Our children no longer learn how to read
the great Book of Nature
from their own direct experience or how to interact creatively
with the seasonal transformations of the planet.
They seldom learn where their water comes from or where it goes.
We no longer coordinate our human celebration with
the great liturgy of the heavens.
-Wendell Berry
Sourcing and eating wild food really opens your eyes, your mind and heart, in fact, your whole being, to a deep appreciation of and connection to the natural world around you!
Wild Nettle Pie
I'm nuts about foraging. Our property is covered in nettles, mallow, dandelion, black sage, lavender, and clover, as well as seasonal flowers and fruit trees. I've enjoyed plucking and munching straight from the Earth- making teas, smoothies, and paving the way for more complicated dishes from this ungovernable lot of what are typically viewed as weeds.
I was gifted Guide to Wild Foods in 2003, when I had the opportunity to work for a CA native seed company, and I've clutched it ever since. It is a beautiful basic companion with good drawings and easy language for beginners. And doesn't Wild Table look tempting? It is becoming more simple to add fresh food to our diets as we learn how to identify, harvest and prepare what is sprouting up all around us: plant medicine cleverly disguised as visual flora.
Earth Skills, in my backyard at the foot of the Los Padres Nat'l Forest, gives my family a thrilling chance to learn more about how we can nibble off of the land. Located in our old neck of the woods, Frazier Park, CA, Jim Lowery and his charming wife, Mary, lead Visionquests and survival weekends in the spirit of Tom Brown, Jr. and Wilderness Awareness. I sprang at the chance to prepare local wild foods with them over the weekend.
Wild Rice with Mountaintop Currants
Lemon Pine Nut Muffins
My favorite part of our day together was grinding acorns into flour. I've always wanted to know how to address the issue of tannins, as some books make it sound like a complex process. It was as easy as cracking open the acorns on the grinding stone, tossing the funky ones aside and food processing them into a fine flour. We started with dried Valley Oak acorns, that the team had harvested locally last Fall.
My team ground up our acorns and then poured about a gallon of cold water over them to leach out the tannins, and then spread the wet meal out on a cookie sheet to dry in the sun.
Acorns can be purchased, but there are so many varieties, that most of us have one kind or another growing at the edges of town. The best time to harvest is usually in September. Our recipe for Orange Acorn Bread called for a blend of wheat flour and acorn flour, but when I make it next, I'm going to sub oat flour for wheat. I like it's earthy, gritty quality.
Cooking in a hall with a dozen people coordinating a dozen different dishes had a soup-kitchen vibe, and a Thanksgiving spirit. I was paired with two guys-a park ranger/naturalist from Ventura County and a fellow from San Jose who teaches urban youth how to interact with the wild. I learned so much just from our chats while we were up to our elbows in acorn mush. It was awesome.
In addition to the Wild Nettle Pie, another team made Nettle Soup. It was really easy to make and everyone loved it. Nettles are rich in vitamin C and Iron, and can be used wherever you would use spinich or dense greens.
Cream of Nettle Soup with Potatoes
(as shared by Jim and Mary Lowry of Earth Skills, with slight modifications)
1 lb. fresh nettles
1/2 lb potatoes
1 leek, white part only
3 1/4 tsp butter
1 3/4 c. water
1/3 c. cream
Melt butter over medium heat and sautee leeks until soft. Add potato and water and cook until tender. Blanche raw nettles until tender and stir into soup. Puree in blender, returning the mixture to pan. Add cream, season with salt and pepper.
I'm going to experiment with this recipe until it reaches nirvana. It's very close to it- however, I think it might be yearning for some crumbled turkey bacon...
Big Mama Gaia offers her bounty to us each season. Receiving from her inspires me to think about all of the ways I want to thank Her.
Ojai's The Farmer and The Cook
The receptivity of the artist must never be confused with passivity. Receptivity is the artist's holding him or herself alive and open to hear what being may speak. Such receptivity requires a nimbleness, a fine-honed sensitivity in order to let one's self be the vehicle of whatever vision may emerge. It is the opposite of the authoritarian demands impelled by "will power." I am quite aware of all the jokes that appear in The New Yorker and elsewhere showing the artist sitting disconsolately in front of the easel, brush in passive hand, waiting for the inspiration to come. But an artist's "waiting", funny as it may look in cartoons, is not to be confused with laziness or passivity. It requires a high degree of attention, as when a diver is poised on the end of the springboard, not jumping but holding his or her muscles in sensitive balance for the right second. It is an active listening, keyed to hear the answer, alert to see whatever can be glimpsed when the vision or the words do come. It is a waiting for the birthing process to begin to move in its own organic time. It is necessary that the artist have this sense of timing, that he or she respect these periods of receptivity as part of the mystery of creativity and creation.
-Rollo May, The Courage to Create, 1975
Sometimes sitting in wait is about not having found the courage to move. But always, I think, it is about building towards that. Even being passive has it's merits. There are no wrong turns. Opening like the Spring flowers, it's possible to commune with our dreams as the flowers do with butterflies, bees and hummingbirds: agents of prolific fertilization, which the flowers cannot survive without.
I love this book when I am beginning something new. It's become my companion in the East, which is associated with the Spring season, beginner's mind, the hopeful Fool. It reminds me to travel light, and to keep building courage to do my work in the world.
On the subject of work in the world, have you seen a copy of Taproot Magazine yet? The guys from Nova Natural, known for their ecological, local, low-tech toys and goods for children, and Amanda Blake Soule of SouleMama have created a beautiful quarterly, ad-free print magazine that speaks to individuals, artists and families living close to the land and farm-to-tablers. Maya Donenfeld of mayamade has a burlap tote bag tutorial in this quarter's issue that I want to try, and Christine Chitness contributed on urbanizing chickens that made me want to build a coop and start nurturing some ladies.
Do you have an idea you're percolating which the East and the other directions and creature guides will help you hatch? Spring Lodge registration ends tonight.
Everything begins as a great idea.
The SouLodge page is HERE. Hope to see you behind the flap!
On many occasions I've considered my own intuition to be faulty. But for many years I've been testing a theory that is grounded in the notion that there is no such thing as a mistake, or no wrong path.
