Musings From The Trail
Full moon in watery Cancer lights up the longest night in the northern hemisphere. This is a traditional time of rest and reflection. Sit in the stillness of winter solstice and breathe with the slow flow of nature in winter. Slow down and enjoy the quiet gifts of the season.
#FullMoon
#SolsticeLight
Full moon in airy Gemini, the loquacious trickster. All this Gemini air and Sagittarius fire may trick you. Try to resist the urge to leap into something new right now. Now is not the time for sudden changes. There is no need to rush. Slow down, take a breath & consider all your options.
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New Moon in Libra, the airy sign of balanced relationships. With so much polarizing information swirling around you, it can be difficult to maintain your inner balance. This new moon is the perfect time to pause and listen for the wisdom of Soul within.
Ask how you can restore your own balance so you can relate to others from a calm neutral space.
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Tarot Card for this Libra New Moon
Page of Vessels
contemplate, envision, open to new perceptions
“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”
~Jack Kerouac
The Dharma Bums
“If there is any wisdom running through my life now, in my walking on this earth,
it came from listening in the Great Silence
to the stones, trees, space, the wild animals,
to the pulse of all life as my heartbeat.”
~Vijali Hamilton
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them humanity cannot survive.
~Dalai Lama
I have been sitting still, watching and listening, for decades. Writers are natural observers and I am no exception. I love watching people and events from the sidelines. But in the past few weeks, it has become more and more difficult for me to simply sit still and observe.
I have been watching and listening for months as Donald Trump encourages his followers to act from a place of hatred and rage. In the beginning, Mr. Trump seemed like a bad joke – a blowhard reality TV star runs for president, really?! But now he has managed to become the Republican nominee for President of the United States, and this ridiculous political side show just got very very scary.
I want to run screaming into the street and stop cars. I want to ask everyone I meet if they have listened carefully to what Mr. Trump says in speech after speech. I want to insist that they follow me home to my living room where I can show them clip after clip of Trump gleefully inciting hatred and racism and divisions between people. And I want to remind them of what McCarthy and other peddlers of hate have done to our country in the past. I want to beg people to not let that happen again.
But I won’t do that. I won’t run into the street and stop strangers. I would be labeled crazy. I won’t make people sit still, watch and LISTEN to what Donald Trump has been saying for months. I wish I could but I cannot.
What I can do is express my deep fear about what Donald Trump may do if he becomes our President. I can voice my concerns to family and friends, and to you, my readers. I can tell you how disturbed I am by all the vitriol and fear that Mr. Trump is selling.
I believe that love is always the answer. And sometimes love requires that we stand up and shout NO, this is NOT OK! Sometime love requires that we step out of our comfort zone and enter the fray.
Mr. Trump’s vision of America is NOT my vision. He does NOT speak for me or the Americans I know and love.
Polite silence is not the answer. Sitting still is not the answer. So I am standing up and shouting NO! every chance I get. I am telling family and friends exactly what I have observed in this man who wants to be my president. And I am doing it in the name of love and unity and compassion.
I hope you will stand up and join me.
“Trump came one breath short of advocating a police state tonight
(it is not an accident that David Duke tweeted such great applause)…
I pray the better angels of America will rise up and
dissolve all the hatred that was spewed
into our body politic tonight.”
~Marianne Williamson, July 21, 2016
The Mending
There comes a time
when the mending is out of our hands.
It falls beyond the reach
of needle and thread,
of determined fixing and worn self help patches,
all manner of effort falls short.
When the unraveling comes
do not be afraid;
the Unmaker stands before
a greater loom where
chyrsalises are shed,
tight knots in life unspooled to the floor
the splendor of leaves fall from the trees
returning to the humility of ground
a glint of ebony on the raven’s wing,
as the black thread is shuttled,
back and forth, our questions,
back and forth, crashing wave to shore
rocked by the drum of the heartbeat
lungs empty and fill again,
until the essential nature
of a larger design speaks
quieting us with
the eloquence of stillness.
Simple as a breath,
into the great unwinding we go
we are rendered out of our hunting grounds,
and delivered into something that opens our eyes;
we become kin to the seasons and
kneel before the wise counsel of winter
bare and humbled
reaching toward our inner sky.
by Margo Stebbing