Thanksgiving Day After

Day after Thanksgiving was a winner!  Began with coffee and tea and watching two deer eating acorns on the dam very near the cottage - closer than I've ever seen them before.  The weather was perfect for all to be outside.  Sam even took a pedal boat ride - didn't dock it well - drifted out into the Pond and finally back to shore at the dam where the boys rescued it.  Air rifles were out and empty cans on benches around the fire pit and cups hanging from tree limbs were great targets.  Hammock was powerful tool with all 5 grandkids dumping each other out!   Usually 3 at a time in the hammock.

 Wisteria was finally pruned and burned in the pit.  Red maple blocking the view from the swing and chairs was removed and added more fuel to the fire.  Walker and Tate were fire lords.  Great aid in getting a serious fire going was old peanut oil from turkey frying years past - probably 5 years old! - also added a great aroma - like roasted peanuts.  

Jack, Luke and Sam used the hammock as it was intended.

Girls all went shopping - except Grandma who stayed behind to enjoy sons and grandchildren (not a shopper anymore anyway).

Night Before Thanksgiving Fun

First photos - all getting ready to leave for Hwy 25 Auto Drive-in movies and supper!

Kelsey and Sydney

Tradition

Just completed my share of the food preparation:  cranberry salad (which nobody eats but everyone insists we must have it - after all my mother always served it - with mayonnaise on lettuce - and nobody ate it then either!  Pecan pie - Luke's request.  Sweet potatoes and apples baked together - (recipe Sara cooked a couple weekends ago and we agreed it had to become a Thanksgiving staple).  Gravy (actually made ahead of time with chicken drippings and hard boiled eggs included but no gizzard, liver, etc.).  Collards (a new addition a couple years ago when we discovered everybody loved Jaquie's collards).  Cornbread (for the dressing which Luke and others will put together tomorrow.0  Ambrosia (not the kind my grandmother made with real oranges - how I loved watching her peel the oranges with a paring knife and get ALL the white off along with the spiral of peel.  Instead, this is canned mandarin oranges, crushed pineapple, tiny marshmallows, coconut and sour cream - with a bit of yogurt thrown in for good measure - but I won't tell the family!  Tomorrow comes the injected turkeys (two this year - the children are all grown up now and they do EAT) and baked ham - whipped cream (for what? - just to eat) and cherry o'cheese pies (made by the kids), and oh yes, the chex mix I made a couple days ago - already we're eating on that - a family tradition from waaaaaayyyy back.  Right now Luke's family has gone into town to lunch at Skin's - one of his family traditions dating back to Clemson life.  Tate's family is on its way from Atlanta.  Tonight, a trip to the Highwaty 25 Drive-in theater a recent tradition from about 4 years back.  And, so it goes.  …….How can anyone NOT love Thanksgiving and family and actually having everyone together - all ten of us!  The kids sleep in the Yogatorium -all five of them, Tate and Wendy get the Love Shack (cabin) this year, and the rest of us in my cottage.  It's great fun communicating between three buildings!!!  Time's up - they're back from town.

Writing

Well, so much for being able to eat outside Thanksgiving Day!  Looks like the cold is coming to stay for a while.  So, the ten of us will spend much time inside buildings.  Just hope it's warm enough for the boys to fish - one of their most fun things to do - besides riding on the Pond in the pedal boat or the canoe.  This year we'll find out just how hardy they are………A bit of philosophy from the book, This I Believe, an essay written by Mel Rusnov:  I believe we are more than the inhabitants of our cubicles….I believe we are transformed and connected by the power and beauty of our creativity. And I believe I owe it to my True Self and the Universe to be creative and connected.  This is my reason for spending December in near isolation at the beach. ……..        I will be busy with yoga, meditation,  breathing exercises, reading, walking the beach, mentally riding the waves as they move in and out,  long hot baths, naps on the couch, and the birds - soaring with the birds.  And hopefully occasional visits by friends to break the pattern, relieve the pressure,  and inspire.  All of this is designed to produce writing.  Writing is one of the most difficult creative activities I attempt.  For a couple of years now I have been working on a memoir. …actually mostly NOT working…... It is time to make a book.  I'm not going until Sunday after Thanksgiving, but I have begun filling a box with tools for writing.  More importantly, I have begun preparing my mind and my soul for the adventure.

Stillness

Once again this morning, I'm compelled to write from within.

Stillness

Rain fell last night
Blood of Mother Earth
Everything is shiny on the surface
But the air,
the space between, 
is milky gray
Quiet

As I sit, 
the candle flame is two
in the double-paned window.
Why am I not two?
Where is my Self?

