Pulling threads
Notes and news from the present moment, on its swift way to becoming past.
March Equinoxe
A detail from “Spring Cross” — one of three new Sky Mandalas released as the northern spring begins…a poem published for you to read…and other good news!
Indigo Sky Multiplied
Blue blue blue! The brilliance of the blue sky! I have recently made a vow to myself, to make the very best of each weather condition that nourishes me, as it nourishes me. (Even if it is out of season.)
art for peace
I am delighted to announce that these unusual art objects were selected for display in the Art for Peace Exhibit at the Textile Museum the weekend of September 24–25, 12pm–7pm.
Winter Solstice
I have added a Winter Solstice meditation session to the calendar, on Tuesday, December 21, 2021. Join us! Also coming soon — the end of year mini-retreat — and in January, our weekly Winter meditation session is open for signup.
Turn the Year Retreat
A Winter Solstice Mini-Retreat
8:30–9 :30 a.m. December 27–31, 2021
As each calendar year ends, on the heels of Winter Solstice, I make a point to mark the transition with intention. There is something so delicious about retreats at this time of year. I find a sense of newness emerges by paying attention to how the natural world changes with the season, and dropping into resonance with that. There is an inward quality to the season of winter, and an outward quality to our holiday celebrations. With tempering and balance, this can be a rich time of rest, and if we are lucky, a deeply generative quality can be found in these dark, cold days.
Notes on Blues
Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
When I was about the same age Picasso was when he made these works, the Blue Period was my favourite. I was not alone — while Picasso could not sell them when they were new, they eventually became hugely popular. There is much to appreciate in the exhibit, yet as I view the work now, I do not have the same love for this Blue Period that I once did.
A Living Being, Feeling the Sun
I am working on a book that follows the lives of several families in the early 1900s, in a very rugged and remote part of the west coast. I have been reading widely many writers from that time period, to understand more deeply how that literature depicted it’s own time, to get a feel for how people understood the historical moment from within it. One of the writer’s I have come to read in this quest is Willa Cather, and her story of an orphaned settler boy. She writes this 10-year-old character with great tenderness, and through him, in two brief passages, Cather delivers a profound teaching that sounds like buddhist or yog philosophy to me.
Context and Action
I practice what I teach, taking care and discernment with media consumption — yet I am caught in emotion with this week's news. Centered as it is around grave violence against the earth and indigenous peoples in the province where I grew up, it hits very close to home. We must hold our remembering, even if forgetting seems like it would be easier.
Using Discernment
A translation of bramacharya that works well in my mind is right use of energy. In yoga and in meditation, we spend a lot of time discerning HOW we are using our energy—on gross and subtle levels, social, interior. What is the quality of our experience, and how are are we directing our vital energy?
Tending the Root
Tending the root for growth and bloom — in the throes of creative process, complication and simplification, I see how this process is constant in all growth. Elaborate expression, and pruning…where does this show up in your life?
Waves of the Mind
I have been thinking about the ways human beings find meaning in pattern, how that serves as a strategy for coping with uncertainty, and the ways this ability can be both benevolent and not.
#Skyproject2
The sky calls again for daily attention. What do we learn through looking, skywatching, daily practice, noting this moment, these three breaths, this sky? Join in!
Late, Late Summer
For the month of September, the meditation circle which I lead has been working with a metaphor practice:
body as mountain
breath as the sea
sky — mind
This is an invitation to think / sense / feel into these archetypes of the natural world, to contemplate their qualities and notice how our embodied experience might echo them. The imagery is boundless, but we can start from here…
Like the Garden Grows
My northern garden grows with such intensity in its short summer season, the transformation is so dramatic, winter seems like a story someone told long ago. I would like to learn from this nature…
Emergent Series
Through the month of April and into May, I have been drawing or painting almost every single day. Art-making is one of my responses to the upheaval and destabilization of the pandemic, staying grounded by observing what is, tangibly, going on around me. I am blessed to have my small art group egging me on.