I credit parenting, and my personal journey with Coyote for this, because Coyote is one who does what she does and lives through it. There is no such thing as a wrong turn. We may disapppoint or hurt ourselves or others on the path of life, however, what happens, happens. There is no denying it. And no amount of shaming or guilting ourselves about it will bring about justice or balance. It seems that the antidote for life's mishaps and wrong turns is simply to Trust: to trust that there is a reason, that there are valuable teachings on the dark roads. And that none of them have to do with medicating the feelings around the lessons. When open, insights always flow in eventually.
Aren't guilt and shame just medicines that don't work very well? The ethic seems to come from very old and ingrained religious ideas about penance, profuse apology and punishment for being human. They seem to be more leg traps that can take years or even lifetimes to recover from. The human condition seems so desirous of being divine or divine-like, that there is no room for actually being human.
When raising children, this ethic can do so much harm. I don't understand punishing religion and thought. It seems counterproductive to encouraging life. I mean, can you see yourself pouring boiling water on your plants that don't flower on time or produce the sort of crop that you want? With children, punishment also just doesn't make sense. It results in a shrinking back from life.
For women, it has been said that esteem does not come factory installed. If this is true, then I can imagine why it is easier to loiter in a leg trap of shame or guilt, rather than fight one's way out in order to live. What I find again and again, is that women are willing to fight for life. Not just the breathing part, but the thriving my-life-is-a-gift aspect of living into full expression and freedom. Seems it's typically shame, guilt, old punishing values, and comparison to others' flourishing lives (unworthiness) that usurps the process of life. When my mom became sober over ten years ago, everyone in my family felt a huge heave toward life. It was intense and palpable, really uncomfortable. And took a very long time to grow into, even for those of us around her.
What can be born when we release control of past mistakes and decide to live with the present is Faith. When we believe that our goodness and truth will find their own way, we can relax into being. A great peeling away from old ways is occuring. I say grateful prayers every day for being able to be a part of it.
It is a great injustice
and a monumental
act of cruelty
for any religion
to make someone fear God.
-Hafiz
The Spring Equinox is this week on March 19th at 10:14 p.m. here on the west coast. We'll be celebrating Ivy Tallulah's third birthday. Our little vernal queen has chosen to go to Disneyland, which is not exactly my idea of heralding Spring in a ritual way, but this is what we're doing. The year she turned one was my favorite, as celebrations go.
Needless to say, I am putting invisibility spells on all of the princess gift shops as a pre-emptive tactic to spare my daughter the models of flimsy feminine archetypes. I haven't got much time before it finds her somehow! A mama can try.
I'll be creating some ceremony the following weekend, and likely all the way through the Beltane, the fiery time of mid-Spring when the earth is wild and fully alive. For ideas about celebrating Spring Equinox, slip over here and have a listen to some pre-Lodge audio. This season is packed more than any other with animal teachers, meaningful handcrafts, and spirited creative guidance to keep you inspired all season. Registration closes this Friday, so if you're feeling the call, sister, get on over.
In other news, there is a BOGO sale going on in my shop all week on fine art prints. When you purchase a print, tell me in the notes to seller which additional print you would like me to send you.
Yay! Spring! I'm going outside to play with my family now. Look what they've discovered while I was creating this post!
The Equinox is coming and it's a very special day around here because my baby girl will be turning three, just as our part of the world wakes up to the first day of Spring.
We typically celebrate the Equinox by planting seeds and imagining what it is we are manifesting for the rest of the year. If ideas are in their "egg state" now, what will they look like when they hatch in a short time? When they've made a stronger kinship to life as we know it?
We'll be exploring some of these questions of the East in SouLodge beginning on April 2nd, and if you plan to register by March 15th, or already have, join me for a sweet telelounge on Saturday March 17th at 10am PST to hear about some ways to celebrate and integrate the messages of Spring Equinox into your Lodge experience. Watch your inbox for details :)
Spring is associated with Rabbit for reasons sometimes forgotten. However, I hold her dear because I've come to know her as one who utilizes her creativity in order to survive. This is how I feel-I love to bring creative pieces and projects to life because this process, for me, is life-giving.
bunny studies in progress
Sitting outside today, it was noisier than ever. Birds of all kinds, hawks dipping, soaring and screeching, squirrels scuttling about, bees buzzing...the Earth is waking up again. I am so excited to see what sort of hay can be made with all of this beautiful sunshine.
I'm happy to announce that Nicole, Petrea, and Terra have won the spots by our Spring fire this upcoming Spring SouLodge season. Lightseekers, if you will kindly send me an email at soulodgeretreatsatgmaildotcom, I will see to it that your welcome and instructions are sent out to you this weekend.
Thank you so much to everyone who fluttered in to toss your names into the (cyber) hat. I truly want all of you to come in and experience our circle, because... it's awesome. It really is! I'm not choosing my fanciest words to say that, but *awesome* pretty much covers it.
As the weeks flip by, I am becoming more and more inspired and adding more content to choose from (Lodge offers lots of options around how to show up and receive the teachings-and this season is going to blow.your.mind.) It must be the Springtime air and maybe the full mama Moon in Virgo that's kicking me into high gear. This is the fourth Lodge, you see, and it was born last summer, so this is the very first one that carries the energy of Spring with it.
There will be much about creativity this session, envisioning it, surrendering to it, allowing it to be born, and be who it wants to be, watching it grow and evolve. The landscape is calling, waking up, and all of the critters are moving about, showing us the way.
I've read much about what "experts" are calling Nature Deficit Disorder-it's what children (and adults) suffer when they stay indoors doing indoor things for far too long. But less has been said about what happens to the soul of Wildwoman when she does the same.
Just as Rabbit wakes up and scratches it's longish ears, thumps it's hind legs and doesn't question whether it should hop out of it's warren and shine it's rabbity light, so, too, will we allow the Medicine Wheel to remind us how to be at peace just as we are in our most natural state. Better yet, to be thrilled about it.
Fox has been calling me out for over a year with some urgency. She's run in front of my car, lured me down a hill outside a restaurant in Big Sur, and showed up in numerous dreams, paintings and writings. She helped me discover some of the work I would be doing with SouLodge.
