While man-made forces threaten our planet’s survival, a new light is being cast out over the horizon in my life. The separation between knowledge and information grows likes horsetail in my garden. How is it that around me, predictions by indigenous elders are showing up everywhere, seemingly fulfilled in techno color, yet personally my life is finally on track? For me there is some confusion as to whether I keep pedal to the metal helping clients wake up, or if, shovel in hand, I head off to the Gulf of Mexico. My heart is heavy. Front and center is the grave awareness of my role in the hemorrhaging oil spill. This morning I asked the Creator, how could I best be of service? For today, the answer was clear: to pray for forgiveness for my greed and apathy. In addition, my job is to shed light for others so that they too can wake up. From this day forward, I will pray for forgiveness and begin to make daily amends, by walking when I could ride, avoiding solo travel, and taking daily inventory of my lifestyle. It is so easy to point the finger at BP. There is an old saying, whenever I point the arrow out at you, there are three coming back at me.
Over the course of the last year, my work as a healer/teacher has grown its own organic garden. The tomatoes, now ripe, set a soft stage for other ingredients in my salad. The only effort on my part was to tend to the task of pulling the nut grass, and to nourish the soil with my loving hands and water. Some plants flourished and others quite naturally disappeared from my tiny plot in the yard. So it was with the relationships in my life. No matter how much I fertilized and tended them, 2010 has been a year of weeding and transplanting my community. All around me, my friends are dispersing, some have moved and some are just falling to the ground like overripe fruit from the neighbor’s tree. It is my nature to try to corral the lemons into a sweet tart, so that I can enjoy the sweet flavors until there are only crumbs left in the pan. However, I am pulled from the yard, as the timer on the stove wails, and it is only as I accept change that I can silence the alarm. The last four years I have been building community. As I pull the finished casserole from the oven, it is clear that all the ingredients combined made a different entree than my original recipe intended. The network was my work of service and it had become my avocation. So now when people do not understand or “get it” it no longer matters. The warm dish on the counter was for my new work. “Catering” had been scratched out on my tattered food-stained business card and substituted with “Healer/Teacher.” Growing in the new garden is food for my soul and my health.
Part of the changing landscape is some travel. Currently I am working in LA on a regular basis, next week I am off to San Francisco to teach, and later in the month NYC. On the horizon is a trip to Peru this fall. The Shaman Chef, My Life and Other Recipes has made it to Round 2 of The Next Top Spiritual Author Competition and I need your help. Win a dinner party for eight. Simply go to the site, check out my book plan, and vote for my book. Upon receiving a confirmation of your vote, there is a link to send an email to enter the contest. Yes, I will come to you.
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