Cultivating Joy in Changing Times

Yes, it’s true.  Our world is turning itself upside down.  Whenever we humans find ourselves on the brink of a major shift in consciousness, the old paradigm grabs on tightly to try and hold on.  But the new is already underway, so the divisiveness becomes even more inflated.  And sometimes it is hard to know what to do about it.  But I say, ‘Hold your thoughts and actions on what you would like to see.’  Poke your head up out of the sand; there are already plenty of places where we can start to build the new.  Simply doing something, anything, can help us to feel a little bit better about all of this change.  Here are ten things to consider.

1.  For my part, I’m a gardener at heart.  So, I’ve started growing food plants to share.  Frank and I have put in eleven fruit and nut trees this past month.  The last of the bare-root plants, in the nurseries, came into their end-of-season sale, so we jumped on it.  
Several years ago, we adopted an untended parking lot near our home and cleaned up the trash, began to build the soil and now have it blooming from spring through fall with hardy florals and flourishing native oaks.  
During WWII, when the Germans tried to starve the island nation of Britain out, she created her “Victory Gardens,” in every backyard.  With the changes that we are about to experience, food prices may well jump sky high.  Certainly federally funded care programs providing nutrition for the young and the elderly are at risk.  Fruit trees yield the most food per acre and potatoes can be abundantly grown in banks or in bags.  Oak trees have provided native peoples world round with balanced nutrition in easily stored acorns.  As federal funds are further removed from Agriculture, producing our own food may well become increasingly important.  Gardens are bountiful.  They make it easy to give and to share.  And working in them brings us exercise, serenity and great peace of mind.  

2.  Sing and dance or play music.  Music connects us.  It is the song of life and we all move to that rhythm.  I’ve heard it said that if you are not singing and dancing, you are not truly alive.

3.  Align your purchasing power with your ethics.  To get you started, visit Goods Unite Us.  
https://www.goodsuniteus.com/
Or get the book for The Better World Shopping Guide  https://betterworldshopper.org/

4.  Try not to drive or fly, and avoid using plastics, which are made from oil, as much as possible.  

5.  Go to the website DuckDuckGo and switch your search engine to theirs so all of your on-line research and data is no longer being easily and shamelessly tracked and sold for advertisers and others to target.

6.  Write to your members of congress, state and federal.  You can get their postal addresses at  https://www.govtrack.us.  Click on congress for current federal representatives and senators.  Let them know that you expect them to honor their oaths to defend our constitution and to respond appropriately if they’d like to continue to gain your support.

7.  Spend time with friends.  Get together with neighbors.  Host Monday night potlucks.  We may need to depend on each other a lot more in the future.  Forming relationships now and creating community can ease this sort of transition, should it occur.  Plus it is fun.  And if you wish, governmental study groups or affinity groups and forums can be formed.  Visit sites like Choose Democracy at  https://choosedemocracy.us/what-can-i-do/    And sometimes it simply helps to band together and share our feelings and experiences.  
One of my guiding lights, Peace Pilgrim, had wise advice for those with concerns over what the future might hold.  She said, “Stay in the present moment.  Do what needs to be done.  Do all of the good things you can each day.  And the future will unfold.”  For me, her words are a steadying influence. They bring me both direction and peace of mind.  
 

8.  Figure out a way to get yourself laughing again.  Play with some children.  Kids laugh hundreds of times a day.  Adults not so much. Watch and rewatch shows of your favorite comedians so you can laugh.  (I like Kathleen Madigan’s “Don’t Bother Jesus.”  Raised a catholic, she was supposed to first go to her priest for absolution.  She could also appeal to her guardian angelk available 24/7, just for her.  If the situation was dire enough, her priest might recommend a Saint, specific to her need.  If that wasn’t adequate and if she, the repentant one, was really good, she could hang with Mary.  But no one was really ever supposed to bother Jesus.)  
 

9.  Eat clean and get plenty of exercise.  Let those endorphins flow and build your own health and strength for the work and times ahead.   
 

10.  Spend time out in nature, even if it is your own back yard or the city park.  Let nature speak to you and guide you.  Answers to our problems always come to us more easily when we are out in nature.  As John Muir famously wrote, “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
 

Okay, one more, and probably most importantly,

11.  Imagine what you’d like to see.  Use your right brain.  Get creative.  (Remember that caffeine holds us in our left brain where we focus only on known solutions and tend to contract around fears about the future and worries about the past.  So consider herbal teas instead.)  Cultivate your right brain potential by laughing, day dreaming, and playing.  This is the realm of cooperation rather than competition.  It is expansive and collaborative and it cultivates and holds you in joy.  
(For more about accessing our right brains, check out Jill Bolte Taylor.   See either her TED talk  at  https://www.ted.com/speakers/jill_bolte_taylor   or read her book, Whole Brain Living at   https://www.drjilltaylor.com  )
(For more about the effects of caffeine on our brain's health and well being, read Michael Pollan’s This is Your Mind on Plants.  https://michaelpollan.com/books/this-is-your-mind-on-plants/) or read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.   https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-Walker/9781501144325)

