Flowers At Home

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Flowers To Brighten Our Days

During the pandemic that started in 2020, we have spent a lot of time in our homes. When I lived in San Francisco, there were flower shops near my workplace, so fairly often, I would bring a small bouquet home to decorate my apartment.

As the years passed, I did this less and less. It seemed to be money better-spent elsewhere and, at the time, it simply seemed a bit extravagant.

Fast forward to the pandemic of COVID-19. Staying home as much as we did, having a vase of flowers in the house was a way to bring a bit of nature inside and to brighten up the space with a pop of color.

Flowers From The Supermarket

Where I live now, I don’t have the dedicated little flower shops of an urban environment. My flowers come from the local supermarket. However, these little flower faces have proven to be just as sweet. They provide an uplifting spot of color, a breath of a living vibration that graces the center of the table.

And I’ve found that I don’t have to spend a lot of money for a small bouquet to decorate our room.

Flowers From A Neighbor

One day, a neighbor stopped by and gave us a bouquet of dahlias. These had come from a specialized grower of dahlias. The song of these gorgeous, full blossoms filled the room with their vibrant melody. The variety of the flowers made for a rich harmony of colors and shapes.

Dahlias, with all their variations, are a magical flower changing shape and color with abandon. They are also the “city flower” of Seattle.

Flowers To Mark Our Journey

All of the flowers that have filled our home have their own song to sing. Sometimes they match the feel of the season or they mark the various celebrations passing by on our calendars. Colors of autumn, Christmas themes, a celebration of hearts, a way to bring warm colors inside our homes during dark, winter nights.

Flowers Bring Nature Inside Our Homes

We decorate our homes with flowers even while remembering that the greatest of nature is outside. Of course, we know this. Yet, to have a tiny bit of nature, albeit in cut flowers, inside our room has the vibration of nature. It calls to us, reminds us of the life-force at the center of these colorful little beings. The sap rises in the stems and suffuses the petals with its energy, its life force. We are reminded of our own pulsing “sap” in our veins, carrying life to all the cells of our bodies. We are a part of nature.

For students of The Radiance Technique® (TRT®), we can connect to the marvels of nature with our Radiant Touch®. By using our TRT® hands-on, holding the flowers, lightly touching their petals when we greet them in the morning, we connect with the essence of nature. “Hello,” we say in our hearts as we add more water to their vase, “thank you for being here with me. Thank you for your existence.”

Even in the toughest of times, we say thank you. We lift our eyes to the sky and whisper our gratitude for this day, for these flowers, for our lives… even while we stay at home.

Happy New Year 2021

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Out With 2020

Wow. It has been a year. A year of challenge for everyone.

The pandemic burst into our lives, marched into all our dwelling places and made itself at home, settling into every room of the house, as if it would never leave.

Loss Moved In

There was a great deal of loss. Loss of friends, family, and animals. Loss of homes, jobs, and income. While we struggled under the weight of the pandemic, any type of loss seemed even more intense, heart-aching, harder to bear.

There was a loss of vacation travel. On a more somber side, there was a loss of travel to see loved ones, family and friends. We missed holidays. birthdays, births or deaths. We felt the loss of being close together, a hand shake, a kiss on the cheek, a long hug.

We are picking ourselves up now. Everyone holds out hope for an end in sight. Perhaps the vaccines along with community exposure will lift enough of us into a sort of herd immunity.

Silver Lining For Other Creatures

While we lived in lock-down, the planet breathed a sign of relief while it had a break from our incessant activity and pounding on the Earth. In nature reserves, birds were able to relax and have the security to build nests, lay eggs and hatch their young. People were not trampling on their nesting grounds.

It makes one wonder if we couldn’t allow our national parks and nature reserves to have a month or two each year without any of us stomping through them.

Less air pollution was markedly visible above the cities worldwide. Water quality improved. In Venice alone, the lack of cruise ships promoted cleaner water. Noise pollution decreased. While not everything was perfect, poaching increased during the pandemic, we could perhaps look at what was beneficial and see how we could mimic that in normal conditions.

When lockdowns become less and our activities ramp up, we might find that we have less time for meditation. Yet, in such a strong environment of loss, past wounds of loss can open again and become tender. It’s important to remember that the time spent in our meditation is what nurtures us in our world of activity, bringing us more balance and awareness.

