Praying for Peace and Healing

"Creator, open our hearts to peace and healing between all people.

Creator, open our hearts to provide and protect for all children of the earth.

Creator, open our hearts to respect for the earth, and all the gifts of the earth.

Creator, open our hearts to end exclusion, violence, and fear among all.

Thank-you for the gifts of this day and every day."

(Native American Micmac Tribe, Alycia Longriver 1995)



Alycia Longriver was a participant in the "Sunbow 5 Walk" in which a small coalition of Native Americans walked from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to California on a journey that covered more than 3,000 miles and took more than seven months to complete."

Ms. Longriver states, "In 1995 I walked with a group across the US, speaking to other groups, and praying all the way (15 million steps) for the healing of people and the earth."

I prayed asking Creator 'to bring', but after the walk realized we already have these things. It is a matter of opening our hearts to the gifts within."



Oh such wisdom from these words. Truth and wisdom.

And I, always straddled between one world and the next, have done it with multitudes of challenges, changes, and losses.

Such is hope. And such also, is the endless lessons and understanding as I let good and let goodness in - cleaning out of the grief and pains of loss and sadness and even darkness as I grieve the unkindness of others in this world, and all of the dark they carry within.

I seek to bring back into myself - the light, the love, the caring mindfulness of wishing for the other what I wish for myself.



I remember so many openings of my heart after many periods of sadness. I am thinking of losing my sister in law who tried so hard to survive end stage kidney failure just as I lost four of my precious chicken pets. I lost two to a neighbors dog and two to pair of raccoons that are most likely the pair I saved from starvation when their mother was killed last winter.

Such are the cycles of nature and of life.





I have opened my heart to never giving up by getting even more baby chickens to raise and then because I just loved them so, a few more. On and on my chicken stories supplied me with fun and blog posts. Then my pig stories! Oh my!

Michele Bilyeu Creates *With Heart and Hands*: Search results for Chickens

https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/search?q=Chickens

https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/search?q=Pigs

Taking in stray cats and loving them into our family Finding homes for the others as well as finding the owner's of dozens of lost animals who found their way to me intuitively knowing I would help them.



Here are Priscilla, Maxine, Blanche and Hazel, the older girls now joined by Angelique, Francine, and tiny Nellie Grace, peeking in the back left. Priscilla. laying down and hiding to her right. I see this photo as my little Rockettes.

For love of all of nature, and its creatures, ground me. These have all grown up and moved on. As have most of my cats and all of my dogs!! But oh the precious memories.

Children and grandchildren filling my life now. They enrich my spirit and reach out to both the past as well as the future. They are the links to so much in this world in all ways.

My lifelong love of animals. I think I have now topped 80 pets in my 7+ decade life. 80!!
Crazy chicken, cat, dog and then the pet birds, rodents, reptiles, on and on that my husband and son brought in!

Now it is all about family as my deepest connection to life. This week was filled with caring, playing with, and entertaining family. My three grown children plus their three spouses or partners, and five grandchildren ages 6 months to 8.

They not only keep us busy but bringing ever radiating joy to our lives.

Thank you Creator for this life and these opportunities to grow and to learn so very much by being and doing.



Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands sharing an imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting from my heart and with my hands.

Of interest:

Excuse any and all pycho typos: I blog on a  Galaxy Note 9 cellphone without any wifi in our home and only a Windows 7 computer stored in the garage. I've done quite well for the last decade and a half without wifi and unless Elon Musk put a Starlink satellite over our house it may be this way for as long as I continue to blog🤣 Come back often as my content changes with corrections and updates almost every single day!