The Firebird, created by Nikolay Polissky

THE ULTIMATE PYROKINETIC SCULPTURE!

Just watch the video! Mind blowing! Astonishing colors...all set to the music of the classical Russians (with  some Wagner thrown in...)

Occasionally, we encounter a work of art that utterly exemplifies the "omigod, this is what I would have created, if I could"...being a worker with all things fiery; this piece is THE seminal expression of the  transmutative drama of FIRE.  

Watch it and be INSPIRED..that is to say, take in the aesthetic power of the spirit. Just think how we could invite this Russian artist to come here and build something like this....and get our whole Hudson Valley region to participate and witness.

a link to his website with more stunning site specific sculpture installation/events:
http://www.polissky.ru/en/

FED scam covered on MSNBC

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I continue to be "awakened" to a deeper understanding of the way in which our economy works...or doesn't...and like most "sleepers" when we have that moment where the "scales fall from our eyes"; I can feel alternately overwhelmed or empowered.

As both the news commentator, Dylan Ratigan for MSNBC and Congressman Alan Grayson (D) Florida and member of the House's Financial Services Com't assert in this news broadcast video, most of us and yes, even many congresspeople are not really educated in the ways in which money is created and regulated, IE controlled in this country.  This is not an accident!

Start your own research...Abraham Lincoln re-instituted fiat currency...ie real money issued by the government during the Civil War...and took on the banking cartels. He was assassinated.

Newspaper Article in Millbrook Independent about This Year's Easter Service

Easter Dawn in Tivoli

by the Easter Bunny, a.k.a Devin Kyle

Making my usual rounds, quite busy distributing candy and rainbow colored eggs at this special time of year, I happened across a very interesting ritual celebration happening on the banks of the Hudson River this Easter Sunday.

A group of nearly two dozen men and women, clearly children at hearts, were gathered around a fire in the early hours at the waterfront in Tivoli, NY.  They sang hymns and listened to a sermon, they broke bread and shared wine and their bright spirits were like a beacon to this tired sojourner, after a long night hiding eggs and sweets.  I was traveling by canoe with my seasonal cohort and dear friend, the Goddess Eostre, so we decided to pull up, landed the canoe and joined the congregation.

"We must break the bread in order to share it," the Reverend Kathleen C. Mandeville, M. Div. who was leading the ceremony told us.  Former rector of St. Clement's Episocopal Church in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan has held this site-specific Easter Eucharist for 15 years running, prior to living in Dutchess County. "I also do a winter solstice in the same locale," she said.  "Easter came early this year and it was downright balmy. We've had other years where it was spitting rain and in the 30s, with ice still on the river.  I always hold the service regardless of the weather— ceremony is not always convenient."

The persevering attendees were there at 7:30 AM start time. There is a core group who have come year after year, which has included Bard students and residents from as far as Woodstock and Great Barrington have also attended. Although unorthodox, the participants are treated to an in-depth examination and exploration of the multiple meanings and histories of this holiday.

"Easter is about coming to terms with death as a portal of love," said the Rev. Mandeville pointing out that the word "Eucharist" εὐχαριστία (transliterated, "Eucharistia"), means thanksgiving. For us, it is about seeing how, in our moments of profound loss, when we are down to the bone, it is there in whatever empty tomb we are confronting, it is there in that moment that we have the opportunity to connect to Source and discover abundance."

The Tivoli site has an open view of the Catskills and yet is afforded a semblance of privacy. She chose the venue precisely because of its elemental and natural setting.

"It connects us to the river," Mandeville explained.  "Almost every year a kind of magical appearance occurs. One year a river otter swam right close to the shore, another year a fisherman cast his nets nearby, another two bald eagles flew over so this year we decided to theatricalize that spontaneous appearance by inaugurating the arrival of the Goddess Eostre and the Easter Hare, in full costume, paddling up the river to join our gathering."

Amii Legendre, a talented dancer, choreographer and performer, and member of The Upriver/ Downtown Dance Company, portrayed the lively Goddess Oestre, from which we get the word Easter.

""My good Jewish friend kept talking about Jesus' 'resuscitation', not remembering that it was actually a resurrection. I found her malapropism both funny and apt, since I myself felt truly 'resuscitated' after portraying the Oestre all morning," Legendre shared.  "I was in a canoe on the glassy Hudson, rowing with the Easter Bunny, singing a small waltzy ode to fertility. It was an honor to be invited into a Christian service with some pagan good tidings, truly resuscitating for my spirit.""

