Summer Solstice and First Quarter Moon

The season is turning. Today the sun exerts its maximum energy on our part of the earth; the powers of outward expression are at their greatest, and the powers of inner contemplation are at their lowest.

And of course, just as we reach the point of maximum yang energy, yin energy is reborn and begins to gain strength: The next days will each be a little shorter again, until the winter solstice in December.

Tonight is also the First Quarter Moon; we are one-quarter of the way through the moon cycle. The moon is waxing - getting larger - until it's full again. Now is the time to remain flexible, use my obstacles as fuel for growth, and show full effort for priorities.

I use this June quarter moon's energy to create patience: I will remember to pause and breathe often, to slow down my racing mind and enjoy the slower summer pace.

Agenda: 

1. Read "Intrinsic Hope"

2. Journal queries

3. Make a full effort plan

4. Make a New Solar Disk

5. Harvest herbs

6. Make Kanelbuller (Swedish Cinnamon buns)

7. Make flower crowns

8. Build a Solstice Fire

New Dragon Moon

The new moon rises today; the Chinese call the fifth new moon the Dragon Moon. Chinese dragons are a symbol of cosmic Chi, good fortune, and new beginnings, but the time around the Dragon Moon is strongly yang, with bright sunlight and moist heat. The Chinese consider this to be a dangerous and unhealthy season and they have customs to protect against the excessive yang energy.

I feel strong and effective when I am able to harness my yang energy to get stuff done, but I like to remember that yang's best aim is to protect yin, and yin's best function is to nurture yang; life is good when I have each in a kind of dynamic balance. This week I will make an effort to bring a balance of restorative yin energy to my life: Slow down, rest well, drink more water, and practice ‘discipline of purpose’.

The new moon is the start of the lunar cycle, a time of high energy and clear thinking. Historically, the new moon is when women took time to be alone; it's a time to retreat, set intentions, and initiate something new.

Agenda:

1. Retreat Day plan

2. Read "Intrinsic Hope"

3. Choose a month theme

4. Set intentions

Blue Moon Sabbath

Sunday is my day to be quiet (at least for a while), with the spirit, in contemplation and prayer, and in community with nature and/or other bipeds. This Sabbath is unusual because II'm not alone in the house - and I need a plan for how to be quiet with a partner: Well, I'll start off with my usual quiet morning writing time, and flow directly into Meeting for Worship. Then scoot outside for time alone in the garden. After that, quiet will be an inner feeling I carry with me!

Today is also the full moon called the Blue Moon, because it is the second full moon in May. Actually, the original definition of a blue moon is a fourth full moon in one season, but I'm going with the newer definition - the second full moon in a month - because I don't have any better name for this moon. Both are correct, because it's folklore, and folklore is fluid!

Agenda:

1. Read "12 Tiny Things"

2. Review, refine, and shift

3. Balance journal

4. Celebrate balance

5. Truth walk ceremony

Tuesday for Equanimity

Tuesday is my day to look at my social and emotional self, make an effort to shift my perspectives around how I view and treat the people in my life, and get ready for a week of fun activities with my grandsons.

And today is Grandson #1's sixth birthday!

Agenda:

1. Read "Intrinsic Hope"

2. Expressing Needs in the World

3. New narrative for equanimity + Equanimity Practice

Tuesday for the Heart

Tuesday is my day to look at my social and emotional self and make an effort to shift my perspectives around how I view and treat the people in my life.

Agenda:

1. Ongo journal

2. Expressing Needs in the World

3. Synergy and hope plans

Defeat the Hump

I've made a mid-week bump plan to defeat the hump that often makes me feel stuck: A plan to help me build momentum and preserve the goodness of the week throughout each of the five days, so that I arrive at Saturday feeling fulfilled and content.

Agenda:

1. My bump plan

2. Writing themes and passion flow plan

Tuesday

Tuesday is my day to look at my social and emotional self and make an effort to shift my perspectives around how I view and treat the people in my life.

Agenda:

1. Ongo journal

2. Synergy and hope plans

Tuesday

Tuesday is my day to look at my social and emotional self and make an effort to shift my perspectives around how I view and treat the people in my life. 

