Field Notes: An Offering of Hope

Today is my birthday. 

So in the spirit of celebration today, I have a gift I’d like to share with you, something that would make me happy and, in turn, be a gift to me.

I’d like to send you a message of hope — a postcard with a little message of inspiration written just for you. 

I have 100 postcards printed up and ready for some loving words of encouragement to bring you some hope and clarity where you most need it. 

To receive the messages, I’ll sit in meditation and call in Divine support and guidance. Then listen for what most wants shared to come through.

Each message will be unique. But I know they all will be…

Messages of love. Of hope. Of encouragement. Of guidance. Of reminding you how very loved and supported you are. Of how the beautiful flower you are is so very needed in this rich and diverse garden called Life.

I’ll transcribe what I intuitively receive and send it on a lovely postcard featuring one of my flower photos.

Would you like to receive a message?

If it’s a yes for you (and it’s okay if it isn’t), here’s what you need to do:

1. Email your snail mail address to me at shannon{at}shannonjacksonarnold.com. 
2. Put message of hope in the subject line. If you have a particular area or topic you’d like me to focus on for your message, let me know (optional; not required). 

I'll take requests until August 31, 2014 or until all the postcards have been spoken for.

There is no obligation and no purchase necessary to receive a postcard.

This is a gift, given freely through me to you.

I’m committed to do doing 35 postcards a week until I get all the messages mailed. I will send out cards in the order received so expect a response in 1-3 weeks. 

You might be wondering why this is a gift to me.

Because one of the things I’m consciously cultivating in my life is my desire to be writing more. 

I’m making in-roads on this: Learning how to self-generate writing time and devote myself to a daily writing practice. Blogging more. Keeping my journal with me wherever I go. Praying for support and strength around my writing and my writing self.

I'm pleased with my progress, and I want to grow my "writer self" even more this next trip around the sun.

I also know how much support and hope I receive when I tune into these messages for myself (it's part of my regular practice), and I want to share the love.

I can think of no better way to start my 44th year.

Tell me, what message of hope do you have for yourself or for others? What would you write on a postcard?

Field Notes: Lessons from the Hummingbird

One of our regular visitors to our hummingbird feeder.

Hummingbird has been my guide for this year.

Each year during the Holy Nights, I take some quiet time for meditation to receive words and a “helper” for the year — an animal totem, a guiding goddess, a patron saint.

This year, hummingbird appeared.

As an animal totem, they teach about joy, adaptability, stamina, clear boundaries, showing us what’s possible when we open our lives to the love and support of the Divine. They teach how to savor the sweetness of life, how to be light while also being resilient and powerful.

I have long loved hummingbirds. My Grandma Jackson always fed and tended to them, and as a child, I would watch rapt as they came up to her kitchen window to eat.

When we bought our current home two years ago, I put out a hummingbird feeder our first summer here when I spotted one sipping nectar from the tiger lilies in our backyard. Last year, there was one or two more at our feeder. This summer, we seem to have 5 or 6 hummingbirds circling about the feeder at any given time.

I know there is something powerful for hummingbird to teach me. And I have been watching them especially close this summer.

How can it move its wings in a figure-eight pattern 80 times per second? Or fly backwards (as cool of a superpower as any)? Or migrate 500 miles in a day?

I have been noticing how good hummingbirds are about boundaries. They don’t hesitate to fend off another hummingbird from the feeder, darting laser-like with a sharp buzz and a threatening approach that says “Back Off!” They are incredibly clear about what is a "no" for them.

And while they might be the most active of birds, nearly always in motion, when they are at rest they exude a certain potentcy of presence. A kind of serenity that is palpable and far larger than their tiny size would suggest.

Witnessing stillness through my window.

I love to watch how they pause on the wire that holds our feeders. Sitting for a moment, completely still and content, listening with the fullness of their being.

Last week, I was enjoying my morning tea and watching the stream of visitors to the feeder from my hearth room window.

And what came to me was this:

This is the key: To be in motion. And at rest. At the same time.

It seems paradoxical, but I know it isn't.

This is what the spiritual masters of many traditions have long taught. How to be in the world, but not of it. How to even wash dishes with loving mindfulness. How to be here now, fully present to whatever you are doing.

I am continuing to deepen for myself what it means to be serene and have stamina (my words for 2014) at the same time. At first, these words felt like opposites.

But I am begining to see how closely connected these two words are.

Through connecting to the quality of serenity at the center of my being, I can have stamina and tap into new wells of energy and focus. And when I am serene in my exerting, everything flows with less resistance and more ease.

I am so grateful for the wisdom of the hummingbirds. For all they are showing me and teaching me.

Tell me, who or what is teaching you lately? And what are your noticing and learning?

The view of our backyard from my favorite chair. Me, with tea, watching the hummingbirds. Bliss.

Field Notes: Fullness of Returning

David Austen Rose at Hidcote Gardens Shop, Chipping Camden, England, June 15, 2014

It is hard to believe that we have been home a month today from our journey to Paris and England. In some ways, I still don't feel fully returned yet.

The trip —and  all we experienced in those 19 days and in the weeks since returning home — is still working in me and through me. When friends ask me about the trip, I find I can't describe the trip in a concise or coherent manner. 

What I can say was that the trip was wonderful. Full of beauty, dreams realized, rich memories I will savor my whole life, fun family time and delicious food. And the trip was exhausting with full days, the sometimes felt stress of choosing how to best spend our time, and several nights of poor sleep.

The trip stretched my horizons in both amazing and painful ways.

It shone light on some tight places in my heart. Like the parts that don't always feel worthy of receiving so much goodness and love or having my dreams become manifest, the part that holds getting everything right and perfect as the supreme standard, the part that is quick to look to the future or the past, but is uncomfortable with just savoring the present as it is — exactly as it is, even the messy stuff — in this moment.

I learned more deeply what it means when they say, "wherever you go, there you are."

It has been a time where I feel a bit like the David Austen rose pictured above — squeezed full of beauty and squeezed full of the fullness of life. It is wonderfully abundant and sometimes over-crowded and uncomfortable. 

There is part of me that wants to tie a neat bow around all that I experienced in the last seven weeks. To write in a way that puts it all into a polished bit of wisdom and clarity, but I can't. At least, not yet.

The truth for me is that life here has been amazingly good and sometimes hard. I continue to feel the stretch of my own capacities and how life (and I think God, too) is calling me to widen the capacity of my heart — certainly towards others but most especially toward myself. 

So, as best I can, I am (again) taking my cue from the flowers. 

When I do this, I can focus on being with whatever is present and allow what is present to emerge, serene in my nonattachment. I can find the bliss in every step of the messily wonderful journey called my life. (I loved what Elizabeth Gilbert had to say about embracing this messiness on Facebook here.)

When I can be with the all of it — the good, the bad, the sublime, the ugly — I know I am touching into the flower-like nature at the core of our being.

Surrendering to the process. Trusting in the fundamental blooming that is always happening in perfect timing. Reminding myself that this abundance of love and inherent beauty is a birthright, bestowed upon all beings.

I am just getting the glimpse of the richness of this space. The Buddha points to it. So does Rumi:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there. — Rumi

In some ways, the travel and the returning is opening me to see all I am experiencing and perceiving as neither good nor bad. It just is. It is all welcome and part of the process. I am finding the powerful gift in moving beyond labels of judgment to just being present to what is in the moment…and appreciating it exactly as it is.

As I so naturally do with flowers, I am learning to do with myself and each messy moment of this life.

Tell me, how you are flowing with the fullness of your life? How is your blooming going this month?