Monday Musings: The Bloom of the Present Moment

First poppy bloom of the 2009 garden side bed

While the weather here in SE Wisconsin has been toward the cooler side, summer is definitely in the air.

I feel languid and drowsy and dreamy.

And I love it.

Love it so much, in fact, I sort of just want to lay in a field of wildflowers and get lost for, oh, a month or two.

So I continue to play with how I can flow with this energy and get some work done.

On Friday, flow meant waking up and deciding to forgo my usual yoga and meditation time.

(The house was quiet and my daughter, amazingly, was still asleep.)

Instead I listened to the birds talk. I watched the tom turkeys strut. I monitored an industrious chipmunk scurry back and forth to its nest with a mouth-full of seeds. I noticed the shapes of clouds. I opened up windows to let the breeze in. And I took my camera out to capture the first poppy bloom.

I was completely blissed out, and I was reminded of this Thoreau quote:

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand.

Sometimes, on a summer morning, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumacs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been.

— Henry David Thoreau from Walden

I'm glad I honored the bloom of the moment on Friday. I felt nourished, alive, and filled with wonder. From it, I — and my soul — grew fuller.

Tell me, where is the bloom of the present moment in your life today?

P.S. I'm honored that one of my favorite artists for inspiration and authenticity, Christine Mason Miller, featured my blog and one of my photos in her Five Things post last week. (She also listed several other yummy links.)

If you don't know Christine's blog or her wonderful art or her inspiring, soul-soothing book, you should.

Several of Christine's art icons are on the right-hand column of this blog. My favorite for today is BE HERE NOW.

Flowering Fridays: Celebrating the Flower You Are

This here is a Columbine.

(Or Aquilegia if you want to get all fancy about it.)

It blooms under the linden tree off our patio and is one of the earlybirds in the flowering parade that goes on in my garden all summer.

I love the columbine for its dainty frou-frou-ness.

(Sometimes they remind me of Princess Diana, wearing a wildly fanciful hat...and gazing out, blushing, from underneath.)

I love the columbine for their color. For their five-chambered shape.

For the way the thingy in back (technically called a nectar spur) curls up in a curlicue.

But what I love most about these columbines — and every single flower — is they are unabashedly the flower they are.

No holds barred.

This demure columbine does not try to hold center court as a show-queen rose.

Or be as bold-statured as a sunflower.

Or go all hippy wild-child like Queen Anne's lace, spreading out in a field.

Or go busting-out-blooming like my new role model, Ms. Spirea.

Nope, columbine only does columbine and does it quite well, thank you very much.

No offense to the others, of course.

Rose, sunflower, Queen Anne's lace and spirea do themselves beautifully, too.

There is no better than in the flower kingdom. It's all good.

(Sames goes everywhere in the universe. But that's a conversation for another time.)

All the flowers are needed, necessary and equally beautiful. Because they are flowers.

(By the way, that's a coded message. Flowers also = people!)

There's power in knowing — and celebrating — the flower you are.

When columbine...you...me...everyone...can own the gift, beauty, uniqueness that we each are, there is freedom, power, strength and glorious magic that emerges.

Because when we stand in the flower we are and live from it…with no apologies…no holding back our beautiful bloom…no shirking from the unique and precious spirit we are...then we are truly expressing the gift we were put here on this planet to be.

We must never forget that flowers (and each of us) are put here to be the bloom we are.

So, today, I invite you take notice of the kind of flower you are.

What bloom are you called to create in the world? What shape, color and size does your bloom take? What are the best soil and conditions for your blooming?

Remember, There is no right or wrong answer here.

Just what's true for you and the seeds you came here to plant and grow into full flower.

Once you've taken note of the flower you are, take a moment to celebrate this.

(Maybe a little happy dance is in order. Or a prayer of gratitude. Or a new bouquet of, um, flowers.)

Whatever you choose, remember — today and every day — to go forth and bloom big in your life.

Tell me, what do you celebrate about yourself today?

*************

Flowering Fridays is a weekly look at flowers through the lens of what they might teach us about flowering fully in our life. Past editions are here.

Listening for What Wants to Emerge

Geum in bouquet

I'm re-reading a favorite book, Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski.* (A book on the recommended reading list for the Center for Authentic Leadership/Future Thinking program with Jan Smith.)

A main point of the book is centered around a way of being, where Jaworski says "predictable miracles, synchronistic in nature, can — and do — occur." (pg. 182).

It is a way of being that is highly intentional, yet very flexible, where one "listens" for want is wanting to emerge and then, "having the courage," moves one step at a time toward the future that we are creating. (ibid)

Jaworski writes on page 134 that in this way of being,

"We are more certain of the direction than the goal, and each day we ask for guidance to take the next step.…We pay attention to what is going on around us. Our awareness operates at multiple levels, and we listen carefully with all we have for what to do next. We never see the whole landscape, so we take the next tiny step and improvise on what we've learned. This thought is captured beautifully by the Spanish poet A. Machado:

'Wanderer, there is no path. You lay a path in walking.'..."

I'm having increasing experiences of Jaworski's concept of synchronicity. And it is truly a magical, wondrous way to be in the world.

And because me likey feeling good, I'm out to experience this more and more on a day-to-day basis.

Not just sometimes. Or when I'm out exploring with my honey.

But every day.

So I'm looking closely at the mindsets, feelings and actions I experience in this state.

What I'm noticing is that being in this state is less a place of thinking, and more a way of being.

There is a rootedness I experience in this state about my inherent okay-ness and the inherent okay-ness of the universe.

When I'm in synch, my people-pleasing leanings and my worry whether I'm likeable fall away. I just know I'm perfect exactly as I am.

And there's tremendous freedom for me in releasing all such constricting thought and energy.

Quite frankly, it's exhausing to live in a place of worry about your own okay-ness.

I'm also noticing that I go into a kind of hyper-keen awareness that allows me to move toward the subtle clues that are being offered me.

Speak to this person. Go here, a quiet voice from deep within calls. Explore this. Do this next.

Then, I move with trust to follow that voice.

Kind of like my role model, Ms. Spirea Bush, who surrenders to the process of her blooming.

No pushing or driving needed.

Just allowing and taking the next action.

Of course, this doesn't mean I'm tossed about by the whims of chance.

I know what flowers I'm committed to growing in my life, and I keep these at the forefront of my intention (or "direction," to use Jaworski's term).

But I'm learning that I don't have to micromanage every single step of my journey by timelining every thing out.

Which I've wasted a lot of time doing in the past.

Life doesn't flow that way.

And besides, I'm enjoying the journey so much more when I can be in the joy of creating my path by walking toward it.

So today my intention is still around flow, and part of being in flow for me is listening for what is wanting to emerge in my life.

The messages I'm getting today are around some de-cluttering in my craft space and some journaling around my new book project.

Tell me, how do you listen for what wants to emerge in your life and how do you experience the state of synchronicity?

P.S. If you are interested in more on Jaworski, check out this print interview here and video interview here.

* I highly recommend reading the book. And note, that if you read it, stick with it until the end — for me, he really tied things together in the last part of the book. In my copy, nearly every page in the last half of the book is covered with underlines, starred passages and WOW!s from me.