Driving into town one day two weeks ago, she called to connect again. I stopped the car abruptly to wrap her warm body in a towel, and take her home for sacred burial. I received a large dose of medicine from her that day and am still working with it now. She is a mysterious creature, and a mighty totem, despite her petite physique. With the help of a friend and our two girls, we honored Fox and gave her back to the Earth with blessings. Part of walking my path means taking care to honor the medicine, as I was taught to.
My guys were gone camping, and so I opened the Earth myself this time, placing her bundle between Mama Sycamore and Grandmother Sage. Thank you to all who gave support and blessings the day she went to the other side.
Honoring the sacred lifecycle.
Fox has come in, along with Red-Tailed Hawk, Great Blue Heron, and Elk to accompany our Eagle eyesight into the East with Spring Lodge teachings. It is a very strong Medicine Wheel to walk this time around. After restoring in the North, it's time to warm up the soil and plant the seeds for the remainder of the creative year. The fourth Lodge running will be pretty fiery, with an emphasis on soaring high without burning out.
So let's give away some seats by the fire, shall we?
THREE winners will be announced SATURDAY MARCH 10th.
*Enter with a comment, and be entered again for a tweet, a blog post, and again for a Facebook share. Be sure to let me know in your comment how many entries to put you down for.
**Those who register by March 15th will be invited to the Spring Equinox call to take place on Saturday, March 17th. I'll discuss the animals who'll be joining us, as well as how to do some clearing and planting ceremony for the Spring Equinox taking place on Tuesday, March 20th.
Registration closes on March 26th. Class begins on Monday, April 2nd.
Gratitude to YOU, the awakened women who walk the path, to the creatures that work as allies with us, to our ancestors, to the Four Directions, to Mama Earth and Father Sky, who teach us all we need to know.
******
**WINNERS OF THREE SEATS IN LODGE ARE...**
Nicole, Terra and Petrea. I've replied to your posts below. Welcome into Lodge, sisters! Send me an email at soulodgeretreatsatgmaildotcom and you'll receive your welcome instructions in your inbox. Thank you all for playing! I hope to see you under the flap on April 2nd.
**Those who register by March 15th will be invited to the Spring Equinox call to take place on Saturday, March 17th. I'll discuss the animals who'll be joining us, as well as how to do some clearing and planting ceremony for the Spring Equinox taking place on Tuesday, March 20th.
Blessings, all. Aho!
Winter SouLodge closed last week and it was a powerful ceremony of wisdom. I am so proud of the women who show up to their own soulwork-I'm sure I've said it a million times and I'm here to say it again: Women amaze me. Woman, the luscious archetype of strength and creative possibility seems boundless. IS boundless. What I love the most about SouLodge, and this is the only way it can really work, is how the women take responsibility for their own forward movement.
Spring Session is approaching quickly, so I took the opportunity to grow a bit myself creatively, seeing as how Spring is the session in which we will plant the seeds of creative growth for 2012. The kids and I have been painting like mad since beginning Flora's class. It's been a pivotal piece of fuel to keep me on path.
I painted like a Coyote with her tail on fire in 2009 and 2010, and then made half a dozen in 2011. While quantity doesn't matter, practice does-at least to me. One of my commitments to myself in the new year was to create time and space to express in the way that is so vital to my soul.
Last year, I'd considered moving my work life into a delicious little space downtown, but with Brandon's work being out of town and moving house on the calendar, I backed out. Now that our lives are back here for a while, and trying to create with a bustling house of homeschooling and life here can be dodgey, I took a chance to see if the space was still open.
Eydie: Oh, Pixie, yes, the space you wanted was never rented. When would you be interested in it?
Me: Um....today?
Feeling a bit Anne Morrow Lindbergh, I moved very few things into the windowed space and checked out for a few days, lunching with my family there and testing what it's like to try to be home when I'm home and at work when I'm at work. So far it's going brilliantly.
Bought an old table desk across the street and painted it blue.
Watched as hearts of light appeared.
Moved in a cabinet for snacks and supplies.
Hung the thirsty canvases.
Made some tea. Popped some gojis.
Opened up Pandora's box.
And painted to save my life.
When there are no words, there is paint.
This is Eagle. Broad of vision and sharp taloned, having come to me last year. This pair are a magnificent sight and medicine that I am working with extremely carefully. There is so much to learn about this powerful bird, most of which I am only just beginning to see.
When I was twenty, I had to get corrective lenses for my nearsightedness. I still have excellent close range vision, but my far-sight has been impaired since early adulthood. I experienced a trauma at nineteen, and I've always wondered if it had anything to do with my fear of the future. Thinking this way has caused me to do everything I can come up with in order to cure my own vision. It may not be in my power to do so, but I will keep trying to shift my perspective-out of Mouse's tidy little den and up into the great blue sky to take in what lies outside my close range. I believe we can heal these things, if we can go into the origin and do what is necessary to free ourselves from the obstacle that once served as much-needed protection. Letting go. That's what it's all about for me: Trusting that I am safe. Soaring.
Eagle is the token representative of the East, rising with the morning Sun, bringing up the day and all possibilities with it. It is a symbol of vast and wide creativity, trust, connection to Spirit, and grasping what nourishes. Eagle has helped me tune into healing my family's past, present, and future, and he assists me in taking responsibility for my own growth. I have called upon him for guidance in matters of conducting sacred commerce, making educational choices for my children, and infusing my creative path with the flame and possibility of the dawn. It is my honor to work with Eagle and to realize that everything I do ripples out, and that I have a responsibility to understand what that will look like, even a hundred years from now.
Winter SouLodge is rounding out nicely, with its beautiful participants honoring White Buffalo's aspects of elder Wisdom, stillness, and inner council. This is the season of the North, in which we draw inward to conserve energies, connect to the hearth, and nurture the seeds deep inside the womb of Mama Earth-the very same seeds that will pop into action with a spark of warmth come Spring. Spring Lodge is filling quickly, where the focus will be on trust, new beginnings, and nurturing your creative and personal seedlings of 2012 and inspiring them with Eagle's sky dance for our energetic journey into the East on April 2nd.
