Hello again!!  How are you, after the holiday season is over?  Have you noticed that the days are getting longer?  Are you excited to start getting more blogs from us again?  It’s snowy again today, after many days where it was so warm and sunny here.  We’ve all been wonderfully busy here, Papa and Mama Kiva working on the conference and with students, and Mama Loba and I doing Winter type stuff like finally organizing and cleaning the storage area we call the library (because it has so many books in it of course!).

I have been looking though my powerful telescope that Resolute got me, before the moon is up, when I am best able to see stars. I think I may have seen one of the stars on Orion’s belt even! I love astronomy. A friend of mine Sabrina came down that night and we both got to look through the telescope.  We had lots of fun looking at stars. She also showed me some constellations I hadn’t seen before, like Orion’s belt. We used both our eyes, the binoculars and the telescope. I also have a “Turn Left at Orion” book and its very nice to use cause it also shows how to spot things with a small telescope. Like Cassiopeia, and the galaxy Andromeda. I am certainly very thankful to Resolute for such a special gift! It’s very lovely having a telescope, I look in it when ever I have time. Looking at the stars is saticfying it gives me a feeling that I’m that I’m fulfilling something.

I also love studying Folklore, History, and many different kinds of Sicience’s I think I’ll be a scolar when I grow up. Papa has been doing lot’s of history with me, just a little bit ago he got me three history books full of interesting history. I drink up knowledge like a spunge!  Still, I think that pretty much my favorite study of all things is Astronomy.

This is a picture of my new friend Che, another home schooled wild child who is going to visit me maybe next month.  She sent me a handmade doll me had made me she used pipecleaners to make it. It’s amazing it has beautiful clothes she had sewed on to it and it even has two pairs of shoes one pair yellow and the other purple. I named her Azul. The word Azul is a spanish word, it means blue (Mama Loba teaches me some Spanish), for she has a blue braid with a little wreath on top of it. I have a brightly colored puppet, that’s a duck it’s tiny like her and has purple wings it’s name is Lola. It matches her well so I pretend they’re friends. It’s nice to have her around cause there’s lots of other dolls I have that are her size plus a paper doll I made. So she had lots of friends.    The other dolls names are Nina, Larua, May, and Lissa. All about her size.  Papa will put a picture of me and Azul too.

Papa posted another piece of his essay on dangerous Pitfalls.  I hope you will all read and benefit from it, because you have to know the pitfalls so you don’t waste time falling into them you know!

I hope every one is having a wonderful winter!!!!

Love!
Rhiannon Cadhla Hardin!

(9!)

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Pitfalls
On the Animá Path of Self Growth, Self Realization, Service & Purpose
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.animacenter.org
Part 6 of 7

The following is the sixth in a series describing dangerous or limiting pitfalls on the path of personal growth and purpose, misconceptions and maladies that can hinder our understanding, development and manifestation.  Please feel to share these with friends:

•  The Goal Of No Suffering
Religions have long promised an end to suffering in the “life after death,” while some New Age and Eastern dogma promises techniques to rid us of suffering right now.  Avoidance of all suffering in this life, however, can be counterproductive.  The expression “no pain no gain” is true in matters of personal growth as well as bodybuilding.  Pain is not punishment, but a call to attend.  It is not our duty or karma, but rather, the balance to exquisite pleasure.  It is the counterweight against which we pull, and it is that pulling which provides the strength of our joy.  Pain is not how we pay the fine for past crimes, but how we pay the dues of our membership in the rolls of the aware.  It is, in one form or another, one of the prices of heightened sensation, and part of the reward of being a heartful feeler.  And beware the draw of drama: The trick is to be awakened and deepened by it, not addicted.

•  Misconstruing Illness & Vilifying Death
It is wrong and harmful to imagine that good health and long life is proof of one’s spiritual level or personal powers.  At its worst, such thinking can cause the ill to feel at blame for their maladies, and make death seem like a defeat instead of a teacher and unifier.  Additionally, while healing oneself physically is important, it’s not as essential as learning from our every illness or disability.  It is the practitioner’s sometimes painful lessons and trauma-instigated transformation that affords her the power and wisdom to assist others.