The Rev. Mandeville is also proprietor of KathleensBarn.com, a vacation rental, guest house, performance venue located just outside the entrance to Tivoli.  Find out more about her ritual production events at SacredFireCeremonies.com. She also writes a blog,  TrueCommerce.org, which includes video from the 2008 Easter Service.

"Three years ago my sermon was about coming to terms with the facts of Christ's bodily resurrection, and reflecting on that theological understanding of coming back to life from the perspective of the new evolving spiritual paradigm.  Understanding energy and vibration as the basis of reality.  Every year when I do this service, it's an opportunity to reflect on my own evolving spiritual awareness with this gathered assembly.   Jesus' life and work was about changing the dominant hierarchy of his time.  Christ was a spiritual revolutionary, he was actually living it."


--

"Money As Debt"...a Blow My Mind Video

Periodically, something comes our way, that just blows all our pet "ways of understanding reality", those indelibly fixed precepts...OUT O' the F-ing water... AND WE WANT EVERYONE TO WATCH IT!!!

The above video, "Money as Debt," penetrated my usual "inbox"resistance of: oh dear, another probably important and curious thing  this friend or that intimate has sent me..which would probably useful and inspiring to watch...but really I can't take the time or gee whiz, better not get distracted.

This one I went for...and even tho it was a forty-seven minute ride, I was alternately riveted, slightly terrified and felt like someone had finally kicked me awake.

"Money as Debt" charts the modern history of money, and how we have become a global economy based on a system driven by debt. The video presents  complicated ideas with accessibly simple  graphics. I am still digesting it all...watch it, you will have your own experience...

The Screen Phenomenon

So I am in a Dune Shack in the Province Lands here at the End of the Cape. And I am having a bit of battle, no that's too strong a word..push me/pull you...no electricity, yup, that's what we came for....yet the writing current has caught me and after months of fishing for the myriad trains of thought, I am finally pulling up fish after fish of image, word, whole paragraphs appearing before me. And urgent creature I am, I fear MY COMPUTER BATTERY will run out..which it will actually. So I am being parsimonious with how long the screen, that magic immediacy of now you think the word..aha here it is (which my creative mind now is entrained to desire)...is on.

Because I am relative, having earned it rightfully so by age, latecomer to the digital realm, I still remember the "screenless" life. TV did not come into my house until I was eleven; it had barely been invented. My parents, being wise in this at least, put limits on it; even so, I found its mythic flickering of story more safe than my family's drama. But I was also a child of nature; in this, I received that gift coming in.

So i grew up, lying on my back in the summer fields of the mid west, watching the slow, steady move of clouds. When it was all too much and it was for me much of the time, I had the great screen of the sky. Very stilling, very patient this sky screen and it was always there. That constancy was part of its healing counterpoint to never-knowing-what-I-would-get-when-I-walked-thru-the-door energy of my earlist life.

Then there was the ocean...another screen of shifting light, shadow, tide, contour, wave, froth, plume and crest. Oh how I delighted in that, never tiring to be near it, in it, playing by it. I made my mother's mornings miserable in the summer when we went, as we always did, to Rhode Island, cajoling and badgering her with desparate insistence to "get to the beach". But being an adult, getting out the house presented her with conflict...a phenomeon I now understand, being her daughter after all.

Now sitting in this little shack which is buffeted about with the sound screen of the wind as the dusk is settling into its night's nest, I am so happy for the sky and the ocean and oh by the way, did i mention, the constant dance of flame in the wood stove, another entrancing "screen". Yet as dark as it is becoming, I am frantically in front of my computer screen attempting to get this all down!

The Economy of Fire

Gaze into the fire. Observe the tongues of flame as they do their kinetic dance, moving according to some pattern of transmutation. It is natural what they do; the fire just moves and its energy is graceful, engaging...it calls us into its presence. We become quiet, that is to say, our mind quiets..our bodies, often around a fire, might just as naturally seek to move, inspired by the fire's movement.

This play of both movement and stillness is what we love about fire, why we generally just feel good in its presence...what is sometimes called " the wilderness TV" effect...the fire's rhythm and movement enables us to relax...as "something else" holds the mind's ceaseless talk, focuses it on this natural "screen".

