BeautyDialogues

My sister Karen

My sister Karen died this week. She went into the hospital on Monday night and was gone by Wednesday a little after noon. She'd been feverish and feeling bad for a few days before Christmas, but she didn't have insurance and felt she couldn't spend the money to go to the doctor and see what was wrong. By the time the pain was so bad she finally relented, it was too late. 

Summer, 2010

She was 48. The youngest of my siblings, you could say Karen was the heart of the family - everybody's favorite sister, aunt, daughter, friend. She made friends wherever she went and had that something special that made us all want to be around her. Maybe it's because she was so much fun. Full of high spirits and ready laughter, she was always the life and soul of the party and she made wherever she was the party. 

She was also stubborn and brave and an incredibly hard worker. Succesfull in her chosen vocation, Karen won national awards for her dedication and skill. Deeply loyal, she loved her family and was fiercely protective of her boys, providing a home for them on a single wage. She brought our mother to live with them in Hawaii when she was transfered there and spoiled her with special trips & vacations.

My sister Karen was good and kind and one of the strongest people I've ever known. I guess some part of me thought she could never die.

I was wrong.

Winter, 2010

Anything I can say about her or how it feels to lose her seem trite and meaningless; the words burdened with an impossible task.

In the end there are no words at all, so I hold her in the silence of my broken-open heart and know her light will always be alive there.

Maui, Summer 2009

Cosmic Benjamin

I've been having so much fun working with my fabulous World Cafe intern, Benjamin Aaron Degenhart. He is so bright and interesting, always thinking of new and innovative ways to present ideas and activities and people in the World Cafe online community we host together.

He's also a great creative lover of beauty, as you can see from this video he recently made and posted on his blog:

Hakone Dreaming

I did something delightfully unexpected (and deeply nourishing) the other day. I took time right in the middle of one of the busiest periods I've ever experienced to join my friend and creative mentor FireHawk Hulin in a photo shoot at Hakone Gardens.

Here's a little glimpse into what happened there:

Vision, Storytelling and Digital Media

I've been falling in love with Salinas, a sleepy fertile town that has been growing on me ever since I moved here at the beginning of the month to join FireHawk in teaching a summer intensive course in Vision, Storytelling, and Digital Media at Hartnell College. I was head over heels in love with my class from the first day...

I've always dreamed of having a room-full of bright young minds to explore with, and the reality has been all I could have ever wished for. My kids (I say kids but they range in age from one impossibly capable 15 year old to a deeply thoughtful and ex-homeless man in his 40s, with most of them bright sparks between 19 and 23) are incredible - sensitive, intelligent, curious and creative.

The course we've designed for them is a bit unusual; it's a multi-dimensional fabric of social, spiritual, technological and vocational threads -  but they have taken everything we've given them and made full use of it. Let me take you back to the first week, for example, where we asked each of them to begin thinking about what having a vision might mean for them...

For many it was the first time they'd been asked this question, and we spent the time it took to uncover a vision for each student - first for their lives and then their community, before beginning to create digital art from what they found. Each student, whatever their background, level of education, or expressive style, threw their heart and soul into communicating their visions through video. With their permission, I'm proud to share the results of their work on the Vision Nest Studio video channel we created.

And that was only the first week! Stay tuned for more about Vision Nest Studio Productions (the "brand" that has come from this adventure for FireHawk and I), and to see the class' final video project - done in teams each focusing on a vision for (one of) the Agriculture, Health, and Construction industries in the Salinas valley in 2020.

Solstice Ceremony

Every year I respond to the drum beat of a Solstice ceremony held high in the Santa Cruz mountains where I join 25-40 others in dancing to the Tree of Life and declaring my intent, my commitment, for the next year.

It's almost impossible to describe the power of this experience in words, but I'll give it a go:

Tall trees, a deep horizon
a meadow with open sky,
where unruffled deer
witness
a communing circle of earnest hearts,
entering ever closely
the domain of their destiny.

A circle of Humans
sitting in the bounty of the gifts we hold,
Listening
for what it is we feel we must offer back
in the grace and gratitude of this fullness.

...o...o...0...o...o...

