After spending some time over the Christmas holiday contemplating the direction of my Substack this year, a few words and themes came to mind. Both from my own life experience and from those of you that have sent me personal questions and comments. I’ve also been moved by the deeper wisdom available to us through the natural and spiritual laws that govern our human existence.
I’d like to offer my lifelong learning of these highly intelligent Spiritual teachings in the most grounded and practically useful ways this year. Using every day language. To take a deeper look into our collective ancient traditions and even talk about how those traditions need to change to meet what’s new that we are facing collectively to take action in our lives today.
We may not find what we need from our old systems and ways of being.
It’s undeniable that we are living in hard times.
If it’s true that the ecological destruction, political and economical polarity are projected reflections of the conflict and stress in our own minds then it makes sense for us to start there.
We all need mind training.
Our minds are undisciplined. It feels like all of us are going through our own apocalyptic process of change. If we don’t change, we will suffer. Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We need to adapt and transform to what is happening all around us. In both our own personal lives, at work, in our romantic partnerships, as parents and in our communities.
If we want to see and experience change in our lifetime, to feel peace and find freedom from the chaos, I think even the most spiritually immature or inexperienced among us realize that a better future for all of us won’t come from the way we’ve been living.
To shift from what we have been doing and believing for centuries by mostly focusing on ourselves, our personal physical and financial wellbeing and living from a self serving place to radically shift towards a more forgiving, compassionate and become more aligned with our highly intelligent ecosystem in service to the wellbeing of the whole.
I can’t help but look to nature to help us learn the lessons we are reluctant to see when our own personal theories and practices have failed. We keep resolving to change and we don’t. Or at least not for long.
Maybe it’s time for us to be more radical.
To consider starting a daily practice to shift our thinking.
To see where we’ve gone wrong, to look beyond ourselves and our bodies to our natural landscape and our ancient universal spiritual teachings in new ways. To become radically resilient in ways we can hardly imagine today by tapping deeper into our being or vertical dimension this year.
The word radical, comes from the Latin radix "root," and in fact, radical and root are synonymous as technical terms in fields such as math and linguistics to mean an extreme change. Living in a mentally and physically healthy world might even be considered a revolutionary act, but it will first happen inwardly and peacefully in an evolutionary way by us resetting our own individual inner thermostats.
Our news only seems to take the current temperature in the world, but if we want to change we need to reset our own thermostats.
How do we do that?
What we need is a miracle.
To shift how we see and do things first in our minds and the world to experience a different outcome because what we are doing in separation and how we are living now is simply not working.
Maybe it’s better to use an example in nature and you know how much I love trees.
There’s one tree in particular that may help us out with our particular current circumstances.
An amazingly adaptive tree in Florida called the gumbo-limbo tree. Native to South Florida and the tropical offshore islands, the gumbo-limbo is a large semi-evergreen tree. It can reach sixty feet in height, but it's usually seen smaller in landscape plantings. It’s sometimes referred to as “the Tourist Tree” because the bark is red and peeling like a sunburned tourist.
The thing I love most about it is the radical thing it does when it’s caught in a storm, a tornado or a hurricane. Instead of bending like most trees which move with the storm and hope to spring back into shape after it weathers the storm but often causes them to be knocked over or be uprooted onto homes and cause even more destruction, it has a different strategy.
It allows its branches to drop off immediately.
The gumbo-limbo tree survives by adapting to the blowing wind by lightening it’s load. It somehow knows that if it can keep vertical, keep its trunk solid, stable and upright, that its horizontal parts can be dropped and it won’t get completely overturned or destroyed by the circumstances or unexpected storm.
It will quietly bounce back from any storm.
“I believe resilience is the secular word for faith — the ability to trust and let go.”
—RICHARD ROHR
Can we be more like this tree and take a radically resilient approach to withstand storms and recover from difficulty and hardship?
Not by using the old ways of trying to put a positive spin on things, to try to keep our heads up and be flexible, to plod on as best we can or recover when the storm passes.
We can do better. Do something different to adapt in a better way.
The prophetic path is not about coaching slogans, cultural clichés, manifesting our personal dreams or easy answers with superficial talking points.
