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Archive for art

Kiva Time

I'm sitting here in my office on Solstice Day, feeling the urge to connect, to "check in" and share the energy that's moving in me.

I feel the shift inside me as the whole hemisphere is moving into "kiva time", the time of dreaming and imagining what is to come when the seeds we're planting now awake in the Spring.

It's morning, so even though it's cool here in northern California, the sun is starting to fill the room and animate the crystals I hang in the window to catch the light. My office is newly rearranged, cleaned, and cleared. With art on the walls (beautiful pieces by Christopher Castle and Fletcher Oakes – and I'm awaiting shipment of one from Lisa Lipsett) and all my books out, it feels much closer to the nurturing sanctuary I've wanted to create for myself for some time now. A perfect place to dream those seeds into being.

Seeds
Some exciting projects are germinating: I've started a new venture in partnership with FireHawk Hulin and other friends at Timeless Earth Wisdom. It's called Digital + Earth Wisdom and speaks to my deepest purpose and intent for my work right now. You'll hear much more on this. The multi-generational work I've been doing with Wiser Together is moving gracefully and forcefully into form, and I'm co-designing the curriculum for a Masters Course on World Cafe and Appreciative Inquiry with Fielding Graduate University, where I've been co-presenting courses on World Cafe for the last few years.

I was born in the middle of winter, and this coming birthday is a big one, so I'm planning to take myself on an inner journey with an outer form – a nature-immersed photographic road trip to Sedona (with side trips as and when they appear on the hroizon). Road trips are among my very favorite things (guilty secret) and I am really excited about this one. I've never been to Sedona, so please share anything you think I should know about it, or anything on the way or in the area.

And I'm curious… what's seeding itself in you this winter? What seeds do you want to dream into being in the darkness of your world womb? What would you like to awaken to as the days grow longer and lighter?

Good Medicine

My dear friend Lightning Dove, aka Sue Blondell, is an amazing artist and gifted "seer" who creates beautiful artwork and "medicine" tools that have the power to connect us to our deepest selves. I am blessed to own many pieces of her art, including an extraordinary "essence" painting of my husband and I and a magnificent full-sized painted gourd which is one my most precious "things".

Lightning Dove is having a rare public showing of her spirit-full work, called "Hush … be still … Listen", from Saturday, September 7th through November 6th at Spirit House in Woodside. Dove will be there in person for the opening from 11am to 4pm on the 7th, but if you can't make it then, be sure to come by while the show is up. You won't be sorry.

If you don't live in the area or can't make it, check out the galleries of her work on LightningDove.com, where you can commission some of her special magic for yourself or a loved one.

Here are some medicine tools she made for me recently:

 

Medicine-tools

(back left to front: small tobacco gourd, gourd rattle, owl wing smudger)

 

The Beauty That is Right in Front of You

This quote by Neal Stephenson comes to me sometimes when the evening news is too full of murder and greed, or my heart stumbles too close to the edge of despair:

"Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways."

As if in response to the need Stephenson identified, Christóbal Vila's 3.75 minutes of healing beauty balm, reminding us that indeed beauty is all around us if only we have eyes to see it:

Great Books

These books inspire, entertain, and teach me things I want to know more about… I hope they will be nourishing resources for you as well. If you buy them through the links on this page, I get a small commission, so I invite you to go wild & totally indulge yourself!