There is a time for listening instead of wishing, or even planning.  When dreams take me to a dead-end, when my impulse only repeats what’s already been done, it is time to be still and listen.  I say out loud the things I know, what I trust, and leave the edges of knowledge alone.  It isn’t time to push though it comes so naturally to me.

The coyote is grateful for her bit of meat.  The deer chews the sweetened grain.  The crow tells anyone who wants to know that I am outside.  The cedar brushes my cheek as I pass.  Mullen bends in my direction and dumps her wealth of seeds.   Echinacea has never been so pink.  All is well.  And I wait.

This is not the feeling of an impending earthquake, though that might happen.  No “other shoe” is about to drop, though we can rest assured that by morning more bombs will explode and take the lives of children and their worthy parents.  Someone I love is sick, but this feeling is not even about that.

At the moment something in the spirit is very strict.  Usually she can be persuaded to give a little slack, more grandmother than mother.  Not this time.  She talks to me about integrity, honesty, faith.  She promises nothing,  isn’t in the mood to bargain, or trade.  She isn’t in the mood for my whining, either. 

Spirit isn’t angry, but she is very serious.  I stay close to her, and she explodes my mind with understanding, makes me wise about a choice.  She fills my heart with love. 

“You are about this,” she says, “and not that.”  Right.  Got it.  Let’s do this.  

In case you did not check out the other winners of  TISBA, the link is below.  If you go to the site, notice that there is a page for reviews for a few of the books.  
I admire the founder of this award, Lois Wetzel, who is the other of several spiritual books (find them on Amazon).  I don't know what is required to put together an award program, solicit authors who have written powerful books, and attend to the details with grace and an artist's eye.  Whatever it takes, Lois has.
We who publish independently are in a new world of our creation.  There are books that are well-written and ones that are not.  This sort of award helps the reader distinguish what might be useful or enjoyable from the others.  And it helps the writer.
 Each of the winners adds something to the understanding of how spirit works, how it can work. 
Start with the grand price winner, Gerry Starnes' book Spirit Paths.
http://www.theindiespiritualbookawards.com/ 

August – in the northern hemisphere it is the season of the sun, and those beautiful ceremonies that celebrate this time of year. 

When I first saw the Sundance Tree, I knew I was seeing the mythological World Tree in its living essence, but this knowing didn’t prevent me from feeling shocked with awe.  As the people prayed, make the sacrifice of blood and effort, I was moved to tears.  When they lined up behind each dancer as he did what dancers do, I cried again.  “We are still here,” I said, not really knowing quite what I meant. 

The Tree never lost its first impact.  Each year was the same, and I placed my own flesh in tiny packets on the tree; my sacrifice, my prayer for what I love.  If you think these are only ideas, you haven’t stood inside the inner circle when the dance is finished.  So much falls away, and yet every inch of skin, every hair is electric with energy. 

This does not exclude remembering other trees, including the one on which the Christ was sacrificed.  I wonder if I ought not to include Eve, who had the gift of talking with snakes, but maybe only those who make it up the tree.  

There are other traditions about this season.  Some tribes believe the summer ceremonies are also meant to help the sun, that unless we make these sacrifices, she might falter.  Remember the book “House Made of Dawn?”  It is an old novel, but in it the hero runs for himself, runs for the sake of the sun in the traditional way of his people. 

There are other ceremonial methods, ones not published in books, to express our gratitude for the light of the sun, for all the reverberations that light means to us.  We give her our sacrifice, our focused attention, our gratitude.  She blesses us with life. 

As I listen to scientists talk about the cycles of the sun, that we might be entering a grand minimum which comes once every four hundred years or so, I think about these traditions.  They are  our acknowledgement that we don’t own the earth.  None of us can will the seed to sprout or make whales sing.  We can do our part to create the right conditions, but that’s about it. 

I want to nourish this felt gratitude.  When I feel grateful for the sun, the trees, the open flower and ripening seed, I am full.  I feel loved, and loving; close to God.  

Try this.  When the morning sun rises, lift your hand or bow your head.  Let the awesome power of creation have its place of majesty.  See what happens.