Author: Alethea Kehas

Author of A Girl Named Truth and The Labyrinth, and owner of Inner Truth Healing & Yoga.

Musing on a Warm January Day #climatechange #tolkein

On By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Gaia & Elementals, Reflections13 Comments
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Moss and lichen cling summer green to the January lilac

It’s a gray day here in New Hampshire. Raining when it probably should be snowing. The temperature, warm enough to open windows. My phone tells me it’s 59 degrees outside. Soon it will be 60, but tomorrow will bring a nearly 30 degree drop in temperature, and on Tuesday it should be snowing.

Yesterday, when I was out with the dogs and my son in the balmy air, I recalled walking in Boston more than twenty years ago, in January. It was a surreal day. Ninety degrees in the city. In January. A few years prior, there was an April Fool’s snowfall that dumped two feet of snow on my car in Providence. The weather has been extreme for decades now. Yet it still feels strange. Surreal.

I am not comfortable with this new normal. Now, most days, the atmosphere sparks with the unpredictable. Or, rather, what shouldn’t be predicted. It can be incomprehensible how we cling to old ways, even when we should change them.

Last night, my husband and I watched the movie Tolkein, and more than anything else, I was grabbed by the scenes of war. No wonder, I kept thinking, he wrote what he did. I was filled with frustration as I watched scenes I try to avoid in books and movies of a senseless and barbaric act we’ve woven into the fabric of humanity since nearly the beginning of our time here on Earth. To the victor goes the spoils of the greatest number of lives extinguished.

In these moments, I’m acutely reminded of the chaos of our chosen existence. The swirling darkness that lives inside of us. How we strive for power by killing life. The irony is sometimes too much to bear.

Outside my open window, it sounds like a tropical symphony. Birds sing as though it is spring and the lichens on the lilacs wear a stunning shade of aqua beside a vibrant green moss. Looking at it brings me comfort. It soothes my troubled heart. As does the happy confusion of wild birds in January.

Nature accepts more easily than I do, and I am grateful that I can turn to its soothing balm to temper my troubled soul. Acceptance can be hard to embrace these days. It can feel as helpless as it is freeing. Inside of it, though, is the knowing that I have chosen to be here in this time, as we all have. To play some uncertain role that I often cannot define. To move through each moment with an intention to cling to more grace than anger. More love than hate. And more forgiveness than resentment. And, what a challenge for this we have been given.

 

Why Did I Dream That Dream #propheticdreams #dreams

On By Alethea KehasIn DreamsLeave a comment
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Photo credit: Pixabay

It was probably about a week or so ago. I don’t know the exact date, because I didn’t record it. Nor do I recall all the details. What lingers, though, is the feeling along with image of the oven top. Burners lit when they should not be. Gas leaking into the air…

In case you haven’t guessed from previous posts, I am fascinated (and perhaps a bit obsessed) by dreams. I always have been. I didn’t record much in my journals as a child and teen, but for a time I recorded my dreams. They held a deep intrigue for me. Some nights they brought escapes into wondrous fairylands. Others, the haunting terror of reoccurring nightmares. And, there were the ones that came true.

Even though I was raised in a very scientific-minded household where anything that the physical eyes could not see was deemed as fanciful and untrue, I knew dreams offered a wisdom into the more hidden realms of  our being and the universe that seemed like truth even to my obedient mind.

The more I study my own dreams, the more I learn. Some of us go into deep meditative states for understanding, some of us channel the inner guide through automatic writing., or consult cards, astrologers of psychics. Or maybe we simply walk in the woods. I find each one helpful, but perhaps not so constantly helpful, as dreams.

Dreams are effortless. We close our eyes and fall into slumber, and dreams come to us without beckoning. Although we may claim we do not dream, we all do. And there are many ways to train our brains to recall our dreams if we have trouble remembering them. It’s worth looking into if you tend to wake without recollection.

When we dream, our minds unearth our deepest fears, as well as our heart’s yearnings. Through their strange language of metaphor, we can decipher a vast library of wisdom. Their code, unique to each individual.

When I dreamt the oven lit and leaking gas several nights ago, I awoke with the feeling of foreboding. I knew fear was at play, but it didn’t feel like a metaphor. It felt real.

I checked the stove throughout the day, and occasionally during the next few days when I’d recall the dream. Then, I largely forgot about it. Until today.

You could say there was nothing too unusual about this morning. My son and I left for an appointment as scheduled, and I reminded my daughter of when to leave for hers. We arrived at the office seven minutes early, and I half-noted the feeling of emptiness on our way in.

