Summer has become intolerable for me. It is just too damn hot and I am miserable, sweaty and cranky, much of the time. But when my little pooch Poppy starts panting in the heat, her little pink tongue drooping out of her open mouth, I know the Dog Days of Summer have arrived.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is sizzling at its most intense right now. This is the horrid weather when, according to Noel Coward, only “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid day sun.”

The term “dog days” was coined by the ancient Romans, who called these hot and humid days caniculares dies or “days of the dogs” after the star Sirius, Canis Majoris, the “Greater Dog,” which is one of the hunting dogs of Orion, the Hunter in the constellation that bears his name. The ancient Egyptians named Sirius the “dog star” after their god Osiris, who was often depicted as having the head of a dog.

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. In fact, it is so bright that it was once thought that it produced heat. In the summer, Sirius rises and sets with the sun, and beginning in July, the two stars are in conjunction. In the latitude of the Mediterranean region, this period coincided with sweltering days that were plagued with disease and discomfort.

The Dog Days are officially counted as 20 starting days before the conjunction and continuing to 20 days afterward which spans July and August, which are hottest and muggiest part of the season. The ancients believed that the heat from Sirius added to the heat of the sun during this period of conjunction, created a stretch of especially hot and sultry weather. Hence, Dog Days.

The conjunction of Sirius with the sun varies somewhat with latitude. And the “precession of the equinoxes” (a gradual drifting of the constellations over time) means that the constellations today are not in exactly the same place in the sky as they were in ancient Egypt and Rome. Today, the Dog Days occur during the period between July 3 and August 11.

Although the Dog Days are certainly the warmest period of the summer, the heat is not due to the added radiation from a far-away star, regardless of its brightness. Nor is summer’s heat in the Northern Hemisphere caused by our proximity to the sun. Earth is actually furthest away from the solar heat lamp in summer. But, because of the tilt of its axis in relation to the sun, we are blasted by a direct hit of fiery heat.

As I write this, the heat index is upward of 115 degrees. This summer is especially bad, with extreme heat waves sweeping much of North America. Our tempers are on boil and even the most innocuous disturbance is enough to send us over the emotional edge.

The entire planet is heating up right now. Literally. Global warming is playing havoc with weather patterns, which in turn, affects all plant and animal life. The debate about the greenhouse effect is also revved up to high.

In fact, all disagreements are reaching a boiling point, as is evidenced by the ever increasing and escalating geo-religious-cultural-political-economic conflicts around the globe. The world seems to be populated by a pack of wild rabid dogs fighting over scraps.

Time out!

Cool down!

Let us turn our attention to positive solutions and focus our thoughts and actions toward creating peace. Peace of Mind. Peace of
Heart. Peace on Earth. There is still a chance for peace.

With best blessings for keeping it cool,

xxQMD

The Queen’s Chronicles: SAY SOMETHING!

It is so damn easy to feel depressed, frustrated and disillusioned right now. These are terrible times of artificial division, manipulated resentment and palpable fear. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about warring religious, economic, political or nationalistic factions. Not about the economy. Not about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of opposition — war or peace, right or wrong, rich or poor, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more holistic, congruent manner.

These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who see the big picture to decide, to commit, to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity and embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate.

Because there really is still a chance for peace — and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. It is ultimately up to us, each one of us, all of us, individually and together, to create the kind of world in which we want to live — starting right here, right now. Within the context of our immediate lives, within the concentric circles of our ordinary interactions.

I once gave a presentation in Washington, D.C. about creating peace in our world and in our lives. During the question and answer period, a woman commented that she wished that she could drop her job and just devote herself to working for peace.” “What do you do?” I asked her. “I’m a therapist,” she replied. Surely she has many opportunities in her professional capacity to create peace every day.

Some might argue that we don't have any choice in this upside down dangerous world and that we can't effect what will happen. But even if we can't immediately alter the course of human events on the world stage, we can certainly create change in our own lives and in all of the lives that we touch. And our thoughts are the seeds of that change.

Dr. Christiane Northrup writes, “Use your thoughts wisely. Understand
their power. Thoughts have a tendency to become their physical equivalent. This is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Another one is the law of attraction, which states that 'like attracts like.' Because it is consciousness that creates reality, the kind of consciousness you hold — your vibration — actually creates the kind of life you're living.”

So our first order of business must be to stay positive. To entertain only positive possibilities. To imagine only affirmative alternatives. To surround ourselves with wholly uplifting, life-affirming people and influences. To align ourselves solely with the greater good so that our actions will be born of only the finest of our best intentions.

What we all have to do from now on is to stay alert, stay centered, keep connected and most important of all, keep talking. Talking, writing, protesting keeps the light of truth and tolerance shining upon the hidden agendas of governments, industries, institutions and individuals. Silence, like the dark of night, shelters nefarious deeds. Silence forgives violence.

