seasons

GCW speaks

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2015-06-07 10.32.05

Cottonwood seedpods and bark

My roots anchor me deeply to the earth. I am content to be here now, day after day, year after year, feeling the seasons shift, the sun’s warmth growing stronger as the earth turns toward spring. The winds and lightning, cleansing rains, the dear ones who share life with me here on this fringe of open meadow. I wake to my home, my circle of life.

After my long winter’s nap, I am gently opening to the birdsong and the frenetic activity of nest building and seed sprouting all around me. Groggy insects crawling out of their nests greet the warmth.

Vultures soar overhead against a backdrop of dramatic spring clouds. They’re back from their exotic winter home, come back to grace our air and land with their effortless easy sky dance as they catch the white sunlight on their magnificent wings.

I feel the millions of buds on my crown beginning to swell, the life force flowing into the tiny embryonic seed pods forming just as they have for millennia.

I am an integral element of this earth, I belong and so my dear, do you. We are all meant to be here. Your dear energy, your gifts and talents, your emotions, and thoughts are all part of this delightful tapestry that we call life.

Diminish yourself or any one of the creatures who make this earth home, and you diminish the whole, and yourself with it. Know yourself as a vital thread in the tapestry of life on our beautiful green earth.

Growing Season

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2013-01-01 00.00.00-14

Spring Bluebells

This new season of growth, exuberance, of reaching for the sunlight mirrors the life within you. After a time of rest you are once again ready to create, to live life fully, to turn your face to the sun and allow the perfect unfolding of your being to take place. If you think you, your brain, or your logical thinking are in control, think again!

The mysteries of the heart and the great depths of you that lie beyond all reason and control send forth this growth. These creative forces are set into motion long before your birth.

You are to tune into this creative power at your center. It is you in concert, in harmony, with all that is. Work in partnership with these forces larger than yourself as you develop the knowing within you. It will steer you always to the right place at the right time.

Trust your internal navigator! Cease your need to control, to define, to pin down, and explain. Simply tune in to the music of the web of life and dance.

Spring is here

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2013-01-01 00.00.00-50

Tree as healer

Now that spring is here, I ask you to touch your hand, your bare foot, perhaps your cheek to the earth, the cool sweet soil, the dewy grasses, the wet sand, the bark of a beloved tree, and allow her energies to fill and restore and heal you.

You were made for the earth and she was made for you. Feel the comfort of her pulse and rhythms, the knowledge that you are home.

I especially invite you to lay under a friendly tree with deep roots. Allow the energies of your home to encircle and fill you with the power your ancient ancestors knew, attuned to her from time immemorial.

You connect in this way to the web of all creation, all living creatures, all spirits, all energies that sustain life on our dearly beloved planet.

Have faith, spring is coming

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2016-01-07 12.03.03

Little snow monkey

Hang on, winter weary humans, spring is coming! In the meantime, don’t wish your life away! Have faith like my roots that reach deep into the soil below the place where ice and cold and snow can touch them – deep into the warm dark earth, our home.

Have faith and trust that all is well! Behind the heavy cloud cover is the blue sky, beneath the snow, the grass waits, beneath the dead leaves and frozen soil, all manner of living things sleep, ready for the return of the sun.

Do not despise this time of year. Do not hate your circumstances. Do not live in the future imagined sunny day; for when you live in the fantasies of your mind, you negate the only thing that really matters, your most precious gift, the present moment!

You make yourself powerless when you live only in your head! It is your body and heart that live here and now. Find a way to fully inhabit your body, for then you will find true joy. Find something to take pleasure in each day, even if the snow lies until June!

You have been given a treasured gift- life here on earth. Use it wisely

Gift giving

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2015-11-28 17.40.30 - CopyGCW speaks of gifts

This season you bless each other so sweetly with your loving presence, the heady evergreen scents you bring into your homes, your thoughtful gifts, the special food. When your gift is freely and lovingly given, when nothing is expected in return, when heart to heart regard is exchanged, all are truly blessed – both giver and receiver.

When giving a gift becomes or feels like an obligation, a duty, when your mind is involved and injects worry, doubt, fear, aggravation, frustrations, upset, unhappiness, give it up! Let that ritual go if it is giving you a bad feeling. It is no longer serving you!

Create and invent your own rituals and start new traditions that make you happy! Don’t read the glossy newspaper ads to find out what makes you happy! It is not your job to single-handedly support the entire economy of this nation through your holiday shopping! Tune into your heart! Your one heart is wiser than a university full of big brains!

Do what makes you smile this season! Do what lights you up! Do what brings you joy!

Weather

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DSCN1861

GCW Speaks of the weather:

I have noticed how humans love to comment on the weather. It is not often good enough for you is it? It is too cold, too hot, too wet, too dry, too humid, too windy, too much, not enough.

