"One thing I have learned from seventy-six years of living is that the primary signs of spirit are courage and generosity." Matthew Fox Photos: Pasqueflowers near Bellvue, CO, and the meadow across the street from my home in Larimer County, CO, April 17, 2016. The third photo is of Matthew Fox. For Spiritual Direction or Workshops, please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/
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The Goddess is the personality inhabiting the immanent, this-worldly aspect of the Divine and the multi-faceted web of Life, where every being serves as a mirror for every other being. She is the seamless Flow of interbeing and interconnection heading toward the infinite God-horizon, the intimate self-caress that moves endlessly from one creature to the next, the common heart that beats through all things. It is She who is the aha! experience of joy-filled insight, the wisdom that sparks the connection between opposites, and the beauty that bonds together perceiver and perceived. Union with the Goddess is, in fact, the meaning of Life. Even God serves Her fulfillment in being the humble, empty mirror of Spacious Love in which She is able to see Her own goodness and beauty manifested and celebrated in a billion different creatures and landscapes! Photo: Vedauwoo Recreation Area, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY, April 12, 2016 For Spiritual Direction or Workshops, please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ "Elders are NOT 'senior citizens' who get gold watches at retirement, move to Sunbelt states, and play cards, shuffleboard, and bingo ad nauseum. They are not 'wrinkled babies, succumbing to a trivial, purposeless waste of their years and their time. Then what are elders? They are wisdomkeepers who have an ongoing responsibility for maintaining society's well-being and safeguarding the health of our ailing planet Earth. Using tools for inner growth, such as meditation, journal writing, and life review, elders come to terms with their mortality, harvest the wisdom of their years, and transmit a legacy to future generations. Serving as mentors, they pass on the distilled essence of their life experiences to others. The joy of passing on wisdom to younger people not only seeds the future, but crowns an elder's life with worth and nobility." "Let's replace negative images of aging with a more joyous vision that I call SAGE-ING. People don't automatically become sages simply by living to a great age. They become wise by undertaking the inner work that leads in stages to expanded consciousness. Elders mine the riches of our spiritual traditions. With their panoramic perspective on time and history, elders can infuse the political and economic dialogue with the wisdom that comes from taking the long view on issues. Sages can help redirect us from selfish, short term thinking to broader, inspired approaches that take into account the welfare of our endangered planet." Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi "From Age-ing to Sage-ing" Photos: Pasqueflowers, Ponderosa Pine bark and the Hewlett Burn, Poudre Canyon, CO, April 12, 2016. The fourth photo is of Reb Zalman For Spiritual Direction or Workshops, please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ The Goddess is the personality inhabiting the immanent, this-worldly aspect of the Divine and the multi-faceted web of Life, where every being serves as a mirror for every other being. She is the seamless Flow of interbeing and interconnection heading toward the infinite God-horizon, the intimate self-caress that moves endlessly from one creature to the next, the common heart that beats through all things. It is She who is the aha! experience of joy-filled insight, the wisdom that sparks the connection between opposites, and the beauty that bonds together perceiver and perceived. Union with the Goddess is, in fact, the meaning of Life. Even God serves Her fulfillment in being the humble, empty mirror of Spacious Love in which She is able to see Her own goodness and beauty manifested and celebrated in a billion different creatures and landscapes! Photo: Vedauwoo Recreation Area, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY, April 12, 2016 For Spiritual Direction or Workshops, please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ HAPPY NATIONAL PARK WEEK! "The National Park idea is to me a very definite religious idea. That is the only way I can put it. There is some deep personal distillation of spirit and concept which moulds these physical earthly facts into some transcendental emotional and spiritual experience. It is this spirit that I believe." Ansel Adams Photos: Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO, April 3, 2016 I simply cannot get my fill of the burned landscapes resulting from our massive forest fires three years ago. High Park Burn, Hewlett Burn, Fern Lake Burn - they all contain a stark beauty that leaves me breathless. I'm amazed at the unusual patterns charred trees can take, as well as the lessons gleaned from the fact that new life is ever able to arise out of the ashes. As always, Nature is the most effective teacher! Photo: Charred trees in the Hewlett Burn, Poudre Canyon, CO, April 12, 2016 For Spiritual Direction or Workshops, please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/_ "Tell me what you will of the benefactions of city civilization, of the sweet security of streets - all as part of the natural upgrowth of man toward the high destiny we hear so much of. But I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found. If the death exhalations that brood the broad towns in which we so fondly COMPACT ourselves were made visible, we should FLEE as from the plague. All of us more or less are sick. "Go now and then to the wilds for fresh life - if most of humanity must go through this town stage of development - just as divers hold their breath and come