Have you observed this experience when people are around fire together? No one feels the pressure to speak, motivated by the unconscious need to fill the social space, make small talk, as we say. If someone is quiet, we can see her across the fire and know they are with themselves and that's fine. The fire is holding the energy so we are free to engage or not....so too, the interactions between us then are more natural, more present, more honest, more spontaneous.

Consider that for most of human history before our relatively young industrialized paradigm took hold, almost all human activity took place around a fire. It is the first and central locale of culture. It is the hearth, around which the family gathered for cooking, eating; the holy place where all ceremony was enacted; where council was held; the source of light and heat; the sacred and the profane meet in the fire.

Fire is the egoless performer; its allows for freedom of expression without compromise, that is what we seek in all our "performances". Being the both the literal and symbolic source of energy, our exchanges before fire become sacred. Music, food, dance, prayer, play, discernment, all are "down to the bone" before the fire.

Having a group conflict, needing to listen more deeply in a relationship, unsure where to move next in your life, wanting to have a great party, desiring to teach a child an important lesson, don't know what to cook for dinner, wanting to deepen your practice...go to the fire, use its authentic economy of eternal flame.

True Commerce and Gift Economies

"True Commerce," is a phrase I coined which connotes the idea of value accruing via exchange that replenishes rather than depletes the commonwealth. We must conserve and expend, both. Every conversation I have these days is the same. Whether people enter in through the political, the spiritual, the environmental, we all know, some subliminally, others more consciously that it can’t go on like this--finitude of resources coupled with a paucity of integrity.

There are many examples from indigenous society of an alternate commerce. In his book, "The Gift; Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property," Lewis Hyde references the Trobriand Island culture whose primary currency is denoted by shell bracelets. These bracelets are passed from household to household forming a gift economy where status depends on fluency of exchange. The bracelets' value increase in proportion to how often they are given away; the frequency of giving determines net worth.

Not surprisingly, the Internet has spawned the propagation of modern gift economies where, indeed, the "erotic" (as defined by a mediating principle of exchange) life of property becomes available via connection as opposed to commodification. The commons of the commonwealth begin to determine market force, and corporate control must bend or lose; the music industry being a prominent case in point.

Another example stemming from a mythic source: our word "money" comes from the Roman Goddess, Moneta. All coinage was minted in her temple thus making explicit the symbolic denotation of money. The Empire's money literally sprang from her loins, not accidentally as a female deity would best incarnate the feminine principle whereby prosperity is sanctioned through relatedness not accumulation. Hence, money's latent energy is released only when "spent"!

Where Digital Meets the Inidgenous

Indigenous societies hold wisdom borne from a time where the split between body and spirit, nature and culture or any of the many dualities who we moderns hold in the fabric of our psyche. As such, there is a rapidly becoming almost mainstream desire (and with that a “market”) to re-apprehend and integrate these earth-based technologies, ranging from the most primitive to highly esoteric. The Grandmothers’ ways are essential in restoring the sacred balance at this time on the earth.
Yet nostalgia is not an answer. We are in the paradigm shift that is wrought in part by the digital realm. But navigating that realm! How many middle aged women do I know who engage in a time honored exchange; help from young men with setting up their high speed Internet for dinner and some job advice. For many women my age (early fifties) especially those of us who are more intuitive than linear thinkers, the computers’ language, encoding syntax and expansive uncharted architecture can leave one feeling like they have stepped into a parallel universe, foreign exotic, unnerving. I have spent many a moment in front of the computer feeling vaguely caught and seen by cybergod’s blinking screen face, sure it can see my neurotic failures. Hence its power and possibility . But we know the Internet is a whole new arena where commerce and community meet so that, like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the act of engaging its viral capacity changes the essential nature of the market network. Harnessing the Internet’s utility as integral to the planning of a project will generate both its structure and the market co-terminously...

This, too, even for those for whom the Internet has become a necessary tool and resource but less a destination, the technologies meet, the spark of dynamic tension synthesizing science and spirit into “techne”, an applied practice, internally balanced with indigenous tools for accessing and discerning the parallel realms of the spirit while expanding the true commerce vehicle for its manifestation.