SouLodge, and the community of women within it's sheltered circle, has become a place for me to hold sacred space for growth and healing of all kinds, and it is my honor to welcome the awakened ones who are called to come to the fire and dance.
Golden Days, by Hannah CrazyHawk
It was nine years ago last month that I took myself to Big Sur for the first time. I disorientedly rang up my friend Swirly and asked her where she loved to go when she needed space away from it all, and this is where she directed me.
I'd had a second trimester miscarriage two weeks before I phoned her and those around me were worried that I would go up there and fling myself off of a cliff. Which, interestingly enough, was where I received the healing I required to move forward in the light, and in a new kind of strength that I'd never before experienced, alone.
Traumatic and blindsiding loss made me feel as though I was standing on a precipice. I packed some art supplies and my journal, and took the curvaceous drive up the California coast to the place where artists have been taking sanctuary for a hundred years or more. In many places the road comes very close to the edge of the Earth, reminding me of my fear of heights, my stomach flipping over as I snatched glimpses of the waves crashing on the rocks below.
The room I stayed in had nothing but a bed and a bathroom. No phone, no tv, no cell service. I painted, journalled, slept long hours dreaming of this baby spirit that had chosen to gift me with this experience before gifting me with motherhood.
On my last day there, I decided to stand at the scariest edge I could find on the roadside and rage out my grief-all of it-all the way back to childhood. I recalled what I'd heard someone say about heights reflecting fear not that we will fall, but that we will jump. I wonder if, for me, it was a fear of soaring...despite what was happening in my body and in my injured soul at the time. I remember feeling a tremendous comfort-that the sea was like a big bowl, a container that could totally hear and understand my rage, my disappointment and hold my tears for me. I grew louder and bolder, and still she rocked me softly. The sea lions below barked and cheerleaded. The turkey vultures circled overhead, not in wait for me to lay down and die so they could pick at my bones, but to take from me all that would become toxic if I held it inside. The scent of sagebrush wafted up and cleansed me. I can't remember a time where I felt more held and safe. I closed my eyes and felt the rubble moving under my unsteady feet, and learned to trust for the first time in my life. Tears of rage turned to tears of gratitude for my life, for all that was possible. I felt it for the whole world.
Often I am asked how it is I came to this work-to my connection with the Earth as a healer, and to the creatures. I suppose in some part, it began with this loss, and then an emptying. The void inside of me filled with light and I felt a strange commitment to want to give back to the Earth for the gift of being held when no one could hold me. I wanted to know I could always come here as if to an altar and find my illuminated self waiting at the edge, trusting.
It was lifechanging to discover that between just she and I, a relationship existed that could keep me in the light. That every part of her was rooting for me. Crumbling, barking, splashing, crashing...daring me to live well, to thrive, to be fully expressed.
I travel back every year to revisit the cliff's edge and to reconnect with my own light. Oddly enough, it only rained that year, and I visit in January or February, ritually. Twice I've been pregnant. Every time, I am rebirthed.
Soujourning with women fills me up. Circling sacred is deep and personal to me, whether I'm the spaceholder or being held. Time in nature with incredible femmes lights my fire in all ways.
Such was the weekend at Teahouse and Point Reyes. If you've never taken a workshop at Teahouse, you must know how warm and inviting it is. The sun streams in the windows, falling across oversized mugs, piles of boxes of teas, little fists of stuffed grape leaves, open bars of spicy chocolate... The women who operate out of the space are well known in the arts community for prolific paintings and vintage-feel photos. They know their colorful, inspiring stuff.
Circle was held with fourteen of us, four journeys around the Medicine Wheel, prayer ties, a loungey lunch in the sunshine, and closing ceremony by Strawberry Creek. A few who came had not journeyed before, and all are exploring the various ways to see and think more symbolically and connected-to-nature about their lives.
As always, but not to homogenize how I feel about the power of women who gather, the caliber of dames was off the charts. And you know, my thoughts on this have nothing to do with what they do in the world, but with how deeply they are willing to go. Each time I sit in this distinct and never-ending shape, I am affirmed in my belief that every woman is a healer, every one a mother, a nurturer, a stewardess of the Earth in her own distinct way.
photo by Dominique Ridley
A magic moment during the third round occurred when each woman took a journey to obtain a message for the person lying next to her. A goddess with a goddess's name had received a blessing from Snake for her neighbor and we sat in disbelief when she was complete and the recipient stood up and unveiled a giant Snake tattoo that wrapped up her leg and up to her thigh. Magic happens, and it's very affirming and transformational. I think being seen by someone who doesn't know you and isn't attached, carries mystical medicine.
A magical meal was shared at Tacubaya, tortilla soup and chile relleno I won't soon forget.
More magic unfolded as we travelled out the next day to Point Reyes National Seashore, a no-longer-in-use turn of the century creamery with barns still standing at the edge of a Tule Elk preserve.
Elke May sounds a terrific lot like "alchemy"
I walked barefoot along the cool trail, where the Elk wander down, deeply breathing the air, drinking up the sun, and enjoying the company of some mighty fine women. Elk is a mother for me, sturdy and nourishing, comforting and serene. Communing with her energy ran my cup over.
Thank you SO much to the women who gathered and made beauty and medicine with me!
This weekend unfolded beautifully beginning with a Saturday live Lodge journey circle at Teahouse Studio in Berkeley, CA with a very open-hearted group of women whom I would like to share with you here. Promise. I'll give a full report of the serious MAGIC this week.
Then it gave way to a hike out to Point Reyes Station, after winding up the curvaceous roads through a magical fern forest and past many clovery fields of cows.
photo by Elke May
I'm so grateful to my co-pilots, who kept me inspired, chatted, coffee'd and fed on our journey, and to SouLodge clansister Alara Castell, who created the below video for us to recount our magic moments in Elk country.
Thank you all so very much for your sweet comments and shares last week over the loss of my cat. It was a very difficult time and I had to key into my intuition in a way that makes me pretty uncomfortable until I'm certain that it makes sense in the end. This is that part of trusting the journey that I get to practice a lot. I've been sensing him around us and it's heartening to know that his extreme loving energy is still at work from the other side. I've been snuggling up to his brother and sharing my thoughts with him, which is nice. It is wholly strange to be a one cat household for the first time in almost 16 years.
