Three Lessons from the Summer Season: Visioning a New World

Posted on:  Jun 4, 2022 @ 10:30 Posted in:  Sabbats

There’s a powerful juxtaposing of realities going on right now. One is our human world stuck in a mindset of fear and scarcity that bears the fruits of poverty, social injustice, war, mass overconsumption and climate change. The other is a life-centered ethos revealed in Nature’s emerging summertime landscape of stunning beauty and overflowing abundance.

Two realities, two ways of living and engaging the world around us, two different outcomes for our lives, human society and Earth home. At this moment, both these realities are turned on high, in our face, shaking us awake and asking us to choose.

Imagine a world centered in Nature’s life-giving ways: where scarcity is met with abundance, fear with love, and there’s enough for everyone and everything.

Photo by Loudge on Unsplash

This isn’t a comfortable discussion to have. It asks you to show up to the toxic brew of sexism, homophobia, racism, violence, environmental destruction and the myriad of other ills that pervade our human psyche and collective behaviors. These terrible events and human ills aren’t isolated, disconnected aspects of our society. They’re symptoms or outcomes of a reality of fear and scarcity that rules our world, where there isn’t enough food, money, jobs, power, social status, and even love to go around.  In a reality where the dominant, aggressive and greedy rise to the top of the pile, gathering life’s goodies to themselves, things are going to get nasty and ugly.

Here are three simple, potent lessons from Nature that can help you revision your life and our collective reality in alignment with the powers of life in Summer.

1. Abundance is real.

In the sun-bright days of Summer, abundance isn’t an illusion or utopian ideal. It’s real and substantive, woven of the raw elements of sun, earth, rain, soil and seed that, through the wondrous miracle of life, produce the foodstuff that feeds the hungry bellies of this world.

Nature’s abundance expresses itself in an ethos of generosity, of giving more rather than less, and taking only what is needed. Take a single cherry tree, not only does it offer up delicious fruits for humans and creatures alike year after year, but the pits of the fruit provide the seeds of future plants and harvests.

Imagine living in harmony with Nature’s ethos of generosity by giving more of yourself rather than less, and only taking what you truly need by walking lightly on this Earth.

Imagine conceiving this same abundance in our shared society, where a decent standard of living is a given, and power, worthiness, love, and other markers of personal satisfaction and social value are infinite and available for all, each in accordance with our deep, true needs.

2. Life is good.

The powers of life are at a peak it the Summer, and the good things of the living world are on full display. The sun is hot. The sky is clear blue. Wild things are plump, healthy and busy tending their young. Ripe fruits weigh down branches. Gardens are overflowing with produce.

Sunshine caresses bare skin. Luscious flowers scent warm breezes. Wild music of birdsong and buzzing insects fills the airwaves. Flowers paint the landscape in bright colors and vibrant greens. Strawberries are soft and sweet. Life is very, very good.

Imagine living and sharing this same goodness inside of you by gifting others with your best qualities and nature.

Imagine a world in which Nature’s goodness is cherished, with its gifts and wonders received with gratitude and a debt of protecting these precious resources, and where people share their own goodness and best nature with others.

3. All life is beautiful and worthy.

Wild things don’t have self-worth or identity issues. A dung beetle doesn’t stop to measure its beauty and value against a butterfly. It goes about the business of being a dung beetle, in alignment with its unique dung beetle purpose and place in the great weaving of life.

Be it a dung beetle or butterfly, dandelion or rose, robin or turkey vulture, mouse or wild cat, no one is more beautiful or worthy than another. The summertime powers of light and life call every living being to blossom, flourish, and play their essential part in the balance and well-being of the whole.

Imagine honoring and claiming your beauty, gifts and sacred purpose, knowing that you’re truly beautiful and worthy, and that your contributions to life deeply matter.

Imagine living in a world where others do the same, where there is no better or worse than, just infinite configurations of beauty and gifts, all contributing to the balance and well-being of the whole.

