Presence, Plenitude & Prayer

The days leading to the Summer Solstice reveal the plenitude of the natural world.

When I had the studio in Steveston, I created a 21 day morning Intensive - joining together in community to tend the longest days of the year and the growing potency and creativity in nature and in the body.  This year I will be offering a 5 week (4 on the coast) series of classes, which includes a daily practice of awareness and an invitation to a day of retreat in Paradise Found.  See below for details - classes in Steveton and the Sunshine Coast.  Just as the moon has phases leading to and from the full and new moons, so the days leading into the solstice carry a potency we can enter into with awareness and allow to inform our daily living and being. 

As I walked in Mrs. Sakata's garden in Steveston this morning, the plenitude of the natural world already spills out onto the pathways. The diversity of flowers in bloom, blossoms of cherries, green shoots poking their heads through the dark soil and Mrs. Sakata's gloves and wheelborrow full of cuttings reminds me of this woman's incredible dedication to life and beauty and plenitude. She has tended her own backyard - and what I call the  "heart of Steveston" while buildings and people have come and gone over the past 50 plus years.  Last year I noticed that the entire front of the lawn was planted with St. John's Wort, an incredibly healing plant.  When I mentioned it to her, she said "What?, Oh is that what they are???  I just think they are beautiful."  Then with her sweet grin and a shrug, she continued "I don't really know many of the names of the plants in the garden actually."

For those of you who have not experienced the blessing of Mrs. Sakata's garden - it is filled with heritage trees, and bursts with flowers from spring till fall in every color, shape and texture imaginable.  Every day is like fireworks as color springs forth from behind and under what has just died down.  Plenitude.  I love that she doesn't know their names.  Every day she walks with her wheelbarrow and small hand tools, trimming and fussing about the little ones.  Her pleasure is palpable and her agility and strength defy her eighty plus years.  Presence and prayer are what I feel as I watch her move silently among the green ones. It seems the garden in turn has tended Mrs. Sakata's body and being.

Our bodies carry this plenitude.  In our desire to meet the cultures agreement around beauty, fitness, and even what constitutes health, the body becomes an object to be "exercised" and one more thing on "the list" of things to "take care of." We learn all the names of bones and muscle, organs and systems. Pleasure and presence can be lost in the will to  "get it done", meet some desired goal, or 'fix" something.  I can't help but feel the body's insult in being measured, weighed and compare. Body as object is not body as living unfolding plenitude of possibility.

The body is always present and available to the plenitude life offers up.  When we begin to slow down and enter  the 72 trillion cells, we tap into the place of plenty. The fertile ground of the body is the land of "milk and honey" humans have spent eons in search of.  Perhaps the "slow down in the economy" will support us to slow down and meet the bounty here in our own backyards.

"And I said to myself:

"What have you done with the garden entrusted to you?"  Antonio Muchado

In my experience, as I have come to land in this garden I have been entrusted with, I discover a portal to the plenitude of life and all of its potential. The body carries billions of years of experience in adapting to changing life on the planet. Embodied presence - showing up one cell at a time and exploring movement and strength in the spirit of inquiry has allowed me to unplug from mechanical movement, body as object and something that needs perfecting, sculpting and fixing.

Pleasure as a regenerative, renewing force is our birthrite. The living body of the Earth is our body. Our objectification and mechanization of what we call Earth and Body has caused us great loss in the enchantment of being alive as human beings on this incredible planet of plenitude.  To "Re-enchant" is to re-story, re-spell re-tell and restore meaning to being human. I invite you to join me in moving prayer in presence and plenitude.

"What have you done with the garden entrusted to you?"  Antonio Muchado

Blessings of the onset of Summer, singing birds, blossoming trees, sprouting garlic, dancing ravens, swelling creeks and plump dew drops glistening in the inner garden.

In appreciation for the journey,

Penny