Radiating Our Light

At a recent gathering of the Moon Goddess Circle, in honor of the Summer Solstice, we sat outside for our meditation. I thought it would be perfect, on this longest day of light, to radiate our light.

I read The Little Soul and the Sun, a children's story by Neale Donald Walsh, author of the Conversations with God series.  This profound story invites us to imagine ourselves as beings of light -- innocent, curious and adventurous little souls -- prior to being born into our lives.

As we settle onto cushions, stretch out on the grass, recline in Adirondack chairs and light candles, I share a passage from Walking in Light, by Sandra Ingerman:

You are spirit.  You are Light.  You are one with the power of the universe.... go within and experience a flame of light growing.  As you continue to breathe, this light grows, flows and radiates throughout your cells.  This is effortless, for your true nature is light....

Then we allow ourselves to shine like stars, radiating light in all directions.  I describe for the group how their energy fields are expanding and overlapping as the vibration rises.

One of our goddesses is preparing for surgery; so, as we had discussed earlier, we quietly move into the healing room.  She reclines on the healing table while the others encircle her.  I suggest where each may place her hands and guide us in maintaining our radiance and seeing, in our mind's eye, our receiving friend in all her light and strength.  I murmur pre-surgical intentions and support the circle of healers with my own light as it flows through my hands.

The energy in the room is electric with the power of these women.

Later, after everyone is gone and the house is quiet, I go outside to dismantle our solstice altar.  I find that the altar, now that it's dark, perfectly mirrors our experience!

 Each individual radiating her light....

And then merging with others to exponentially expand the power, the beauty, the healing grace.

The play of light and shadow illustrates just how our fields overlapped and merged.

I take a moment under the crescent moon to register my amazement.

These outward reflections of inward experiences affirm that I'm not making this all up!  What happened here tonight is true.

Namaste -- the divine light in me honors the divine light in you.

Communion

Three of us are spending the weekend at our friend's new home on the edge of a meadow that inclines toward a deep wood.  A sea of long grasses, wild daisies, and purple thistles wave in the soft breeze.

I have pictures of the woods, but they don't capture it's deep soul.  Rock walls weave and tumble alongside canopied trails.  Boulders hunch their massive shoulders.  Trees soar skyward.

It feels like a cathedral in here.  I wonder if architects of old-world churches  aspired to imitate places like these, where we naturally feel reverence.

Vaulting arches, graceful columns, and lofty domes can only hope to capture the energy of the deep forest.


We devise a simple ritual expressing our acceptance of something lost and welcoming infinite potential -- untold possibilities -- to flow into each one of us and our sisterhood. Papers feed flames until only ashes remain. We carry the ashes into our sacred environs, releasing them into the running waters.

The current whisks them away. As if their mission is urgent.

The waterways of the earth are her veins and arteries, carrying our offering across the body of the planet.  This stream -- infused with our intentions for wholeness and healing -- will join other tributaries on it's journey to the great oceans where our gift may be received by the world.

Thus the land receives our sacramental offering to the Spirit of All Life.  Our modest ceremony connects us to mysterious creative forces in ways we have yet to appreciate.

 

Something was initiated today, in communion with these treasured friends and and Mother Earth. Releasing ashes of something that once was, with full hearts and healing intentions for all, somehow quickens the phoenix waiting to be born.

Amen!

Turtle Wisdom

A fish cannot drown in water.

A bird does not fall in air.

Each creature God made

must live in its own true nature.

Mechthild of Magdeburg

Early morning sun filters through the leafy canopy outside.  Myriad greens --  sunlit chartreuse and shadowed emerald -- float on the late-May breeze.

I toss the covers off and ten minutes later I'm out the door.  Cool air  exquisite on bare arms.

The moment I round the corner that opens onto the pond, my body viscerally relaxes.  My mind expands with the view.  My entire being knows -- this is the place I stop and sit. 

I approach the dock with soft steps.  Still,  a duck emerges from the rushes and glides away.  The birds put up a fuss, as if I'm a foreign invader.

You'd think they know me by now?

I'm greeted by a dozen turtles!  I've never seen so many at once, here in the water at my feet.

Several larger ones are embedded in the cloudy bottom.  Foraging? Pale lines criss-cross their backs like crooked tic-tac-toe boards. Suspended in the water, three babies stare at me with their tiny wizened faces. Their shells are about the size of a compact, ringed with bright orange markings. Their little paws hang motionless as they regard me with curiosity. 

I think.  I mean, who knows what they're thinking?

Several other triangular-shaped heads dot the smooth surface -- a constellation of turtles.

The ones on the bottom rise lazily and poke their heads up too.  There's a thin layer of dust on their shells.  Their movements are proverbially slow, until I raise my hand to lower my sunglasses so they can see my eyes (ridiculous).  But when I move, they scurry away. One of them slips into the recesses of the mucky bottom.  Later, she re-emerges; realizing, perhaps, that I'm no threat.

They look like a bunch of wizened old souls, ancient in their self-possession.  Navigating the borderline of earth and sky, heads pointed toward the sun, bodies in the watery realm.  They burrow in the cloudy depths and sun themselves on shoreline rocks.

I  know them because I'm born in the sign of Cancer -- the crab.  Like these turtles, I wear an energetic shell -- a persona, fraught with defenses -- a shield the world has taught me I need.

Lately though, everywhere I turn, there's a lesson on the power of defenselessness.

By this, I mean dropping habitual defenses and venturing into the mucky-bottomed shadows of the deep psyche.

It's like hauling buried treasure up from the bottom of the sea.  The chest's hinges are rusted; the lock is encrusted.  But despite whatever made us lock away some part of our soul, or  seal off a terrible affront to our being, the treasure -- our essence, our innocence -- remains. 

Because God created us in innocence, it cannot be destroyed.

Behold your Innocence

Feel it glowing within

like rainbow-hued gems glistening in the sun

sprawled on the deck

of the ship of your soul. 


These turtles teach us to plumb the depths and to accept the light.  When we plumb our own depths and accept our own light, we find that we are as alive and vital, ancient and new-born, wise and playful as these humble master teachers.