BeautyDialogues

Transformative Beauty

"Beauty is not just a call to growth, it is a transforming presence wherein we unfold towards growth almost before we realize it. Our deepest self-knowledge unfolds as we are embraced by Beauty."
~ John O'Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

Stone Earrings

The Mill Valley Art Festival had many beautiful things on display this year - artisan crafts, photographs, artwork of all kinds - but one that has stuck with me long after the booths were struck was this piece of jewelry by rebecca bashara:

The simplicity, originality and functionality of the design attracted me, but even more delightful was the fact that all her jewelry features river stones. That's right; river stones. 

It takes a special kind of artist to shower so much love and attention on what to the uninitiated would be simply ordinary rocks, but she is that kind and I love her work.

Equinox in Dorset

Fancy a magical mystery tour of the Dorset hills this weekend, exploring the ancient hill fort of Hambledon Hill?

(photograph by Simon Pascoe)

If so, you're in luck, because RedEarth and their merry band of elemental pranksters are up to their alchemical magic tricks! Music and Art will be loose in the landscape this Sunday starting at 5:30 GMT, echoing in the largest Neolithic enclosure in Europe in celebration of the Equinox.

Have a look and see what they're envisioning for this performance installation - 'Enclosure' - on the RedEarth website and in the Dorset InsideOut pages.

Shumei on Solano

Strolling down Solano for the Solano Stroll last Sunday, I came upon something interesting. In among the craft and jewelery stalls, the art cars, bands and musicians, stands for library outreach and various community projects in Albany and Berkeley, there was a table for what appeared to be a Japanese spiritual organization of some kind.

Einstein's Dreams

I’d heard of Einstein’s Dreams long before I found my own copy at Moe’s (God, I love Moe’s! What a fabulous bookstore!). A quirky little ‘literary’ piece by scientist Alan Lightman, this hauntingly delicate first novel explores the nature of time and how our conceptualizations of it rule the way we experience life.

It’s a quick read – I devoured it whole on the flight between SFO and Denver - 30 short dated prose-poems threaded with ‘interludes” of real-time interaction between the 26-year-old Einstein and his best friend Besso, and framed by a prologue and an epilogue.

30 dreams, recorded between 14 April and 28 June 1905 illustrate the same world, or versions of it, through 30 different views of time. Time stands still, runs backward, is mirrored back and forth, stays frozen in the past and is different in every city and for every person: every possible conceptualization is played out in Einstein’s dreams…

My favorite is the dream of 15 May, 1905:

Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.

Sacred Space in 2nd Life

If you know me or have read this blog for any length of time, you know that bringing sacred space into the online sphere has been one of my strongest dreams and passions ever since I entered this field. In my work I am always seeking to create environments of peace and beauty where silence is welcome and hearts connect, where we are aware of all our relations within the natural and spirit worlds and can enter deeply into our essential nature as Humans and relate together in the sure knowledge that we are one interconnected spirit and body.

I’ve been integrating color and images and movement into user interfaces, cultivating the practice of kindness and respect in conversational forums, and generally evolving these sensory-based language(s) as my ground-of-being online. I have been blessed with many successes, large and small, in beginning to realize my dream, but the other night my ability to imagine what is truly possible took a quantum leap.

My friend and playmate in this realm FireHawk Hulin (aka DragonWolf Goheen) invited me to join him in Second Life to explore something he and the ever-amazing David Sibbet (aka Sunseed Bardeen) had been working on with the exquisite Michelle Paradis (aka SingingHeart Amat) … something truly unique in my experience, and totally magical.

Sugimoto's Seas

The DeYoung is currently featuring an exhibition of work by Japanese conceptual artist and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. I was particularly fascinated by a series of seascapes he did as a result of a search for the timeless landscape, something that our ancient ancestors would have gazed upon yet is still recognizable to us today. The only place that fits that criterion, he says, is the horizon line between sea and sky...

This one is of the Boden Sea, in Uttwil.

Storyfield

First of all, the invitation to Storyfield itself blew my mind. Sent out to visual artists, writers, photographers, filmmakers, videographers, oral storytellers, journalists, executive coaches, non-profit workers, process arts practitioners, teachers, elders, the invitation was wide and consciously went out to a broad range of age and ethnicities. The call was made for us all to consider the larger field of cultural and personal stories that determine our world view, and see what a new story might look like.

Conceived by Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute and Peggy Holman, co-editor of The Change Handbook, Storyfield was unlike any other conference I’d ever been to. In truth it was more like a Gathering of the Tribes; the wide and diverse tribes of creative humanity engaged in Re-imagining the World.