. Writing with a goose quill pen will help this even more.

It was a perfect evening………………….

Recently for a storytelling session I was asked to write a story,  it wasnt until I read the poem again this morning I realised the story and the poem had great similarities.

Thought I would share this with you this morning.

SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

E E Cummings

The following poem just says it all for me.  It took a long time find the place of acceptance of “what is” in life.  Once tasted I realised the answer to  living with that elusive ” inner peace” was trying to achieve acceptance in all areas of my life and day to day life’s challenges.

Whatever life brings up for us, know that its arisen because we have something to learn from it, learn to see the gifts in all and every situation.

The poem is by RUMI, the famous Sufi poet who died in 1273; he states very clearly just what I am trying to say, he says it far more eloquently than I ever could,

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

The image here is one of my pencil drawings made into a repeating pattern, one of black and white, life and death,  one must have many deaths in order to give birth to new growth

The following quote is one I repeat very often

“What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life?

What do I know should die, but am hesitant to allow to do so?

What must die in me in order for me to love?

What not-beauty do I fear? Of what use is the power of the not-beautiful to me today?

What should die today? What should live? What life am I afraid to give birth to?

If not now, when?

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I recently came back from teaching a workshop about the Hero’s Journey, using the Major Arcana cards to reveal the epic path.   this quote I plucked from one of my most favourite books just about said it all.

“Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.”

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Women Who Run with the Wolves: Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman)

also see www.livingenergyhealer.com

I still find creative deadlines challenging, I always manage to keep to them and over the years have learnt to pace myself a little better.  I also find I use them to ignite a sense of urgency within me, without them I wouldn’t get anywhere as much work done as I do.  They kind of act like fuel that ignites me into action.  Love them or hate them I NEED them.

Hot pinks and reds are favourites at the moment, love the vibrant energy waves these colours emit.  Have been playing at patterns again, this one is from a drawing that I illustrated a poem with.  A beautiful poem that touched my soul and forms the essence of my being.

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible;

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.

by Dawna Markova

Flickr: Your Photostream.

Selected verses from
The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts

Be kind and tender to the Frog,

And do not call him names,

As “Slimy skin,” or “Polly-wog,”

Or likewise “Ugly James,”

Or “Gap-a-grin,” or “Toad-gone-wrong,”

Or “Bill Bandy-knees”:

The Frog is justly sensitive

To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay

A treatment kind and fair;

At least so lonely people say

Who keep a frog (and, by the way,

They are extremely rare).

by Hillaire Belloc