BeautyDialogues

Seeking Beauty

Photo by Vagabond Shutterbug on Flickr

Robin Morris, a Beauty Dialogues reader who’s become a friend over the years, has paid me the highest compliment a writer could wish for. Here’s a letter I received from her a little over a week ago:

“I had a thought this morning that I wanted to share with you in relation to your connection with "beauty".  It was one of those moments this morning when it felt like a light was turned on in a very dark corner. Recently I've been struggling with the transition and loss around my divorce, and I had the realization that I need to shift my focus from dwelling on "why?", or "what did I do/what could I have done?", to "what do I need to heal?" or something close to that.

At first I assumed this looked like a gratitude journal or focusing on positive outcomes of the change in my life, but what I realized as I walked with my sweet puppy this morning, is that what I need is to be able to see the beauty in my life.

Contemplative Twitter, or #co-tw2

I've just finished taking part in an experiment on Twitter initiated by the consummate Techno Shaman George Por. The idea and instructions were posted online, and the invitation was sent out through the Presencing Institute's online community site yesterday afternoon, but for those of you who like their news delivered directly, here's the gist: it was a one hour experiment laid out in four 15 minute segments - the first of which was to contemplate the following question in silence, somewhere away from our computer screens: "What is needed for openness and dialogue through tweets to scale and affect positive change in consciousness and society?" 

Wedding Bliss

A friend of mine just got married and they made what I think is just about the cutest video I've ever seen of their wedding - an idyllic down home Vermont country "do" at the SkyMeadow Retreat Center. Of course the music - Anyone Else But You by the Moldy Peaches - is pretty irresistible on its own (it was in the soundtrack of the totally sweet-natured film Juno) but there's something in the whacky sentimental style of this video that I fell in love with and immediately wanted to share here with you. I hope you like it as much as I did.

Our Wedding at Skymeadow from drewvigal on Vimeo.

Ceremony

My friend and colleague David Sibbet, sometimes known as TurtleBone (Blessed by the Spirits of Crumbling Trees) and called Sunseed Bardeen in other worlds, has written an exquisite post about the Solstice Ceremony I made fleeting mention of in my last post.

I invite you to read it, and absolutely promise that you be charmed by his storytelling and touched by the beauty of his images. Not only will you learn some details about this ceremony, which is exquisite in itself, but he transmits a deeper understanding of what all true ceremony is about.