A Valentine's Day Poem

"Throw my seashells back into the sea
cool the stings of memory
the past inside me has danced its dance
now is the time for now's romance."
-Dana Schechter

I've gone the distance,
taken a stand where I can
and not just in this instance.

Lost my heart
but gained my soul
having learned that breaking it
is the only way to make it whole.

Children dub me crazy and weird
so at last I know I have achieved
the state of highest queered.

Who am I?

I am the fire of your heart's desire
borne from the wounded deer
who does jump higher.

I am the poultice
whose alchemy does entice
the shadow of "its my and me,"
now seen
and sucked dry
of fear
so we can all just be here...

I am the the void, the gap, the space
where the willing allow
a change
now face to face.

I am a playmate,
the wind who blows early, often and late
who answers anxiety
with an invitation of levity, brevity and fate.

I am the tears we weep
when we must lose what we must lose
to keep what we can keep.

I am the practice morning, noon and night
aligning my whining
upwards on the stake in my spine,
releasing the fight
and just taking my time.

I am the phallus
living in temples and carved of stone
initiating an ancestral maiden's moan.
Modern women and men now choose to wear me
when seeking to unlock their power with
my ancient and essential key.

I am the vulva, the yoni, the pussy,
(we never really know what to call me!)
as entering my recess
you access
the passionate mystery.

I am the screw driver in the purse.
I am the one who needs a nurse.
Who is over sexed and underlaid,
over worked, under paid.

I am one, perhaps two
a dyad, a triad, a trio or trinity
sometimes a quartet, four
but really I am the world at your door,
you very own gate
to infinity and fate.

I am your father's death, your baby's birth.
We swaddle and suck.
We decide not to fuck.
We stand at the grave,
embracing both memories and enemies,
leaving, at last,
not turning back,
Pluto's cave.

I am all of your exs, some of both sexes,
telling the truth when it matters most,
finally enfleshing that childhood ghost
letting go of every last hurt, lost and angry boast.
And now we do sit
ungrief stricken
to simply have some fried chicken.


Today when the moon is in the seventh house
and Jupiter aligns with Mars,
The water bearer fills our cups, right up
and we commit to Love,
now and again and now again,
to steer the stars.


I am just a human woman,
messy and queer,
eccentric and hectic and dear.
Of course I am only talking, balking and stalking
this great "I am" of this thing called love,
that innocent, precious and ephemeral dove,
and hope like a dope
still stuck on luck
we will all expand
and burst
into a new universe.

This is my tale of the pilgrim's passionate way
with all of the intimates I hold in my heart,
having traveled the end back to the start.
Thank you for listening to all of my say as I offer my part
on this Valentine's day.


KCM, Valentine's Day, 2009
with inspiration by and plagiarism of the words of
Dana Schechter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Thich Nant Hahn, May Sarton, Emily Dickinson, & St. Paul.

On not feeding the brain worms

In the bright dark wood of love, we wander, some days clear, on the path; others, scratching our heads or our butts, depending on the amount of "stuff"...you know, all those obstacles, mostly self-created that keep us in the endless round of psychological association either projecting the future or dragging the past. In a twinkling, a blink, in that tweaky specific moment the Buddhists call "the gap," the place between breaths, a dead zone, no man's land, the void where every choice is possible, we have the opportunity to do it differently, change the encrusted architecture of our memory, minds and nature...breathe in innovation; breathe out possibility.

If you are anything like me, I awake every morning with a conscious attempt to recognize the delicious newness of the day..."aha, I say, oh God, I get another chance to try it again." As I pad downstairs, let the dog out, check the bird feeder, put the water on, crack open the computer, I find the sneaky brain worms beginning their practice, too. They are hungry and are checking to see if I will offer them food...they love doubt, fear, anxiety. And if finding an appetizer, they could easily wipe me up into a veritable feast of main courses...panic, anger, hysteria. That's their job, of course, to get me, their nutrition into such a state of paralysis that they don't have to go hunting for other prey, having found a good kill on which to feed.

You may think I am speaking symbolically but this experience, that of allowing our minds' thought patterns with their concurrent emotional content provides literal energy to real entities which "need" us in order to maintain their existence. The Yacqui indians and the Toltecs call them "the parasites"...Echardt Tolle references this as the "pain body."