I have been haunted recently by the words written by a Protestant minister after the downfall of the Nazi regime. “First they came for the gays. I am not gay, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Gypsies. I am not a Gypsy, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Jews. I am not a Jew, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Catholics. I am not a Catholic, so I didn’t say anything. When they finally came for me, there was no one left to say anything.”

Be bold.
Make a statement.
Make a stand.
Make a difference.

In light of the widespread oppression, manipulation, intimidation that surrounds us today, we most certainly need to say something. We need. In fact, to talk to everyone who we meet, actually engage on a human level with those who we encounter as we make it through our day. Not just our families, friends and colleagues — those of presumed like-minds — but also the shoe repair guy, the waitress at the coffee shop, the post office clerk, the bag boy at the super market.

A good example is Dianne, one of the wonderful people who regularly attends my healing circles. She not only prays for the homeless men and women who live on her block, she calls them each by name. I am so impressed and inspired by her personal outreach to the “untouchables.” Everybody is, after all, somebody.

If we ignore, exploit or patronize those people whose lives intersect with ours, how can we expect international relations to be more civilized? We need to walk our talk wherever we go, whatever we do, remembering always, that by doing so we do make a difference. Let us each be a sun, sending our caring energy out into the world, shedding light wherever we go. You never know whom you might touch with the radiance of your warmth.

I have an outgoing message on my answering machine that doesn’t even say, “Hello.” It just starts right in with, “You know there really is still a chance for peace and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. So let’s make peace — in our homes, in our own hearts, in our relationships, in our communities, in all of our dealings and in the world. Peace be with us all.”

Much to my surprise, the very people whom I never would have thought would respond favorably have. The overwhelmingly positive reactions that I have received from workmen, telephone solicitors and service personnel has been an important lesson about the necessity to reach out beyond the boundaries of our biases, assumptions and expectations.

A few weeks ago, I came home to a message from the plumber who was making an appointment to fix my sink. After listening to my taped pep talk, he answered in his gravely Brooklyn brogue, “Yeah, what is this war all about, anyway? Why are we fighting those people? They never hurt us.” This, from someone I would have assumed to be a proponent of the war.

The electrician, another guy who really shocked me, loves the message and calls in daily just to hear it! Once I was here when he called and when I picked up, he complained. “Let me call back again,” he implored. “I want to hear the message. It makes me feel good.” The reason, he explained, is that it is not political. It is personal. And it touches his heart.

But why was I surprised? People are just people, after all. When you think about it, all people are of a like-mind when it comes to living a life unthreatened by hatred and violence. The urgency for war only seems enticing when it is waged elsewhere. Ask anyone. "Do you want bombs and missiles to blow up your house?"

Every parent has the right to put her/his child to sleep each night without any risk of that child being shot, trapped in the midst of some hostile crossfire — be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ireland, Angola or the South Bronx. No one wants to live and work in a war zone — in Palestine, Bosnia, Zimbabwe, the World Trade Center or East L.A.

So, buck up and say what is on your mind. The more you do so, the more empowered you will feel.

We become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
—Aristotle


With blessings of speaking your truth,

xxQMD

The Queen’s Chronicles: WALKING THE TALK

I have just returned from my annual 9/11 chant for peace event — A 911 EMERGENCY CALL FOR PEACE. For seven years, this day has been used as a call to war. I want to reverse that energy and use it as a wake up call, to prod us to think, walk, talk, act for peace.

Our ceremony was moving and sweet. We blessed each other with Tap Roots Oil to honor the fact that we are rooted in each other. That we are the support and sustenance for each other. That we are rooted together in the Earth.

We burnt herbs to dispel all the negative energy that surrounds us. And invited in the sweet spirits of peace. And offered thanks for our lives.

I gave each participant two shamanic amulets: one, a tongue of fire (lengue de fuego) bean seed to help us speak our truth. Every since 9/11, there have been signs in the subway saying, “If you see something, say something.” Yes! We all see so much that is wrong. It is incumbent upon us to speak up. To speak our truth. To walk our talk. To put our money where our mouth is.

The other amulet was a crystal from the last ceremony that I performed at the World Trade Center. A crystal that had absorbed the sunlight of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. It is reminder of the presence of light in the dark. A metaphor for the possibility of hope in despair.

I created a labyrinth of salt. As we each walked into the spiral carrying our seed and crustal, we focused on our intention for peace. In the center, we lit candles and made blessings and prayers for peace. As we walked back out from the middle, we thought of ways in which we might be the instruments of peace in our lives and in the greater world.

We chanted and chanted and chanted for peace — for the chance for peace. And by the end of the evening, we were awash in the glow of loving kindness. Our group was a living legacy of that original 9/11.

*

Seven years ago, when the planes flew into the Twin Towers, I was out of the country. It took me more than a week to be able to get past the sealed borders and return home. One thought consumed my mind during that agonizing week of separation from my house, pets, friends and the city that I loved. I craved to be of service to my community.

