Leap of Faith

My spirit soared when a Voice spoke to me:
“Come, come to the Heart of Love!”
How long I had stood within the house of fear
yearning to enter the gates of Love!

The New Jerusalem, the Holy City,
is bound firmly together;
All who seek the Heart of Love,
those who have faced their fears,
Enter the gates in peace and with great joy,
singing songs of thanksgiving,
There, in harmony with the cosmos,
the community gathers united in love.

Pray for the peace of the world!
May all nations prosper as one!
May peace reign among all peoples,
and integrity dwell within every heart!
Then will friends and neighbors,
and former enemies as well,
cry out, “Peace be with you!”
For the good of the universe and
in gratitude to the Beloved,
Let us serve the Holy One of all nations
with glad hearts.

Psalm 122
from Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness 
by Nan C. Merrill

This is what I read this morning as I sat among the redwoods in the cathedral of the earth, pausing for a moment to pay attention to the Sacred Presence. I did not write these beautiful and powerful words, but they resonate with my heart. For too long now we have been fed the lie of fear, the lie of hate, the lie of evil. We must be afraid, we are told, because “they” are evil and hate us, and must, therefore, be destroyed! It is not true. It is not true! IT IS NOT TRUE! “How long I had stood in the house of fear yearning to enter the gates of Love!” There is violence in the world because there is injustice in the world. There is violence in the world because there is ignorance in the world! There is violence in the world because there is fear in the world! And it doesn’t have to be that way. We have it within us to make it something new and different. We are one people, firmly embraced in the loving arms of the one God. In the landscape of Love we can meet in peace and harmony. “May all nations prosper as one! May peace reign among all peoples, and integrity dwell within every heart!” It is no longer enough to reject the lie. We must also have the courage to stand up and declare what we know to be true. “Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.” I do not yet know all of the ways I will seek to live this out in my life. But I know I can no longer stand silently by while the lie of fear is proclaimed as the gospel by which we must live our lives. We must each of us in our own ways let the Light shine forth into the world. In the words of singer/songwriter Jewel, “Light does the darkness most fear!” “Pray for the peace of the world! . . . For the good of the universe and in gratitude to the Beloved, Let us serve the Holy One of all nations with glad hearts.” Let’s make some noise!

Blessings,
Roger

Went for a hike yesterday. This is what I found -

click here to view some wildflower photos

After weeks and weeks of traveling I don’t quite know what to do with sitting still. While Veronica is in Florida I am camped in a beautiful redwood forest south of San Francisco and here I will be for more than a week. What a luxurious gift! The lesson of the moment seems to be one of discovering stillness. Before today I’d written two poems in the entire time we’ve been on the road. Today I wrote three. I think perhaps there is value to be found in this time of rest.

Blessings,
Roger

- - -

ancient trees and timeless waves
seduce me with their rhythm
the rush & hurry of my normal pace
robs me of their peace

attending to the forest’s voice
reminds me to seek stillness
where wonder & abundance
can seep into my soul

how much have I been missing?
how impoverished is my living?
there is beauty all around me
just waiting to be seen

can I learn to pay attention
when life’s frantic schedule beckons?
in this world of constant speed
I will seek the gift of slow

- - -

the “stillness” of the forest
is anything but quiet
as the whisper of the wind
moves among the branches
and the chattering of birds & squirrels
echoes through the trees

but stillness it most surely is
for in its timeless voice I hear
the healing rhythm of the earth

- - -

Stellar Jay preening
in the branch above my head
stray feather drifts down

We made it to the Pacific Ocean! And then Veronica took off for 8 days in Florida. (She saw two oceans in the same day.)

While she’s gone I’m camping at the San Mateo County Memorial Park, located in a beautiful redwood forest about 30 miles south of San Francisco.