As I share Nature’s lessons and these visions of a life-centered reality, I want to be clear that I’m neither naïve nor someone who believes that light and love can banish life’s evils. Nature isn’t always gracious and generous. Winter brings scarcity and death, and the wild world can deliver up devastation through earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. Yet Nature always returns to abundance, goodness and life.

In the same way, our personal lives and collective humanity are plagued by the natural ravages of illness, suffering and death, as well as the countless ills and horrors of our collective reality of fear and scarcity. Yet we can choose a vision for our lives and world based on a reality that always returns to abundance, goodness and life, no matter what challenges and hardships come our way.

This isn’t an easy choice to make. It’s hard sometimes to believe in abundance, goodness and life’s beauty in the face of the pain, suffering and horrors that weigh down our personal histories and shared humanity, and the terrible, terrible things we humans continue to do to each other and our Earth home.

Believe me I know, because I’ve traveled into the depths of my own personal horrors and those of our humanity, and come out the other side. I’ve come to understand that I/we can’t undo the harm that’s been done to us, and to the people and things we hold dear. What we can do is look life in the eye, see and speak truth, and choose accordingly.

We humans are capable of immense horror and great goodness. We can build a world based on an ethos of scarcity and fear, or abundance, goodness and beauty. We get to choose, each moment and each challenge, which of these two realities will be our guiding force. Yet, in the end, only a life-centered ethos, love and the best of our nature can mend our hearts, transform our life and take on the momentous task of creating a new, better world.

Nature shows us what we’ve forgotten. It teaches us that abundance, goodness and beauty are real and ever present. It reminds us that nothing is forever; from the depth of Winter, life always returns to and unfolds into the stunning plenitude of Summer. So too we can emerge from the long winter of soul of humanity, and a collective ethos of fear and scarcity, to return to a life-centered reality that can embrace and nourish us all.

Imagine that there’s a place and purpose in this world for every person and wild being, each beautiful, worthy and precious, and that we each bring our best gifts and qualities to the communal table of humanity to solve the problems we’ve created and build a better world together.

Then shift into this living state of abundance, goodness and beauty; stretch out your hands and send this vision outward, like a prayer, into the suffering hearts of our human world.

Bring these lessons and the life-centered ethos of the Summer into your life through the Path of She Guided Journey – Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess .

The Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering is part of a Guided Journey Series through the seasons to help you seek and source the transformative, life-centered teachings of the Goddess and Nature. The Summer Journey includes: a Guidebook (pdf ebook), Journal (pdf ebook), and Guided Meditation (mp3 audio)  that offer an integrated, seven lesson program with wisdom teachings, awareness practice and journaling exercises, and a guided meditation.

Learn More at: Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess.

Buy Now at the Path Store.

Summer Journey: Nature’s Magic of Beauty and Abundance

Posted on:  Jul 10, 2020 @ 11:00 Posted in:  Sabbats

I reach out to you as Summer deepens into its powers of light and life, and Nature gifts us with its transformative magic of beauty, abundance and goodness.

Your Summer Journey is a revolution in the making, with Nature’s bounty of beauty and abundance as the counterforce to negative mindset of our daily newsfeed.

I reach out to you as I struggle daily with the onslaught of bad news that relentlessly reinforces the mess we’ve made of this world, and the horrors of our destructive ways.

I reach out to you knowing that I’m not alone in my angst. We all sense, deep down, that change is coming at us, hard and fast — change that profoundly matters to our personal lives, to those we hold close and dear, to the oppressed and vulnerable in our midst, to our children and children’s children to come, to our Earth home, and to our very future as a species.

I reach out to you, offering a different voice, and a positive, empowering vision and path of change in the face of the noise and negativity of the daily news cycle that locks us in a mindset of scarcity, fear, and gross imbalances in power, wealth and wellbeing. This outer mindset is just one possibility and path for our human society, and another path, arising from the life-centered ways of the Goddess and Nature, is flourishing outside your doorstep at this very moment.

