I am grateful for life,
for living in this beautiful place,
for the gift of doing the work I love.

CHANGING PLANET, CHANGING LIVES . . .

We live on a conscious planet.  The joys we feel and the stresses we experience together are part of the neural web of our mother earth’s consciousness.  She is fully alive and awake to our changes and our shifts in energy.  We are her cells.  She carries our messages of joy and suffering, promise and despair in her body electric, along with those of the simians and cetaceans and the grasses.

We live in times of “Creative Stress”, says the world-honored peacemaker and evolutionary social healer James O’Dea.  These are times of despair and opportunity, endings and beginnings . . . “All swings around us—there is as much darkness as light” – said Walt Whitman.  Yet today we are all witnesses to an undeniable shift, an evolution of consciousness unfolding in the midst of this timeless dynamic of darkness and light.

What is our personal role in this evolutionary shift? We each carry inside of us our own “evolutionary impulse.”  Honoring it becomes the source of our joy and empowerment.  Dishonoring it can make us sick, depressed, even violent.  We can find our evolutionary impulse by following our bliss, by doing what makes us truly happy, by discovering what it is we seek to create and lovingly bring forth into this world.  The impulse is there in each one of use, a loving unique expression that is the real source of beauty and diversity on planet Earth.

We are just one species of many bearing this evolutionary impulse – together we make up the Universe Story.  “The Universe Story” is what Catholic theologian Thomas Berry calls the larger story of consciousness emerging from the Big Bang, a consciousness that is beginning to look back at itself in the mirror (creator/creation gazing back at creator/creation.)  Scientists in all fields now are beginning to turn away from dividing up and studying “the parts” of creation to looking back at the whole.  In the words of anthropologist and systems-theorist Gregory Bateson: “Do you ask what it’s made of – earth, fire, water, etc?  Or do you ask what is its pattern?”

We can speak now of a new spring rising, a super-charging within the human cells of mother earth’s network, leading to a new collective consciousness and response.  Biologists call this “quorum sensing” – the alert decision-making process used by decentralized groups to coordinate their behavior.  It is what functions in bees and bacteria, in beautiful flocks of birds and wheeling schools of fish, and it is what is happening now in the leaderless face book revolutions we’ve been witnessing across North Africa and the Middle East.  As of this writing, we’ve seen largely nonviolent “quorum sensing” decisions made spontaneously in the populations of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Iran, Turkey, and Jordan, with neural links to the labor actions in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere. The immediate spark of this most recent rising came from the fierce fire sacrifice and catalyzing of just one cell (Tunisian fruit vendor Muhammad Bouazizi.)   “And that where I am, or you are, this present day, there is the center of all days, all races” – Whitman again

We see arising in chaos theory, cybernetics, ecology, and complex systems theory a new understanding of the whole that can be applied to all aspects of our lives.  As celebrated by James O’Dea and other consciousness leaders within the Shift, the Pachamama Alliance, and the Bioneers movement to name a few, what we are witnessing in the rapid blossoming of NGO’s and civil society groups around the world are new neural networks of human consciousness forming.  These networks are a powerful planetary form of quorum sensing for new, increasingly leaderless world.  And they will help to reshape our lives on this rapidly changing planet.

         - Seamus

                 Coming 2011 Events

• SUMMER SOLSTICE CELEBRATION JUNE 18-19 for information click here.

• Labor Day 2011 weekend retreat entitled “Changing Planet, Changing Lives”, for info click here.

• GUEST SOJOURNS AT TARA’S MEADOW, BEAVER ISLE
This summer I will have the honor of welcoming several “guest sojourners” to Beaver Isle on reserved weekends at Tara’s Meadow.  Make your reservations early.  Both individuals and couples can choose from a variety of experiences – solace and play in the beautiful heart of nature, to Island tours, Celtic Body Prayers movement meditations (described below under red headline), life coaching, swimming, hammocking, as well as hikes through nature.  For more info on Sojourning click here.

• CLASSES and PERSONAL CARE SESSIONS
Look for a list of personal services, and/or small group study topics by clicking here. You will also find there a full description of our “personal care sessions”, which are individualized programs for your spirit’s growth and the navigation of life’s challenges and mysteries.

Celtic Body Prayers Celtic Body Prayers® offer us a fresh new path for restoring balance in our lives.  Utilizing gentle movement-meditations, ecology and verse, shamanic healing and the deep wells of native and contemporary wisdom, the Body Prayers® Arts can help us cultivate our bodies, minds and spirits together in one graceful daily practice. First Introduced by Seamus Mullin-Norgaard in 1995 and featured prominently in his annual Beaver Island, Michigan retreat, Celtic Body Prayers® is a unique, healthful exercise and meditation art.  Utilizing recited sacred earth poetry, Celtic Body Prayers® is a new approach to balancing body with gentle exercise, mind with meditation and spirit with prayer.  By once again giving voice and movement to the ancient poetry of the heavens, the elements and Creation, Celtic Body Prayers® offers us a rich new daily practice for celebrating the health and beauty of ourselves and our environment. Body Prayers® are unique for their wide breath of resources and cultural inspirations.  Seamus has skillfully blended his background in contemporary ecology (M.S. in environmental studies) and the movement meditation arts (yoga, T'ai Chi, Qi Gong), along with the sacred wisdoms traditions of the diverse cultures he has studied or lived amongst (notably the Native Irish and Native Americans).  In Body Prayers® the breadth of knowledge and respect for the global traditions is inclusive rather than exclusive, honoring Christianity, Buddhism, Native American Spirituality, and most notably the Sacred Earth Ways of the Celts.  Drawing from these diverse backgrounds Seamus is able to tailor a healthful daily practice of movement meditations, exercise and spiritual affirmations sensitive to a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds.  Come explore the Celtic Body Prayers® Arts for a new ecology of health, grace, and spirit. Celtic Body Prayers® movements, based on nature's creatures, mysteries, elements and plants, include... The Deer's Cry - a simple, graceful morning prayer based on St. Patrick's Lorica. The Wizard's Dance - sheer poetry in motion, a slow dance that breathes shape and fire into the ancient Song of Amergin. The Tree Lorica - A gentle exercise of one's legs, back and trunk involving the spirit of the trees. Please, feel free to investigate our website thoroughly and to tell your friends about us.  Check out when and where Seamus will be holding future workshops by clicking the Workshops/Services link below.  For more information on our Retreats and Community building activities click on the Retreats/Community link, also below. Peace and blessings.