The receptionist flushed when she saw us. Stumbling over apologies, she informed us that my children’s appointments had been canceled last minute due to illness. No big deal. We rescheduled and left. For a moment, I thought about running an errand or two, but instead followed the familiar road home.

We were back at the house about a half an hour after we had left. Entering through the garage, I found myself puzzled by a strange smell. My daughter was on the couch eating her breakfast and watching a cooking show. Nothing unusual for a weekend. I greeted her, told her about the appointment reschedule, and we talked about other things as I continued to sniff the air periodically.

I decided it smelled like gas. Not the gas from engine exhaust, but it seemed to be more concentrated near the garage, so I lingered around there for a moment, then walked towards the oven. There was a small frying pan on one of the burners, leftover from my daughter’s breakfast. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. She often makes herself elaborate meals on weekends. Except there was the smell. Slightly sulfurous and overwhelming the air. My eyes left the pan and looked beneath it. No flame. They caught upon the knob below, turned a quarter to the right.

I recalled the dream nights before as I turned the knob to “off,” pushed the button overhead to fan the air outside, and opened a door and window to aid the ventilation. I sent a million silent “thank you”s to fate that the morning’s appointments had been canceled, then began a firm, but kind lecture to my daughter about minding the stove and not using that particular burner to simmer because the fame dies when it is down to low, but the gas still releases.

 

Still Presence #writephoto

On By Alethea KehasIn Gaia & Elementals, Reflections17 Comments
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Photo Source: Sue Vincent

The land called to those who wanted to hear her. The rest wandered in idle enjoyment of the still stones. They brushed careless hands across their surfaces, and felt for holes to climb. Sometimes they took out their pocket knives and chiseled what they thought to be forever love upon their granite faces. And the land watched in silence, waiting for those who could hear her.

She sang the forgotten song to those who remembered its melody. They felt it in their bones as they stood upon her raised mounds. Her notes caressed their skin in the embrace of mother love. Her song wove inward through membranes to find the memory of home. Joy, rupturing the heart into ecstasy and sorrow, she sang of a love so deep tears fell from opened eyes.

To show her love for her children, the land danced her stones. She sent her pulse through their inert bodies and brought life to their forms. She whispered through time to awaken her mysteries and the stones beckoned to those who listened.  The long waits, well-worth the heart opened in recognition, they offered magic to the hands that hugged their bodies close.

I remember you, they whispered into pressed ears. Welcome home. 

 

Thank you Sue, for the morning cry 😉 and for the photo prompt. To participate please click here. 

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Finding the Light inside the horrific #australianwildfires

On By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Gaia & Elementals, Reflections22 Comments
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Australia. Photo Credit: Pixabay

It hurts my heart to look at the photos and I know millions are crying with me. There is no grasping for logic inside this incomprehensible tragedy, as there is none. We can blame ourselves, and perhaps we should. Ignorance turning a blind eye for too long. Greed over-riding altruism. But, when it comes down to it, most would not have wanted what we are facing right now: an Earth, our home, filled with incredible and horrific suffering. I am thinking right now of the wildfires raging through Australia, as they have raged through California, Alaska, and so many other places across the globe in recent time. So many lives lost, millions of animals and plants gone. The innocent, suffering the worst.

We can blame ourselves, and perhaps we should. But, little good comes from looking backwards unless we are willing to change the patterns of our ways. In the midst of this horrific tragedy, I see the enduring light of hope. Eyes being opened, where they have been shut. Hearts joining in their collective sorrow seeded from love. That light that unites us all, igniting to extinguish the murderous blaze.

It was the late Fred Rogers who urged us to “look for the helpers (heroes)” when the unspeakable occurs. Right now, at this moment, the world is filled with them. Locals opening their doors to homeless wildlife in need of shelter. The wealthy and not so wealthy sending funds towards the efforts to abate the flames. Countless hearts joined in prayer and song calling for rain. And, all those firefighters risking their own lives to save another. This is love.

And, in some incomprehensible way, perhaps it is needed. A friend on social media made the observation yesterday that when a photo of Australia had appeared on her screen upside down, she thought it looked like a heart. It does, in a way. A misshapen heart breaking open. It also looks like a woman’s pelvis, expanding to birth. There are legends about Australia and the sacred lands in and around Uluru. Some consider these ancient lands to be the womb of Earth, and I find myself wondering if this incredibly painful rebirth we are experiencing is part of an awakening. Or, at least a call to an awakening. The future is shaped by our hands, just as the past was. How much more can the heart endure before it breaks open into love? Not just for the self, but for the other, in whatever form that other takes.