We are all in this together, so together let’s find ways to create anew.  
*Love is stronger than fear.  We shift the energy with our mutual support, while listening within to find our unique service.  
*Create something alive and empowering.  Follow your calling.  Share your experiences and knowledge.  Ask for and give help.
*As we gather together in small groups of support and connection, we build resilience and find our clarity.  Doing this is disempowering to realms where fear and division reside.  
*Learn from the children.  They know how to laugh.  We’ve all witnessed kids cracking jokes even right after they’ve been in trouble.  There is always something fun and funny to see and do.  Charge into that.  
*I recently heard that heroes are just ordinary people.  They happened to be at the right place at the right time.  And they just simply held to their values and ethics.  
*Trust in the larger vision.  This is after all the Age of Aquarius.  It holds the promise of harmony, egalitarianism and understanding.  It was the dawning of this age that brought us the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, Gay Rights, AIM the American Indian Movement, and The Environmental Movement.  These movements now have deep roots that have firmly taken hold and risen strongly.  They have provided insights and support into the eons of beauty and equality and justice that lie ahead for us all.  But first we have to clear out the old.  And that dying grasp is making one last powerful lunge back into the unsustainability of massive consumption and resource depletion and all that that brings with it.  

Years ago I heard a talk by the feminist, Sonja Johnson.  She was driving into the city to work one day when she passed through an open space of beautiful green forest and meadow.  She was so moved by its beauty that she stopped the car and got out to marvel at the scene.  When she did this, she was swept up in a moment of profound epiphany and compared the truth of nature to the falseness of the city that she had been heading towards.  She found herself realizing and deeply understanding that we are all doing everything all wrong.  And there is truth to this, we have become completely lost in the citification, or the ugly-fication, of the natural world.  And our massive over consumption has become more than critical.  So, yes, things do need to change.  And we are here, older, wiser, ready to create what is new.  And creativity is fun.  It brings us joy.  I’ll leave you with these words from Louis hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life.  

“All is well.
Everything is working itself out for the highest good.
Out of this experience only good will come.
And I am safe.”

Josephine Laing
© 2025

Reclaiming Our Connection With Water

In 2010, PBS aired a show called "Next Year Country.  In it, Matt Ryan, a rainmaker from Mount Shasta was called to North Eastern Montana to come to the aid of three families who were experiencing a profound drought.  The situation had become so dire that they were about to loose their farms.  The rainmaker brought large metal pipes and laid them out on the ground moving them from time to time for two weeks.  Then he left.  The drought persisted throughout the rest of the state, but the North East Corner, where the three families lived had heavy rains and an abundant harvest. 

In 1983, Shirley MacLaine, the American Film Actress wrote an autobiographical account of her explorations into the infinite possibilities of life in her book, Out On A Limb.  There in the mountains of Peru, she tells of her experience in calling the weather to change.  Vicki Noble in Shakti Woman speaks of the same phenomena.  This inspired me to play with that energy as well.  And you know what?  It worked.  Standing in openhearted harmony with the beauty and sacred interconnection of all things, while engaging my imagination and holding to my intention, I have engaged my sense of command and parted the clouds or called the rain. 

Last year in my women's circle, we all went out back with some simple dowsing rods and walked around an old abandoned two story brick building.  The dowsing rods swung together and touched every time one of us walked across an irrigation line or water pipe.  It took us a while to realize that that was why our rods were crossing, but then we saw the spigot and the meter.  The rods also swung right where the vetch was growing lushly in the sparse field.  Vetch has deep roots that reach down and pull water up to the top layers of the soil.

My grandfather was a 'Water Witcher.'  Most of the folks in his part of the Midwest didn't want to have anything to do with psychic ability and abruptly dismissed it out of hand.  But somehow, dowsing slipped through the cracks of acceptability.  Using an old forked willow branch, he would hold it in his hands, letting the end that would have been closest to the root zone point out in front of him.  Then he would walk the land.  He would start off for the places where water would likely be, and then he'd move along until the branch dipped sharply down toward the ground and told him the life giving liquid was near.  All the farmers in his section of the country called him to help find a good spot whenever a well was needed. 

As we round the bend into the last months of our rainy season, here in California, where the reservoirs are still low from the last few years of drought, I am wondering how many of us, when we see those big cumulus clouds overhead would prefer not to have it rain today.  Perhaps we just washed the car or have plans for a garden party.  Maybe the new roof is not yet on that house we are building for that young couple with the baby.  Or, perhaps we are thinking how there is still no rain.  'No rain.'  "Not enough to do the trick."  How influential are our thoughts and words?  How deep do these infinite possibilities run?  My experiences have shown me that the subtle energies of nature are willing to join their wisdoms with ours.  But we do need to step into concert with them, open up and ask.  When we do, they respond.  So I invite you to join me in reclaiming our connection with water.  Let's use our imagination to feel and smell,taste, hear, thrill at and call the rain?

© Josephine Laing, 2015

Women's Spirituality, Reclaiming Feminine Divinity

Hello everyone,

My friend, Einar, helped me make another video for you to enjoy.  This one is on the Women's Spirituality Movement.  When we women gather together, we empower each other. And that is just what the world needs now, don't you think?

© Josephine Laing, 2014