Light, Love, and Healing for Our World

The writer and activist Joanna Macy says: "Work with your passion. Work with your pain. Work with what is at hand." And to that, my own heart responds.

For now, more than ever, spiritual warriors are needed to feel the light and love within them and radiate that love to the darkest corners of hearts and souls everywhere.

There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.

Lao-Tse
Chinese philosopher
6th century bce



Still your hearts from anger, fear, or hatred. Fill them up with love and peace. Our spirits know who we are, why we chose to be here during these incredibly challenging times.

With life's many challenges ever increasing, how do we find peace in this horribly troubled world, this universal psyche that chooses the negative over the positive, the masculine over the feminine, the warring over the peace making and bridge building? 

It must be personal as well as national, universal as well as international. We must care, and care deeply about one another in any and all life forms and we must use our hearts, our energies, and our time to do good, say good, and be good to the best of each moment's ability.



"There are those who give little of the much which they have and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

~On Giving by Kahlil Gibran from The Prophet~



The fires, the floods, the earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, and tornadoes are not only the change and transition that Mother Earth, herself is expressing--as hard for us as it might be to understand.

They can be seen as our planet's release buttons for survival. If there is too much pressure within the Earth, it erupts in volcanoes or crack opens in earthquakes.



If there is too much pressure within us, we may erupt as well. And the damage we may do to others may be just as great emotionally as volcanoes and earthquakes are physically.



If we see Mother Earth as Gaia--a living breathing entity with her trees and plants as her lungs, her incredible beauty as her heart--then Gaia is losing her breath, her natural sustainable growth and energetic flow from decay just as so many of us are losing ours.



Natural connections of mind, body, and spirit through the destructive energies of anxiety, fear, anger, hatred and dis-ease have caused cracks and many of us are stuck in the unhealthy patterns of those cracks. Everything makes us fearful or angry or hating the other.

We are all connected and when we hate the other we increase our own weaknesses of self judgment, low self esteem or low energies of illness, pain, or depression.



But in this process of death and destruction there is still an opening up in our world and our world view. The chance to learn and grow and to transition our world and our hearts and spirits into unity once again.



We are all connected. We are all part of one another. My microscopic atoms are merged with yours like stars in the cosmos. The pain that i feel is my pain, your pain, all pain. The fouled air that I am breathing will become the fouled air and the foul breathing of yours.



When we set off a bomb in one country, its repercussions and loss of awareness and love are felt by all of ours. We are perpetrators and we are victims. The winds of time and change merge into
one and so do we.



There is a purpose onto heaven for all of this. It doesn't have to be ours to understand but there it is. And part of that is the destruction of the old to make space for the new. As challenging and as awful even unbelievable as this may seem.



As someone who is old, this gives me pause. But, I am more than willing to go through whatever I have to in hopes that someday, a heaven on earth can become possible and a newer kinder, more caring and loving world might exist.





"Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. 

Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. 

The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”

L. R. Knost

To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it,a little more poetry to it,a little more dance to it.

~Osho

How do we choose to feel peace, make peace, be peace in our own hearts? It starts with each of us as individuals, each moment of every single day.





Life is truly challenging for many, many people in this world now.
My own beloved oldest daughter was diagnosed with an already advanced, very aggressive, and unusually challenging form of cancer.



She is a remarkable and fierce spiritual warrior and she has withstood non-stop treatments without respite for a year and a half since diagnosis. She fills up my heart with her steadfast determination and fortitude amidst unbelievably challenging conditions.





I hold her always in my highest heart and spirit and I pray for deep inner and outer healing and strength, with all the love and light and healing powers of all of the highest angels of the most divine powers of God by any holy name.

"Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
the blueprint of your life would begin to glow on earth,
illuminating all the faces and voices
that would arrive to invite your soul to growth.

Praised be your father and mother,who loved you before you were,
and trusted to call you here with no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you into becoming who you were meant to be,
blessed be those who have crossed your life
with dark gifts of hurt and loss that have helped to school your mind in the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you,
blessed be those who looked for you
and found you, their kind hands urgent to open a blue window
in the gray wall formed around you.

Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
your health, eyes to behold the world,
thoughts to counte-nance the unknown,
memory to harvest vanished days, your heart to feel the world’s waves,your breath to breathe the nourishment of distance made intimate by earth.

On this echoing-day of your birth,
may you open the gift of solitude in order to receive your soul;
enter the generosity of silence to hear your hidden heart; know the serenity of  still-ness to be enfolded anew by the miracle of your being.'

John O'Donohue,

To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings



I am active in my own unique ways of trying to work with this incredibly challenging time in our lives, our changing country, nation, and world.

I focus on doing all I can to make it through them with spiritual thoughts, prayers, and deeds to create a place where we can not only survive turbulent times but prepare ourselves for the many challenging days and years ahead.

I focus on staying centered, filling my heart with gratitude for the gift of every day with my family--my three children, their partners, and my five beloved grandchildren.





I know in my heart of hearts that I have been waiting for this time to come.



We Were Made For These Times

By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"Refuse to fall down.
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.

If you cannot refuse to stay down
lift your heart toward heaven
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled,
and it will be filled.

You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you
from lifting your heart
toward heaven —
only you.

It is in the midst of misery
that so much becomes clear.

 
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.
refuse to fall down"

~Clarissa Pinkola Estés~
Excerpted from The Faithful Gardener: A
Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die















Peace in our hearts creates peace in our world. And that is our soul's purpose..to create this peace by doing and being what we are called to do, and to be.





"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about."

