When I Am Silent

© 2014 Oona McOuat

When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music. -Rumi-

A stolen hour; an empty page.  A lone swan swims across a winter lake.  And I breathe, just breathe, and give thanks for this moment.

Photo by Gemaskerde-Muchaco

It has been a year since my last message.  A year of tilling soil and planting seeds, of learning how to conserve an abundant harvest, of stepping away from the stage and into the heart.   Along the way, I have met the wisest and the woolliest aspects of my nature.  I have learned that when I feel riled up or stressed, the best I can do is breathe, just breathe, and reach beyond the story I have mistaken for truth, the story separating me from Self. 

   Photo by Leigh Hilbert

At the same time, I love stories that I know are stories.  I love the language of music and its power to transport and transform.  Yet, I am hungering for new stories, for words that gently and bravely guide our way home.  

My truest sense of music this past year came to me at Samhain - Halloween - as I played and sang for a dying friend.  As I let myself give way, I fell outside of form.  How I love that spiralling, soaring place of light and dancing shadow that music becomes when I breathe, just breathe, and let my essence flow.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

We fill these days before the winter solstice with cookies and carols, with cards, and Christmas movies.  It only takes a moment to step beneath the bustle, and breathe, just breathe, into the stillness of the dark.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Last night the Star appeared in a clear, cold sky.  Bright and beckoning, sparkling with knowing, it reminded me that this Mass of Christ is a celebration of the birth of a great teacher, who – like so many other wise ones before and since – believed in the powerful potential we have to live in peace on earth with joy in our hearts.  How simple and complex is their message: “Peace is here, peace is now; it lives within each one of us...”  And as I rush to the post office to mail packages and start to feel snappy and stretched, I remind myself to breathe, just breathe, and be fully in this moment.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

May the light returning bring you joy, may the new year bring you beauty, and may we all remember, moment by moment, the Love that we are.

 

If you too enjoy song & story, have a listen to December Song.

With Bright Blessings,

Oona

Holiday Presence

© 2013 Oona McOuat

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

(Enjoy December Song, my Holiday Present to you.)

At a time of year when the days are short and the lists are long...

Stop, Breathe, and Give Thanks.

When you are shoving a gift into an envelope in hopes of rushing through the throngs at the post office, and in your haste, snip the necklace you are packing in half...

Stop, Breathe, and Give Thanks.

When approaching the pile of presents that needs wrapping and things that need doing begins to resemble climbing Mount Everest in a blizzard...

Stop, Breathe, and Give Thanks.

Photo by Pat Morrow

When you read one more story about Fukushima or Syria and wonder what kind of world we are leaving to the children...

Stop, Breathe, and Give Thanks.

As a luminescent moon paints the sky with wonder...

Stop, Breathe, and Give Thanks.

As snowflakes fall, perfect and unexpected...

Stop, Breathe, and Give Thanks.

As the still, dark days coax our inner embers and sing of seeds to come ....

Stop, Breathe, and Give Thanks.

 May the magic of the season enfold you and may we dream the world anew as we stop, breathe, and give thanks...

Oona

Photo by Kmax

Storms, Quakes, and Dolphin Dreamtime

© 2012 Oona McOuat

The moon is full; the earth is changing. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and wild weather.... In the northern hemisphere, we approach Samhain (All Hallows), the midpoint between the balance of the autumn equinox and the winter solstice - the darkest day of the year.

If we were in a fairy tale, we would be at the part where Jack has climbed his magic beanstalk and arrived at the home of a fearsome giant, where the miller’s daughter sits alone wondering how she will ever weave that pile of straw into gold, where Hansel and Gretel are lost in the forest...

Hansel and Gretel

Lately, I have been like the Princess and the Pea – tossing fitfully as I sleep through layer upon layer of dream.

The Princess and the Pea by Cat MacBride

I know others have been dreaming more too, wandering at night through the hidden world of the unconscious. Perhaps our dreamtime is guiding us towards a clear, true path that will lead us out of the woods. But for me, this is not the time for action...  And so, I open and receive like a child listening to a bedtime story, letting memory, image, and sensation guide me through the wilderness of not knowing.

Most of us don’t like the part of the story where nothing happens.  We want our heroine to slay the dragon – now!  Words are today’s swords, and so we arm ourselves with the internet’s quick fixes and easy answers.  Time-pressed and money-pressured, bombarded with constant communication but little communion, we tell the stories of our lives in 140 characters or less.  As winds howl and days darken, we are lost in the maze of mind, numb to the beauty and meaning all around us.

