New Year's Resolution: Balance in 2014

I am living vicariously through the uber-runners out there doing marathons and other extraordinary feats to close out the year.  Yesterday,  my westerly loop was just enough of a challenge to 'feel it'...today I opted out of running to give my body a last rest- sans work and all other obligations, to truly reflect:  not so much on where I've been, but where I'm going.

It seems as if I was stuck on some kind of perpetual loop in 2013.  Out on the roads,  I found myself taking the same turns,  feeling the same fatigue,  the work routines,  predictable politics and frustrations,  even the same tired relationship stories...endless obsessive and narrow pursuits.
Something in me knew it was a limited trap, after all it was MY trap.  I made this strange confluence of pathways.  I stuck with the same box of colors, and kept wondering where all the twinkling sparkle was at....It was time to look outside that box, stop looping around the same familiar tracks.  Some roads are no longer meant to be followed.

I've learned that my relationship with Mother Earth is the whole reason I persist.  Just as She supports us all,  it's way past time for all of us to support Her.  Divine and ET interventions aside,  if we don't get our collective shit together, then we/humanity can kiss it all goodbye and try somewhere else, if such chances are given to those who seduce-to-destroy with careless and reckless abandon.   I've never felt how sheer existence balances on the head of a pin, and one's tipping point,  towards destruction or creation, can look so much like the same thing.  I'd like to imagine Gaia knows how it turns out and is reassuring us to keep making resolutions and dreams,  to keep following good roads into the future.

If you are, like me,  someone who can easily get lost,  then some of those familiar roads may offer the safety net you need to just keep moving forward.  But ask yourself anytime you are persuaded from your purpose:  what kind of experience am I after?  And what kind of earth will support that?  I want back the land, the housing, gardens, studio of my prior life.  But I want it in a new form, in the New Earth.  And I want a New Me to live there.

Winter Solstice: We Welcome the Abundance of Hope

I woke before dawn, and when I made it over to Dania beach the first morning colors were just coming up over the ocean.  High winds were whipping the waves, but the air was clear and filled with the briny smells of everything washing up through the salty surf.  I took a gentle jog down the beach,  passing little knots of other folks huddling here and there- not as many as last year for the 2012, but clearly out like me to see the Solstice sunrise. 

By the time the goddess team arrived I'd began making the mandala, using the logical and abundant material- seaweed- and happy to join in the spontaneous dancing, drumming and meandering about that only a 3 year old brings! 

I made an inner circle around the 4 directions: I wanted something to symbolize the microcosm of our physical beings IN the world surrounded by the macrocosm of all that supports us OF the world, placed as we are in the BiGGER circles of the planets, sun and all life. 

So while goddess-in-training Naomi tries out Celeste's singing bowl,  and the candle, sage and various artifacts placed in the center,  we also state our hopes and prayers to place into the circle....

...as the sun rises.....

...and we end our little ceremony by closing the mandala/circle and leaving it for the beach to absorb.

Celeste and I both remarked on the contrast from last year to this:  from the dark pressures of the 2012 culmination point, through a challenging year,  to the lightness and joy this year!  Naomi said the sun was "happy"...and I agree....all up and down the beach,  the seagulls seemed excited and free,  the sun was bright and the water was full of diamonds glittering on the waves....

Sunday I took myself out on the Big Griffin loop and into the gorgeous day,  my heart full of those sparkling edges coming off the soles of my feet as I found a gait and ran more distance than I've done in a while...I was eager to see everything and feel the world come to me in the costume of 'ever-green' and verdant south Florida.  The knowing that my body was still capable of performing such a seemingly simple function- to run- filled me with gratitude and joy.  There is nothing like unfettered movement, out in beautiful Mother Nature,  to heal whatever hurts my heart.

I feel ready for my vacay break,  time to work on- and spend with- my space, and get ready for the unfolding of 'next chapters'...some known and some, I trust,  mysteries.  It used to be 'trepidation' when I thought about those future challenges. Now it's the raw enthusiasm an Aries gal like me can muster from that deep expeditionary impulse:  to go, to know, to see,  to feel myself Free to keep becoming what I am meant to be. 

Closing in on the Longest Night; its all Lightward from Here

I'm guessing it's been about a month from my side injury and physical setbacks which kept the miles low.  Winter is happening elsewhere, and I missed plenty of gorgeous, warm days not on the roads.  A significant depressive episode during Thanksgiving caught me off guard, and it would seem I was scheduled to meet up with my Shadow for a last go-round before the year wrapped itself up. 

Sudden changes can bring as much stress as laying fallow.  So this curious mixture of forces deep at work,  micro and macro, while my running regressed was frustrating.  Just when it seemed I needed those miles most,  my body ramped down into beginner's mode....a slow jog when I could,  plenty of walking/breaks, more off days than on....the only thing I was disciplined to increase was my yoga. 

I learned significant lessons from this Shadow encounter.  How vulnerable I can be.  How much that innocent wanderer I was as a young child holds onto running as a last bastion where I can move freely in the world.  The toll work and people can take on me.  The stress I put on myself.  Baggage and agreements long held amended.  The fear and anger I held against that girl for not 'knowing any better' (youngest child syndrome...in the perpetual dark about what's going on with all the older people around you...) and all the jams I've been in since.....began to evaporate.  I connect with that little wanderer who knew every back path in the neighborhood, and began my lifelong love of long treks (now runs) and 'getting lost' in Nature.

My mom's death anniversary comes up New year's eve too...so added to this the yearly remembrance of Motherhood themes of bonding and losses which permeate my life....and the stability I found in a conscious connection with Great Mother as a resonance to the Life force I always felt in and around Nature and my own pure spiritual being. 

The shamanic descent of humanity this time of year is amplified by Cosmic forces too numerous to mention.  While the plans and palette of Universal architects renovate our foundations,  we wander through the sparkle of photons pinging like tiny receptors towards our next world.   Mother Nature is coming on fierce these days,  after all there is much to do in this rehab project....but She's been shining bright out my window and giving us tropical splendor, a reminder that not all change is hard.   And back on my lovely Griffin loop this morning,  slogging my way through the last few miles,  I finally remembered to get out of my head and really LOOK at the skies, the flowering landscape, all the beauty around me.

The blackest black has a beauty.  And the boundless imprint of Light lifting our souls into its right  Loving place is beautiful.  But what I love most is all that stuff in-between.  Today I learned my every step has a beauty, no matter where I think I am 'in the process'.    May we all learn how beautiful our vulnerability is this year.  And how strong we can become.