A brown leaf of the post oak wobbles
One tiny branch of the willow oak 
moves tentatively
as if a Being is touching it.
My squirrel moves in jerks
stopping, sitting, eating, hoarding.

All else is still.
I hear the wind
blowing softly from my CD
but not a sound from outside.
Winter is coming. 

Shedding Leaves

Can't resist showing you a couple more photos of the deck - both of which were taken from inside the Yogatorium.  Also want to share with you a write I did following my meditation yesterday morning.
I watch as leaves fall from the trees
Yellows and browns mostly.
Brown leaves still bound to an oak.

Soon all shedding will be done
except for the beeches.

How like what I'm doing!
Shedding my old beliefs,
All those ideas I gathered
from other human beings
as I learned to fit in.

I'm shedding my learned leaves
For new green ones to come later -
Remembered.
Winter is on its way
when shedding will end
And I'll stand bare,
buck-naked
Free of the tribe's teachings
Empty, clean, available
Like the trees
not dead  - resting, waiting.

I'll wait with the trees in readiness for Spring
Gathering energy and strength
as I sit tall and still and quiet.
Listening
for the wind and the owls
Watching
squirrels and deer and songbirds
for clues.
Feeling the cold of the nights
Knowing
Hearing
Sensing
Within my Body.
Time circles
I disappear 
to become.

Yogatorium Deck photo

Here's a new photo of the deck I took tonight from the highest of the three levels..  It is absolutely stunning and will clearly be one of the best additions to our facilities.  The edges of the three levels are visually outlined with small stones to keep me from stumbling - so far I'm the only one who has - I'm always looking up instead of down.  I'll be facilitating more events in the 2014 year and this deck will make them much more enjoyable.  This is looking north to the fire pit, hammock, pond, and labyrinth.  If you haven't yet visited, come see!  Classes still going all this week and next Monday.  Possibly even Saturday after Thanksgiving if anyone is interested. My family plans to be gone by then.  Either way, I'll be here. Give me a call if you want to do one last class before I leave on Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Fox Theater Outing

BUSY week!  So much happening it's hard for me to even remember it all.  Biggest project - on my MacBook Pro I created an ad for Greenwood Magazine and actually sent it to the publisher!  Hope it will come out in January.  This creation took several days including a session with the techie at Apple Store in Greenville.  But, it's done!  One of those things I'd been "planning" for months……Next biggest thing - drove to Atlanta after yoga class on Saturday and Luke and I went out to dinner at Marlow's Tavern and then over to the Fox Theater for Celtic Thunder concert on Saturday night.  Some of you have already seen the photo on Facebook, but here it is again for the record.  …...Then, yesterday I drove back home from Atlanta for spiritual group meeting at 2:30 and fire ceremony/druming circle last evening.  Spirit was with us!  The rain was only a few drops - nothing to interfere with the event!  Life is good!

Filling Your Well

I have spent many, many hours over the last 24 working on an ad.  Don't know when I'll be satisfied with the collage of photos I'm putting together, but getting better as I go.  Of course, this is fun for me, even though challenging and frustrating and all those other emotions that come up when one is trying to be creative.  So, I'll have to spend some time "filling my well", as Julia Cameron writes in The Artist's Way.  If you have never read that book, you should.  I'll lend you my copy if you like.  Filling my well can occur from many different activities:  meditation, walking, sleeping and dreaming (especially in the hammock), listening to music, eating chocolate and/or ice cream, traveling, reading romance novels, knitting, sewing, breathing practices, and, of course, yoga asanas.  Sometimes, just sitting in my swing chair on the screen porch.  What fills your well?

That was then.This is now.

Busy fun weekend!  Lots of shamanism activities - all three of us, Sara, Faye, and I learned stuff we didn't know before!!! This going inward is a truly enlightening experience.  I'm ready to help you whenever you're ready.  (I just completed my "Healing the Light Body School" of The Four Winds Society and so am a certified shaman.)  ……...One of the major mantras I came up with is "That was then, this is now."  I healed a trauma from my 16-year-old head and now can live without the hangup.  It's truly amazing how different I feel.  And, what is happening to me is, I'm recognizing how many seemingly unimportant "imprints" in my body are not unimportant at all - but crucial to my happiness.  Soon, I'll get another session and see what comes from it!   ,………NEXT, you will truly want to be here Sunday evening at 6 pm.  We will actually be able to SEE the full moon this time.   It won't be hiding behind the trees.  So, plan to BE HERE!  Note the time change - it's now at 6 pm.  If you wish, come earlier and walk the labyrinth at your leisure.  Getting pretty dark by 6.  The fire pit has been moved to the North side of the Yogatorium - between the building and the dam.  You'll find us there.