There’s no place like home by Cat MacBride

Some red shoes, a gnarled oak, a wishing well ... if we fall into its depths, we will find our radiant selves.

Happily ever after is right here, right now. The dolphins told me so! Enjoy this video of them and me swimming together on August’s Blue moon. Created by Leigh Hilbert, it features my song Ancient Mother.

May your days be blessed with beauty, your nights, snuggly and sweet.

Oona

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Balanced Between the Dark and the Light

© 2009 Oona McOuat

Photo by Jeff Ardron

Each night the stag comes.  There is only a window separating my nocturnal habit of tapping my fingers on a glowing box, his of munching on fallen apples.  As his eyes meet mine through the glass, a primal jolt awakens a longing to abandon my endless emails and fill my nostrils with the night scents of turning leaves and early autumn.  

Autumn, autumnus - the word is most likely derived from the Etruscan autu, and is related to avil (or year) and menos meaning loss.  The year is dying. And as we harvest the bounty of the fecund growing season we also prepare for its death. 

Today, all over the planet we sit poised in perfect balance between light and dark. Tomorrow, those in the south move towards the light while those of us in the north prepare for the season of darkness. 

I move from desk to door to outdoors, my computer-bleary mind racing with all that needs to be done.  There's a nagging worry that I might not get the harvest in before the winter comes.

Deep inhale of musky blackberry bushes and yellowing maples, and a falling star, a dying star, streaks across the sky in one last awe-awakening dance. The stag stirs and eats another apple out of necessity and pleasure, and the words of poet Mary Oliver run through my head:

"Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

I think of growing deeper and wilder, leaping hungrily, instinctually, over the moss-covered stones, waning sun on my face, berry-stained hands ripping bark from trees to find honey flowing from dripping combs. Finger to comb to mouth, everything sticky with the pollen of a hundred flowers now faded. Feasting as if the sweetness will never end. Living as if I am dying, balanced between the darkness and the light.

Blessings,
Oona

On Balance and Rebirth

© 2008 Oona McOuat

Last night I slept like a baby for nearly 12 hours, curled up in my comforters against the spring chill …. The kids I teach are coming down with whooping cough and scarlet fever, and my body needed a good long rest to build its strength.

Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox - the point of equal day and equal night when the balance turns from the dark towards the light.

Sunball

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

I love the dark, the deep, rich mystery of the unformed. Although I often long for the sun and warmth, the turning inwards of autumn resonates with my soul. Since I was a teenager, spring has meant hay fever and a burgeoning aliveness that quickens my activity level and frequently sends me into overdrive. All of the springiness of rebirth can throw the plodding and methodical parts of me a little off balance. That's when it's time to get my hands in the dirt.

Plants have always anchored me in my body and the physical world. I remember the first spring I explored on my own as a child. I was old enough to bicycle solo into uncharted territory. I had just read Louisa May Alcott's "Under the Lilacs" and I was on a quest for lilacs. I would ride my bike past unknown houses and if I saw lilac bushes in the yard, I would creep up and bury my nose in their rich mauve, lavender, and deep purple glory. I don't remember sneezing…

Decades later I am living near the place where I grew up, striving to reclaim the grounded, gentle rhythm I followed as a child. It is spring and I've hardly sneezed at all! Perhaps I am learning to not take on more than I can peacefully accomplish as I temper my in-the world-self's tendency to mirror the quickening of nature. 

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

As I was making the bed this morning I was reflecting on balance: equal day and equal night, the dark and the light, linear time and eternity, ego and essence…..I have jumped on the Oprah bandwagon and I am reading Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" as I take the weekly online class. At first I registered because I thought I should be aware of what this potentially huge shift in global consciousness was all about. Within 10 minutes of being in class I knew it could help me grow. Eckhart's presence reinforces the peace inside me and encourages me to understand why and when I lose it.   

So, I was making the bed this morning, ruminating about time. Last week Eckhart spoke of rooting ourselves in the eternal. I personally love floating through the unframed, unformed magnificence of eternity. 

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

Yet there are things I want to get done here on earth. Do plants and animal know they are going to die?,  I wondered as I pulled the top sheet up over the bottom one. I doubt it. Is that why they can so purely surrender to their soulful and instinctual nature? Are us humans addicted to our day planners and Blackberries because we are afraid of dying? I started thinking about (I know, according to Eckhart thinking is ego based, but sometimes a girl's got to do it..), I started thinking about how anchored in linear time the cycles of nature are. 

