Summoning Angels

Summoning the Birthday Angels

This year because it is 2020 we all have a unique opportunity for vision and hindsight simultaneously:  20/20 vision and 20/20 hindsight; with it, perhaps a little insight also.

It comes at a time in our lives and in the life of the planet where we can look forwards and backwards concurrently—see our wisdoms that we can embrace or let go, and find new ways in service to the future and upcoming generations. A unique point of view indeed! And the choice is in our hands.

My eight year old granddaughter made me a card for my recent birthday. When I asked her about her picture she said “you are summoning the birthday angels.” I was moved at both the images and her use of the word—summoning.

Contemplating her choice of words I see we can all summon those angels whether it is for birthdays, gatherings, meetings, celebrations or hard-hitting topics like global warming, health and wellness, or crisis that touch us all deeply in one way or another.

We are not alone in our singular or collective struggles. We have the capacity to reach-out to one another in our families, community, or greater circles of influence. Sometimes alone, we feel isolated yet in the act of reaching, we find connection and an opportunity to communicate at a deeper level.

lt is a choice we make on all these occasions. A choice to listen and to know also it is irrelevant if my opinions are shared or contradictory.  It is in this one act of awareness I can move through 2020. In doing so, I am able to embrace my future rather than constrict both my present and future.

It is in the reaching out, listening, and deep connection where change and acceptance occurs; knowing my interconnections are what being human is all about without judgement. Judgement separates me rather than unites me with others. Acceptance unifies and allows me to recognize my humanity.

So, I for one will summon the angels for birthdays, gatherings, meetings, celebrations, and for hard-hitting topics like global warming, health and wellness, or crisis that touch us all deeply, speak my truth in a kind and respectful way, and listen above all else to those that do, and do not share my perspectives. It is a choice I can make, and an act I can take.

Writing Practice: Write, journal, or create a poem on how you will summon the angels in 2020. Cut, rip out words, phrases, or pictures from magazines or newspapers—go to the recycling centre for these or use your stash—now create a collage that represents your summoning in either your journal or elsewhere. Post your creation visibly as a reminder.  I have my granddaughter’s picture on the fridge!   

Connect, Reconnect & Interconnect— the choice is ours…

It’s been raining now for five days steady- not continuously, gradually, and in the past night and day perpetually. It is coming up to the anniversary of the big flood of 2013 in Southern Alberta and while last year knocked out bridges, water supplies and people’s houses in a flash flood as mountain snow gushed down mountainsides, this year – after the big re-build and reconstruction— it is quite different.

The steady rain is much what I imagine Noah’s flood to have been. Not biblical in stature, simply on-going. Water barrels are overflowing, and the ground is saturated having soaked up gallons- okay litres of water.
In contemplation of the cycles of life, I am in awe of its complexity, simplicity and its intricate interconnection, and how as humans, we have no control. We “kid” ourselves that we gain it, have it, and know how to handle it-—but guess what—it’s purely illusionary.

I am reminded of a poem written at nine that has this refrain “…and I thought in my mind of the cruelty of man, that one day nature would repay.” And as odd as it may seem, now fifty plus years later, I sense that same sentiment.

In our eagerness to control and exploit our environment to a lesser or greater degree to feed the industrial complex and our consumerism, we have trodden violently on this land. I can’t help myself from seeing that with global warming, ocean toxicity, deforestation, loss of habitat, and agricultural monocultures that we are eating-up Gaia’s abundance and generosity at a ferocious rate; hardly sustainable, untenable at best.

This is not new. Many of us feel it, sense it and wonder how to change it- and many of us do it in baby steps.
Today, I have just celebrated a friend’s birthday with a potluck lunch. As always at these gatherings there is great food, conversation and opportunities to connect and reconnect.

Personally I am delighted to be part of such a rich community and friendship—whether talk is about the town’s decision to allow a chicken pilot project within town limits, local bee hive keepers excitement about bee behaviour and worker bees feeding their queen, gardens growing with the moisture or grass fed animals and happy chickens being raised and farmed locally—conversations centre on connections, reconnections, and the interconnection of all things.
The thing is—it’s about taking baby steps, building community one step at a time without the mindset that more is better. It really isn’t- and most of us know it, and don’t know how to change. There lies the crux and choice. The choices we make today are reflected in our tomorrows. How we make those baby steps is created by the choices we make each and every day, and through an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things.

fools day

look to this day, it’s shroud of fog

blocks the light. trees heavy with snow

fallen, light as prairie dust-

 

icicles cling to the roof where snow-melt

springs momentarily; transforms, runs free

down roofs; caught mid-stream.

 

and told to stay as temperature halts

escape back to earth’s crust-

 

now the light is dimmed

by unspoken rays trapped behind

cloud cover.

 

a silence dangles in density, unheard

by passing trucks. their roar unmuffled

 

by stillness, or hushed in unspoken

glamour, held in peace

brought by low-hanging haze

 

it will come, speaks the calm

to all that listen beyond proximity

 

it will dance with the light

of transition, no matter the instant

of transformation—

 

it will move in fluidity,

once more, with patience

 

at its core. from that centre

it will emerge freed

by sun’s rays and gleam.

 

©Angela Simmons 2014

 

Fifty years from NOW…

Fifty years from now I’ll be dust; blowing in the wind. What wind is the question, nuclear wind, prairie breeze, a soul’s waft into ether returned to the dust of the universe, back to the stars—heading into another journey, galaxy, destination unknown, and what will be left behind?

Will only some animals remain, amoebas crawling out of the swamps into being? What animals, what humans—or will we become like so many species now, extinct because of actions taken today?

Fifty years from now, maybe only the Bitumen Children will survive—those children born into the Alberta Tar Sands, the moonscape of the north who have adapted and hold immunity to toxicity through their survival of environmental catastrophes.  Now, they live in underground tunnels of collapsed rig structures, the only place safe from the air.  In the underground collapsed constructions sunk into the earth covered by tidal waves of weather patterns gone on walk-about they survive. Fifty years from now, ‘aint that pretty if we consume at the same rate and ignore indicators.

Fifty years from now…I’d like to imagine harmonious co-existence; acceptance, respect for a wholistic interdependence of all sentient beings- however, I’m not a science-fiction writer. An optimist yes, a believer in miracles, yes however, you just gotta see ‘em every day in the small things, and trust that building a resonance of change, will tip the scales into the survival of the planet, yes, and our species.

Spider Moon

I’d like the Bitumen Children to stay as science fiction, rather than an outcome of climate change and human acquisition. I’d like my grandchildren, their children and their children’s children, down the genetic line of humanity to witness the wonder of a full moon filling the horizon with light during its rising, drink the waters of the aquifer, feel the warmth of sun through a renewed ozone by awareness and revision today, eat grass fed meats, organic produce as a norm, and see the value of the power of one, to make a difference through actions taken one day at a time, by the choices made today, now, this instant by us and the generations to come.

Fifty years from now, I’ll be dust- and I’d like to make a difference today, because, it is all I have…

Photograph: Spider Moon– first published in a collection of poems- The Moon That Follows You Home (2009) ©Angela Simmons

Writing Prompt: Fifty years from now… email your comments (and/or post) writingmybrain@gmail.com with Fifty years from now… in the subject line.