My own commitment, in this next cycle of the sun, is to hone my inherent, god-given aesthetic intelligence into a powerful instrument of Light.

I offer this commitment for the benefit of all sentient beings, and ask three blessings to guide my way:

May my voice be sourced in Silence.
May my words evoke the magic of original Knowing.
May my images be graced by the catalytic spark of Beauty.

May it be so!

Everything is Beautiful

When I was in China I had several chops made, and I asked one of them to be the Chinese word for Beauty. "What kind of beauty?", the artist asked me, explaining that there are many kinds of beauty in the Chinese language. I replied I wanted the characters that meant the beauty of life itself. "Ah!", he said, and carved me this chop. It means "Everything is Beautiful".

Poetry of Kay's Wedding

My friend Kay married her devoted love Jeff this weekend. A gentle afternoon sun came out to bless what turned out to be a perfect wedding - charming, intimate, and profound. Profound for many reasons, not least of which being that Kay has pancreatic cancer and now in her fourth post-diagnosis year has decided to stop chemo and radiation and live the rest of her life without them, and with Jeff, who has pursued her with convincing clarity for several years now. So her radiance and beauty and very aliveness, standing there smiling next to her equally radiant Prince Charming in front of family and friends - that alone was deeply profound.

There was charm in the lovely garden site with a close-in view of the bay; in the hand-made truffles Sue stayed up all night dusting with luster powder and filling with chai; in the tendrils of green ribbon flying in the breeze and in the bride's laughter and spontaneous wit. Intimacy in the heart-felt vows, the daughters that stood proud and beautiful in their formal roles; in the generosity and community of family and friends that came from near and far to cook and offer their homes and decorate and celebrate and clean up afterward, going home together to put their feet up and talk about how wonderful it was.

And no small dose of the charm and intimacy came from a thoughtful gift given by friends Michael and Karen, who hired Silvi Alcivar to grace us with her red typewriter and poetry on demand. If you don't yet know about Silvi and her magical art, I'm so glad to be the one to tell you...

a little help from my friends...

A couple of gifts arrived from sweet girlfriends this morning:

My friend Beverly has sold her house and is taking a world tour with her son Matt to investigate cool things happening around the planet. Here's some beauty she sent back from Thailand:

Ashley Cooper, aka Bright Spark, is up to her old tricks of spreading love all over the place and here's a little bit of it just for you (via MC Yogi). You have to watch this video - it's so cool. This is what technology is for!

MC Yogi - Give Love (Giving4Living Mix) from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

My Birthday!

woodcut by Tom Killion

It's my birthday and the sun is shining! There's something about the sun in winter that is so delightful - so optimistic... I love it when it's beautiful on my birthday!

Dreaming

My annual Dreaming Ceremony was a little different this year, due to the series of storms that hit the California coast in the last few weeks. The winding mountain road I took to get there was a 2 hour obstacle course of rock-slides, flooded low spots and downed power lines, so it was no surprise to find there was no electricity when I arrived.

We gathered that first night in a large room in the Santa Cruz mountains, lit by a roaring fire in the fireplace and the glittering lights of this year's altar (created by Lightning Dove, aka Sue Blondell). The heat in the building was electrically generated so it was cold and we were all wrapped in medicine blankets and woolly socks - some of us wearing scarves and hats, and even gloves.

It was magic...

One of the main motivations that takes me to the Dreaming Ceremony - and the Summer Solstice Ceremony that bookends my year - is the wish to realign my system to the rhythms of the natural world. The conditions could not have been better for that purpose, or for the collective Dreaming we all came to do together...

Later that night I took a flashlight back to my little cabin in the woods and lit a bunch of votives to do some journaling before snuggling into bed and watching tree shadows moving outside my windows. I left my porch light on so I could tell if the electricity returned and when it came on in the middle of the night I was kind of disappointed.

But that wasn't the end of our adventures with the weather- the electricity was on and off throughout the four days of ceremony and the darkness in the Kiva was especially deep when there was no electric current to distract us from the Void. My body actually began to remember what it was like to live without it and the re-calibration of my internal compass was well and truly set by the end of our time together; I figure it's good for another six months at least!