As I drove past each day I was unable to shield my eyes, unable to look away. The post God Eyes first appeared on Braided Way Magazine ..read more

The nature of heaven has been described in near-death experiences, dreams, and by countless psychics, channelers, mediums, and intuitives. We’ve learned about it from extraordinary people who visited heaven, as Emanuel Swedenborg did over 250 years ago. But no one has provided the rest of us a way of visiting this realm. Imagine if we could do so to meet with loved ones, learn about heaven’s purpose, and access insights critical to healing problems on Earth?  The mystics taught that imagination can be an organ of perception. Christian mystics describe spontaneous visions infused with myst ..read more

Sometimes when alone we speak to the night air It’s like praying as only silence it seems is spoken back to us But night has its own language with words behind  its deep hush They come up to us from our own depths And the words are not our own There’s silence over silence and an ancient road slowly occurs to us  under waves of bluish fog We begin to know long-dead  whisperers from the deep end of time They are us and we are them We find between us a common grief and without knowing it we are shepherded by father dark down the old road The post Finding Our Way first appeared on B ..read more

My father watches a video my mother took of a butterfly feeding from a zinnia, slowly flapping its wings, and says, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon as profound as this.” In the background church bells ring, the same my grandmother loved, who kept butterflies encased in glass frames on her wall beside a crucifix. There are a thousand unknown things coming together in the opening and closing of this moment. You might need to know my father for this to be as profound as it is to me. Friend, I wish you did. The post Miracle on WhatsApp first appeared on Braided Way Magazine ..read more

“Instructions for Living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Mary Oliver When I used to go to church, our minster opened each sermon with a prayer that began: “Startle us, oh Lord!” It was a prayer for something greater to be stirred in our souls, an entreaty – Please startle us. Wake us up! It was as though he was voicing the cry of my own heart: a call to be surprised, to be moved, to apprehend that which we could not previously see. And he wanted it too. His words gave voice to something both old and alive in me; a yearning to feel a connection to something greater and vas ..read more

attending the wise women. It is meet and right to do so. No one here fears any god  designed by men for us to please them. We braid each others’ hair.  I love the simple shift I wear,  the ceremonial fires, the reverence  for what grows and rustles  in the forest, the fields.  Insects glow. Trees are gracious,  generous with their shade. The river hums and sparkles.  We learn songs as we stir the pots.  Our voices rise, drift downwind. We learn the natures of pennyroyal,  hyssop, rosemary, ginseng, rue.  We learn women’s fierceness  h ..read more

Tending to grief is the essence of the alchemical wounded healer. Proving a sanctuary and safe passage for its unfolding – in the body, the psyche, and the nervous system – requires that we fall to the ground, at times, and weep. Weep for the shattering, for the dying of a dream, for the entirety of the unlived life. For it is these tears that form the substance of the portal to joy. Grief is not something we “get over,” but a partner we spin with, honor at times, argue with at others, and lament with as the cycles of our lives unfold. We live in a world that has lost contact with the holy wat ..read more

–for Gerard Manley Hopkins If only the archangel Gabriel would visit and with holy host proclaim “Children of Creation, let there be no anchor for rancor in the Dead Sea, nor fuel for cruelty in Bethlehem; let people enjoy temple, steeple, and mosque, and live their lives and their loves without mayhem,” perhaps the shredding shrapnel that shocks us into rage at loss would cease, and we could reclaim our lease on the peaceable kingdom, calm and stable, and at long last not till the soil of hatred to bitter harvest in the sacred homeland. The post The Peaceable Kingdom first appeared on Braided ..read more

Circa 1929 This photograph of my newborn mother being held on one side by an Athens nurse with the headgarb of what could be an angel, and on the other side by my Yaya, herself almost still a girl at 21, the child swaddled and held as if blessed between them. Light from the tall window is fierce still, 95 years later;  and I can’t stop staring,  as if seeing a pathway opening  from that moment to now,  I am a living dream  before a dream in my mother’s cells,  the image might be saying: here is one of the beginnings of your life.   ~ Photograph suppled b ..read more

Before the invention of thoughts we sang ourselves to sleep.The day melted back into humming, the humming into silence, silence into a breath of the Beloved. Of course the stars were not yet born, and the moon was still inside you. Lay your head on my shoulder now. Listen with all your heart, and I will teach you nothing. A Vedic text declares: “Adau Bhagavan Shabda rasahi: in the beginning, the Lord created the universe through a stream of sound.” I know you have a very subtle esoteric sadana to practice, but before you meditate, don’t forget to Hum. Om is too stuffy, just Hum ..read more