Friends

Tonight my friend Sara is driving in from Wilmington, NC for the weekend.  Tomorrow morning Faye will drive here from Hendersonville, NC and the three of us will have a retreat here as we do three or four times each year.  We are three of our six pod sisters who met in 2005 as students in the Claritas Institute for Interspiritual Mentoring which Joan Borysenko initiated  and led.  It was a turning point in the spiritual life of each of us.  And, it melded us together into a pod of truly loving friends for life!  (The other 3 are involved with stuff this weekend that prevents them from being here.)  ….It's times like this when I wish I were a poet.  Friends have become so important to me - relationships is what life is truly all about.  Although I love my isolation times, they would be worthless, worse than that, useless at best, heartbreaking more likely.  The isolation periods give me the time to process what is going on in my life and grasp the deepest meaning of it all.  At the moment, FRIENDS.  Otherwise, they just disappear from my screen.  …..This act of learning as a shaman to "dance between the visible and invisible worlds" is clearly the most important facet of my life now, the most rewarding, and perhaps the most difficult.  But, it is coming.  I am almost daily now seeing improvement, progress, and joy in the acts of attention to the game.   I am so fortunate to be able to share my new learnings this weekend with friends who care.

Day Off to Just Be

Here it is already Wednesday!  Mondays and Tuesdays are truly full with two yoga classes each day - plus my morning 1-hour meditation.  So, today is my "day off."  I'm still overcome with the beauty of this month.  The tree leaves are constantly drawing my eyes from one to the other.  There is a red maple on the dam with FOUR different colors of leaves on it!  Red, orange, yellow, green, and now BROWN!  It seems incredible even though I'm looking right at it!  There is an oak behind the Yogatorium that has one whole branch of brown leaves and the others are still yellows.  The dam is covered with a deep mat of leaves - so much so the tree roots that normally try to trip me up are buried. The view into the woods is becoming more open each day as the leaves fall.  Soon, we will be able to see deeply into the woods through the trees past the old outhouse even.  …….Yesterday workmen insulated the Cabin so it will be reasonably comfortable even in the winter months.  Always before it was so cold one might as well be outside sleeping on the porch!  The fire ants are still active - had to buy more powder yesterday at the co-op to try to clean them out of my monkey grass border - they have already done much damage to the root systems - may even have to replace some as time goes by.  You would think they would be happy enough with the grass areas, but this year they have invaded my  flower beds.  Enough.  As you can tell, this is truly my day off - a time to JUST BE!  Come try it sometime - this is a great place for such inactivity!

Connection

Here is one of the most beautiful, meaningful photos I've seen lately - thanks to Todd for sharing it.  What does it say to me?  First take a look and see what it says to you……….I see a joining of the masculine and feminine parts of myself into one whole spiritual being in a human body.  This is one of the subjects of study during the Walking with the Sacred  shamanic training.  There is a feeling of completeness that comes with such work.   Notice the candles are not joined totally - there is a gap above and below the joining.  Still, there is the connection.  Questions:  How do we make this happen?  Is a complete joining ideal?  Or is it more healthy spiritually and/or humanly to feel those gaps, those separations?  From my own viewpoint, I am at least beginning to recognize times when one is overpowering the other.  And, perhaps that is good.  Perhaps that is what balance is all about - shifting, adjusting, balancing, making it all work together for a wholeness.  Reminds me of the saying "They are joined at the hip."  Maybe that's what this depicts, being joined at the hip.  I like that,….being joined at the hip is just about right.  How nice it would be if I could be joined at the hip of everyone!

Praying Mantis

 Another good day yesterday.  Practicing some divination work, reviewing notes from "Walking with the Sacred" week, watching a fire in the cabin fireplace,  knitting - in general a very pleasant day!  Sending you my most recent nature photo.  This little girl was perched beside my front door.  She is all brown, not green like others I've seen.  Is this her winter coat?  Is she dead? She didn't move even when I held the camera very close.   I didn't disturb her, so don't really have answers.  What a graceful being she is - I must Google her and learn more.  But first, it's meditation time - gotten to be a lovely habit - first thing each morning I grab my warm poncho, throw it on over my pj's, dash up to the Yogatorium and turn on the heat.  Then, a cup of tea, a shower, some clothes instead of pj's, and a blog post!   A lovely way to begin a day!  May you be happy!