Spring Cleaning

Spring cleaning takes on new meaning as a way to reflect on our lives. 

The accumulation of things we acquire or amass in the past year, the clearing of energy in our homes so we create space for new energy to enter our lives, and the physical act of letting go that allows growth to happen.

Often, we settle into the inertia of passive living and need the awakening energy of Spring to nudge us into action.

May this Passover reflection energize you to engage in Spring cleaning with spiritual conviction.

http://origin.library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1101334266965-614/Cleaning+as+Spiritual+Ritual+Preparation+for+Pesach.pdf

The Luminous Continent

Satellite photo of Antarctica

Inhaling pure oxygen after a long hard climb up a steep and icy slope in Antarctica, I look down at our ship as a sailboat drifts by and kayaks glide in the glacial waters below. 

Imagining myself alone on this frozen planet, I realize how American explorer Admiral Richard Byrd felt when he wrote: “This is the way the world will look to the last man when it dies.” 

Picturing the scene as my last view of a world about to be lost, I am struck by the silence. In this world of ice and snow, all is deceptively still, even as the vast ice sheet that is the Antarctic Peninsula I stand on keeps on moving. 

Trekking Patagonia

Patagonia looks like nature the week after God created it. Land swelling like it had been lifted upward by some great surge, snowy mountains like fortresses, rivers that run as far as the eye can see, vast open skies that make you want to lie on your back and just absorb it all. Breathtaking nature that reduces us to a state of wordlessness. It fills you up inside and there are no words to contain what you see, no pictures to capture the sense of awe that stops you in your tracks and makes your whole body say WOW! 

Awakening to the view of Paine Massif mountain range along the shore of Lake Sarmiento in a dune-shaped hotel and spa was a perfect way to start the year. Clad entirely in bleached lenga wood to blend unobtrusively with the spectacular landscape, the eco-friendly lodging hugs the earth's contours.

You come to Patagonia to walk. It is one long endless walk surrounded by snow-capped mountains, glacial lakes and skies so full of fluffy clouds you hardly see the blue between. You fill your water bottle from streams, hike for hours to stand in the shadow of majestic mountains, hear the thunder of avalanches up in the peaks and struggle to walk in whipping winds that blow snow sideways. 

Endings and Beginnings: A New Year Meditation

To journey without being changed is to be a nomad.
To change without journeying is to be a chameleon.
To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim. ~ Mark Nepo 

There is a symmetry about endings and beginnings that have to do with cycles and time. 

We look back with perspective and look forward with anticipation, openness and curiosity. Experiences fill the foreground as the mundane fades into the background. In this time of betwixt and between, our year-end / New Year angst contains both our eagerness to cast off our old shells and the anxiety of embracing the unknown.

When I was in India, the spiritual head of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram told me that my problem was that I worry too much about the future. He said, "The future will come at you like a speeding train, you don't need to do anything to prepare for it, you have to learn how to live in the present." 

Easier said than done!

Recent articles featured in the NJ Jewish Standard

To read the full story, click on the linked titles. 

1. Connected through the web of life - by Angelica Berrie • Op-Ed - Published: 21 November 2013

2. Angelica Berrie’s amazing journey - by Joanne Palmer • Cover Story - Published: 29 November 2013

For the eversion and all the photos click here.