A few days ago, leaving a young friend in charge of our home, my husband and I set off south to Santa Fe via the Great Sand Dunes (which is a story for another time.) I have only been to the city once before and George had never seen it, so it seemed a perfect …
Beltane begins with fire – specifically with the bonfires lit from the nine sacred woods (birch, oak, hazel, rowan (mountain ash), hawthorne, willow, fir, apple, and ivy). From that bonfire, the hearth fire in each home is renewed and rekindled. These woods symbolize the female and male energies, wisdom, birth and rebirth, life and death, …
A few blogs ago, I wrote about the emotional freight of time, and today brings that issue back again because it is my husband’s 60th birthday. He was born on the cusp of the ancient summer quarter, so this day has marked a special transition in the year for me ever since I met him. …
As we come to the end of one season (the spring quarter) and prepare to enter a new one, long practice invites us to release the old energy and acknowledge the lessons learned. It is an opportunity to empty ourselves in gratitude for all we have received, pouring back into the universe the blessings that …
Let me admit right up front that I am aging and that everyone around me is aging. In fact, the whole human race is aging – those in utero and those approaching or passing the 100 year mark. And lest I get too caught up in the human thing, a clergy friend reminded me today …
We are very close to the end of the spring quarter in the ancient calendar of the northern hemisphere. Next Wednesday will mark the final Imbolc meditation for 2014. So we are in a transition time, gathering up the lessons and tasks of this part of the life cycle and following our spirits forward on …
This year, because independently cycling calendars do occasionally coincide, the Jewish and Christian faith communities have the relatively unusual synchronicity of Passover falling in the week before Easter (at the time it fell prior to Jesus’ actual death), and both the Eastern and the Western branches of the Christian Church celebrating Easter on the same …
Last Wednesday, I suggested that we take a week to consider all the things that fill our lives, and then to consider which ones we are willing to empty from our time, our energy, our focus. I invited you to join me in thinking about what might be able to breathe and grow in the …
Along with most of the rest of the United States, my husband and I are in the final stages of paying taxes for 2013. As most people who handle the process themselves — as opposed to hiring a CPA to do it — know, the US tax code is not exactly an intuitive document, nor …
Whether we are Christian or not, our sisters and brothers of that faith are moving into the final week of Lent, considering the death of Jesus from many perspectives, seeking to understand his witness on behalf of the vast majority of humanity who live on the margins of power. His teaching (in common with the …