I spent the past week in upstate New York, at Tapawingo with my mother and Mark (and his little brother) and my beautiful grandmother and a dancing constellation of aunts and uncles and myriad cousins. Lots of mosquitos, too, and a few wild dogs, and countless stories and memories and emotions. This was the land where I drew my first breath.

My mum has a photo on her blog of one evening we spent, after our island picnic, floating candle-studded piece of moss out into the dark lake. There are more photos, too, but they can't quite capture the being there, and this alone makes me feel shy about sharing.

It's nice to be back, though, very, both in Boulder (which feels like home) and to Gaia (which is home in a different and deeper way). When it comes to the latter we're in the process of dreaming up a summer of polishing and revisioning, so as to help improve the navigation and performance of the whole site and to, at the same time, help clarify and support what's emerging here, and it's so beautiful to return to those others I'm so fortunate to be working with.

In that past my question has always been in flux.

It's changed depending on where I was and what I was doing and the shifting space of my insecurities and concerns. And it's generally been characterized by anxiety.

Questions no longer make me anxious. (But this is, perhaps, quite obvious; I get to pose a new one here each morning. My daily question, then, is "What is today's question? What will I ask today?") I love how they open doors, and love how they focus attention, and love how they include wonder. I love their power.

So in the past my guiding questions have changed, all circling anxiously around the usual existential concerns of "why... why... why...?", and it's funny to realize, now, that my deeper question, for some time now, has been steady. What am I called to? I love this question because it requires stillness, and listening, and attention. I love this question because it speaks to possibility. I love this question because it reminds me to be open.

And I wonder what my next guiding question will be.

Oh, there's been so much going on!

Last Tuesday evening, we tested some new waters with Gaia.

I've been pretty vocal (or not quite vocal; what's the written equivalent of that word? Emphatic?) about my adoration and support of Gaia members getting together in person, or to participate in conversations and gatherings together outside the site itself. And we've had site-wide events of a sort, in that we've encouraged members to get together in their own local communities on the same day or week. On the 20th, though, thanks to Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, we had our first live, participatory event for all of Gaia—a TeleGathering on Conscious Relationships.

It was quite something. :)

The call on Tuesday, from my perspective, went wonderfully. I was jittery with anxiety to start (I'd only been on one of those group calls once or twice in the past, and had never dreamed of hosting one!) but this nervousness was overshadowed, fortunately, by my giddy enthusiasm about what this event meant to the community. There's something so, so powerful about sharing any experience with a large group of others, and every time I thought about this with relation to Gaia my heart would beat faster and fill to the brim with such a sense of joy and excitement. When we opened the lines that evening, all I could think about was the hundreds of members from around the world all listening and all paying attention to the same shared call.

Fortunately, though, Gay and Katie are two people with great presence and greater love, and their easy comfort with the topic and the form quickly drew me into the call and conversation.

I won't go into too much detail about the content and all I learned there, just because I'd like my reflections there to be  more a part of the dialog in the related Group. Instead, I'll just say that it was wonderful seeing the questions come in and to dive with them in and out of the seminar.

The only damper on the evening had nothing to do with the Gathering and listeners and topic, and everything to do with the TeleConference service we used: apparently the webcast software couldn't handle the number who joined us, and so while those who came early enough to get on the bridge line, anyone who tried to tune in online was left with a busy tone.

No matter, I told myself. We'll be able to post the recording when we're done.

But even that was not to be. The recording depended on the webcast software, not the phone line, so all the conversation was lost for good.

After a quick bit of thinking, Gay and Katie and I just decided to restage the call the following day; we didn't want anyone to miss the seminar and fortunately had all the questions saved. I'll confess that despite being a little disheartened by having lost the first recording, part of me was a bit relieved, as I knew a little more about "how" to host a call such as this, and another part of me was excited about the opportunity to spend another hour in such a rich learning situation.

Fortunately the second version went beautifully. :) Practice makes, if not perfect, at least for smoother practices in the future. And while listening to myself still makes my ears burn red, I'm sure I'll used to the sound of my voice soon.

In any case, do go have a peep at the related Group! The recording is posted over there and there's already some rich conversations that's starting to flow.

The kind that has room for both of us.

Everything. :)

My favorite story about 'yes' comes from, of all people, John Lennon.

He met his second wife,Yoko Ono, at the debut exhibit of Ceiling Painting at the Indica Gallery in London.

It was an interactive piece; visitors were invited to climb a white ladder up to the ceiling of the gallery, and then use a magnifying glass to look read a small inscription painted on white canvas. Lennon described what it was like to clamber awkwardly to the top of the ladder, pick up the magnifying class, and peer upwards at one tiny word:


I love that message. And it's funny... I wrote last week that the world was saying, I love you, but I'm beginning to think that's not quite it. The world, to me, is saying yes. And I want to say yes right back.

It's the first of the month, and I remembered this morning (at about 3 am; don't ask) to whisper 'rabbit rabbit' as a gentle spell to bless the month, and me. That childhood ritual feels even more appropriate for May--this month of fertility and spring.

It's funny, becuase I was thinking about rabbits, or one rabbit in particular, just yesterday. Most people are familiar with white rabbits and rabbit holes, and I can't help but feel that Gaia is full of those who've followed the former down the latter. (Why else would you end up in this community, if not for a gleeful curiosity about the possibilities that might lie just beyond everyday reality, or the potentials latent in playing lightly with one's beliefs?)

The rabbit I've taken to following, though, isn't white.

One of the things I've been working hard at is making sure I'm speaking from my heart. It's so dearly important to me, in the world of relationships and family and work, and in this culture of confusion and surface and distraction, that I grant others the respect of connecting from my authentic self, no matter how scary it might be or how vulnerable I might feel. And so at night, sometimes (beneath the rabbit in the moon), and in the evenings, when I have time to sit a little and think, I come up again the koan-like question about who or what that authentic self is.