There is only one antidote for this madness; staying present. And the technologies for staying present abound, naturally, that is to say, there are many, as many ways as we humans have of being human with our unique and troublesome prefrontal neocortexes. I keep bashing my proverbial head against the paradoxical truth that "it's not about trying to figure it out." Rather to become more present, I must become more natural. The divine flow of nature is the source of our vitality..the more present I am, the more exchange I receive...and have to offer.

So what about those pernicious brain worms? They do their job, if we choose to walk a path of awareness, of forcing us to exercise our power of choice. It's always an inside job, I keep finding. Today, I am putting my mind to good to use by writing..that's an appropriate exercise of mental energy...and the worms, they dissappear when I don't let me fool me into identifying with one of myriad, self-deprecating "talking tapes" they spin in my head. Time now to don my winter fur and go out into the bright, white winter day.

Nearing Midnight

And the Posts of Yore have finally been added to a (hopefully more secure) site, so that True Commerce musings may now continue unfettered by opportunistic virus-spreading geeks with nothing better to do...

You Have To Learn To Love What You Don’t Like

(originally posted August 3rd, 2008)

I remember reading an article in The New York Times Magazine several years ago, an interview with the psychoanalyst who was the editor for the new edition of The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud that is being re-issued. I forget his name at the moment; the article had much to say about the re-interpretation of Freud’s work and its relevance but the last line of the article riveted me; “You have to learn to love what you don’t like.” I’ve pondered this quote often and its inherent paradox.

Here’s how I understand the essence of this dictum. In life, the things we don’t like or have resistance to doing are often "places" that need unearthing. Sure some things are just preferences, the apples and oranges question; others are reflective of a darker, (and thus more fertile) opportunity to discover the mastery that comes when we challenge and push through. I call this process, “mining the shadow.”

An example from own life is my relationship with the computer. I’ve had great resistance to entering the digital world which I “covered” for a long time with various judgmental attitudes, feeling perfectly justified and yet knowing in my more honest moments that I was fearful of confronting a way of working and thinking that is inherently difficult for me. Being more a symbolic thinker than linear, I prefer to “intuit” answers. Following a series of linear steps, remembering a sequence based on logic is difficult for me to remember unless I repeat it many times over until my mind becomes “entrained”….even then if time passes and I attempt the application again, my mind draws a blank (and then “the brain worm” of odd panic) sets in, making it even more difficult to retrieve the steps. We all have different facilities, talents and limitations.

What finally motivates us to surmount our resistances? Well, Love finally. In regards to learning computer language, I love the opportunity it provides to create audience, something I am seeking for my own work. But more than just that….in confronting our judgments and working to achieve mastery in a place of resistance, we enlarge our being, becoming receptive, gracious, compassionate.. more able to receive others in their limitations and fears.

It surprises me that in learning to love the language of the computer, I find myself led back to deeper “commerce” with myself and others. I can love the practice of meeting resistance with inquiry and practice, at least on a good day....

I Gotta, I Gotta, I Gotta

(originally posted April 24th, 2008)

I find this litany often in my head..all the tasks, projects, responsibilities, life changes, bad habits to surrender etc. Sometimes it can be useful to rehearse the “to do list” and see how it stretches out to fill in the days, keep the time line moving forward in one’s life as a way staying on track. Recently, I am having a shift where I see how by projecting the sense of obligation and overwhelm that often accompanies this voice, I am really just sending a mixed message of resistance rather than one of clear intent. The push/pull, split between really wanting things to get done and the fear of it all coming to pass. Someone once said something to the effect, ” I have so much to do, I’ll never die.” Procrastination, which is really just a veil of resistance, is a funny thing.

What’s the counterpoint, the antidote, the tool if you will to use in working with resistance? I find, of course, that the first thing is to have awareness, to feel the resistance, observe it when it comes up. Then sometimes, I can play the inner game of tricking it….”ok I don’t have run x number of miles but I will put on running shoes and run as long as I want…” Giving myself permission, interrupting the punitive voice loop.

Then its the release of just tapping into the divine flow….staying present and feeling the edge of what’s wants to happen next without orchestrating and DECIDING it all….I don’t have to over produce it. Yesterday when I was running in Tivoli bays as I sitting on a dock and I reached out my hand into the all this spring popping energy and brought into my mouth, into my body….feeling myself in the pulse of it all…and trusting that I am not separate from but part of it all..that’s it all just right here, the air on my skin, the opening to the unknown, the love of earth, my heart pounding, trusting to ride the warm air thermals into the day.