Last week I joined an enormous group of freinds in New York City to celebrate a friend's showcase at American Songbook in Lincoln Center. Jonatha Brooke played for us in an intimate theater with Dar Williams and we were all able to get together in one place afterward for some communing, which did my heart so much good. It was a whirlwind trip, but so worth it to be able to support Jonatha's big moment sharing tracks from her tribute to Woodie Guthrie. She is our songbird of Squam Art Workshops and it's been a highlight of attending and teaching there to hear her cathartic tunes these years. Her words and voice move me to tears every time I have the blessing to see her.
The very best part of rooming with and seeing some of my favorite girls is that we laughed, laughed and laughed more than I really believed possible.
I left for the city not feeling altogether humorous, which is one of my best defenses for the crabby-gloomies, and I came home feeling released and clear.
Silly Swirly.
Sweet friends.
Beautiful Madison Park.
Always in motion.
Always memorable.
And...it's so good to be back home...
Thank you all so very much for your sweet comments and shares last week over the loss of my cat. It was a very difficult time and I had to key into my intuition in a way that makes me pretty uncomfortable until I'm certain that it makes sense in the end. This is that part of trusting the journey that I get to practice a lot. I've been sensing him around a lot and it's heartening to know that his extreme loving energy is still at work from the other side. I've been snuggling up to his brother and sharing my thoughts with him, which is nice. It is wholly strange to be a one cat household for the first time in almost 16 years.
Last week I joined an enormous group of freinds in New York City to celebrate a friend's showcase at American Songbook in Lincoln Center. Jonatha Brooke played for us in an intimate theater with Dar Williams and we were all able to get together in one place afterward for some communing, which did my heart so much good. It was a whirlwind trip, but so worth it to be able to support Jonatha's big moment sharing tracks from her tribute to Woodie Guthrie. She is our songbird of Squam Art Workshops and it's been a highlight of attending and teaching there to hear her cathartic tunes these years. Her words and voice move me to tears every time I have the blessing to see her.
The very best part of rooming with and seeing some of my favorite girls is that we laughed, laughed and laughed more than I really believed possible.
I left for the city not feeling altogether humorous, which is one of my best defenses for the crabby-gloomies, and I came home feeling released and clear.
Silly Swirly.
Sweet friends.
Beautiful Madison Park.
Always in motion.
Always memorable.
As always, it's so good to be back home...
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Today is the first day of SouLodge, and so I am pouring my energy carefully into that beautiful vessel and feeling conservative. I'm nursing a terrible headcold as a result of many things happening all at once.
The most unexpected event, though I feel right with how it all went down, is that I lost my sweet cat on Friday night. He crossed over in my arms after making it very clear to me that day that he was finished fighting the strange virus that took him over the week before. That day he lingered in doorways, lying between worlds and preparing himself for the journey. I wanted him to go in peace, and I also wanted him to stay...for me. He was over fifteen and we had many good snuggling and hugging years together. Still, you know how it is-you know how letting go goes.
The sweet and tender woman Lis Hofmann left this on my Facebook page, for which I am so grateful-in all moments of grief this will stay with me:
I'm just taking it slow and steady.
When I created this painting in 2009, Ivy Tallulah was just hatched, nursing up a storm on my front, and hanging around on my back while I launched my Etsy store and fed my creative fire with all of that juiced up mama hormone I'd experienced with Miles, but had been shy about working through then.
Change, the graceful gypsy.
I was feverishly connecting the dots between my art process and my spiritual practice, and so a sixty-piece series was born over the next three years featuring creatures departing colorful cityscapes, and headed for the wild woods- as we who practice journeywork experience each time we relax into the drums and depart consciousness for wisdom that resides deep within us.
What was so important to me was to integrate all of the separate categories and classifications of my life and roll them into my everday muchness. I'd been practicing shamanic journeys once a month in circle, painting on rare occasion, when Brandon would take Miles out for a walk, and mothering in a compartmentalized way that was unbalanced, and yet I was so wholly absorbed and in love with. I don't think I realized that I could do them all at once and not one of them would go hungry.
It was a very big three years. Today I sat looking through some old journals, tearing out pages on which I'd written letters to the babies in my belly, to put in their special tin boxes for later. I'd written all of my dreams down, and my journeys too, and I could see now, seven years beyond the first page of baby notes, how I'd been planting those seeds of integration back then. I don't know why it surprised me, how it all matched up-why is it that we wake up each day and think that what we're building and growing is something new, when in fact, it's been unfolding all of this time? I suffer a bit of Groundhog Day syndrome sometimes, I think. In actuality, life is rolling along like a bicycle wheel going forward and also coming back around to the same place over and over...
Tomorrow is a very big day. As was prophesied in the pages of my journals, I'd yearned for our family to all be home together then, working and living under one shelter. Yet with the past year being the toughest ever on my fourteen-year marriage, I believed that I'd be releasing the sacred contract on the Winter Solstice just past. I'd known for some time that a very old something needed to be let go of. But Superdad and I made an entirely different decision, on the turn of a dime. We resolved to bring him home from his day job and put our family firmly together, rather than stretching it apart. The old way is the model that most of our parents showed us, which reminds me of the post-war television show Mad Men: that Dad is away from home about fifty hours a week, missing out on being a parent for most of the babes' waking hours and too tired to nurture his own creative dreams while turning someone else's crank. This family/work/life model has never worked for us, and it's caused us much grief to be out of alignment for this long.
That crafty vixen of change has shifted directions again, making her way out of my dreams and into Ordinary Reality, as my own multi-faceted processes have integrated into one, so she has come forth to appear right here for the whole, in real time. I share this somewhat vulnerably, as there is plenty of risk at hand. Though I must say, that nothing is worth more than taking it. Deeeep breath.
Another page is turning in this story- as my partner will arrive home tomorrow evening after the last day of a twenty-two year career in industrial design, to champagne and children full of anticipation-a piece of emotional parchment that I have held close to my chest (like aces).
It seems we'll be pioneering a new model from scratch (like cream biscuits).
