Category: nature

  • Creating Daily Rituals

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    There are so many ways to create rituals in our lives. We might engage in formal practices that shape our day to day lives, like making a cup of tea and sitting on our meditation cushion to engage with the world from a place of grounded presence. My personal relationship with ritual shifts over time, based on what I need and what feels resonant in the moment. Some days, I might stand in the path of the rising sun, feeling the light on my face and breathing in gratitude for my connection with the Earth. Other days, I light a…

  • On Coming Home: an update

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    These past few years have been rough ones. So many people I know have made major life transitions, lost dear ones, confronted the realities of chronic illness, moved into the unknown. On the larger scale, we are living in a world that is stressed and wounded because of the ways that we humans have exploited the Earth for all of her precious gifts. I write this during one of many intense Nor’easters that have left people without power and damaged so many trees in our region. It is a reminder that we are living in a time of transition for…

  • Summer in the Garden

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    I realized the other day that I hadn’t posted since June. It’s summer in Maine, and the last thing that I want to do on a beautiful day is sit inside, so I thought that in lieu of a long blog post, I’d instead share some photographs that illustrate the summer so far. While it’s far from over, things are starting to shift. I’m preparing for fall classes, watching the bee balm fade and the plants start to lose some of their luster. It’s a beautiful, rich, bittersweet time of year–especially here, where we spend so much of our time…

  • Celebrating Spring

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    While it may seem like spring will never come for those of us buried this winter under 6+ feet of snow, the earth is doing what it always does this time of year–it is thawing. The maple sap has started to flow; the birds are chattering in the bright sun of the morning; the squirrels are patrolling the snowbanks and scramble with their fellows across the high drifts. Today, the temperatures got up into the high thirties, melting the sidewalks and creating rivulets into the streets. To celebrate the return of spring, I have decided to highlight the delicate work…

  • Imbolc Light: Spiraling Out

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    Today, I began the day with dance. The sun was bright outside and the energy in the room felt like spring to me. The set moved me to open up and reach upward, toward the sun, toward the cloudless sky, toward the emergence of spring. Though there are 8 foot piles of snow all around my house right now and the air was so cold this afternoon that my cheeks and thighs felt frozen when I came in from a walk, the light was so strong; it was a stark contrast to the position of the sun in the sky…

  • Announcing: Walk Your Edge–A Six-Month Journey of Earth Connection

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    One Saturday per month * May – October 2015 (May 2, June 20, July 18, August 1, September 12, October 31) 10am-6pm meeting in Portland ME fee $600 : sliding scale work-trade & time dollars are options; payment plan available Many of us have been working for years to make big changes in our hearts and minds and in the larger society. As our society’s systems of racism, misogyny, homo-trans- and xenophobia and the destruction of our home the Earth are exposed and visible to us all of the time, it may feel like our work is simply too big.…

  • Listening to the Call

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    For most of my life, I have second-guessed myself, stood back to observe, avoided anything that might expose my lack of skills/knowledge/intelligence. I have taken the back seat, fumbled for words when asked to speak my mind, and generally been afraid of failing. Since 2013, I have been deeply asking what my true purpose here on this planet is–what am I called to do and what can I stand behind? I have been asking this question all of my life, but after a major illness and the reflection that followed, the question changed to be more like what can I…

  • Honoring our ancestors

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    Outside tonight, a cold rain is falling, and we are likely to get our first hard freeze of the season. It seems fitting, given that we are moving rapidly from the upward, outward energy of summer to the inward, downward energy of winter. It is a time of reflection and conserving our energy. It is a time when the veils between the worlds of life and death are thin, when our ancestors are accessible to share their wisdom with us. It is a time of honoring the passage of time and the movement between living and dying. It is also…

  • On Becoming a Radical Homemaker

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    This morning when I woke at 5:30, instead of going back to bed and trying to ignore the cat asking for attention, I picked up a book that had been languishing on the bottom of my library book pile for a few months.  (It’s bad when you’re a librarian and can renew as many times as you like!)  Shannon Hayes’ book Radical Homemakers is not a new book at this point, but for me, it’s the perfect book for this moment in my life when I am seeing all the ways that I need to change what I’m doing to…

  • Awakening the erotic

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    For many years, I have created small shrines and altars on every free surface in my house.  I collect things like driftwood and heart-shaped stones to remind me of my connection with the all-encompassing life force of the earth.  So it was a natural thing to create this small altar in the front of the teaching space for a workshop I hosted yesterday on “Herbs for Erotic Play.”  I wanted to add more items, but I was hauling bags with a hurt shoulder so I settled on simple: the yoni that resides on my medicine-making table, the chunk of rose…