It’s about a much DEEPER attention to our vertical or depth dimension both within ourselves and ALL of life.
That is what the theme of the Field will be for this year is.
Radical change in our lives.
To cut off what about us is threatening our very existence for the wellbeing of the whole. Our unrealistic preoccupations with everything only on the Horizontal.
The questions for us to consider as we enter this new year are how can we adapt and tread more lightly through the storms that pop up in our lives?
What are we carrying that is a burden that we can put down what is no longer serving us?
What is most essential for us to have with us through whatever comes next?
How can we let go of all that is excess and weighing us down preventing us from feeling free to experience what is at the depth and the core trunk of our being?
What’s deepest in us is LOVE.
Our natural inheritance is PEACE.
By focusing on what is MOST essential at the roots of our being we can mature into wise old trees and human beings that demonstrate this love and resilience no matter what storms we may face now or in the future together.
It’s a spiritual journey towards maturity that accepts and doesn’t judge ours or others immaturity and imperfections.
It takes steps towards maturity in a way that may be perceived to others as imaginative, different or radical. It may not be what everyone else is doing, but it’s what we can do to make the changes we wish to see in ourselves and in the world.
We don’t need to have all of the answers now.
We are in the dark immature phase and we can’t possibly know what will happen next.
We just need to be willing to adapt and be guided.
To change.
To be open minded. Teachable. Humble.
Unlike politicians, experts or intellectuals vying to be right or to convince others to think the way they do and support them, prophets are more like insiders who love a community or family enough to critique it in love.
Are we willing to do that?
To take a critical look at ourselves, our family systems, our relationships or culture in a new way?
Not to defend them because we love them too much to do that any more.
To stop making excuses and defending ourselves for being the way we are.
The habits, the stubbornness not allowing us to forgive others and the need to be right.
That is our ego.
We also don’t need to make others wrong for doing things differently, or to be overly critical to shame or harm others by being judgemental, but instead to discern what needs to be looked at it from the edge of the inside with love and compassion.
To listen to the canaries in our coal mines, to the symptoms of our bodies, to what our environment is telling us and make quick, decisive RADICAL changes immediately.
As in RIGHT now and continuously.
Daily doses of love. ALL year long.
To aim for peace and love in the aftermath of the destruction or before the next storm hits.
I have been thinking of how I can best help do this, and one idea came to me late last year. It’s to show up daily and audibly share 9 minutes of ancient wisdom for modern times.
To create either an easy to listen to audio or video reminder of our True Nature, because it feels like we are living in a world on fire and reading a weekly inspiring piece won’t be quite enough for us to make the necessary changes.
We need new habits and for that we need to do it daily.
There is a saying in a Course In Miracle that spending 5 minutes in the morning connecting with our vertical or being dimension (the Holy Spirit in Judeo-Christian terms) is enough to ensure that it will be with our thought forms throughout the day.
So we can make radical change in small increments.
As the flames of unjust societies, humanitarian disasters, and ecological crises flicker around us, it is easy to feel helpless and overwhelmed.
How can we respond to this destructive era with wisdom, love, and peace?
The path ahead will be challenging, but we will walk it together.
That is why this year I intend to create a community with these short daily meditations, stories and parables available to explore contemplation as a way to build this radical resilience AND to help others master this inner shift from fear to love.
We’ll tend to our inner flame so we can stand in solidarity with the world without burning up or out.
We’ll be fully present to what is presenting itself in our lives to grow more resilient — teaching us how to sustain inner strength, purpose, and connectedness.
To choose love and peace over anger, denial, and despair. To forgive others and change ourselves. To imagining a better future that begins by finding it within ourselves not just working on our outsides or our bodies —only then, can we help others tend to their own inner flame.
That is the definition of a miracle in ACIM. To see things differently and shift our perception. To change our own minds and thermostats first and then we’ll experience a different temperature in our lives and the world.
Together we can live that better future out into the world.
“The meaning of MIRACLE is an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.”
Definition of a Miracle ~ Webster Dictionary
Something that happens outside of the realm of human understanding of what is possible from the known physical laws that govern the earth.