For 26 years, I had served New York City as an urban shaman. The New Yorker magazine had even dubbed me “the unofficial commissioner of public spirit of New York City. The World Trade Center had been the site of half of the seasonal celebration rituals that I had facilitated and so I was especially bereft at the loss of my public altar.

So in response to the terrible tragedy and in memory of all died that day, I undertook a “Walk Your Talk Pilgrimage.” One by one, I engaged the people whose paths I crossed: friends, the UPS man, the guard at the bank, the waitress at the coffee shop, the washing machine repairman, the people who actually live, work and love in New York City. We shared amazingly intimate, sweetly profound conversations that inevitably ended in a hug or an extra-firm handshake.

It was the human face of this tragedy and its resulting extraordinary state of affairs that I chose to focus on. I did not want to lose track of the myriad emotional and spiritual interconnections that people are capable of making — with each other, with their own best selves, with the greater universal good of all.

I experienced this kinder, gentler city the minute I got back to Brooklyn. A delivery guy was just leaving my building as I arrived home with all my heavy travel bags. When he saw me trying to wrestle them up the stairs, he ran to help me, thank goodness.

He wouldn’t accept a tip and insisted that he just wanted to help. When I asked him if all his relations were safe, he said that they were all fine, but that he felt terrible, because he wanted to do something to help. “You just did,” I reminded him. He was extremely pleased with the notion that this, too, was peace making.

On the way to the coffee shop with friends the next morning, I ran into my neighbor Monifa walking with another woman. We stopped right there in the middle of the street, traffic not withstanding. (And nobody honked.) "How are you?" "How are you?" "No one dead?" "Everyone OK?" We ran our eyes up and down each other looking for signs, for clues of damage. We all six embraced in relief and mutual comfort and then we introduced our selves to the ones in this circle who we didn’t know. We hugged first and asked names later! A sign, surely, of sanity in psychotic times. (And still nobody honked.)

I went to visit the 2nd Fire precinct in my neighborhood to pay my respects. The neighboring community had blanketed the sidewalk up and down the street with offerings of flowers, candles, cakes, tears and messages — one written on World Trade Center stationery and sent as a thank you for saving his life on that fateful day of reckoning.

I shook the hands of one traumatized but sturdy young man and thanked him. I engaged his misting eyes with my own and told him that I prayed that their dedication and sacrifice would be the foundation of a new way to live together as a world community. He locked my eyes and squeezed my hand and bit his quivering lip. He had seen quite enough of war, thank you very much.

At the bank I greeted the lobby guard as usual. I asked him if he was OK. “Not really,” he told me as his eyes filled with tears. His stepfather had been in the building. He escaped, but was shaken to the core. The guard (who I talk to practically every day and whose name I am ashamed to admit I do not know) said that he felt that his step dad would never be the same, like some Viet Nam vets whom he has known who will never be the same.

Then he confessed to me something remarkable. Actually, it was the most profound thing that I have heard anyone anywhere say on the subject of peace. “I hate my uncle,” he told me. “And I have hated my uncle for so long that now I hate anyone who looks like my uncle. ‘Why for you got to go look like my uncle?’ he quoted himself in his West Indian lilt. “Now I have to hate you.” He looked me right in the eyes and said that he realizes now how wrong that is. That he can no longer hate all uncle look-alikes. That he is now even working on trying not to hate his uncle.

I called Judith, one of my counseling clients, who was feeling particularly despondent. A nurse, she had immediately ran to one of the hospitals on Tuesday morning to lend a hand, but after the first batch of the injured passed through the emergency room there was no one else to help. She was desperate to move out of this place of feeling helpless. “I wish there was something that I could do.”

“You could call Linda,” I suggested, knowing that she had had a recent painful falling out with a good friend of hers. She allowed as she had known deep-down all along that in light of everything that has just happened, she should, she wanted to call. But she couldn’t. “Just do it, honey. Make peace.” And she did! And they did.

I witnessed an intense white light, an inner glow that emanated from the people of New York City during the weeks of my walking and talking. We had risen to an unthinkable occasion and we liked ourselves for doing so. We reached out to our neighbors and we found that we liked them, too. And everyone really liked how good it feels to feel good about themselves and each other. People want desperately to do right, to do good, to be good, to live right.

In the hardest of times, we managed to transcend what makes us human and embodied what makes us humane. We saw the putrid smoke of destruction burn clean with the spirit of true communion. We in our beleaguered town have tasted grace. We recognized it for what it is and we cherished living in its beneficence.

So many people have expressed to me their apprehension that as things returned to normal, people might lose some of their newfound consciousness of perspective and interdependence. But why go back there? What used to be normal didn’t really pan out all that well, it seems to me. That old normal isn’t nearly good enough for us who are divine and beautiful beings. Our challenge and our joy is to make this miracle of living in caring community be the new normal.

*

And tonight, seven years later, that vision was embodied in our dear, intimate, communal circle of chanting for peace. There IS still a chance for peace. We are that chance.

With blessings of harmony and helpfulness,

xxQMD