I have hope for better days to come. Australia is opening another doorway for us, just as all past tragedies have. We can enter it holding hands, find the scattered pieces of life inside, and do what we can to make our world whole again. We can, because we must. There is no longer a choice. Another doorway for us. There is only one. In essence, there has only, ever, been one. The one through the heart. Let us step through it together. Let us change our broken ways and mend this broken womb so that we can find a rebirth of what unites us all.

Life, a love story #dreamhealing #dreamjourneys #seadreams

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Memoir, Reflections10 Comments
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photo credit: <a href="http://Image by WikiImages from Pixabay” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Pixabay

I have been tumbling backwards in my dreams. Returning to homes of childhood and their keepers. It is funny how the mind moves through the body and the body through the mind. There is a cycling through time that is nonlinear. We are spirals like the galaxy that holds us together. We are each tiny universes filled with cells and memories. The past woven into the present, threading into the future, spiraling inward and outward. We are each an ocean, contained and endless. Our waters swallowed into the membranes of our cells in one moment, and expiring in waves back to the stars. We are heaven and earth in one body walking the planes of existence.

Three nights ago, my bare feet found the sands on the edge of the sea. They walked endless shorelines, treading the line between solid ground and the sharp drop back into the vast womb of Mother Earth. My heart a tremble of fear and courage, yet I dared not step into the water. The drop too steep I knew the swallow would be whole. It’s no surprise that the Mother returned in other forms in subsequent nights as the ocean found containment inside the throat. Words still searching for air. How frustrating the spiral can be.

As the year turns into a new calendar, there is the calling to shed the worn, tired skins we wear. There is the calling to strip bare and return to the womb to rebirth the self new and fresh. Yet birth is rarely painless, nor is it usually easy. It takes concerted effort, a fair bit of strength, and a willing letting go.

I have been thinking of the excuses I hold tight inside the spiral. This false feeling of security in the futile hope that no more pain will ensue. No one really desires pain, yet the heart builds a fortress that splinters in the tearing down. Birth is always easiest when there is no resistance to battle through.

I think, perhaps, I should have dove headfirst into those dream waters, or let the feet follow the suck of the sand into the liquid abyss. Only then would I have known if the drowning would have swallowed my breath, or gave it back. Complete surrendering of our fears comes with trust, and the acceptance that death, in some form, will occur.

It is always, though, a love story. The question is, do we make it conditional, or unconditional?

The Face in the Smoke #writephoto

On By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth7 Comments
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Photo Credit: Sue Vincent

The face of the chief rose above the naked arms of the trees. Her body of smoke illuminating the burnt forest below. Beneath her, squirrels dropped their nuts and ran to keep ahead of the flames. Rabbits and mice dug deeper into the earth to find refuge from the heat, while the beetles clung to the bark and burned. The deer and coyote had left when the first ember crunched the dry leaves with its orange teeth, but where was man?

“Wake, my children. Wake and see what you have done.”

Her words came from the voice of no sound. Rising from the heart of Earth, they broke the barrier of time and space as they wove into the membranes of deaf ears where their vibration was felt in the cells, stirring the unease of truth inside bodies that had become numb.

“Wake and remember.”

Her specter rose with the smoke until it filled the black night.

No one saw her, save for one. A girl-child had lingered, letting go of her father’s hand as he pulled her to safety. And, somehow in his hurry, he had released her while he chased after fear. She stood defiant against the blaze as she gazed up at the ghost of her ancestor. Listening to words no one else could hear.

“I hear you, Mother,” she shouted her voice into the night, lifting her words to the sky. “I am here.”

I wrote this inspired by Sue Vincent’s prompt, #Fume, in honor of Suzanne at Being in Nature, whose passionate plea for change fills the pages of her blog. She lives in Australia where wildfires are devastating the land and the life that depends upon it. She shares my sentiment that it is imperative that we acknowledge the effects of climate change and make real efforts to slow it down. 

 

We Are God’s Hands #climatecrisis #climatechange

On By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Reflections8 Comments

help-1300942_1920 “It’s in God’s hands.”

The words took hold of me while I scrolled through Facebook, that place where I can only spend so much time before frustration builds. The words came from a woman responding to a post about the climate crisis.

I sit here, a day later, thinking about the convenience of this claim. How often it is used to excuse our personal actions, or inactions. This letting go of control and giving it up to whatever name we, individually, call the divine force that moves through all of us. It is a false claim. An untruth we choose because it’s convenient. To put up our hands up and declare that something is beyond our control is to give up the truth of our existence. We are not puppets in some divine play, we are the directors, the actors, and the story-tellers. We exist to be active players in this game we call Life.