According to Christian Science it’s “A divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law.” Mary Baker Eddy —the discoverer and founder of Christian Science—believe that miracles are natural. They’re just not widely understood. “The scientific manifestation of power is from the divine nature and is not supernatural, since Science is an explication of nature,” she wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
“Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known to us in nature.”
St. Augustine.
Harvard medical doctor Jeffrey Rediger—who has been investigating “miracle” cases for more than fifteen years—wrote this in a 2016 Washington Post editorial: “Miracles only contradict what we know of nature at this point in time … I believe that miracles are actually consistent with mental and spiritual laws that we are only beginning to study.”
One “miracle” experience that was published in the Christian Science Journal by Lona Ingwerson in September 2014 was about her family’s home. It was caught in a wildfire as Laguna Beach, California, burned in 1993. Whipped by gusty winds, the fire was moving at 160 kilometres an hour and consuming homes every few seconds. Lona recalled praying to ward off feelings of discouragement, since they believed their home was already lost.
To her surprise the next morning a news channel showed a picture of their house standing alone amidst the wreckage. When asked about what had happened, the local fire chief stated he “could not discount divine intervention” due to the speed of the fire and because it had actually touched the house. “The fire did indeed touch our house on three sides and then stopped. When the flames died down the house stood, untouched.” Her family was humbled to realize that it was the prayers of their worldwide church family that had stopped the flames.
There are many stories of that one inexplicable house left standing like this red-roofed home in Hawaii that was reported on in NPR:
Sometimes when things feel overwhelming I like to read about miracles or hard to explain divine intervention from every day people that are especially skeptical or not “believers” like the scribe of ACIM - Dr. Helen Shucman who as an agnostic or self described as an atheist spent 7 years dictating the voice in her head who claimed to be Jesus and was once quoted as saying: “I don’t believe it, but I know it’s true”.
Those of us who have trouble explaining what they experienced are the most compelling.
Here is one more example:
Policeman Tyler Beddoes was in for the shock of his lifetime when he and other officers arrived at an accident scene in March 2015, where a car had overturned in a body of water.
Beddoes, explained what happened when he and fellow cops went into frigid waters to approach the car and look for survivors. That's when he told Faithwire that he and the other officers all heard something incredible.
“We all heard an adult female voice, which was a calm voice saying, ‘Help me, help me,'” Beddoes said. “This voice really guided us to the car and gave us hope that whoever was calling out was alive.”
When they reached the car, there was a woman who had been deceased for 14 hours — but an 18-month-old baby was still alive in the backseat. In the end, that mysterious voice helped save the baby.
Now I see those extraordinary events as the effect of a deeper cause.
Coming from our own minds, as a natural expression of love and this year I’d like to share it 365 different ways to experience them with you as prescribed in “A Course In Miracles”.
The effect of a healing is caused by a healed mind.
A shift in perception of who and what we are.
I wrote about A Course In Miracles this year, if you missed it you can read it here.
In a nutshell, while there are many sources and spiritual texts available to us in the world, to me it is THE most powerful blueprint available to us to guide us to this inner peace and freedom more than any other book I’ve ever encountered.
This year I feel guided after taking into consideration your feedback to commit to creating an audible version for my written Substacks at least twice a month.
Also with an option to view a casual daily audio and or video to loosely follow the daily workbook lessons in the Course and weave in a lifetime of studying other sacred ancient spiritual texts like the Christian Bible, the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, Sufism, Budhism, the Tao, Zen, Judaism, Native American Teachings, Psychology, Geography, History, Philosophy and any other parallel teachings that support the daily lesson.
I’m calling it “Nine Minutes with Nona”.
Simply because it’s my take on it. It’s a personal reflection and you don’t need to study or read ACIM to benefit from it. It’s a way of seeing ourselves and each other differently. I’m often told by strangers that “Nona” means grandmother in Italian. So this is grandmotherly fun kind of wisdom. With personal stories and all I have to share on this topic as I’ve learned from other teachers.
Nona in also Latin is the number 9. I was born on the 9th and the number 9 emphasizes a harmonious balance between taking thoughtful action and seeking inner wisdom.
Throughout the year I will gently be encouraging individuals to make a positive impact on the world while fostering their own self-awareness and understanding.
