bringing light to life

We call the moon full when she is the brightest in the sky. When she is full, she illuminates.

When you are full, you illuminate.

The moon is now full in Aquarius, and since my sun and moon are both in Aquarius, I feel particularly lit up by this lunar phase, particularly illuminated.

According to the astrologers I follow, this full moon is highlighting the energies of late December 2020, meaning something that was originally seeded in late December is rising up or coming forward or blooming into being.

On a personal level, this seed or dream or vision is connected to the future self, a possible outcome, but there’s a larger implication as well - the seeds we planted together.

Sometimes I see us - humans, I mean - as wheels turning inside of a larger wheel, individual expressions of the one - but oneness can be overwhelming, especially when it seems our parts are so far flung, at such odds with one another.

Our stories change when drop out of them, focus on the other rather than ourselves.

I heed the message, that we are to love one another, that we are to extend love and compassion to all in every moment, but sometimes it is a more peaceful stance for me to tend to my own heart first, to begin to glow compassion toward myself then allow it to ripple out, beam out, at first simply touching, then lightly caressing, then finally saturating others, the all.

How I relate to myself transforms my partnerships.

How I treat myself informs how I treat others.

Love is not limited or finite, it grows and expands outward. It is eternal.

As we stand here together, opening to future potentials, preparing for what is to come, I feel electrified, clear, and strong.

One week ago, I had a dream. In the dream I was at Wake Forest University. My niece is preparing to go to college in a few weeks, and that’s been heavily on my mind, but she’s not going to Wake Forest or anywhere near North Carolina. I’ve never been there and know very little about it, but it the dream, I was going up and down a staircase with heavy dark wooden banisters, and talking to other people in a dorm room.

I was also registering for classes, which felt a little odd to me, a little risky, because I was so much older than the other students and really, I thought, didn’t belong there.

The most significant thing that happened in this dream, was a conversation with a woman. She was beautiful and earthy, goddess-like. She was reclining on a bed and she said to me, “You need to cleanse your home with a birch broom.”

When I woke up, this was the part of the dream that felt real to me, this was the part that lingered.

I love it when dream people deliver advice and messages. I love it when they tell me things I have to Google and decode.

The morning after my dream, I began my investigations and found another name for birch - the Lady of the Woods.

The Woods. The Forest.

Birch is symbolic of renewal, protection, and new beginnings.

Birch wood is believed to ward off evil, banish fears and build courage. Associated with beauty and tolerance, the birch's vibration heightens acceptance of oneself and others.

And what about a birch broom, specifically? It is typically used the morning after the Winter Solstice to brush out the old year. Obviously, it is not the Winter Solstice, but it is a full moon with connections to the Winter Solstice, connections to late December 2020.

These are challenging times.

Change is swift and intense. Old systems are falling away, long hidden truths revealed. We are living the fast consequences of our actions, of that which we have denied. False prophets are screaming on every corner.

For a while now, I have felt that something was coming, something for which I needed to be prepared, for which we all need to be prepared. It came to mind that this waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling was likely trauma response, the result of a global pandemic (we’re still in the middle of that, you know?) plus everything else we’ve been witness to over the past year. Of course I feel uneasy. Who wouldn’t?

And yet, there’s a part of me that still feels something gathering, an intensity.

I don’t mean this in a doomsday way. I’m not saying something bad is going to happen. It is not something about which I am afraid. But it is something, I suspect, that is going to require a radical opening at the heart.

As a collective, as the wheels inside the wheel, we will have to love ourselves through this passage.

Perhaps the voices of hatred are so loud right now because they know they will not survive; We survive the same way we heal, by choosing love and compassion.

We dream into the future, we bring things into being, we make predictions, but we cannot know for sure what will happen.

We can only look at where we are and feel into likelihoods. If things continue the way they are now, then most likely this will happen or that, but this is a free will universe. We are making choices in each moment, both as individuals and as a collective. We are living the consequences of our actions, perhaps at an accelerated rate. Things can change and things do change.

Right now, it feels to me like we are living in two separate realities. When the two rub up against one another it causes a deeply uncomfortable friction.

More than ever in my life, I am noticing vibration and how impossible it is to marry two unmatched vibrations, how impossible it is for us to even see one another, at times.

Love is the only thing that can bridge that gap.

Last week, Tracy and I were sitting on our couch watching a movie when he saw a reflection in the glass doors that separate our living room and dining room. We turned around to see the falcon sitting on a low tree branch in our front yard, just a few feet away from us.

I saw him two other times in our neighborhood earlier in the summer. We have red tails here, but falcons are rare. In fact, I assumed when I saw him before, he was just migrating through and was gone by now.

He was beautiful. Powerful. Mesmerizing. We just sat and watched him until he took off and flew skillfully up through the narrow gap between the two trees in our yard.

It felt like a sacred visitation.

These are difficult and unsettled times.

Many of us feel worn thin.

It can be hard to maintain hope - for humanity, the earth, the future.

And yet, within my own self, this little spaceship of Lori-Lyn, I feel I’ve finally come to the end of a painful and burdensome cycle.

Last week, I was recording video and I realized that the artwork I’m making now is directly connected to the work of my twenties. It’s as if I picked up the golden thread I’d dropped decades ago, and stepped right back into that current.

I realized that I have made through to the other side of something - a long passage of self-doubt and fear - into a new sort of wholeness and integration.

I posted this Energy Prayer, and one of my dearest friends - who has been my friend all this time - said, “This is you.”

Yes. This is me.

This is me no longer giving weight to voices of criticism or fear.

No longer tiptoeing around the edges of my personality, my passions.

This is me in the full understanding of what it is I’ve been given to work with in this life, the full understanding and acceptance of the fact that when I shine my strange little light, I won’t be everyone’s cup of tea and that is not only okay, it is necessary in order for me to do what I came here today.

This is me, a woman in her fifties who feels younger than she did at twenty-five, at peace with the past if you can believe it because it takes my breath away to realize it, calling back the pieces of her creative voice that she’s stored away and ignored for decades.

Yesterday, Tracy said to me, “Just follow the muse.”

I’m ready to do that.

How about you?

What’s calling to you?

What’s lighting you up?

What are you creating in your life under the beautiful light of this full moon?

In my writing now, as well as my visual work. In my day-to-day life and every choice I make. I am opening to the ever-present, insistent light, making myself a clear and unashamed channel for the odd, passionate, magical voice that has held me, guided me, and sung to me my whole life.

I have things to do, art to make, books to write, wigs to wear, things to say.

I’ve been doing these things…I’ve been here…for a long time, but the energetic truth is, I am just getting started.

I’m ready now. (Let’s dance.)