there was a time when my daily life consisted of all day, outdoor, sweat-dripping work. i love this type of work. the type of work during which water is evaporating as quickly as it is soaking in. the type that requires clothes to be peeled off to step under a cold shower at the end of the day. these past few days, we’ve been building rock walls, moving around and… Keep Reading
mornings with no plans, no have tos, no clock checks… just stilled time, tameless flows of words, breakfasts at noon, hair-flying dancing to nostalgic tunes, every-body-part-sun-kissed stretching… laughing. always laughing. mornings with no thoughts about how we should live… mornings just living.
i push aside leaves to see that they are still here, heart-shaped and rooted in this sacred space. a gentle remembering, a pull to a place, a presence, a time, a larger unfolding, a forever tie. but right here, right now, just these stones, just this love.
“what are your fears?” occasionally somebody will ask me this question. whether legitimate and serving to keep us safe, or illogical and working to hold us back, we all occasionally experience the feeling of fear. for me, diving is a response that reliably surfaces. i love to swim, but have never entered water head first. i was the girl, during high school swim classes, who had to check off the… Keep Reading
more feeling, less thinking—because the path taken through instinctive spontaneity often outshines the one taken through careful planning. welcome, 2017. welcome. “one day when you wake up, you will find that you have become a forest. you have grown roots and found strength in them that no one thought you had. you have become stronger and more beautiful, full of life giving qualities. you have learned to take all the… Keep Reading
tucked away, in the basement of my childhood home, is a long, concrete-floored stretch of space—my dad’s workshop. it is filled with wood pieces and tools, paints and stains and benches and, often, while growing up, the noise of various machines, the smell of sawdust…and my father’s creative and capable mind. back far enough and around the corner are a few of my parents’ more personal things—things collected and kept… Keep Reading
…a little like “earth, wind & fire” and a lot not like it at all.:) it’s been several years since i have walked through the art institute of chicago. a visit felt due, so i spent some time, a few days ago, working my way through the crowded rooms of the museum. a couple of rooms in, i started to notice that i was paying more attention to the people… Keep Reading
one morning, when i was around 9 or 10 years old, i noticed an older lady standing in her front door as i rode by on the school bus. sensing a feeling of loneliness, i smiled and waved. she smiled and waved back. both a friendship and a ritual, across 2 windowpanes and several feet of front lawn and pavement, commenced. every morning, she would be standing there—waiting to share… Keep Reading
:: the river of change :: “am i going to flow with my river nature today, or am i going to swim against it? this is what i ask myself when i get out of bed each morning. and when i go to sleep, i apologize to the river gods for any hard strokes i made against the current, and for splashing about like a drowning person. i pray that… Keep Reading
“what we have enjoyed, we can never lose…all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” —helen keller one of the classes that i signed up for during the summer of 1998 was speech. while preparing to try to convince my classmates to adopt animals from our local shelter for the persuasive speech requirement, i found myself spending a lot of time there—at first, just to gather information and… Keep Reading
maybe it’s a remembrance from another life, or a familiarity that courses through the bio-terrain of my being from past generations… but i feel as though i’m coming home whenever i return to this breathtaking and diverse rising. energy, from ancient places, moves in and around, bringing stories from the vast stretch of stars, stories from the rugged expanse of earth, stories from the steadily moving waters —medicine— inciting, with… Keep Reading