Come, take my hand, join me as I walk on a fine, sunny July day, following the same path that’s guided my questing feet for twenty years — down a secret forest trail on our land that leads to a tranquil, rural road surrounded by farmland.

The fir trees and sword ferns greet me as I pass, brushing me lightly with their bright green, new-leaf finery. My heart swells at the cry of nesting eagles in the treetops, and I sniff hungrily as I pass the hedgerow of ocean spray. Just out of sight, gardens are in full bloom, with tasty, green produce and plump, sweet berries juicy ripe for the picking.

This Nature’s transformative magic, an antidote and counterforce to the negative onslaught of the daily news cycle, and the madness and stresses of our human society. I’m not hiding out or seeking solace in the natural realm. No, this is a conscious act, a walking transformation, and a revolution in the making, with Nature and the Goddess as my teachers and guides in their ways of life, abundance and goodness.

I reach out from my place on this path and invite you to experience a bit of this Nature magic I speak of. However my story resonates with you, breathe these energies into your body and soul. Let them awaken your own connections to the beauty and gifts of summertime Nature in your part of the world.

You don’t have to live in a rural setting like I do. You just need to step outside your door and Nature is there: in the sky overhead, the earth beneath your feet, the birdsong and insect buzz, and your favorite green space or tree or flower bed; in the fresh, local produce at your grocery store; and the way your body feels when brushed by the wind and caressed by sunshine.

This is no mundane exchange with Nature. Great teachings beckon to you from your sensual, summer encounters with green-growing things, fragrant flowers, melodic birds, fresh-picked berries, warm-wind caresses, and the life-giving promise of sunshine. Simple, powerful, life- and world-changing lessons — abundance is real; life is good; and every living being is beautiful, worthy and essential to the web of life that holds us all.

Imagine these lessons as the foundations of a new, life-centered vision for your life and our shared society: where scarcity is replaced by abundance, love heals our fear, and everyone and everything are valued and supported for their beauty and contribution to our collective wellbeing.

I’m not naive. I know that we can’t heal ourselves and fix what ails our humanity solely through Summer’s visions of beauty, abundance and goodness. Nature, like humanity, has many sides and seasons. Winter brings hardship, scarcity, death and darkness, just as our lives are marked by pain, wounding and the shadow side of our nature. There are potent, transformative mysteries in light and life, and in darkness and death, and our lives and world are a complex weaving of all of these things.

I reach out to you in this post, and in everything I write and offer from the Path of She, from a fierce love and determination that are fueled by hope not despair. I believe in you, in me, and in the countless others that are waking and choosing to do what is needed to mend our souls, reclaim our lives, and help create a wiser, saner, more just and loving human society.

From my own intense, many-years, many-seasons journey of soul, and in my Path of She work with others, there’s one thing I know for sure: that everything we need to accomplish these mighty, daunting, exhilarating, transformative tasks is already here, within us and all around us, if we but learn to seek and source the teachings of the Goddess and Nature in new, powerful ways.

I have created the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering as part of a Guided Journey Series through the seasons to help you seek and source the transformative, life-centered teachings of the Goddess and Nature. The Summer Journey includes: a Guidebook (pdf ebook), Journal (pdf ebook), and Guided Meditation (mp3 audio)  that offer an integrated, seven lesson program with wisdom teachings, awareness practice and journaling exercises, and a guided meditation.

I hope this blog post will inspire you to dive deep into your Summer Journey with Nature, whether through your own self-directed pathwork or the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering.

During these COVID-19 times, when many of us are struggling and in need of spiritual inspiration, I’m offering my Summer Journey at sliding scale prices.

The full price is $16.99.  Use this coupon: summerdiscount to pay 50% of the purchase price. Use this coupon: summergift to download the Summer Journey package for free.

I ask you to pay what you can and to take what you need in support of your spiritual pathwork at this time.

Click here to go to the Path Store.  Add the Summer Journey to your cart, then enter the coupon on the checkout page.

Artwork by: Vincent van Gough