I want to be real, I thought last night. I want to remember, always, to be real. But how? And what does that mean?

And I remembered another rabbit. I remembered the velveteen version of that old childhood story. Remember this?

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

Oh. Of course.

Goodness. It's been ages.

I always feel so self-conscious updating here after a long period of silence; I feel oddly obliged to provide an excuse or overview of what I've been doing since the 11th (from a beautiful Earth Day weekend—from which I'm still quite sunburnt—to a visit from my mama and little brother to all manner of planning and dreaming for a series of Gaia-related events this spring and summer). Instead, though, I'm just going to carry on as though I've been writing regularly. After all, I haven't exactly gone anywhere. :)


I spent most Wednesday afternoon on the phone with Gay Hendricks. I don't recall if I've mentioned his name before; I met him when our whole Zaadz crew came out to Boulder for the first time last Fall. What an amazing human being. (I'll confess I get little awed sometimes by the people connected to this space; the mere fact that we're getting to host Peter Russell at a Gaia event in Boulder this summer is enough to make me wonder what sort of saint I was in my former life to deserve such a blessing, and even then neither Gay or Peter hold a candle to the sheer wonder of the hundreds upon hundreds of others I meet here, in this space. I mean, I had dinner the other night with Dawn and her son at Sunflower. I met Brian through these pages. It's funny to discover family in people with no actual blood connection.)

But I digress.

We talked for a long time about Gaia, and about the inspiration that started this whole site, and about our future, and the potential of where we might go and who we might touch and what we might offer... and, most of all, what we'll need to sustain ourselves.

I don't know how much it always shows on the site, but part of what concerns me most at a day-to-day level involves ensuring that we (that is, Gaia Community) pull our financial weight when it comes to the company as a whole. After all, this site started as an independent business, not a non-profit, and ensuring that we're at least sustainable is personally important to me. Right now our ads and newsletters cover only a minute amount of the costs involved in supporting this site, and I'm adamant that we do our part to show our appreciation for our adopted parent company. Hosting and maintaining an online community is by no means an inexpensive (in terms of time and money both) endeavor, and this, I think, has been one of the greatest ongoing challenges since we began.

In any case, I always get such a quiver of joy from speaking with people who are both intellectually and heart-fully gifted; Gay's brilliant but his sweetness and genuine care for others tends to outshine his mind. (His blog, if you're interested, his over here, and if you'd like to read a few chapters of his last book, Five Wishes, just click here.) His support and input and enthusiasm around what we might do to create a means to better support Gaia Community was wonderful, and I'm anxiously excited about the opportunity to work quite a bit with Gay over the course of the summer. His ideas around what we might do to develop a creative and viable business model (and one that supports and respects the free community and sheer planetary significant of the wonderful energy generated here) were inspiring and exciting and strong.

(We're just now in the process of planning a free telegathering for the whole community, so you'll all, if you wish, get to meet--at least in-voice... but more on all this later. )


Yesterday afternoon I had a wonderful conversation (as a preface to an interview this Saturday) with Jeff Carreira, from What Is Enlightenment? He's working on the weekly "Universe Project" and will be interviewing me this weekend about Gaia Community.

It was great connection—almost surprisingly so.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not much of either a Wilber-or-Cohen-ite. I have my own quibbles with the conception of consciousness as something with an evolutionary direction, and can't shrug my own intuitive sense of the ongoing process and cycle of living and dying. To put it another way, I'm all about encouraging and supporting healthy development, but I have a hard time taking seriously any developmental theory that doesn't include the other side—that is, the process of senescence and aging and death.

I don't know whether it's an unshakeable existentialism or a too-vivid knowledge about the gritty and unpredictable ferment of the world—the chaotic, unquantifiable messiness of death, the inevitable rupture of birth, the explosive unpredictability of life in all its forms—but my own inner process tends more toward embracing and accepting those mysteries than trying to understand or direct them. I want to engage, of course, and participate in this crazy game, but unlike so many spiritual paths, I'm a bit agnostic as to the direction.

So we talked about that.

We also talked about communities and individuals and the interrelationship or interdependency of the emotional (or psychological or spiritual) energies of both.

It was a treat speaking with someone who had such a deep lived experience of the awareness of that interconnection; I think it can be all to easy to confuse our feeling state with the feeling state of the community or group (or country) we belong to, and to either allow ourselves to get affected by that energy, or, conversely, to mindlessly contribute to a destructive collective emotion by broadcasting our own anger or rage or disenchantment to those around us. By being aware of the way in which the emotional state we're in affects, strongly, the state of those around us (and how we might be affected in turn), we're able to consciously participate in the holding or creation of a more positive collective felt-sense.

I'm sure all of us have experienced this in some small way, in how one person in a group of three or for can drag down what was an exuberant conversation, or how the presence of one grounded and calm person can help stabilize and calm those around her. I've found, though, that those who are skilled at sensing and understanding this process can have profound effects on very large numbers of people—serving to create a space of peace even when others are upset, or to shift the emotional quality of a group. To my mind, merely being aware of this relationship goes a long way in developing that ability.

And so we talked about this with respect to Gaia, and how this community harbors so many who are wonderfully conscious around the way in which their own feelings and attitudes affects the collective, and what a strong role they might play in maintaining a place of peace and inspiration and support. And we talked about the implications of this for the world at large...

Anyway. It was a good chat, and I'm looking forward to Saturday's longer call.


Well. Maybe this explains why I don't update too regularly. I do tend to run on, and on, and on... Perhaps I should stick to status updates instead. ;)

The truth of a thought or belief is, in my view, directly proportional to how much love lies behind it.