Can you simply bless each day as it comes to you? Do you know what a blessing each day of this life is? Can you feel the power of the meaning of you in this body in this place at this time? You have chosen to manifest as a physical presence here on this earth! This is an honor to be cherished and acknowledged….but I digress into a speech….

Can you bless even the coldest windiest day of the year? Can you feel joy within you during an overcast week, or is the cloud cover a mirror of your human atmosphere? Have you allowed the clouds of fear and stuffed feelings to accumulate in your energy field until they block your light? Do you clear them? Crying, like rain, can clear and air. Let clearing be your daily practice, for your health and the health of the planet. Simply feel, as you were born to do. Allow yourself to feel. Acknowledge your feelings and locate them in your body, and this will help to clear them.

Hurt no other in this process, for violence of thought word or action is a gross misuse of nature.

What is emotion but energy; like wind and breeze it needs to flow and move. If you stop it up the layers of cloud get thicker and thicker. You may feel a storm coming on. You may feel restless, unhappy, sad confused, anger may build within you if you squeeze and hold back and stifle and pretend it is not what it really is.

You are meant to clear the clouds daily and shine brightly like the sun! Create your own weather! Let it flow and all the earth will be blessed.

Christmas tree farm

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2015-11-28 12.30.21GCW speaks of a Christmas tree farm. (with guest help from evergreen tree spirits)

This farm is such a place of beauty and serenity. We are a community with trees of different ages, shapes, sizes, colors, and varieties of evergreen so beautifully kept and nurtured for your human delight and enjoyment. You beautify this corner of the earth through your farming, and you spread the joy for miles around. This is a sacred place.

We (evergreen tree spirits) bless you with our heady scent, the texture and beauty of our green leaves, thin and short, long and soft, the sticky sweet sap, the sharing of your holiday season.

2015-11-28 12.41.32

You bring us into your home and we bring you joy! Human tree interactions at their best! Our greenery decorates and freshens your spaces, giving you hope in the cold, dark and gray time, when most green things have died or gone to sleep. You are welcome!

We love you! Even when you come and cut us down, another of your kind will plant seedlings next year to continue the cycle of yearly blessings. You make a fuss for us. You bring more of us to life on this farm than would grow naturally. We are given more chances to feel the sun and rain, the cold winter winds, to witness the lightning in summer, to feel the thunder, to know the earth supporting our roots and pulling them toward her loving center, to be fed by the rains, to sense the wheeling hawk and vulture above, to support nests for lively songbirds, to shelter the little furry ones that come and make their home here among us. This life on earth is precious and not to be missed!

Remember the earth in which we grow and receive our sustenance. Give us back to the earth when you are finished with your holiday, and we will feed next year’s growth.

Winter

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2013-01-01 00.00.00-504

GCW is on far left

GCW speaks of winter

The shift in seasons from autumn to winter reminds us that all living things must die, ourselves among them. There, that’s out of the way!

So many fuss about the cold of this coming season. Do you wish to add the energy of fuss and complaint to the web of all things? Would you prefer endless summer? That is available elsewhere, not in this place.

The cycles of light and dark, seasons, the rise and fall of waves and our breath are intimately intertwined with our cells and our energy. We have been created for this ebb and flow of the life force, the time of growth and fruiting, and the time of rest and pulling inward. When you live by the clock and calendar, by human devised definitions, by the preset schedule, you limit yourselves severely! You do not allow the flow of the natural world to provide you clues for the structure of your lives. You create your own climates and curse the one outside that is too cold, too hot, too humid, too wet, but this is a curse on the earth that you have evolved to exist in so successfully. Cease and desist!

Bless each flake of snow, bless the northwest wind. Bless bright sunlight sparkling on a million ice crystals. Bless each day of your life with your inner warmth, and light. Find something to bless each winter day. Then if you dare, express your delight at living on this planet so exquisitely attuned to support our precious lives.

Changing colors

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Fall color

Fall color

A six year old from Central Iowa asks:

Q. Why do leaves turn color in the fall?

A. My dearest, we want some fun before our long winter’s nap! We love to color and paint just as you do! We delight in showing off and being noticed! Its part of who we are, the colorful party for another growing season well lived! Its the closest we get to a birthday party!  The ashes and cottonwoods love the golden hues, as bright as sunshine!  The maples and oaks like reds and scarlets and oranges, sometimes purple!  What colors do you like to paint with?

Pick our beautiful leaves up and hold them to your heart. This is our gift to you!- Our breathtaking color combinations and hues. This is fun! We get to play before bedtime. Do you?

Think about this, and see if you do this too: We grow, we celebrate, then we rest. Grow, celebrate, rest. Grow celebrate, rest.

Love and tree hugs to you!