Hallelujah for celebrating
our lives through the lens of GRATITUDE!
Hallelujah for all of you on the Daily Creative Practice and those of you
visiting this blog BEING PRESENT to the good. Hallelujah for our beautiful
Mother Earth and all of her CREATIONS.
Today, I am grounding
myself in Mother Earth. As I rose from bed this morning, I planted my feet on
the ground and kneaded them heel-to-toe several times, experiencing the sinews
of my calf muscles stretching and connecting me to bone. It felt good to feel
the weight of my body and the heft of gravity pulling me downward. Then off I
journeyed to the YMCA with my husband Chiboogamoo to exercise this wonderful
miracle of my body, which let me know that I needed to release its tension from
the dismaying results of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections.
Outside it was dark, but I
could see the silhouettes of trees swaying in the breeze often accompanied by
the rising sun. The leaves from the oak tree cascaded down around us as we
climbed into the car. The workout at the gym filled my body, mind, heart, and
spirit with ease and inspiration!
I felt a strong urge to
open the pages of Mark Nepo’s “The Book of Awakening,” upon my return home. The
sky was pink with an emergent sun; children bracing their jackets around them and carrying book bags
were ambling up the hillside of my townhome apartment complex, their parents
towering over them as leaves continued to fly and sail around them.
Opening the pages of this
book randomly, I came across the passage titled, “The Power of Symbols.” Mark
Nepo wrote:
If you truly hold a stone,
You can feel the mountain
it came from.
And he explains that
“Symbols are living mirrors of the deepest understandings that have no
words.” These symbols at their best
expand beyond ideas but “call” us into an expansive world of being filled with
others, experiences, and memories.
In times of stress like
now, we might ask ourselves, what GOOD can come from this. I suggest finding
those symbols in your life that encompass a broader way of BEING and summon you
to a depth of experience that contains the GOOD. The GOOD is not only all
around us—it is also IN us!
As I asked myself what
symbol might be the “right” one for me now, the answer came immediately! The
dolphin vertebrae! I found this marine mammal artifact on the barrier island Wassaw
on the coast of my beloved state of Georgia! Several years ago, when I arrived
on the Wassaw beach with an Emory class conducted by Chiboogamoo, the dolphin
vertebrae was waiting for me sticking upright in the sand. Before I knew what
it was, its shape struck me as an ancient symbol holding important information
for me.
This morning, as I yearn
for a way to CREATE gratitude, I laugh at how easy it is to find! Our Earth is
rich with abundance. We only need to be embodied, present to ourselves and the
world.
Hold the bone, envision
the dolphin!
I am reminded of my
multiple communities that I have the good fortune to be a part of in Decatur,
at Emory University, Georgia Tech, Little Five Points, Agnes Scott, Georgia
State, and ever expanding circles around me, radiating out to the coast where
the dolphins swim in the Atlantic. And the Atlantic connects to Europe, Africa,
India and beyond….well you get the picture!
We are all connected! What
a joyous thought!
The dolphin wisdom I found
from the book, “Animal Speak,” by Ted Andrews offers a way to BE today. He
suggests that learning to breathe like the dolphin can be beneficial and help
us align ourselves with the present and perhaps other times. And like the
dolphin, we can play around with sound and breath to engage ourselves more
fully in our lives.
That’s Coffee with
Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me. What symbol might you hold today that will fill
you with GRATITUDE?
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