Life's a Garden - Journal Entry Part I

A lot of the things are in place. The things you need to build the garden of your dreams. The land is there, waiting for you, in a time of peace. The tools are stored safely during the winter months. We have an idea of what needs to happen first. Do you have the right seeds, and planting supplies to help these little balls of potential grow? They will grow when the time is right, if you grant them the right conditions. They will grow. They want to grow! They need a beautiful space, and while you do not take credit as the primary Creator, you are the provider, you are Secondary Creator in that you create the conditions for life and environments. That is an equally powerful position in granting Life At This Time because without you, the seed will remain a seed.

Your power is in your HAND, your THOUGHTS, and your ability to DEDICATE to habit and action that will allow ripe conditions for the beauty you can help to grow.

Beauty you can cultivate.

You have the vision.

It starts with you.

"We are made for these times"

From http://www.grahameb.com/pinkola_estes.htm

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

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Ubuntu and my former professor

"Ubuntu is an ecological strategy for survival," he says, from an ecological and societally introspective talk recorded years ago being now played on *Radio Party* on WEFT Community Radio 90.1 one Saturday afternoon.

Always organized under constant renewal... Malcolm X suggested not to become fossilized, not to become cynical... "And that continues to inform my ideas that the human spirit maybe under the circumstances of pain and suffering (like blues music) during these dystopian times, the best of the human sensibilities and ideas emerge."

Host: "Why is it important to have fun?"

My NRES 104 professor, years later, on the radio: "...to celebrate the joy of being with other people. The conversations get dark, and the music brings you back. I'm down with that entirely. There's nothing like music, for sure. The arts man, for sure."

For surrrrrre, man.

That man was the one who affirmed my path in determining my major in college. Freshman year, 2nd semester, I was inspired to make change in the environmental path we're on as a species and to assist in the effort of conservation. He was on the radio station where I also am a volunteer. But I thank him, his name is Gil Mendoza, and glad he made such an impact through the way he taught that class and inspired me. I also want to shot out to my high school Costa Rica program creator and guide Thomas Koulentes who also supercharged that inspiration and caused me to realize that the environmental fight is the greatest fight.