***
Fox is graceful change. She begins her process by opening up to new patterns she may not have considered before. Fox changes herself to bring about a desired situation, not unlike shapeshifting. She may use camouflage or invisibility to burrow under and blend in if necessary, in order to find out how she fits in. She listens carefully, creates comfort all around her, and tunes into her instincts. Her keen perception serves her well when the time comes to make a decision. Fox cozies up and protects herself before she trots off into her new adventure- expecting the unexpected, and willing to be guided.
Maria Sabina, by David Ryan.
Gotcha.
Did you think I was going to give you ten steps? Share how I became a shaman?
This is such a funny subject to me. Funny because today there is so much talk about who shamans are and what they do, what defines a shaman and the like. I'm immersed in the talk. It may be because not many of us truly know what a shaman is, or, so as not to insult the intelligence of those who do, suffice to say that care must be taken to wrap (or unwrap) one's head around the notion.
My feeble attempt to explain is that a shaman is essentially trained in the very specific and traditional methods of shamanism that are unique to indigenous tribes and cultures. By elder shamans. These healers exist in nearly every culture. They take great pains and make tremendous sacrifices to develop intense connections with the spirit realm and with their helpers and guides. And then they are asked to use that power to heal members of the tribe. Indigenous peoples attribute illness to a loss of spiritual power, and so it is up to the shaman to restore them to health with all of the tools and helpers they can call upon. Can you imagine such a responsibility?
I am not one who is qualified for this, which is probably why I'm really uptight about the word shaman. I have been blessed to have studied with a medicine woman (whom I've never heard call herself a shaman before, I wonder if she'd consider that audacious?) who lives very much like a monk or a nun and has dedicated her life to her spiritual practice and honoring her spirit helpers, to the exclusion of many things you and I would consider essential for living a modern life. I think that's why the word holds so much power for me-because I know a bit about what her life really looks like.
The very good news, however, is that anyone can have a dedicated *practice*, in which they honor the sacred every day, develop their intimate relationships with spirit guides and allies, consider the Earth and her resources as holy, drum, dance, sing, tell the stories, light the candles and fires, fast, sweat, receive the gifts that the Plant People have to offer, pray, meditate, create altars and shrines, caretake the young ones and the elders, commune with ancestors on the other side, work with sacred tools, talk to the animals, and revere life with gratitude.
This is what is sometimes referred to as a shamanic practitioner. I don't want to get all left-brain on ya'll, but you know- it helps to make clear distinctions. A great many people want to walk the path (that is made simply by walking) but have fear about what to call themselves (I vote for no labels, lest ye accept the dogma that comes with it) or fear appropriating customs. Borrowing from cultural traditions can be a very serious business, particularly here in our Native America.
A good rule of thumb, I think, (and I hope I don't have to eat these words) is that if something is practiced in many tribes or cultures, such as drumming, for example-it could be OK. Comparitively, if a friend taught you a song in his or her language, it would not be OK to share it with most folk. I sometimes have to work up the nerve just to sing them to myself, they're such a gift. It's like Grandmother's silver times a thousand. To tell you the truth, I wish I had more to offer about what is OK and what is not. Sacred practice is a very personal and intimate journey. Much must be determined by your own ethics, and then triple checked by going into the ancient well within for council.
The very best news is that this work is calling to many. It is needed in a BIG way.
We find ourselves standing at the edge of the well, having made it that far, just having heard a distant call and knowing we had to walk. We're called "seekers" and such, those who follow the faraway sounds, right? Perhaps we know that stashed away in our biology are caches of memories of how to honor the sacred. Going there will not make us...anything at all- not a holy person, not better than our brother or sister, not to be rewarded. Little that we find there will support delicate, thirsty ego.
However, we make the trips into the unknown anyway, because we didn't come to the well to stand at the edge and wish.
We came to the well to remember.
I'm getting really excited for the end of the month, when I'll be holding the first live Lodge circle of the year at Teahouse Studios. There are nine spots left, so if setting the tone for your year of *spiritual creativity* in person is high on your list, then jump on in. We'll be using shamanic journey technique (Yes, I'll be drumming) to go inward for the inner council of animal totems, guides, ancestral healers, and helpers who will see us through 2012.
In the audio below, Stefanie Renee, partner at Teahouse Studio and mamaphotographer extraordinaire and I share a casual call to talk about about what the space is like and what we can expect when we circle together in Berkeley on the 28th of January... and in which I am unusually giddy and celebratory :) (Or maybe not so unusually)
This is a one-day workshop, which takes place on Saturday. A group of us from the workshop will be going out to Point Reyes for a picnic on Sunday in the hopes of spotting some Tule Elk, so send me an email if you'd like to know more about how to get in on that after our day together. I hope to see you there in the divinely feminine room of cozy eastern sunlight...
Gifts from Wendy & Satch
I've been taking some time to read again, which is something I can do between Lodges, and in Winter, where the season lends itself to snuggling down and reconnecting with the writings I love. The four of us were driving in the car on New Year's Day, a day on which I made choices to do little bits of all of the things I wanted to have more of throughout the year. Such as:
The idea was to create the blueprint for what every day life can sometimes look like by inviting all of those elements in to play on New Year's Day. Kind of a new ritual for me, but it was lovely, and I've found myself wanting to take the whole of January to set the tone for the year-which has got to be about filling up as much as I give out. Because it's not so much what we do, it's about how we feel- how we remember our days, right? If I was conscious of my choices, I usually have a more satisfied feeling at the end of the day. It was really about choosing energy.
Tonight, I lazily flipped open my copy of Medicine for the Earth, my favorite of all of Sandra Ingerman's books, and read this passage:
One of the missing pieces to all healing today is understanding the power of creating sacred space. Creating sacred space, as I refer to it here, means the vast energy created by people's individual energies joining together in a room. Today many people create sacred space by actually designing a room, an office, or a house in such a way that allows more energy, vitality, and soul to inhabit that space, but this is not what I am speaking of here.
Over my years of teaching I have noticed what happens when I create a strong container for thie group. Miracles! Why? Because everyone in the group can feel safe in opening up to the power of love. Here is a definition of power that I like to use in my work: Power is the ability to use energy.