Entelechy

(originally posted April 16th, 2008)

1603, from Gk. entelekheia, from en- “in” + telei, dat. of telos “perfection” (see tele-) + ekhein “to have.” In Aristotle, “the condition in which a potentiality has become an actuality.”

This is a word that appeared as a new addition to my lexicon recently; I encountered it in Jean Houston’s book, “The Mythic Life.” In nature, we see this phenomenon all around us especially in this season of vernality; the seed building potency through the dark winter, pushing out its vulnerable green fingers, following its organic essence toward light and warmth to fulfill final morphology. As the platitude goes…within the acorn is the dream of the oak tree.

So it is too with us prefrontal neocortex cursed humans….even with the distinct burden of consciousness that enables choice. Entelechy is that quiet voice, the glimmer of our deepest selves speaking to us about our greatness of purpose. At times, the voice seems to speak in code and we have to shut down our programs and refresh in order to hear it. We hear most often “in the gap” that comes when we are “verbing our identity” or to put it another way, when we are present.

Verbing your Identity

(originally posted February 19th, 2008)

Verbing your identity is an expression from my dancer/choreographer friend Amii Legendre who proffered it the other day as we were brainstorming a project..being a person for whom movement is an essential language, this conceptuality would be a natural….and here is a shot that shows all around Good-To-Go-Down-For-Anything friend and dancer Anne Mulvaney doing just that….utterly in her expressive authentic element, performing a to the rescue, impromptu fire dance.

Isn’t it great when we have those moments where we are our being.

New Moon Manifestation

(originally posted April 10th, 2008)

Here are all the women in Grandmother’s Medicine Circles. We are all happy on a barely Spring day.

Record Store in Hudson

(originally posted April 10th, 2008)

While fighting off the beginning’s of a “Where-will-I-go-what-will-I-do” attack, walking down Warren Street in Hudson, I came across a record store with CD covers displayed art gallery style across the wall with a discrete sign in the front window saying this company records about six records a year with artists whose music they love and admire…a tribute (in this moment of music business history) to a small business doing what it loves: locally, aesthetically, uniquely.

Here is an example of a locally produced MP3, recorded right here in my kitchen. It is called, “Maple Honey Jar Band,” and was made spontaneously as Devin started messing around with a half empty mason jar filled with the maple syrup we boiled down recently from great sap water my trees were giving this year. We had Garage Band (mac recording program) open and he started recording the curious sound, (take a listen and tell me what you hear…) emanating from the jar while he “played” it…..meanwhile, my friend Anne and I are on a frustrating search for a cheese grater in my kitchen drawers which comes in as a de-facto rhythm section.

The Happiness That The Hammer Feels

(originally posted April 10th, 2008)

This is a memorable quote from an old friend of my past, Terri Lucas, lighting designer, technical production manager from my congregation of St. Clement’s, a church whose sanctuary doubles as an Off-Broadway Theatre that I had the great honor to be the Rector of. Terri, a strong woman with a fabulous voice has swung many a hammer in her lifetime. She used to pop this line off whenever we were having one of those great moments, which we had often as a community at St. Clement’s, where the collaborative sum of the parts make a beautiful synergistic whole.

The hammer is happy when it connects its purposeful power to the head of the nail and the wood just surrenders….

The music below is a famous song/dance number performed by Donna McKechnie,
"The Music and The Mirror,” from the musical, “Chorus Line,” about a group of struggling dancers auditioning for a director who really puts them through their paces. The whole play is really about coming to terms with our vocations and what is required to live that life.


musicandmirror.mov

The Unexpected Opening of the Heart; an Easter Sermon

(originally posted March 30th, 2008)

THE UNEXPECTED OPENING OF THE HEART

The bread of the heart
is dense, chewy, durable….
survival for our desert wanderings,
good food for the long journey.

And how do the people who live in the desert
bake bread?
on hot stones of course,
baked in the fire of life’s harsh beauty.
Today still modern bedouins
stir a stiff mixture of grain
and precious, oh so precious water
onto hot rocks burning red
with the kind of passion that is borne from
being inflamed, bursting with desire
and yet still holding the center.