For any donation with a minimum donation of $9 per month, I’ll be offering these daily audios or videos along with accompanied different practices, meditations, ideas, prayers to expose you to a wide variety of different lineages that share the same universal truths in different ways to help transform your mind and for you to find what resonates best with you to go off in any direction you choose next year or to dig deeper into what feels good or true to you.
It’s about being shown something radical and new about who and what we are and why we’re here.
I will be digging deep into my treasure chest of our collective inherited ancient wisdom, stories, parables, analogies and metaphors I’ve gleaned over the past 5 decades that have helped change my life.
These unchanging eternal Universal truths from the perspective of a farm girl with a love of nature. A geographer. A History teacher. A mother. A wife. A daughter and a friend. And as a sober person who has suffered chronic pain and healed from a life-threatening depression to a feeling of freedom, peace and inner wellbeing naturally by finding a God of my own understanding.
Spiritually.
ONE day at a time.
That is really what the metaphysical text A Course In Miracles is all about.
To help us shift from a thought system based in FEAR to one based in LOVE.
To find inner peace.
As most of you know I consider it to be one of the greatest spiritual texts on planet earth and I suspect because it’s written in the Judeo-Christian language that can be difficult to decipher so my videos are not meant to replace them, but rather they are meant to accompany the text but to do them in a plainspoken way.
They will be recorded daily starting mid-January and will be accessible to you for the year. I am still working on the best platform and way to stream them to you along with master classes on different topics, it may be a separate app or you tube, but for now please respond to this email if you’re interested in being a part of this pioneering Beta group so you won’t be left out and I’ll send you more details next week.
If now is not the time, you may want to try next year the invitation is open.
To be clear, you don’t need to buy or even follow along with the book, but if you’d like to get started tomorrow on the daily workbook, this App created by “The Foundations For Inner Peace” with a free text or upgrade to an audio option for a small annual fee.
Today, I’m simply looking for a show of hands.
I’ll be recording these videos and audios for 2025 either way, but if there is enough interset, I’d love to help anyone keen to get started now with a small group of you and we’ll have a private call with this small group once a month so I can answer your questions as we go along.
This Substack of course will continue on separately as it has been, so if you’re not interested in the daily videos or audios or masterclasses you can simply follow along as you have been. I will share one video from them a month so you can sample what is being shared.
I’d like to thank you for following me this year, especially to those of you who have supported my work financially.
You may not realize it, but as a Minister with no parish or church I am entirely dependent on the generosity of others to help me keep the lights on and pay my rent to continue to offer community groups and one on one counselling at no charge for those that need it the most.
Your annual $100 voluntary contribution to “The Field” is essential for me to continue on, so if you have been reading for free I hope you’ll consider upgrading your subscription to paid for 2024 here or give a gift subscription to a friend…
THANK YOU VERY MUCH, it means the world to me to do this work and I hope to have the chance to keep writing here and sharing with all of you in the new 9 minute format starting next week.
I’d like to leave you with a special blessing from the amazing preacher Nadia Boltz-Webber whose grit I love and compassion I can’t seem to get enough of these days.
Happy New Year dear friends.
See you next week!
With love,
Nona
A New Year’s Blessing for radical realists.
As you enter this new year, as you pack away the Christmas decorations and get out your stretchy pants,
as you face the onslaught of false promises offered you through new disciplines and elimination diets,
as you grasp for control of yourself and your life and this chaotic world -
May you remember that there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love.
Yearly reminder: there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love.
There is no resolution that, if kept, will make life less uncertain and allow you to control your aging parents and your teenage children and the way other people act.
So this year (as every year),
May you just skip the part where you resolve to be better do better and look better this time.
Instead, may you give yourself the gift of really, really low expectations. Not out of resignation, but out of generosity.
May you expect so little of yourself that you can be super proud of the smallest of accomplishments.
May you expect so little of the people in your life that you actually notice and cherish every small, lovely thing about them.
May you expect so little of the service industry that you notice more of what you do get and less of what you don't and then just tip really well anyhow.
May you expect to get so little out of 2024 that you can celebrate every single thing it offers you, however small.
Because you deserve joy and not disappointment.
So, I wish you a Happy as possible New Year.