Agenda:

1. Generosity practice

2. Read "Intrinsic Hope"
3. New narrative for naming feelings

4. Synergy and hope plans

5. Plant sunflowers!

Good Friday

Permelia and Madeline, our first duck ladies

 Today is Good Friday, when we mark Jesus’ death and burial. This morning I remember again that the soul's "dark night" is a part of the human condition. I reflect on desperation and despair. My capacity to experience despair is a gift; through it I am transformed. Jesus said, "You must be born again." (John 3:7). The ability to shift from despair to hope is how I get the strength to live life whatever the daily deaths I might face.

Agenda today:

1. Darkness to Hope Meditation

2. Read "Intrinsic Hope"

3. Proaction and reciprocity plans

4. Dye eggs

5. Bake hot cross buns

Hope I can Agree With

Hope is necessary in order to have any kind of happiness, and I think I've lost it. I am unable to contemplate any dream of a better future without being washed in an overwhelming sense of dread and sadness. I need to find a new entry into hope.

Agenda:

1. Read "Intrinsic Hope"
2. New narrative for being present

St. Patrick's Day and Chaharshanbe Suri

St. Patrick's Day is an Irish holiday that falls on March 17 each year. In Ireland it's celebrated with parades, community feasts, singing, dancing, and church services, all in honor of St. Patrick, an English man who lived in about 400 A.D.

Pat’s whole name was Magnus Sucatus Patricus. When he was 16, Irish raiders carried him off from England to Ireland to work as a slave. He escaped six years later, traveled and studied for many years, and became a Christian missionary. He returned to Ireland, and grew famous for all the miracles he performed and for converting many Irish people to Christianity.

Chaharshanbe Suri, the Festival of Fire, is part of the ten day Zoroastrian festival, Farvardegan, which concludes with Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on March 21. On this last Tuesday evening of the year, Iranians jump over bonfires.

Agenda:

1. Read the Sweet Spot

2. Family and community brainstorm

3. Synergy and hope plans

4. Prayer of St. Patrick

5. Plant peas and my straw doll

6. Enjoy hot Irish coffee

7. Make Ajeel

8. Build a fire and JUMP!

Emotional perspective

My theme this year is Creative Perspective. Perspective is just about how we look at things, like our opinions, actions, what's happening in the world and what happened in the past. 

Tuesday is my day to look at my social and emotional self and make an effort to shift my perspectives around how I view the people in my life.

Agenda today:

1. Read the Sweet Spot

2. Ongo journal

3. Synergy and Hope plans

Retreat for Hope

Today I have some time alone, and I want to give attention to what it means to have hope. I woke up with new ideas or my book project, and at the top was a section on hope for our earth.

We all know in our hearts that we are living on borrowed time - the worst is yet to come. But none of us know what the future holds - what movements might rise up; what a big corporation may suddenly decide to do; what planetary shifts might still occur.

In "Hope in the Dark; Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities" (2016), Rebecca Solnit writes, "Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn't enough reason to hope."

She writes about the realities of economic inequality, attacks on civil liberties, cyber-surveillance, and climate change. "Hope doesn't mean denying these realities. It means facing them and addressing them by remembering what else the twenty-first century has brought ...This has been a truly remarkable decade for movement building, social change, and deep, profound shifts in ideas, perspective, and frameworks..."

So one part of building hope is to remember the good stuff that has happened. Another part is to shift your perspective - open your mind to the possibility that things can get better. Life is full of uncertainties- why not hope for the best? Broad perspectives and possibilities invite an opening to action. 

"Hope locates itself in the premises that we don't know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. ... It's the belief that what we do matters even though how or when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand."

Agenda:

1. Read "Perspective"

2. Make hope plans

3. Make peanut brittle

Bliss State

This morning I woke up in a state close to bliss: I was alert, eager, looking forward to my day, and already thinking about what I've titled my Flow Project. I thought, "I've got my groove on." 

Then I thought, the word flow might be limiting me, because it's associated with accomplishing tasks. What I'm aiming for is a daily flow, or maybe a bliss-flow state, that I can ride through each day, with equanimity, resilience, and hope.

A search for "Bliss-flow" led me to a book called Bliss Flow: The Ultimate Energy Journal: Unstoppable Success In 90 Days, by Chelle Clarke. "Chelle is a modern day witch, energy and crystal healer and all round spiritual junkie and gets her creative outlet fulfilling her stationery addiction by designing high vibe and super cute notebooks right here on Amazon under her brand, Journal Junkie."

Oops.