ever and anon to the surface to breathe. Go whether or not you have faith. Form parties, if you must, be social, go to the snow-flowers in winter, to the sun-flowers in summer. Anyway, go up and away for life; be fleet. "I know some will heed the warning. Most will not, so full of slavery is the boasted freedom of the town, and those who need rest and clean snow and sky the most will be the last to move. Once during my childhood on the farm in Wisconsin I was let down into a deep well into which choke-damp [carbonic acid] had settled, and nearly lost my life. The deeper I was immersed in the invisible poison, the less capable I became of willing measure to escape from it. And in just this condition are those who toil or dawdle or dissipate in crowded towns, in the sinks of commerce or pleasure." The Contemplative John Muir This week, all National Parks are free of admission! Take some time to explore YOUR parks :) Photos: Pasqueflowers at Vedauwoo, WY and at Lory State Park, CO "The care-laden commercial lives we lead close our eyes to the operations of God, though openly carried on that all who will look may see." The Contemplative John Muir Photos: Pasqueflowers at Vedauwoo (WY), Pasqueflowers and Spring-Beauties at Lory State Park (CO); Pasqueflowers at Gem Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO ADMISSION IS FREE FOR ALL NATIONAL PARKS THIS COMING WEEK - APRIL 16-24 - IN CELEBRATION OF NATIONAL PARK WEEK! The National Park Service is celebrating its 100th birthday this year and is honoring its formation this coming week by observing National Park Week! Hooray for National Parks! For all of America's flaws, the trait that makes me proudest of our country is our capacity - when we really set our minds and hearts to it - to restrain ourselves and our tendency toward endless development, and instead to set aside vast swathes of land for preservation and for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations. While the Puritans often get a bad rap (and they, like ALL of us, definitely had their shadow side), what people often fail to acknowledge is the fact that the Puritan mindset was a major influence in the formation of the American wilderness preservation system. Because the Puritans believed that human beings - and human societies by extension - are naturally flawed, they looked to wild places to provide spiritual sanctuary and an ongoing sense of God's presence. Our preservation of landscapes "where man himself is a visitor who does not remain" (in the words of the Wilderness Act of 1964) arises in large part from our modern impulse to rightly fear the negative impacts that our corporate-industrial lifestyle have on the landscape and on the Earth that sustains us. During my undergraduate years at Colorado State University, I took a course from Holmes Rolston III (often named "The Grandfather of Environmental Ethics") entitled "The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature." In this course, we studied the difference between the European land aesthetic - and by extension, that of much of the rest of the world - and that of America. In Europe, a landscape is considered beautiful if, for example, mountain ecosystems are interspersed with evidence of human civilization, especially with picturesque towns and villages. By contrast, America considers a landscape beautiful if it is composed of VAST TRACTS OF UNPOPULATED LANDS. Interestingly, Aldo Leopold, whose ideas influenced the formation of the first wilderness areas, wrote in 1921 that wilderness should be "a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state" that is "big enough to absorb a TWO WEEKS' pack trip" without ever encountering a road or building. While we hopefully no longer believe, as the Puritans did, that human nature is innately corrupted, we do retain their sense that modern human society is problematic and that we therefore need to preserve sacred natural places which will enable us to get away from our corporate-industrial society in order to experience "God's First Temples," as John Muir once put it - wild places where the Divine Presence can be encountered directly in an atmosphere of silence, solitude and beauty. The creation of the National Park Service in 1916 is a direct consequence of this mindset. April 16-24 is National Park Week, and admission to all National Parks is free! Get out and celebrate YOUR Parks! Photos: Great Sand Dunes National Park (CO), Grand Teton National Park (WY), and Redwood National Park (CA). For Spiritual Direction or Workshops, please visit: http://www.resourcesforspiritualgrowth.com/ After my trip to The Great Sand Dunes, I talked about the value of a warm, sunny, spacious landscape for putting a person into a meditative state of mind. I also mentioned how a combination of the roar of the Rio Grande River and the ancient Native American rock art present nearby enabled me to see my thoughts during meditation as coming from a great distance, as though from an ancient past. However, over the past several days of Pasqueflower-hunting, I've suddenly become aware of the fact that the new Spring FRAGRANCES are also effective in putting me into a spacious state of mind. The soothing smell of dry, wet grass, the butterscotch scent of Ponderosa Pine, and the invigorating fragrance of rain falling on granite all connect my soul to the nostalgia and vastness of Divine Love like almost nothing else can! And especially after a long winter, when hardly any smells seemed present during long, snowy hikes in the woods. How wonderful our senses are for helping us become more spiritually attuned! Photos: Pasqueflowers at Hewlett Gulch (CO), Greyrock (CO) and Vedauwoo (WY); April 9, 11 and 12, 2016 |
AuthorStephen Hatch, M.A. is a spiritual teacher and photographer from Fort Collins, Colorado. His approach is contemplative, inter-spiritual, and Earth-based. Archives
June 2016
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