Oh this crackling strong desert bread,
rimmed with rock ash,
we will eat it this morning, you and I,
with our beloveds
remembering again
that death is no failure,
only the narrow gate
through which all us weary, lovely wanderers
will pass only to discover it is merely love’s greatest portal.

II

Do you think Jesus was thinking this, just this…
when he held up stone baked bread, adoring it, treating food as God
and seeing with shaman’s eye
his passionate, brutal death.
Already his collaborators of the heart
reflect their longing, knowing what they don’t know.
He has to love them.
And he is breaking their hearts.

So with astonishing personal significance,
he picks up the bread, tenderly “This is my body but it is our hearts, our pain, our love”
then he breaks it,
does he rip it with ferocious intention
like a bandage from a wound,
with angry strength,
I think so, maybe..

or does he do it delicately, slowly separating the two halves
as lovers do with such delicious poignancy after making love,
oh I think so, maybe…

But break it
he does
And he eats, his friends eat.
What they don’t finish is given to the birds.

You can not trap love, neither can you bind it with lack.
TO share bread,
we must break it
And because we are messy humans,
sometimes to open the heart,
it must first be broken.

THe terrible polarity of his cross appears to him
and suffer he will as humans do with
that great pull in the chest,
from which all our greatest choices are wrought,
Oh we flail about,
seeking truth in extremity,
until and at last we hang,
dripping blood and consciousness,
raw and fertile
finally still enough…
the spirits know we are ready
to be an offering.
And so they eat with us.

Until and at last
all is forgiven,
every last molecule of every betrayal, every lie, every monstrous piteous awful thing, every thing done ever in the vast infinite
explodes with quantum shifts.
The great stone guarding the tomb of our hearts
moves, just simply moves.
and all energy releases, just breathes
lets go.

III
Can we who stand here this easter morning
in the thin warming of spring air and light
at the threshold of this river, this season, this life together
can we look around in each others longing faces
and let this love which will find a way
burst, redeeming every last awful thing we have ever said and done to each other,
all of us here in this specific shining moment
and then weep and laugh and love around this fire,
and for once, just this once
and then know that at last
the terrible, necessary stone
has been removed from our pounding, hopeful hearts

then
Let us bake and brake and bake and break
good bread on these stone of hearts
and simply eat it.
Because we are, after all, collaborators
in this great communion
of the heart.

Kathleen C. Mandeville

Easter 2008

Until you decide

(originally posted February 19th, 2008)

UNTIL YOU DECIDE

Until you decide-

the work that
you’re doing is *about* deciding,
and not
about the work that you’re
deciding (whether or not) to
do.

Once
you decide, then you begin the
work that you’ve decided to
do.

Put some tacky in your wacky

(originally posted March 29th, 2008)

Again one of my true commerc-eers, Devin, who has been partially “wintering over” with me so we have had lots of time together staring at computers and conversing about all manner of things across the work table, flung this line at me the other day, “Put some tacky in your wacky!”

Malcolm Galdwell’s book, “The Tipping Point,” which has become a hit standard in the innovative marketing analysis genre, almost to the point of becoming passé, espouses the principle of “stickiness”, that is to say when an idea, product or service succeeds in meeting that elusive yet precise place of catching on…in the marketplace, in solutions to social problems or in the minds of all us as we evolve toward greater consciousness, an epidemic of energy constellates and things take off.

There is tendency, I find, to reduce towards the least common denominator as a principle of accessibility…the more generic something is, the more probable it is that a larger number of people will buy, relate or share. Yes, there are archetypal patterns, a collective substrate that undergirds our humanity so, for instance, a classic movie, such as “Gone With The Wind,” endures because it deals with issues so potently familiar to the human experience: the devastation of war, the pain of triangulation in love, the power of our connection to the earth to redeem us; but it incarnates these themes through the unique personae of eccentric characters.

Evolution tends toward specificity; the more precise we are in our essence, the more we “call” to us the ever more nuanced circumstances which bring us to the next lesson. This truth applies in the realms of commerce as much as in the realms of the psyche. It is exactly our “wackiness” that is our “bestselling” attribute; the more innovative our wackiness, the more opportunity we create to develope that “tacky” market niche.