Back to my Flow Project: I've made a backwards calendar, with the first steps I need to take for my big Flow Project, and I expect that more will be revealed as I progress. Today's steps are:

Agenda:

1. Define the hope component

2. Creative self-care intention

Good Friday

Permelia and Madeline, our first duck ladies

Today is Good Friday, when we mark Jesus’ death and burial. This morning I remember again that the soul's "dark night" is a part of the human condition. I reflect on desperation and despair. My capacity to experience despair is a gift; through it I am transformed. Jesus said, "You must be born again." (John 3:7). The ability to shift from despair to hope is how I get the strength to live life whatever the daily deaths I might face.

Agenda today:

1. Darkness to Hope Meditation

2. Read "Hope in the Dark"

3. Bake hot cross buns

First Quarter Moon and Navratri Part 3

Navratri continues for the final three nights. The nine nights of Navratri are broken up into sets of three, and during each a different aspect of Shakti is meditated upon. For these final three nights we honor and thank the Divine Mother as Saraswati, who is "the essence of self". Saraswati’s wisdom and knowledge leads to enlightenment, happiness, and peace.

Photo by Alan Gillespie

And Tonight is the First Quarter Moon; we are one-quarter of the way through the moon cycle. The moon is waxing - getting larger - until it's full again. Now is the time to remain flexible, use my obstacles as fuel for growth, and show full effort for priorities.

I use this April quarter moon's energy to create hope and optimism.

Agenda Today:

1. Morning meditation and mantra

2. Read "Hope in the Dark"

3. Journal queries

4. Make a full effort plan

5. Add to the altar

Farvardegan

Today is the start of Farvardegan, which means “days of remembering the Fravashis" (guardian angels). It's a ten day Zoroastrian festival that includes the five days of Hamaspathmaidyem, which begin on March 16, and concludes with Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on March 21.

Hamaspathmaidyem is the sixth and last gahambar. This gahamber is the most significant to Zoroastrians, because it's devoted to remembering the fravashis or guardian angels. According to Zoroastrian religion, each of the 6 creations was created during one of the gahambars. Mankind was created on this last one.

Agenda this week:

1. Read "Hope in the Dark"

2. Spring cleaning

3. Welcome the angels
4. Offer thanks
5. Recite prayers

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a 46-day period of preparation for the joyful Easter celebration. The word lent comes from the Anglo Saxon word lencten, which means "lengthen"; it refers to the longer days of spring.

Lent is about mortality and transformation; death and rebirth. Marcus Borg says, "It means dying to an old way of being, and being born into a new way of being, a way of being centered once again in God."

Quakers don't traditionally celebrate Lent because we live every day being born again, centered in God. Still - I will always jump at a chance for a period of reflection.

Agenda:

1. Read "Hope in the Dark"

2. Simple food plan

3. Make pretzels

4. Hang up the Lent Lady

5. Plant a sabzeh

Winter Nature Culture

Nature-culture is my way to live as part of nature; sharing my resources with those who share theirs (the bees and the birds, etc.); becoming more aware of nature's needs so I can be a better neighbor; changing my habits so I can cause less harm.

My working definition of Nature-culture is "Humans living in unity with nature: acting in ways that create shared spaces that mimic the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems."

I've taken quite a bit off time off from my garden. It doesn't need much from me right now, and I'm not eager to go into the mud. But winter is a great time for observation, planning, and preparation, and today I will find a dry window to take a notebook and a camera outside for an observation session.

Agenda:

Daffodils up, 1-10-25

1. 

Review the Divine Laws

2. Prayer Candle ceremony

3. Read "Serviceberry"

4. Hope and Resilience

5. Bird and butterfly garden planning

6.

 Start a phenology journal

7. Brush and leaves

Advent Hope

This week of advent my theme is "family love and joy". One way I show my love is to maintain a well-ordered and peaceful sanctuary for my family and friends, and a welcome space for nature; also, maintaining my home and my land in good order is the honorable and sustainable thing to do, and is one way that I show reverence for the Earth and for God.

As I've said, my Earth-Quaker way of celebrating is to acknowledge and mark the changes of the season as they progress. The season of advent is when I celebrate the darkness, and the hope of returning light.

Darkness is not all bad; it can be cozy. Darkness leaves space for mystery, reflection, and quiet growth. But the world holds so much chaos, grief, war, famine and hunger; it's important to remember to have hope, and shine the light.

Agenda:

1. Love meditation

2. Read a novena

3. Read "Active Hope"
4. Rosy Future

5. Dawn prayer for Creation

6. Make a gingerbread house