When everyone in a room is focused on using their energy to support, love and heal others, that is exactly what occurs, and this is the energy that supports miracles.
In the practice of cross-cultural shamanic healing it is well known that the power of healing for an individual or for a piece of land is multiplied exponentially by the number of compassionate family, friends, and community members present at the healing. This occurs because the community present agrees to put their personality and egos aside, allowing for a greater spiritual energy to be called forth and gather the healing work.
Her work has had a tremendous effect on me since I was handed a copy of Soul Retrieval in 2000, but this book is the one I come back to again and again. It's messages are seared into me. It's affirmed all that I have learned to do instinctively, all that I have learned to do from others far wiser than myself, and helped me believe in the power of energy-negative and positive, and how we can raise it, quiet it, transform it, and make something beneficial and useful of it. I'm a Virgo, so I'm big on *usefulness*, as in "Thomas is a VERY useful engine!"
What I think we sometimes don't realize in our virtual society, is that energy is created behind the scenes, in everything we do. An online living room, such as this one, shows you what I think is worthy to share, but I also come here to flesh out my mistakes and show a bit of underbelly from time to time. What I have learned within six months of Lodge and hundreds of amazing women doing the soulwork with me, is that we all have the power to raise energy, to transmute the negative, to inch ever more slowly towards love, beginning with ourselves. We must begin to trust that if we can transmute what works against us inside of us, then it will show up that way outside of us.
I'm not talking about perfect behavior or not having human flaws, clearly that's not what this is all about-but, how to love ourselves through our humanness by allowing the Divine in to shine down a bit of wisdom now and again.
I took a journey to the Upper World last night to see what my protective energy field looked like-I'm always afraid that I will create a brick wall when I need protection- and that has not served me well at all. I will keep the medicine close to my heart, but I will say that it was a magnificent show of clarity and imperviousness, while allowing for a vast flow of love around, in, and out of me. I felt held by the Universe, in a safe and beautiful container which allows me to do all that I want to, with the boundaries in place, and what I have to give moving freely. It was a gift from Source that made me feel, for a snapshot, able to deal with the human foibles that I create by being me every day. Like spinning in circles at an onslaught of breakfast commands with no coffee, and yelling to regain control in the kitchen (I dislike that I yell at or near my children more than anything else). The vision held me throughout the day as the eruptions that take place around here bubbled and spat. I didn't cease to raise my voice, but I also didn't flog myself for it.
And this is why I thought it was interesting that I opened the book to page 99 tonight and read the above passage. Community energy + heart intention x balanced boundaries = Sacred space. Integrity. Hope. Healing. Vitality. Inside and out. Whenever possible. Repeat.
Something I give a lot of thought to, consciously and abstractly, is the phenomenon of women comparing themselves to others. Do men do this? Honestly? It seems like nothing blows a hole in a nicely rolling tire more than the feeling that someone else is doing it better than us. Or, ever get that false sense of confidence from thinking you're doing it a bit better than at least one other person, so that carries you a mile or two, until they ride up on your ass and pop a hole in that flimsy theory, too?
There are so many things to stop a woman. Too many.
I remember picking up Spilling Open by Sabrina Ward Harrison when I was in my late twenties, (headed back to art school) and upon devouring it, thinking, "This young and beautiful artist stole my life! Tart!"
I don't know that I really believed it, because though I have stumbled over my perceived inadequacy many times, seldom have I been stuck in a creative quagmire for long. In the end- not long after reading Sabrina's works, whom I'd erstwhile fashioned a graven image of- I discovered that, indeed, she did not steal my life, and that my very own life and expression of it was waiting for me just up around the bend- and that I could feel free to meet it whenever I was ready to face that my expressive arts weren't really going to look like the work of those I admired. The whole process was going to be a bit rougher, more informal, messier, tattered around the edges, fumbling, frustrating, sometimes even foolish.
I am blessed to create what I create, to birth what I birth, to hold a safe container for others' messy processes to wriggle out into the world. My extremely original writerly comadre Marybeth told me that it's the midwife's job to sit on her hands and sing songs in the other room, while all-the-while trusting that mama can do it, that baby can do it, and that all will come into being just as it is meant to. I'm so grateful to her for this metaphor.
Sometimes we have to do this for ourselves. Ego and Personality can sit, godparentlike, in the other room, singing sacred and holy favorite hymns, while true path is born from the unconscious into the conscious realm. Shamans laugh at this reality we live in, calling it the illusion, while the inner realms- journey and transparent contact with higher dimensions-THAT is reality. It is that very transcendent place which birth occurs from.
No one can touch what happens in our dreams, in our journeys, our active imaginations, and meditations. The sacred realm is ours alone. And though we are all connected beyond space and time there, unified, spirit-wise, what is very deep within us comes forth when we make the journey inward to meet it.
What I mean to say, really, is that we can strike an agreement here. We can agree that we are not afraid of each other. We can agree to trust that my baby will not look or act like your baby once born. We can agree to do the innerwork to the best of our abilities in order to honor our one precious life and the expressions that beg to be birthed. You can do this, and so can your sweet, creative lovechild.
I'll keep the fire burning and the songs singing in the other room while you labor.
************************
Desire to Inspire winners are Laura and Joanna. Email me with your addresses, lucky ones.
The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline's longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening us shapes of days.
As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them
The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.
Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.
The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.
The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.
Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.
We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.
-John O'Donahue, To Bless the Space Between Us
Thank you, 2011, and to my beloved community, for all that was shared.
Love, Pixie.
Did anyone see the Moon last night? I can't recall such a Cheshire smile in a long time, if ever. Mischievous, full of rhetorical questions, and philisophical pontifications, I felt her nudging me into the new year as I sat under her. Are you feeling the nudge to take any risks in the new year? Broadening your vision and deepening your connection?
Maybe one of them is coming to Berkeley on Saturday, January 28th for a live-Lodge journey circle with me :) Teahouse Studio has graciously offered to host us for the day: catering our lunch and providing a cozy space for us to journey and unearth the little pieces of gold that will carry us through each season of 2012. It will be a relaxing day of communing in circle in beautiful Northern California. Here is a list of local hotels and distances from the event, as well as directions, if you want to make an easy weekend of it. Email me if you have questions about anything at all.
