Nancy Lankston
Our new yard in Boulder has fairy flowers everywhere – even under the deck!
✧ ✧ ✧
“When the first baby laughed for the first time,
the laugh broke into a thousand pieces
and they all went skipping about,
and that was the beginning of fairies.
And now when every new baby is born
its first laugh becomes a fairy.
So there ought to be one fairy
for every boy or girl.”
~James Barrie, Peter Pan
Spring — the PERFECT time to Dream and Heal
Join Nancy on Sunday April 13 and explore healing in a space of tree dreams and moonbeams. Learn how to consciously connect with your dreams and use them to heal what ails you. Click here to find out more about Dream Flow.
Explore your dreams, reconnect with your Soul, heal yourself. Everyone welcome from novice to experienced dreamers.
When: 3:30 – 5:30 PM on Sunday April 13, 2014
Where: Boulder Community Acupuncture
3405 Penrose Place, Suite 202
Boulder, CO
Suggested Donation: $10-20
Please RSVP and let Nancy know you’re coming. Send an email to: nancy@nancylankston.com. Or call Nancy: 720-378-1729.
“In order to heal themselves, people must recognize, first,
that they have an inner guidance deep within,
and second, that they can trust it.”
~Shakti Gawain
When people question what my religion is, I want to say that I believe in Taoism mixed with a large serving of gnostic Christianity and a side of Tibetan Buddhism thrown in for meditative measure. Or perhaps I could offer a brief lecture on the common threads in all religions….
Maybe it’s more honest to just say that nature is my true religion. And share this beautiful poem by J.L. Stanley as a way of explaining:
Catechism for a Witch’s Child
When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird’s wing
tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open spilling
streams of molten ice to earth
and tell them how you drink
a holy wine of honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother who never taught you
death was life’s reward
but who believed in the earth
and the sun
and a million, million light years
of being.
☯
Each week I receive Heart Advice emails from Pema Chodron. Pema is wise, humble and quite funny in a dry Buddhist kind of way. She is one of my all-time favorite spiritual teachers. This week’s Heart Advice is so good that I wanted to share it with all of you.
Sometimes the most profound advice is quite simple:
A BRIEF PRACTICE FOR GROUNDING
“First, come into the present. Flash on what’s happening with you right now.
Be fully aware of your body, its energetic quality.
Be aware of your thoughts and emotions.
Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful.
This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in that moment,
a way of saying, “This is my experience right now, and it’s okay.”
Then go into the next moment without any agenda.”
~Pema Chodron
Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change
Where is the moon tonight?
Is she up yet?
What aspect of herself is she showing?
☾ ☽
These are the questions that come to mind when I gaze at the night sky. Maybe it’s because I’m female. The ancients claimed that all women are creatures of the moon. Or maybe it is because I was born in the early morning hours before dawn, just as the moon became full. And on that night many moons ago, the moon rose in the sign of Scorpio, the keeper of the night and the dark mysteries of life, death and rebirth. I am a moon baby.
For whatever reason, I have been fascinated by the moon for as long as I can remember. My ancestors used the cycles of the moon to track the passage of time. And I still do the same – in fact, it stuns me that the Gregorian calendar in use all over the world is not linked directly to the cyclic movements of the earth and moon. That’s why we have a silly Leap Year day every 4 years – we need to “correct” the errors in the Gregorian calendar! Whoever thought it was a good idea to ignore astronomy when creating a calendar?!
In every solar year (the time it takes mother earth to go all the way around our sun), the moon goes through 13 cycles. There are 13 lunar months in each year, not 12. And within each lunar cycle, the moon slowly shifts from the dark phase of a new moon, gradually showing more and more of herself (waxing) until she complete reveals herself at the full moon. Then she slowly wanes, showing less and less of herself in the night sky until she is not visible at all. Then the moon cycle dance begins again.
These cycles where the moon is constantly shifting and dancing with how much she reveals of herself seem quite female to me. There is nothing linear about the moon! And I find that women are typically more changeable and moody and rhythmic than men, whether we care to admit it or not. 🙂
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance…”
~Ecclesiastes, King James Bible
Our ancestors planned their sacred rituals around the cycles of the moon; they knew that each moon phase holds a specific power. So, when the moon was fully revealed in her full moon state, the ancients celebrated and worshipped the divine feminine energies of birthing and completion. Even today, wise midwives plan their schedules, knowing that many, many babies are born when the full moon exerts her pull on pregnant wombs! Full moons are times of completion.
In contrast, when the moon is hidden from view in her new moon state, the ancients saw it as a potent time to plant the seeds for new projects and begin new ventures. Even the timing of farm planting and sowing was tied to the moon cycles in ancient times; not so silly when we realize that the waters and tides of planet earth feel the pull of the moon as well.
The next time you’d like to start a new project, try starting it during the dark phase of the new moon. And when you are ready to celebrate an accomplishment or rite of passage, hold your celebration during full moon time. Synchronize with the rhythms of the moon and see how much potency organic timing can add to your life.
I love watching the moon go through her dance from dark to light and back to dark each month. I am definitely a moon baby! And I plan to continue my love affair with the rhythms and cycles of the moon until I leave this earth. It keeps me connected to the cycle of the seasons in a deep meaningful way.
“We have all but forgotten that life is a rich and mysterious coming together of many worlds. We have lost sight of what the ancient priestesses and shamans knew, that the forms of our visible world have their roots in unseen dimensions, and that it is in these unseen dimensions that the primal energies of life lie. In our forgetting, we have lost the wholeness of life, and we have cut ourselves off from the real forces that shape our world.
But when we are present in life, free from demands or agendas, when we allow life to unfold according to its own inner principles, we open up a doorway again between the worlds. Within our consciousness the inner and outer, the visible and the unseen worlds, can come together and speak to each other, and our split-apart world can become whole again.”
~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, in Darkening of the Light
