Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

I am sitting in a room with two glass walls and a beautiful, lush garden with all the colors of the rainbow in front of me. It is cool and the soft air that blows in through the door is as sweet as the sound of the fountain water and music flooding in with it.

I am in Mexico, for the first time, and loving it more than I knew I would. I admit I knew it would be very special, and at the same time of its difficulties and drawbacks, but I didn’t know what it would be like to see images of Frida Khalo looking at me everywhere I go, and an array of colors that almost rival India in their richness and vibrance. Life is everywhere. It isn’t as tucked-in as it is in my native country, and isn’t in most of the rest of the world.

I find it hard to leave my island home every time. Like leaving Avalon, or our own private Shire. But somehow I cannot avoid being a child of the world, and it draws me back into its open arms every time. It shows me that no matter how harsh the circumstances, or how kind, it is all the same wild and radiant world and there is only more and more of it to love. The heart of the world is my heart, and traveling, both in the inner lands and the outer, stretch it to the point that I can hardly differentiate mine from its own.

Living in one place that you love is almost as special and rare as meeting a true love. And I have found that it becomes the thing I grow around, like a winding vine. Leaving it to far-off lands is like being unwound from everything that has let me become what I am, and gives me nothing to hold onto. And then nothing itself becomes that support, and one lives on a kind of prana or energy that has no bounds. You trade comfort for freedom, and in doing so you find you can have both.

This does not just refer to travel…it refers to how we handle change, and we are right in the midst of so much. Every energy point is like a major curve in a very specific road of destiny. We have put everything on the line, and it is terrifying, and freeing, both at once. We must drink the most subtle nectars of the flowers of hope and beauty if we are to keep our great hearts beating through the changes.

I have found that no matter how my circumstances change, I am not diminished. I may be weathered and even close to feeling rubbed out into the great fabric of all things, but my soul shines bright as any star, in the darkest of nights. On those dark nights only the stars…the tiniest points of light, can bring back faith, but there is no night without them.

This solstice, make a promise to your own heart, to make it the holiest ruler of your life, and to trust that if everything seems to be dissolving at this time, it is because there is something so magical coming into being that your vision is not yet vast enough to imagine its beauty. I am not exagerating…I truly mean every word, and believe wholeheartedly in magic’s complete and predestined return.

I was once given a card which had an anonymous quote on it, “I will never be the same having seen the moon from the other side of the world.” I dreamed of the day I would do so, having never left the country at the time. Having now visited some 20 countries, I would say that the words are more than true, and at the same time it speaks even more deeply of the other side of the world within us, and our view of the inner moon from the other side of transformation.

Trust your process…trust the changes going on in your life…and most of all trust your great, infinite, and unimaginably gorgeous heart. It knows all.

Love, (and flowers of all colors)
Jennifer

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

The ancient Sibyls, prophetesses of the Mediterranean lands, wrote their prophecies on leaves and laid them at the mouths of caves. If no one came to retrieve them they would be scattered by the winds and the questioner would have to do great work to recollect and understand them. The Sibyls were also known to write in codes, or to sing their prophecies as song, and the quality of their answer corresponded to the quality of the question, and the intention in the heart of the questioner. They did not prophesy to please the ones who came to them…they spoke what they received. They trusted their own power, and the power of the universe’s response.

For most of us, being too translucent would be a terrible thing. What can remain invisible within us is protected. But along the path of life we stop saying what we mean, and learn to dress it up in the fashion required of the moment or the company or our own expectations. It can be exhausting. Our life force and the sparks that light the flames within us, diminish.

Perhaps we are afraid of offending someone, being judged, being seen for who we are…or not seen. We go to great delicacies to create complex ornamentation in our speech and way of being, but sometimes not in the spirit of the art of the soul, but in the fear of our raw, unedited essence escaping. And though we do not want it to always express this way, if we have forgotten our wild essence our life will soon show it.

Every time we swallow part of the truth of who we are to please someone else or present a certain image, it is stored somewhere and waits for moments of release. The moment we can vent, or cry, or write, or finally tell someone the truth we have not spoken. It waits for the moment we decide to hold a boundary we have been letting the water rush over for a long time. It waits for us to trust ourselves, and what is wild and true and real within us.

When we begin to trust our own power, a friendship most avoid or abuse, there are certain people who will leave our lives, and situations which will provoke us to return to a more false way of relating to the essence within…but once we have truly crossed the line within us, we already know better. We may be tempted or feel defeated at times, but the greatness of our truer path holds strong and guides us, ultimately. And for this reason new people and new situations and opportunities will enter.

The truth is that there isn’t just one line we cross one time…there are countless lines we have the choice to cross or hold back from every day. There are countless moments to let our wings be bound or freed. Every time you take a true risk of the heart, a part of you is liberated that will never have to hide again. These times require us to be both strong and free, and to protect that freedom with a grace that it takes our entire being to open to. May this grace fall into your path and guide you across every threshold of the constraint of your true being, and open you to a blazing new sun, and brilliant new moon, within.
Love, Jennifer

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This month Jennifer also released a new name for her monthly e-newsletter, Sibylline Leaves, in honor of the ancient messages sent on the winds by these sacred Oracles.