Next Step Integral Community Seminar morning practice poems from Whidbey Institute, August 2011.

2. Sweet gentle forest, teach my heart to listen who hums who chirps who chatters who listens who asks Teach me to be present to be presence Open calm awareness listens I am present to greet all anew.

3. New beginnings flow participate fully to create functional community People open to each other creating a new dance for the future In the Magnificence that We Are Anything is possible!

4. Morning consecration Birds singing the prayers of dawn Leaves reaching out to give their blessing I am touched by grace in nature's heart Finding my own heartbeat again The human race receiving those prayers and blessings moving together so that each may find their heartbeat until they become One.

5. My family, together in stillness as it has always been Find place in/with nature family in community with all beings One sole Being One sole Earth One unseen Sun.

6. Space Within enclosure through it enclosure with absolute spaciousness. Absolute, the all that is beyond all relative space that contains, brings forth the new Contracting - opening - contracting opening in birth Being as confession.

7. Silence calls so persistently I am absorbed Thirsty for home Home again To feel for what is natural Out of the ordinary life This is home

8. Human silence the forest speaks Listen... The forest Cathedral God is here Consciousness evolving Gorgeous nature may I enter? A door opens each morning the presence invites us to step through ourselves Home!

9. I am fully alive in this moment with fears as tall as the trees but moss grows only on those things that do not move forward so I move forward into the unknown fear aside and trust in the One that IS finding You, creating We the fear transforms into radiant perfection.

10. Yesterday black and white, smoke cough, obsessing thought; Today plasma screen, chirping bird, scurrying bunny. All me. Tomorrow, trail blazers path, love, open, together, tomorrow yes tomorrow us So goes the drama of this human life and longings Yet, still now here I rest in the always already perfection of now. Embarking, arriving this day always waiting - Tea calls us to breakfast.

11. Openness, luminous outpouring, abundant, generous, empty Clarity - patterns and colours that call to each other, lean into each other, contrast with and require each other Compassion - as my feet fall upon the earth that I might place them each with gentle lightness as She gives Nature and space to see opening our eye to all that just is. A universe of possibilities a Feast for our senses a Place to make together.