A Blessing for The New Year

Let’s welcome a blessing for the new year. What is a blessing? The dictionary defines it as:

– the act or words of a person who blesses:
– a special favor, mercy or benefit:
– a favor or gift bestowed by God, the invoking of
God’s favor upon a person:
– praise devotion, worship, grace said before a meal:
– approval or good wishes.

Another fun fact regarding the definition of the word blessing – whenever animals gather in groups, they are identified with a collective noun, like a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, or a swarm of bees.

If you should ever stumble upon a group of unicorns, they are formally named… a blessing of unicorns.

As we say goodbye to 2020, we offer this blessing – a poem by John O’Donahue. Beannacht is the Gaelic word for blessing and currach is the word for boat.

Beannacht, by John O’Donahue

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.


Be sure to take a few moments to listen to Mr. O’Donahue recite his poem. His voice and accent capture the wild, sea-whispering Celtic wind.

In With 2021

As we enter 2021, we lift our eyes to this new cycle and we’re filled with hope that this year will be softer and kinder. We invoke a well-known blessing of our own:

May the longtime Sun shine upon you and guide your way home.

Wishing you and yours a new year filled with healing and love. Stay safe. Stay healthy.

Happy New Year!

Earth Day Inside Our Homes

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Celebrate Earth Day

It’s April 22 and today we celebrate Earth Day! Except this year, much of it will be spent inside or practicing our new activity of social distancing, so gathering together for Earth Day events won’t be quite the same of past years.

We Belong To The Earth

We are reminded in this quote that our human lives are tied to our planet. Even if you succeeded at living on Mars, you would not just run out the door of your house for a walk in the park. Firstly, you’d need to climb into your spacesuit that would provide oxygen. And heaven help you if your unit failed.

No oxygen? It will only take a couple of minutes for that to no longer be a problem. As in, you will have expired and oxygen will no longer be needed for your lifeless body.

Well, on that cheery note, let us give a moment of thanks to our trees and plants that contribute oxygen to this planet.

Oxygen = breath = life. Our precious breath that allows us to be here. It’s the cry of a newborn baby as his lungs fill with life-sustaining air. It’s our breath in our meditations. Our lifeline to this planet is our breath. We are deeply connected to our precious earth.

Ideas For A Locked-Down Earth Day

Rainier Fruit from Washington State put together some ideas for creating Earth Day habits that we can do at home and that extend throughout the year. Because, truly, Earth Day is not just a day. It’s a way of life.

Rainier’s ideas are easily translated into our daily lives. Do you remember your parents telling you to turn off the lights if you’re not in the room? That’s an easy one.

Leftovers are a great way to decrease waste and to help your budget. Make an initial investment in some reusable containers to store leftover foods in the refrigerator. Glass is great for tomato or oily based foods. For plastic containers, make sure they are BPA-free.

Can’t stand eating the same meal two days in a row? Make use of your freezer. Divide leftover meals into single-serve containers. Let them defrost in the refrigerator and voilà, a meal you can enjoy a week, or even a month, later.

Eating-up your leftovers has the added benefit of decreasing your time spent cooking. A little reheat on a stovetop or in a microwave makes a quick and satisfying meal.

Just say NO to plastic, one-time use water bottles. Klean Kanteen is my go-to for sustainable bottles, but there are a lot of different companies that fulfill this purpose. You can also get reusable, insulated containers for when you visit your favorite coffee shop. Decrease your use of single-use coffee cups.

If you carry an 8-ounce coffee container into Starbucks (double espresso, touch of milk), they take it and you might even get a 5¢ discount for using your own container. Hey, every little bit helps!

If you like big coffee drinks, hot or cold, the insulated mugs come in all sizes to accommodate various caffeine-concoctions.

In Touch With Nature

For those of us stuck in small apartments where it’s difficult to get out, our need for nature looms more strongly than we ever realized. It’s easy to take nature for granted until we can’t be in it.

Given how much our planet sustains us, we want to make sure it’s cared for in a responsible way. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming. This big planet – I’m just a small human, what can *I* do to help?

Each of us can help in very small ways. If you never leave a piece of trash on the highway or in the park, that is one less piece of trash. If you put into practice just a couple ideas this year, and then add to that next year, and so on, when it’s all added together, we begin to make a difference.

Enjoy and connect to Planet Earth today and every day!