success

"If I ask you on your death-bed fifty years from now, ‘Was your life a total success?', and you say 'Yes', what would be the five or ten things you’d be referring to that made you say it was a success?"

I followed my heart towards the adventures it was leading me to

I loved deeply and let people know it with my words actions and energy

I stayed open to and stayed aware of magic everywhere I went

I believed that my biggest dreams were possible, kept an open awareness of them, and followed them with calm confident grace

I created a fabulous community of friends and loved ones with whom we expanded our knowledge of what love support joy and adventure is

I committed my heart and energy to the people and things that fed me and gave abundantly and received abundantly in that direction

I was tender with the gentle things while allowing my infinite innate power to ease me radiantly through the twists and turns that life provided

I let people in





and you?

i am...

finding gems. breathing. tripping over my own two feet. waiting, wishing, wanting, remembering how much i love to sing. how it feels in my body. opening my eyes and shutting them tight, then forgetting. loving through the pain. falling. down a large hole and scraping the palms of my hands and wondering who is going to send down a ladder. seeing fuzzy. getting the necessities just barely done... shower, food, sleep, court. allowing myself the freedom to walk around the lake and feel the sunshine and distract from my aching to smile and even laugh. i am laughing. allowing. allowing strangers the spaciousness to invite me in for a moment. allowing the curious miracle of absurdity to stand out. allowing the re-organizing of myself and my structures and my ideas of what's possible... shift what's possible. fighting. confused. protecting. releasing. driving and barely noticing that i'm driving. looking for my armor just moments too late. breathing. eating. wandering in circles. amazed at the complexity. breathing into the simplicity. finding gems.

remarkable

from foundmagazine.com, a website that publishes found gems.
this one slows me down, lifts me lighter, brings me joy....

where it all began....

There was an international intentional gathering in Chapada Diamantina, a mountain range in Bahia, Brazil. Those mountains are sacred to me, in the way that I feel at home there. The hills slope up into tabletops in what looks like large skate ramps, and the hillsides glitter with quartz crystals. Red rivers flow through the valleys and everywhere you wander there are waterfalls. Tier after tier after tier. It was summertime. Brutal. Yet perfect for plunging into the rivers over and over and letting the sun bake me dry. Perfect for spending all day not doing much except relaxing in the shade.
I had arrived alone, pitched my tent, and took a deep breath. Everything that I owned was in a backpack, and I soon met a friend in the same situation, except that everything that he owned included a large metal box. He had hiked into the gathering with the intention of building an earthen oven.
So we set about digging up dirt and collecting hay and crystals to build the structure around this metal box and people started gathering to help and soon we had a small community of enthusiastic oven-builders with their eager hands helping out, and their tarps and tents pitched in a wide semi-circle around it.
Over the next four weeks, over 1000 people passed through that part of the mountains, and for every waking hour, there was bread being kneaded, cookie batter being stirred, pizzas being tossed, and muffins browning. We fed hundreds of people every day and every day people came by with pounds of cheese or flour or sugar to joyfully donate to the abundance.
There was about a dozen of us who were self appointed stewards of this fabulous feasting extravaganza, and though it all flowed pretty smoothly, without job assignments, or schedules, we were always having trouble keeping track of the oven mits.
"Where are the gloves?!", we would call out when the bread started to brown and break open at the top, and it was always a scramble, but somehow, we could only ever manage to find ONE, and a different one every time!
So we called ourselves the oneglove kitchen. And to me, oneglove always stands for the beauty of letting the magic happen....