I have two copies of Christine Mason Miller's DESIRE TO INSPIRE on my desk, just waiting to land in one of your hands. The first chapter being, A Force of Good: When We Care for Ourselves We Care for the World, and one of my very favorite chapters, number seven: Plenty of Room for Everyone: Understanding Our Unique Place and Purpose. I was very lucky when I started my very first real business in 2000, to have a mentor teach me that I need never be frightened of any person of company imprinting my ideas or creating similar vibes or products as me.
He told me (bless you Drew Bernstein, pioneer of clothing for Fashion Freaks) that all I needed to focus on was staying true to me-that if my vision was what I alreay do and who I already am, I wouldn't ever have to worry about what anyone else is doing, in fact, I could freely help them-which is what he did, and what I learned to do and still practice. For those of you who are considering taking a leap with your art, your written words, whatever it is that is pulling to you-get some fortification under you so that you can feel confident that your expression is truly yours and impervious to being duplicated. Our visions are as unique as our DNA.
Two copies are ready for sending out. Tell me what the Cheshire cat is smiling about, or that you will take a chance on yourself in this upcoming year which I'm certain will set the record for Creative Fire. As women, just about everything we do can be a creative act. Taking a chance doesn't have to be externally big, risking it might look as simple as loving the Truth more than anything else, Trusting deeper than the Ocean, Loving, no matter what scares you about Love.
I'll select winners on Monday evening here in the wild West.
I hope to sit with you in Berkeley and see what comes to you: what peace, what comfort, which allies, what beautiful surprises are within you...
Thorns and Thistles, Kelly Louise Judd
Sometimes it can be very difficult for me to receive a compliment. I wave my hand and make an oh-come-on-it-was-nothing face, just like my mother does. Go silent like just my Grandmother does, and look away not knowing what to say, then change the subject. I'm learning to just say *thank you* without qualifiers. I am not one who requires validation, (that sounds so weird to say, eh?) so I just keep plodding along on my path, trusting that the right road will keep rising up to meet me. We've been down this road before, you and me.
I read this today, and am sharing it with permission. It was written by an Elder who attended SouLodge this Autumn with a friend. I am always extremely humbled when a Grandmother enjoys anything I have to offer; I have always made my most longlasting friendships under the wise ones' wings.
I feel proud.
My hope is that the Mystic Vixen will step and in remind me what was said about the effect western Woman would have on the world (if she will only learn to receive a compliment...)
This is me trying.
***
In this whole wild world of paths and streets and avenues and roadways we can easily become lost. I created this account a full cycle of flying around the sun ago.
Much has come and gone, been seen and heard and tasted and touched in that time. And then I took some time and space for me and discovered this wonderful kindred spirit Pixie Campbell.
Pixie provides a space for wild women to truly howl and growl and re-member their whole true selves. A space of teaching and “permission” for journeying and communing with a circle of sisters within the context of nourishing our spiritual selves as well as companionship on this walk.
The path for a solitaire may seem rocky and untravelled but when we walk with others we see that the path is actually well lit and there are rest places for weary travellers along the way. Stories are shared at the fire, songs are sung, and sisters bring cups of warmth that strengthen and soothe our weary bones.
There are places along the route that feature huge brambles, that when you travel with others their eyes see the berries among the thorns. The thorns may rip at your hair and scratch your flesh, but the berries heal and soothe those wounds as they open your heart and eyes to their beauty and enchant your tongue with their flavour. You may feel that there are roots to trip you up and boulders that impede your path, but with companions there is always a hand to help you up from the ground or a foot well placed to provide the necessary “kick in the pants” to get you over the boulder.
Yes, SouLodge is a sanctuary for wild women who dare to be who they are, truly are, and it is also a place to find yourself in the company of others who are ready for the adventures of the path we have chosen to walk this time round.
***
Thank you, deeply, Baba. We also sometimes need a swift kick* of a reminder to receive a compliment with grace.
Additionally, thank you to all of you who have come over from SouleMama to have a peek around. I am so honored to have you here around the fire. Amanda's beautiful book, The Rhythm of Family: Discovering a Sense of Wonder Through the Seasons, is about to be well-worn around here, thanks to Santa.
photo by Brandon Campbell
Searcher, there is no road. We make the road by walking. --Antonio Machado
The light is making it's way back and the post-release hangover wore off in no time. It's been so energizing to read all of the posts that came in, to know that energy was being raised, consciousness committed to, and women and families in circle around the fire were gathering everywhere. Mission accomplished! When I birthed the idea many months ago, I had no idea how the video would be made, much less received. It was loaded over 25,000 times, which exceeded my dream to be amazed, by far. Thank you to all of you who embraced this ritual, some of you for the very first time.
It takes so much courage to create the road by walking.
Snuggling in with my babies for Christmas, I was reminded of just how little it takes for a young mind to be amazed. It's not even their dream to be amazed, and yet, it's so simple for them. For Miles and Ivy- being together, making platters of food, seeing Santa's cookie with a big bite taken out of it, being in awe at the lights and the laughter, pecking out Silent Night on the keyboard, having everyone in their tribe circled around them...I could see the wonder of celebration all over their faces-excitement for life seeping out of their skin.
Marking special occasions ceremoniously has a tremendous impact on the young and young-at-heart. Tribes of all cultures have been burning fires, even Solstice fires, for millennia. As I've taken the work of SouLodge narrower and deeper, into what it really means to connect to the Earth and the seasons, it becomes evermore clear that we are all connected by a distinct thread. This very tribe of rebellious moms, creative spirits and wild women burns so brightly that the thread is unmistakable, and oh-so-powerful.
The Four Season Pass has sold out of it's limited quantity-but there are still seats open for Winter SouLodge. I hope you'll take your commitment to connect and circle to new den-like depths and nesty heights with the howling pack, where we'll be focusing on deep restoration and care of Self and Earth during the quiet time of year, before bursting into bloom in the meadows of Spring.
Ivy holds down the heartbeat of mama Gaia.