Click here for view a few photos from the campground.

lots of forest fires to the west of Lake Tahoe meant the sunset was spectacular

click here to view the photo set

(these were taken before the bear kept us awake half the night)

Ted, the man who checked us into our hotel room in Sante Fe (Hi Ted!) was reading a book when we walked into the lobby about communicating with animals. I told him about a book I’ve owned and loved for decades: Kinship With All Life, by Boone, that describes how the author was taught to communicate with animals by the movie-star Strongheart, a German Shepherd he had the good fortune to take care of for awhile. We had an unexpectedly delightful time sharing a reality we don’t seem to share with every one.

As we were eating our final breakfast at the Silver Saddle before leaving for Taos, we shared the story of our journey into trust and faith with Ted who seemed to enjoy it. He gifted us with a music video he had made and he gifted us with these words of blessing: 

“In joy, harmony and safety I step into the unknown.
In joy, harmony and safety I step into the unknown”.

He also gave us these words of wisdom, which he attributed to Kahil Gibran (a teacher of mine from way back): 

“Fill your day with beauty and to hell with the rest.”

Words to live by. Thank you Ted. 

***************

From the awning of our tent trailer we hang prayer flags. My favorite is the prayer/greeting “Namaste”: 
“I honor the place in you in which the entire universe dwells. I honor the place in you which is of love, of truth,  of light and of peace. When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, we are one.”
When you are in that place in you, that place of utter connection with all of life, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us. 

I dwell in that place, sometimes for only an instant, sometimes for longer. It is my favorite place in the Universe. I  think that is why I love Nonviolent Communication (www.cnvc.org) so much–it is a way of understanding and action  that leads to that place of oneness. When I surrender my goals and only strive to find connection with myself or  another, I fall into that place of oneness. And magically, it seems, a path always appears before me. 

******************

Roger found this gem the other day:
“Do not go where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A friend who knows me well gave me a refrigerator magnet for a going away present. It is 2″ square and has a picture of two women in 1940’s fancy dress, putting on their matching gloves. The inscription reads: “They made it  their strict policy never to err on the side of caution.”

Ralph just said it with more poetry. When I see the magnet I laugh. It is so me. A “safe” life has never appealed to  me. There doesn’t seem to be any real safety in the outside world anyway, and inner safety, I’ve learned, depends  upon living an authentic life, a heart-led life. 

And so here I sit in my campsite at Great Basin National Park (an undiscovered gem), being buzzed by a hummingbird with the smell of butterscotch in the air and the music of water dancing down the mountain in my ears. There is safety in all this beauty, in all this love, in living a life dependent upon prayer-led inspiration. It is not  the kind of “safety” I am used to wanting, and it is the kind that is beginning to seem more and more real. Day by  day we wallow in beauty, look for connection and strive not to err on the side of caution. Some days are still very  challenging, and I think I’m learning to trust and have faith that this path will lead us to where we are going. 

Namaste, 
Veronica

More amazing places. More amazing sights.

Click here for photos from Chaco Canyon.

Click here for photos from Aztec Ruins.

Click here for photos from Great Basin National Park.

Enjoy!

