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Archive for Nature

Remembering the Past

For the last few years, I have been writing a novel based on the true story of 2.5 years of my life as a teenage runaway. I chose to write it as a novel rather than a memoir for a variety of reasons, mainly because I think the story goes beyond my personal experience, and my memory isn’t always accurate enough to justify a memoir, especially when the story I’m telling incorporates details that may or many not have been true in “real life”.

The last third of the novel is set in a commune in southern Vermont, where I actually lived for six months or so before moving to another commune in northern Vermont where I eventually began to ‘grow up’. The time in the first commune was punctuated by a horrible fire that burned it to the ground and killed four young people in the process. In the aftermath of the fire, everyone who was left behind dispersed, and in my real life, I had not heard from anyone who was there since then.

Until…

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Attunement

photo by Amy Lenzo

In describing the series of online ceremonies I’m co-hosting with FireHawk Hulin and Pele Rouge over the next solar year, we talk about attunement:

“During this process we will dance with an older way of looking at time, one that is in relationship with the cycles and wisdom of the natural world, the way things actually are. When we move in supportive relationship with the natural cycles of Earth, we establish patterns in our lives that are life-giving, nourishing, and in harmony with the larger rhythms of life.”

“(This is a) … “tuning” ceremony, bringing us each into our own direct relationship with the medicine of Earth.”

To begin preparing the container for this timeless journey, FireHawk and I created a basecamp to serve as the ground for our expedition; its design based on the four directions of a Medicine Wheel. In the South, we placed an intention for “Attunement”.

The South is all about relationship, the place of feeling and emotion. We placed attunement there to remind us that we are aligning ourselves in relationship; with our own inner life, with those that are journeying with us, and with the natural world we are all part of. Attunement requires that we slow down and listen to the quieter voices, so often missed in the bustle of daily life, to find the deeper patterns we want to attune to and synchronize ourselves with.

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“Scent”sing

The first roses of the season are in full bloom… in my garden and all over the neighborhood; their scent a intoxicant I willingly abandon myself to. There is a particular blend of longing and joy that scent can evoke… without a word having been spoken, I find myself laid open by this subtle Beauty.

Diane Ackerman, in Natural History of the Senses, says that when Cleopatra first invited Antony to her bed she covered the floor in rose petals a foot and a half deep. Apparently the Romans were so enamored of the rose that they founded Rosalia, an annual holiday to sing her praises (ah! perhaps it’s the Italian in me that so enjoys this luxurious flower).

Still impacted by the sweetness of an online Elemental Ceremony I co-hosted this weekend with my friends Firehawk and Pele, in honor of the element of Air, today I’m struck by the relationship between air and scent. If scent is a kind of nuanced communication delivered by air, it carries a tale we cannot close ourselves off from like we can the stories of our other senses (we can close our eyes or plug our ears indefinitely, but we cannot live without air for more than a few moments). Not that I want to – the scent of new roses in this lovely California Spring is a spirit-reviving tonic and I am most grateful for the Medicine.

 

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?