Crescent Moon

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

The Moon orbits around the Earth in 29 ¼ days; the Earth orbits around the Sun in one year. It takes 9 months to gestate a child, 6 weeks to distill a flower essence; it will be 6 moon cycles before the wheel of the year returns to the next point of balance. Our bodies are anchored in linear time; our spirits hunger for the eternal.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

I am still learning how to dance between these two points, how to live and create authentically and spontaneously, while flowing down the "to Do " list like a river sure and true. I've recently decided I need to put my creative self on a schedule, dedicating consistent, structured time to her unfolding rather than letting inspiration alone dictate when I work. My free spirit balks at this, but I am so good at implementing meaningful distractions and putting more pressing commitments ahead of my personal projects.

The natural world around me moves through linear time with seamless grace. I let her ground and guide me. As I walk through the woods on a newly discovered trail that goes right from my backyard up Mt Maxwell (!) I gather young, brilliant green nettles. For five nights in a row I cook and eat them and feel wonderful. In a month or so, the nettles will be too "old" to eat this way. By autumn, they'll be gone.

I watch as the first brave snowdrops give way to tiny wild crocuses. A convention of sweet, heart-shaped leafed violets suddenly gathers under the elms. Birds whose names I don't know are arriving at my doorstep, filling the air with music. Soon the wild lilacs will appear. 

At Burgoyne Bay, a field of gorgeous daffodils miraculously sprouts up by the sea. I am reminded of the delight that flooded me at age four as I stood in my Nana's field of tall, yellow daffodils, surrounded by a large and happy family of flowers singing and bobbing their heads.

As I focus on the process of creation, I turn to nature to model how I can move my ego-mind self out of the way and let things take their course. My thinking self can step back in to edit, shape, and form when needed, but how can a garden flourish if we are continually hovering over any new growth, pulling up anything we don't recognize and calling it a weed?

Sweet balance is helping me drop into, fall into, stumble into a place where life is full and rich and real - full of many cycles of death and rebirth, many letting go's and openings to the miraculous. Blessed balance is helping me know when to act - to say no to the garbage dump down the road or the horrendous situations in Iraq and Tibet, not because I am opposed to the horror, but because I hunger for and believe in justice, peace and beauty.

As within, so it is without. Let me be and create what I believe in. As we work and play, and love and heal ourselves, each other, and the world, let us all remember the pure, eternal, unscripted joy of rebirth.

May Springtime, all time, fill you with a happy heart!

Carmel Point

by Robinson Jeffers

from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. © Stanford University Press, 1989.

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,

Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop
rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine
beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. -As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Photo by Leigh Hilbert

The Labyrinth

© 2006 Oona McOuat


Squeezed between the longing for what has been lost, and the desire for what may be, there lies this moment.

photo by Kmax

It is so easy, especially at this hectic time of year, to be everywhere but here. There is so much information floating about, telling us how we should live our lives: how we should fill them with vivid, positive images of what we want to have happen, propelling us out of the now into the next, manufactured moment.   Or we are counselled to painstakingly uncover the subconscious patterns that have created our past so we can control our future.

photo by Leigh Hilbert

I am beginning to believe that the Creator has a wonderful sense of humour. Just when we think we have a handle on natural laws and have figured out the ways of the universe, we're thrown a curve ball. Life is full of pleasant and unpleasant surprises.

photo by Kmax

A year ago, when the potential randomness of the universe was unleashed upon my life, I was left shaky and despondent. If bad things could happen to good people - how in the world could I feel safe?  How could I take responsibility for what I was experiencing yet avoid falling into self-blame? And why did my innocent heart of hearts still believe that what appeared to be bad might actually be good?

Some things are constant: the beating of our hearts, the rise and fall of our bellies as we breathe, the light returning at the darkest, coldest time of year, whispering of hope…. 

As we follow the twisted labyrinth path on this shifting, searching planet, perhaps all we have to guide us is the knowledge that our lives will spiral up and down with a wild, passionate, beauty that is reflected in the cycles of the seasons.

photo by Kmax

It is almost winter, and once again, the descent into the dark has left me with a legacy of loss. But this year, I am stronger. I burrow into the warm cocoon of my knowing, and trust that this moment is neither bad nor good. It just is. Of course, my emotions tell me otherwise - creature of deep feeling that I am. Yet beneath the highs and lows, there is a murmur, a lullaby, which calms and soothes as it sings that love and light are constant. They are faithful, if invisible, companions.

Perhaps they are the guides that lead us to the realm of Faerie - a place where nature sings, magic swells, and the heart - even in the depths of winter - knows joy.

photo by Kmax

As we journey into the center of the labyrinth, I wish you peace. I wish you joy. I wish you love and presence.

Stop. Breathe. Believe. Become. Savor the gifts of winter.

photo by Kmax