Rumi

 

Prayers for Freedom

"We Shall Be Known"

'It is time now, and what a time to be alive, in this great turning we shall learn to lead in love'.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6NbvYXImLXPgacMZ9ffizn?si=x4d-HYpxSdqohiz4C6amNQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A2SvD3wk04cEDMGJLujCWAR

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

Prayers, and Prayer and Peace Flags Still Flying High

During times of intense national, global, or personal challenges, where I have often asked for shared prayers, and well wishes for even members of my immediate family, the designing of prayer flags has always been a natural progression of my fiber art.







When I learned during the prayers flags from the many world religion books I was fascinated the amazing discovery of just how much seemingly disparate religions share in beliefs, stories and symbols, I realized that my need to be and to do continuing good in my world stemmed from innate beliefs and energies archetypically handed down by the many generations of my ancestral lineage.



All of my many interests and passion, my cultural and spiritually combined belief system and the deep inner knowing of who I truly was in my innermost being had led me to all of the places and all of the people who would come into my always interesting but still basically home centered life.



Creating peace and prayer flags from the simplest of fabric strips that I hang from trees or my prayer arch arbor outside and the prayer flag garland I created from vintage fabrics or Crocheted pieces I inherited as well as my inkjet printed words and quotes added such heartfelt love and joy in their use!



Then there is my Buddhist prayer flags specially delivered via two Quilting friends. Starting from an Oregon Quilter who moved to the city of Mungpoo in the Dar-jeeling District of the Himalayan mountains as she fulfilled her wish to truly study Buddhism in a Buddhist abbey with monks who sent me an authentic prayerful flag garland, which is always above my sewing projects on my little loft sewing table. We didn't manage to meet up at the Sister's Quikt Show as we'd hoped but left them with another quilt collector and his promise to mail them to me after their mutual visit in Oregon.

They were a true delight to receive. Even is she teased me by asking me to forgive their musty smell as it was the wet and often humid monsoon season in Mingpoo. She also added that they were carried down the mountain on the back of a yak." Not sure about that but it made me laugh!



Rainbows are such a beautiful symbol of miracles and of hope as they always follow the rain. The rainbow and the dove are both biblical and ancient symbols of hope and peace as things we always, always need.



So today, I salute and pray for Ukraine and Ukrainian peoples everywhere. Bless you all and may God/ the Highest Powers of All and all that is Divine hold and strengthen and protect you with a multitude of Angelic High!















Praying for peace now as spiritual warriors is what all of us can join in and continously do. Be peace, live peace, send peace from and in your deepest being.

These original style prayers above (on one of my many surfaces displaying my special gifts or found objects) used to be free gifts mailed to those of us in the 1980s for encouraging further donations to "Free Tibet" groups in India comprises of displaces monks driven out by communist China long ago. Sadly I have not received additional ones in a decade or two but gladly with prayer I hung or used as gifts to others .

But I love my lone surviving packet and these cloth ones above my hand-me-down 1940 or 1950s little folding table that once was our only dining table and now is my rotary cutting table for fabric for sewing, quilting or crafts.








From the Himalayas to these special art flags that I created for Oceanside Museum of Art a number of years ago for a special gallery exhibition. Oh the joy of knowing my three prayer flags were flying high and being looked at by everyone from art lovers to gallery members to those with open and loving hearts spreading this simple but deeply meaningful art form.

I had followed the Prayer Flag Project blog for a very long time, and have loved all of the beautiful flags that everyone had created and shared their and shared many of my own there as well. The site is still there but no longer moderated or added to.

However, I kept my own bigger site going with its Prayer Flag Page as it has aways had the first and biggest compilation of the history of Prayers flags that someone used to rewrite even the Wikipedia entry. I can only hope my very ancient library angels and their books predating the internet are smiling!

It was a a delight to extend my thoughts, my prayers, and the making of my own flags to a greater, and deeper meaning as I created my prayer flags for submission to the Oceanside Museum of Arts Prayer Flag Project and their project submission, eventually to be included as part of this group! It is so incredibly sad that the group slowly dwindled down through the years where artists were giving up blogging and out of need focusing on their own time for making their own art. For me these flags are still being made and given as gifts to others during hard times.



My Oceanside Art Musrum flags were made on my own painted fabric with raw edge applique, beads and inkjet printing. They include quotations from well known sources on their fronts, and my own prayer flag blessings (in poetic form) on each of the backs of the flags to tie them into my themes.

Knowing that my three prayer flags were flying high with so many beautiful creations,in California, I know that so much goodness and intent is being manifested during all of our personally challenging times and the challenges of Hurricanes and Super Storms on the East Coast. As we have since learned our weather pattern and the number of super freezes, storms, hurricanes and tornadoes have increased year by year.



We are all combining our energies of manifestation, and healing from East to West, and West to East and the thoughts and prayers of so many only intensify with the height, the depth, and the breadth that all of these external energies of rain, wind, and storm!



And throughout these heartbreaking times with the Covid-19 virus in its many mutations, prayers have only increased in need and sharing.







Blessings to all of you during our ever continuing times! And many happy blessings for a celebration of Easter Sunday, Passover, or even the original Oestre that those with Druidic, Shamanic or the original pagan practices of ancient peoples still practice following their own beliefs, spiritual practices and innate roots to re-ligion which originally meant "to link back"!

However you celebrate this time of rebirth and renewal as Winter transforms into Spring-- celebrate with family, friends or loved ones and enjoy the beauty and sense of peace we all carry within. We will be with our family of 12 including our four beloved grandchildren and 4 dogs. The cats stay home as do the chickens!



https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2022/03/for-courage.html



https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2022/02/go-to-limits-of-your-longing-and-pray.html




https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2022/03/the-clearing.html?m=1




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."