40 Days of Peace Day Seventeen
Possibility and Responsibility
There are infinite possibilities..
Our perspective shifts how we experience our world. I decided a long time ago to CHOOSE to believe in miracles. How can we have any HOPE or wonder about what is yet to come without believing in the miracle of the unknown?
We are Divine beings, here TO CREATE.
So what is our responsibility in this magical creation process?
How do we show up in full faith of our dreams?
When you look around the world you can see that much of this world is clearly imbalanced. It’s easy to see the gloom, despair, division and darkness when you look at the news. And its easy to feel hopeless when we’ve grown up watching movies and reading magazines that subconsciously tell us how we are “suppose” to look, what kind of house we are“suppose” to live in, what kind of path we are “suppose” to follow. Gosh, its easy to start comparing ourselves and focusing on what we don’t have, what we haven’t accomplished.. Maybe we’re not the weight we want to be, or we haven’t found our passion yet. Maybe we struggle paycheck to paycheck. Maybe we’ve “failed at business after business” OR maybe we just haven’t found the business thats aligns with our purpose. AND maybe all the businesses that didn’t work out were experiences to give us wisdom for what is yet to come.
That little voice in your head needs to be silenced in order to make room for the infinite possibilities that await you!
“When Nanabozho, the Anishinaabe Original Man, our teacher, part man, part manido, walked through the world, he took note of who was flourishing and who was not, who was mindful of the Original Instructions and who was not.
He was dismayed when he came upon villages where the gardens were not being tended, where the fishnets were not repaired and the children were not being taught the way to live. Instead of seeing piles of firewood and caches of corn, He found the people lying beneath maple trees with their mouth wide open, catching the thick, sweet Sarap of the generous trees. They had become lazy and took for granted the gifts of the Creator.
They did not do their ceremonies or care for one another. He knew his responsibility, so he went to the river and dipped up many buckets of water. He poured the water straight into the maple trees to dilute the Sarap. Today maple sap flows like a stream of water with only a trace of the sweetness to remind the people both of possibility and of responsibility. And so it is that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.”
(Excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass. Adapted from oral tradition and Ritzenthaler.1983)
We are responsible for ourselves and for nature.
Nature is infinite with abundance all around us! The story that the news tells you… that there’s not enough food, not enough land, not enough work, not enough time… that is a lie.
We are disconnected from our natural system. We got lazy and invented the microwave and TV dinners a while back and we thought it would be a good idea to grow one crop on 1,000s of acres. And as it turns out, that one crop.. needs his friends to survive and thrive. Today we call it Permaculture, many moons ago, it was just the natural system. Strawberries grew wild and free as gifts and corn grows best with her sisters, beans and squash. There is a divine system and in this system of mutual reciprocity.. a relationship of responsibility and gratitude… there are INFINITE POSSIBILITIES.
Miracles even…
“The earth endows us with great gifts but the gift is not enough. The responsibility does now lie with the maples alone. The other half belongs to us; we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness.” _Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass)
We went to see Rob Bell speak last night in Atlanta and he talked a lot about joy and how to cultivate joy in our everyday lives through gratitude and looking for the miracles and positive things we experience every day. He spoke about how difficult it can be to come home from a hard day and be present and joyful with his kids and his wife when he has just been in the room with great suffering. Perhaps he had just came from a funeral, or at the bedside of a sister who is battling cancer, or with a brother who’s wife just left with their kids, or with a mother who just lost her son. Everyday in the world there is heartache and suffering. There is no denying this. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns. This is true.
But he went on, the real JOY, is not in walking around the suffering, or numbing the suffering… the REAL JOY, is in walking through the suffering and finding Light on the other side. The joy is being able to embrace the Light before the darkness, to embrace the darkness, and the Light that comes after we go through the storm. Joy is the hug that holds all 3 of these moments in our lives.
This JOY is how we believe in infinite possibilities.
The more we walk through the dark times and find our way to return to joy, the deeper we grow in LOVE and faith. We’re also not meant to face it alone. Every single one of experiences the darkness and suffering of life. And when we are brave and beautifully vulnerable, and we share our experience with others, we receive the healing power of our connections.
Rob also gave an analogy of evil where we have all this stuff, all these blessings around us, things like running water, shoes, air, breathe… and so much more. And the evil would be having all the things and not finding joy.
Perspective is everything
We have a responsibility to find JOY. To be grateful. To find our place in the healing of the planet.
We have a responsibility to CREATE, to LAUGH, to ENJOY the food we eat…. There will be hard days and gut wrenching painful moments in life. We have a responsibility to face them, to learn from them and allow them to help us evolve.
We have a responsibility to FOLLOW OUR DREAMS! We each came with a unique purpose and we each play a part in this big play happening on the global stage. We best not bail out or cancel our shift because we’re fearful or don’t think we’re good enough.
Possibilities baby! INFINITE POSSIBILITIES AWAIT!
Rule 17
The whole universe is contained within a single human being-you. Everything that you see around, including the things that you might not be fond of and even the people you despise or abhor, is present within you in varying degrees. Therefore, do not look for Sheitan outside yourself either. The devil is not an extraordinary force that attacks from without. It is an ordinary voice within. If you set to know yourself fully, facing with honesty and hardness.
Journal Time