We are God’s hands.

God is not responsible for the mass extinction we are facing and the rise of our oceans. God is not responsible for the fires ravaging the face of Earth or the hunger in the bellies of children whose parents cannot afford food to fill them. God is also not responsible for our individual and collective greed. Our hoarding of wealth and want for more. God is not responsible for the felling of our  rainforests and the bleaching of our coral reefs. God is not responsible for our choice to burn coal and fossil fuels over harnessing the power of sustainable resources. The responsibility is ours. Alone.

If we are going to claim to be children of “God,” or whatever name we call the creation that brought us here, we must also realize that as children, someday we must grow up and take responsibility for our individual lives. We must step outside the shelter of convenient excuses and realize that our hands are pulling up the roots, stripping our mountains bare, and turning the ignitions in our vehicles in the name of convenience. It may be an “inconvenient truth,” to admit that we are the masters of our own existence here on Earth, but it is the truth, nonetheless. We can either face it, or suffer the consequences of denial.

The Seal of Circe #Offering #writephoto

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Poems15 Comments
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Artist Credit: Sue Vincent

 

The Seal of Circe 

She wove the rainbow through the threads of being

offering life in her hand

“Drink”

It felt like the moon

moving through the shadowed land

filaments of light filling the long

forgotten pathways. She sang of magic

her voice dancing through my night

eyes opening wide

the blue columns, catching the fire

of Horus to lift the roots that bind

She, the water to his fire

He, the sun to her moon

and I, the child born of their union

A seal stamped upon a dream

Or was it something more

this urgent memory of magic

lingering after she returned

to night. My feet still dancing

her song, slightly unsure

unaccustomed to a tune

 called freedom and also joy

older than time

leading me home

 

For Sue Vincent’s weekly #writephoto prompt challenge “Offering.” 

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This Body of Water Memory #waterdreams #dreamsymbolism #watersymbolism

On By Alethea KehasIn Gaia & Elementals, Reflections2 Comments
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Photo Credit: <a href="http://Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Pixabay

It is a rare night when water does not come to me in the form of dreams. It fills the basins of bathing tubs and the land surrounding me. I marvel at its form rising with ease through gravity, encompassing form until it disappears and absorbs. “Did you know water can remember you?” a friend shared on the eve of the solstice.

How can it not? Water is memory. When you pour it into a glass, it becomes the cylinder. When you expose it to music, it becomes the song. Exposed to fire, water becomes heat. Ice, stasis. We move through liquid limbs with the structure of bones. At least 70% water, we are living memories. The memory of what once was, and still is. Of what will become, and has never left time.

We are song, fire, heat, and ice. We are splinters of pain and the symphony of love in one body. Except, we are not just one body. We drink the tears of our ancestors and those that have been lost to form. We drink memory every day to fill the thirst inside. Expelling with the need to release not just our own, but those that have collected inside of us. We are memory in watered form.

In an instant, a molecule of water can transform. The shattered atoms of anger can coalesce into a star of love. Our bodies are capable of reform. Old patterns, learning new. We orchestrate the symphony of our own songs. The play of memory, ours to mold and break down. What songs do you sing to your cells? What memories do you ask water to carry for you? When I forget, I whisper love into the vessel and drink it into my cells. I sing “Om” through the well of the throat until it sinks into the womb for rebirth. Remembering I am the keeper of water and its memories, at least for some time. Time that dances in chaos or harmony inside of me, waiting to be released and rejoined in another form. Water, older than time. Held, for a moment, in me.

“First Woman”: A Solstice Dream #poetry #poems #dreampoetry #solsticepoem

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Poems2 Comments
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Photo Credit: Pixabay

First Woman

You may call her Eve

but I knew her as Melissa

The first woman born of her clay

write her story, they whispered

and so I do, following the trace

of her line. The curve of the body

born supine to face the sun

my eyes, watching the slow unwrap

of the goddess. A womb like a hive

my mind, pulled toward the drones

anxious in the hurry to follow a crowd

to nowhere. I turn back

relearning the slow unfolding

of woman. The mother skin lifting

its mold. I watch her smooth the lines

so slowly I am pained by the thought

that we will be left behind. But she

cares not of the train rushing

to the forgetting land. Her fingers

the mystery I need to remember

how carefully she births self

without division and smooths the folds

until lines become curves

until there is no beginning

and no ending

she just is.