When in Debt, don’t Doubt, it will be Death

(originally posted February 25th, 2008)

“When in Debt, don’t Doubt, it will be Death,” so says my soul brother David Schechter, a long time traveler along the path of the soul, as we were playing with mining gold from the shit…if nothing else, one can make poetry out of one’s travails. And the message in this alliterative pithy aphorism is simple but not easy…Debt bespeaks lack and yes there are times when we “owe” someone or something, that in itself, is manageable until or unless one feels resistance. fear, shame and inadequacy in meeting the obligation and we vibrate in lack so that the hole becomes deeper. NO way out but through. The task, then, is to do whatever it is to restore our innate natural vitality. Vitality is based on the exchange and movement of energy…..and it through energetic exchange that the currency of our lives consummate.

So my task today is to raise my vitality; out of that practice comes the pollen of beauty from which the sweet balm of honey will attract more of what it is I am creating.


This is David (with pink bag,) taking a picture of our mutual friend George Smith (with river grass) who was playing Neptune in The Planet Sturgeon River of Light, 2006 and Peter Frank, his ex of many years ago triple-Capricorn

amplify through giving

(originally posted February 22nd, 2008)

Having just come out a relationship where I felt drained and had to learn to protect my energy…a useful corrective; I am just beginning to reconnect to my inherent generosity of spirit. The Modern Resourcer (aka Devie Boy) threw this above title phase at me when I was expressing “Oh-I-am-not used-to this” response to the welcome ministrations of a good friend of mine…he says, matter of factly (a matter of factness, I used to feel without having to reach for it), “yeah, living in abundance…amplify through giving”

On Not “Fitting”

(originally posted February 19th, 2008)

Many of my intimates, people I work, play and collaborate with struggle how to generate a sustainable income for themselves in ways that are congruent with their talents and labors. Why is this? It is an axiomatic and acceptable statement, said with a sigh of resignation that “oh well, its difficult to make a living and a difference.” And we all just keep stepping on that truth, often without questioning its basis. There are many answers to this conundrum. Here is one. We are in a paradigm shift about how we understand the nature of reality. That is a long blog for another moment but suffice it to say that the universe is based on vibration as the essential “stuff” of its operation. Indigenous cultures whose older practices and knowledge have been shrouded and are now being unveiled and taught- like an underground spring arising again at this critical time in Earth’s history-knew how to change vibration so as to change form.

This has everything to do with commerce, abundance and exchange….and most (?) of our social conventions regarding wealth, money are based on a debt service ie. scarcity . Gee…alot of us just don’t fit within the current societal structures as we are about working in the new paradigm. This then puts us true commerce workers on notice to challenge the internalized scarcity fears we harbor within…and seek resonance then with trust and faith in The Field of Plenty.

getting paid nothing to do nothing

(originally posted January 31st, 2008)

I was sitting with my friend and computer pedagogue Devin yesterday morning while he was, in his most patient and humorous way, endeavoring to lead me through the tutelage of various “pathways” to more computer conversancy and as I am not really paying him…I turn and say to him, “You’re not really motivated by money are you, Devie boy?” His rejoinder, ” Why when so many other people are doing it?” We laugh since we are both broke. That’s him with the wacky hat on his cell phone, engaging in all his non-money making true commerce activities.

Removing the stone from our hearts

(originally posted January 24th, 2008)

Here is Grandmother 3 Crow inviting us to step through a flaming heart, singing “Weh weh ee cha”, The Lakota Heart Opening chant.

We've just created this Blogger Blog for True Commerce

Ahh, yes, dear Google strikes again and assists True Commerce under the entity "ignivox@gmail.com" to reclaim what had become an "Attack Site"— in other words: Hello and Welcome to "blog.truecommerce.org" formerly located as "truecommerce.org/blog/" which was a Wordpress blog, being used with numerous audio and video links and a variety of interesting "Podcasts" mostly exclusively by Our Very-Tivoli Reverend Kathleen Corbiére Mandeville. Hopefully soon (perhaps each subsequent "Blog Entry" forthwith) you will be able to view what was previously viewed in the former location, there were, I recall, at least a dozen very interesting episodes previously, and now that we are under this safer umbrella for safely storing thoughts without so much risk that our one little public interface window to the world (the "Comments" area...?) will not be abused and we can share the musings on True Commerce and all general spirituality.