At the Vortex of Sobriety
It was the 4th of July and fireworks were going off non-stop all over the city on an evening in America when many celebrate freedom. I was in Los Angeles visiting a friend and I had the opportunity to...
View ArticleVenice Biennale 2013 Part 1
It's a picture perfect fall day in October and I need to get outside and revel in it's yellow leaves but first I cannot resist writing just a few words in anticipation of my upcoming trip: a life long...
View ArticlePrayer for the New Year to Santa Lucia
I am trying to wake each morning with the intention to softly open my eyes and see the new light through lenses of love. St. Lucia (the one who wears a crown of candles and offers sweets on her holy...
View Articleikebana: the art of flower
Ikebana: the art of flower Ikebana: noun, Japanese meaning, the fine art of flower arranging. Ikebana is a disciplined art form in which nature and humanity, in an elegant dance, are brought together...
View ArticleThe Venice Biennale Part II
"I recognize that I must be alone with my soul. I come with empty hands to you, my soul." C. G. Jung A dear friend, Jane, brought me a gift in a pink box about half the size of a shoebox. I...
View ArticleA Prayer for Juarez and West Mesa: An Offering Mandala 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014 2 p.m Plaza of the National Hispanic Cultural Center Avenida Cesar Chavez and 4th Street Albuquerque, NM Free and Open to the Public Please join us to create a prayerful...
View ArticleYoko Ono: ARISING
Yoko Ono invited women from countries around the world to write testaments of harm done to them for simply being a woman. The setting for these testaments are part of her installation Arising, shown in...
View ArticleThe Paradox
I am engrossed in a novel this summer. I take it with me to the studio and when I am in a moment of pause on a painting commission, I read. The Goldfinch is Donna Tartt's very thick contemporary...
View ArticleFinding Humility on Route 66, Part I
Recently, a colleague, (thank you Marta) helped me to formulate a question for my best interest now and in the future: "What is the quality I most need for present circumstances and for proceeding into...
View ArticleFinding Humility, Part II
On the train to Santa Fe two days ago, I met a wonderful woman from Oakland, California. We talked about the book she was reading by Stephen Harrod Buhner, Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm....
View ArticleJohn Muir: Ecology of the Heart
"Fountain Lake Farm in central Wisconsin, the boyhood home of Sierra Club founder John Muir, was recently purchased for protection by a Wisconsin land trust. The newly protected area will adjoin the...
View ArticleA Flight, December 2014
I am at a threshold experience that I long to share. Come with me please to marvel at a bird sanctuary less than an hour from the urban sprawl of Albuquerque where I live. It is the time of the annual...
View ArticleContemplation, January 2015
To me everything is supernatural. -Richard Jefferies, The Story of My Heart, 1883 2015. The second day of the new year feels cold outside. A bit of snowfall early in the dawn hours on New Year's...
View ArticleLord of the Feathered Tribe
"Beyond… someone else's land; a terra incognita, holding the suppressed fascination we all have for places just beyond where we know, or are supposed to be."-Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk Many...
View ArticleSummer, Struggle, and a Spider's Thread
There is a sweet patio on the first floor of the complex where I live. It has a small lap pool and a few tables and lounge chairs; flowering trees and rosemary shrubs surround it. This spring/summer...
View ArticleVincent van Gogh and Nature
50 Paintings and Drawings at the Clark MuseumWilliamstown, MassachusettsIn the web of nature, where van Gogh created his masterpieces, he was transfixed by all that is alive: rocks, water, trees,...
View ArticleNuminous Fields
numina |ˈn(y)oōmənə|plural form of numen .numen |ˈn(y)oōmən|noun ( pl. -mina |-mənə|)the spirit or divine power presiding over a thing or place.ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from...
View ArticleEcology and the Eco-self
Environmental activist and Buddhist scholar, Johanna Macy wrote in 1991, "Among those who are shedding ... old constructs of self, like old skin or a confining shell, is john Seed, director of the...
View ArticleThe Bird Who Came in Through the Doorway
As I sit in my morning meditation with Rune stones, ancient Nordic symbols, I chant to connect me with all that is alive, I hear the distinct sound of wings flapping. Not the wings of my canary...
View ArticleIn the Bag
I have had a summer practice of going to the Rio Grande river many mornings to start my day before the heat waves of desert afternoons. It is a short ten minute drive from my place and if lucky I can...
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