Loss of an Animal Friend

 

My friend Mr.  Grey (the Guard Kitty).  We miss you so much, Mr. Grey.  

World Wide PAGAN MUSIC!

For those interested, some fascinating neo-tribal, neo-pagan music!

 

https://youtu.be/64CACoHNBEI

https://youtu.be/nLgM1QJ3S_I

https://youtu.be/jM8dCGIm6yc

https://youtu.be/NVY90cIko_E

https://youtu.be/ph2Qja6DoIU

  https://youtu.be/rETv-fv6RWs

https://youtu.be/JyrA9ift_VA

Imagining Beauty ~ Traveling the Path of the Heart by Patricia Ballentine

https://youtu.be/AQCjxi2buUc

I wanted to share the beautiful video Presentation (with her permission) that Priestess and Artist Patricia Ballentine gave at the 18th Conference on Current Pagan Studies that she gave just this past weekend.  The Theme was "Visions of Imagination and Creativity" and Patricia's video about the creation of her Labyrinth was my favorite presentation, both a sharing of the creative journey, and a meditation on finding the pathway to the Heartland.   Thank you Patricia for all that you bring to a world thirsty for what you offer.  To learn more about her work, visit her Blog THE CREATIVE FLAME

Imagining Beauty: Traveling the Path of the Heart

"Imagination can raise us up or tear us down. It is something we all have and use every day. When we anticipate a next step we are imagining what an outcome may be. When we resist taking an action we may be imagining that the future will look like the past. The challenge is to imagine the higher turn rather than being held back by imagining the worst as we take each step on the winding path of life. THAT is the greatest magic! 

In 2021 I created a 14' x 14' hand painted and stitched portable canvas labyrinth. The intention was to create something that would serve as a tool to bridge generations, weave inter-tradition communications, and support community building. I didn't realize how deeply the creative process would take me into my inner multi-generational work. From the spark of inspiration to the final steps of completion and consecration I gained clarity into my vision of, and devotion to the path of Beauty. 

 

This video steps the viewer through the process from the spark of inspiration to completion and consecration, revealing the call to Beauty."

Requiem: Art for the Sixth Extinction

                                                                                  

Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.   

Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you, I

bend down my strange face to yours 
in farewell.

Anne Sexton, "All My Pretty Ones"

Xerces Blue Butterfly.  Became extinct in 1945, one of the first American
butterflies to become extinct from habitat loss caused by urban development.

I just applied for a Puffin Grant to do a Shrine for the 6th Extinction as part of Dia de Los Muertes next fall.  I hope I will be able to do it..................it has been in my mind for a long time.

 

"We have been raised to think that our body ended here, with this bag of skin, or with our possessions or education or house.  Now we begin to realize that our body is the world."

Joanna Macy 

it's 3:23 in the morning
and I'm awake
because my great great grandchildren
won't let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

Drew Dellinger, Hieroglyphic Stairway

                                                               

Paintings from "Shamanic" Series

A long time ago I had a dream about a man who offered me fire.   In fact, I had the dream twice, and although I never fully understood it, I remember the dream still.   It is a beautiful metaphor for love, for courtship, for sacred sexuality, for a longing I must have felt then for being offered all of those things.

I rediscovered this painting in the process of looking through my files (I seem to be engaged very much in contemplation of my life these days).  I always loved it, never showed it, don't remember anyone ever saying anything about it to me, and finally it was destroyed, as so many of my paintings were.  It is hard to have opportunities to share paintings, and it is hard to store paintings, especially when they come off the canvases.  I am sad that it's lost, but glad that I have the image still.

I remember when I painted it, during a magnificent, magical residency at the (now defunct) Cummington Community, in Western Massachusetts, not far from where Emily Dickenson lived.  It was 1989, and I was reading Journey of the Wounded Healer by Joan Halifax, and was very much thinking about the way shamans and healers find their callings.  All of the paintings I did then were based on the concept of the Shamanic journey, and on my dreams.  The painting below was called "Fire Heart".  Now that I think about it, all of the paintings were also about Fire.  Which has always been my friend, and my Element.

Films for Hope

Toronto Tower, Canada  Studio Precht

I wanted to share, at the Eve of 2022, the link to this amazing resource of documentaries about people, and technologies, and "New Stories" that are all about hope, sustainability, evolution, and solutions to the crisis of our time.   As the creators of Films for Action say:

 "Stop imagining the apocalypse; start imagining the revolution."

https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/cancel-the-apocalypse-documentaries-to-help-unlock-the-good-ending

Shilda winery in Kakheti, Georgia   -   Copyright  X-architecture

"Our present moment is saturated in dystopian, apocalyptic fantasies of the future.  As the late Mark Fisher said, "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” We can envision a thousand ways that humanity might destroy itself and the rest of the world, but positive visions of the future remain severely lacking in comparison. Why is that?

The Dark Ages led to the Renaissance. Feudalism led to capitalism. No era remains stagnant forever. But there's an invisible meme in our culture today that says capitalism is the greatest economic idea humanity has ever invented and it will never be surpassed. That's why a thousand dystopian visions of the future all imagined that capitalism stayed the same, our economic paradigm never evolved... and then the world was eventually destroyed. Could the two be connected? Is our failure to imagine something better than capitalism going to be what actually leads to "the bad ending" for humanity? 

What this points to, in our view, is a crisis of imagination.  Humans at heart are storytellers, and we enact the stories we tell ourselves. As we've written before, our culture is enacting a story that's destroying the world. If humanity is going to unlock "the good ending," we've got to imagine it first. We've got to imagine ten thousand localized versions of it. That's how things change. 

Fortunately, visions of a more beautiful, compassionate, regenerative future already exist. But since they're not being broadcast daily on the evening news, we've got to dedicate a little more energy towards broadcasting them ourselves. This is what this list of films is for. These films decided that the apocalypse is canceled. Climate change is canceled. Biodiversity loss is canceled. A comeback of this scale has never been attempted before, but that's why it's going to work.  The people in these films aren't listening to the folks that say it's too late. They're imagining the future they want, not the future they're afraid of, and they're bringing that future into being.

Whether we're ultimately successful is not the point, and beyond anyone's ability to truly know. The point is that our true nature calls us to choose determination over defeat, and resilience over despair.   We hope these films inspire the former - that place in your heart that knows a better world *is* possible, and is ready to make it happen."

The Winter Solstice: Bridgit's Poem

 

BRIDGIT

 "God's abstention is only from human dialects;

 the holy voice utters its woe and glory in myriad musics,

 in signs and portents. 

 Our own words are for us to speak,

 a way to ask and to answer." 

.....Denise Levertov

There are some gifts that come to us

just once or twice in a lifetime,

gifts that cannot be named

beyond the simple act of gratitude.

 

We are given a vision so bountiful

we can only gaze with eyes wide,

like a child in summer's first garden.

 

We reach our clumsy hands

toward that communion

that single perfection

and walk away speechless, blessed.

 

And breathe, in years to come

breathe, breathe our hearts open

aching to tell it well

to sing it into every other heart

to dance it down, into the hungry soil

to hold it before us

 

that light,

  that grace given

  voiceless light

 

Lauren Raine (1999)