- Roger

Chaco Canyon is about as inhospitable a place as you can imagine. It is hot, dry and difficult to reach. Located about 20 miles south of a major highway, it takes over an hour to get there because the last 16 miles are dirt, with the worst washboard conditions I’ve ever experienced. It is way off the beaten path. But beginning in about 850 c.e. and lasting until about 1200 c.e. all roads led to Chaco. Something extraordinary and more than a little bit mysterious was happening there. A culture formed, with its center in this arrid canyon and spread out to cover thousands of square miles of what we now know as Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. For reasons which we may never know, these people built massive complexes using nothing but stone-age technology. They had no wheel, no beasts of burden, no metal tools. And yet the stone buildings they created were masterfully designed, massive in scale (up to five stories high in places and covering several acres). And all of this at several locations within the canyon and many, many locations beyond the canyon, all built within the same basic time period. And the more we discover about what they did, the more the mystery grows deeper. These structures were not primarily used as living space. All indications are that their function was to serve as a center for ceremonies and possibly for trade. There are kivas everywhere - some of them massive in scale (holding up to 400 people). But things only get more interesting from here. With no metal (and thus no compass), the walls of these complexes are lined up on extremely accurate north/south and east/west lines. They also reflect an alignment with both the solar cycle (solstices and equinoxes) and the lunar cycle (did you know that the moon has an 18.6 year cycle?). And these massive complexes are also aligned with each other over very great distances. One example is a set of two “Great Houses” that are aligned to each other with an orientation to the lunar cycle. They are miles apart. The line between them is exactly bisected by the line between two other “Great Houses” that are aligned with each other along the solar cycle. My mind is still swimming trying to fathom the enormity of what they did in this out of the way, inhospitible place, and the possible reasons why. Whatever it was, it captured the imaginations of a huge number of people over the course of many generations and motivated them to expend enormous amounts of time, energy and resources to transform their vision into reality. To say that I am intrigued would be one of the great understatements of the year. Here is a poem I wrote after a morning hike through the area.

Chaco
by Roger C. Lynn
June 2008

on this path the ancients trod
my feet now walk at sunrise
high above the canyon floor
past walls of mud and stone

their silence in this sacred place
bears witness to the mystery
there’s more to life both then and now
than we shall ever know.

we leave our mark upon the earth
for others who come after
the impact that our dreams can make
will stretch beyond our lifetime

sun and moon and flesh and bone
all fit within the pattern
lines beyond what can be seen
connect us to the whole 

Singer/songwriter Katya Chorover has a line in one of her songs - “I want to drop off the map & drop out of time with you.” Today Veronica and I did just that. Five miles up a dead-end dirt road out of Cuba, New Mexico there is a charming old adobe hacienda. As I write these words I am sitting on the second floor veranda, with the crickets chirping and the wind blowing lightly through the aspen trees. It is a peaceful and wonderful experience to be here.

Click here to view a few pictures.

Blessings,
Roger 

This has been percolating in my brain for a while.

Last week we had the wonderful privilege of exploring the ruins in and around Mesa Verde (which were built by the Ancestral Puebloan people from about 750 c.e. until about 1300 c.e.) One of the central features of these places where people lived was the “kiva” - a round room built below ground level and probably used for ceremonial purposes. It was a space specifically set aside for the purpose of being in touch with the presence of the sacred in the world. The kiva represented the very heart of the living space. It was not off in a corner somewhere. It was not a feature which appeared in some sites but not in others. It was smack-dab in the middle of virtually every site. And sites of any size at all usually had multiple kivas scattered around the space. Recognition of the sacred was intricately and intimately woven into the very fabric of everyday life. 

When I began to recognize the magnitude of this reality it stopped me in my tracks. Every day - multiple times a day - everyone who lived in those ancient spaces would have been reminded that all of life was filled with the presence of the sacred. What would life today be like if we could recapture even a fraction of that understanding? How might our lives be enriched and expanded if we could find a way to have some modern equivilent of a “kiva” in the midst of our everyday living?

I’m not quite sure what that would even look like, but I am intrigued by the possibilities. It might be an “altar” of some sort, situated in a prominent place in our homes. Perhaps it could be a prayer practice before meals (at our house we hold hands, hum together and offer words of thanksgiving). It could even be something we wear, like a Native American “medicine pouch” worn on a thong around our neck or always carried in a pocket where we encounter it at unexpected moments. There are all sorts of possibilities. Whatever specific practices we choose would serve to help us manifest our intention of being fully present to the sacred which is all around us in every moment of every day. Reintegrating a sense of the holy into our lives at a basic and fundamental level would be a powerful place to begin healing the brokenness which seems to be so prevalent in our world today. I invite you to join me in searching for ways to reclaim this important spiritual heritage.

Blessings,
Roger