•  The Cult Of Happiness
In the pursuit of happiness, some spiritual approaches recommend we avoid negative influences.  However, it is exposure to the so called “negative” that tests and fortifies the positive.  Systems, habits and regulations are potentially more dangerous to one’s spiritual path than chaos or disruption could ever be.  Besides, nature teaches that happiness is too easy a goal for our fleeting finite lives, too low a mark for our aims, too little to ask for one’s primary prayer.  Better we covet childish exhilaration and sensual ecstasy, strive for quiet contentment and raucous excitement, pray for the realization of our truest, responsive, sensate selves!  Better we seek the fullest expression of that being, suffer the price of our increased awareness, and bear the utter joy that is then our reward!  After all, joy and suffering are polar twins, pointing to the same capacity and willingness to feel.  Together they widen the scale, expand the measure of how alive we truly are!  Happiness is the mind freed of immediate worries, the basket of our lives emptied of all disruptive input.  Joy, on the other hand, is an ecstatic disruption – that together with longing and sorrow – fills that basket to the brim.  Happiness is comparatively shallow and inevitably conditional, whereas joy is so deep it remains undefeated, even with our honest embrace of the saddest of events.  Animá teaches us to embrace both, and to give thanks.  For to really enjoy, one must fully enjoin… and fully rejoice!

•  Transmutation Of Desire & The Distrust Of Instinct
At times bosses, husbands, priests, politicians and gurus alike have taught that we can’t trust our intuition, because it’s what tells us that “something’s wrong with this picture.”  All vested authorities should fear the power of our inherent, native intuition, for it’s what warns us when we’re being disempowered, and what begs us to strike out against what binds us.  It’s a red light designed to warn us about the hours of our lives burned up without engaging in truly meaningful activity, the days spent stuck in artificially lit boxes, our earth damaging or soul deadening careers, and any partners we might live with who don’t love and honor us like they should.  Intuition is simply “body smarts,” ancient corporeal knowledge directing us to what best serves our real needs and authentic selves — and away from anything failing to serve us in this way.  It’s fulfilled by mindful food gathering whether in a store or a field, but it recoils at standing in line.  It’s attracted to learning, but suspicious of schools.  Our deepest instincts are the still-valid messages echoing the cumulative experience of our evolutionary past, and the forward looking intentions of the Whole.  While ideas can be independent of and even contrary to the direction of earth and Spirit, instincts are inseparable aspects of anima inclination and will.  Teachers can pass on all the best ideas and processes in the world, but we still need to develop intuition, instinct and discernment in order to personally know how, where and when to apply them.

…to be continued

(To further deepen your study and practice we recommend enrolling in the various Animá 8 Week Courses described on the website, especially the introductory “Orientation, Principles & Pitfalls” and the new course on “Awareness”)

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Call For Help with Conference Sponsor/Vendor Outreach

Free Registration, Acknowledgment & Unending Thanks Offered to Volunteers

doing outreach to potential event Sponsors, Vendors & Practitioners

and

Any Amount of Help Welcomed from Anyone

willing to send a Sponsor or Vendor Invite and Application to any business or nonprofits you personally know of

The TWHC is getting huge amounts of buzz on the internet, participants are already arranging rides here from as far away as New England and Canada, and we received so many requests to speak that we filled all the spots the first week.  There will be a deep ecological and conservation element, with the help of United Plant Savers. Flamenco dancers and musicians volunteered for free, and two earthy bands were so honored to be involved that they signed on from the east coast without our being able to pay their transportation here. The website has been upgraded, a special blog built just for conference announcements, a first batch of flyers and brochure went out, and more are in the works.  And finally, Mt. Rose Herbs and LearningHerbs.com made the first good sized sponsor donations.  That said, we have a number of tables/spaces to fill, and we could use more financial sponsors to ensure the event’s success.

There are 3 essential elements to this work:
-researching related businesses, nonprofits and health practitioners in NM
-Sending materials email, or snail mail when necessary
-making followup calls to be sure they got the material, encouraging them to commit

We could especially use more help contacting places BETWEEN NOW AND FEB 1ST , the deadline for Sponsors to be included on the first 1,000 20″ posters, in the first 1,000 revised color trifold brochures, and in our Sponsor Drive Director, Rosalee’s slide show video due to be made available through YouTube and through herbal and healing portals.

And those of you who understandably can’t commit to filling a Volunteer Position in this way,

we would still welcome your help sending out to any business, nonprofits and health practitioners you know:

a) TWHC Sponsor Invite

b) TWHC Sponsor Application

c) TWHC Vendor Invite

d) TWHC Vendor Application

You can click on any of the above to download them, the send them yourself and let us know you contacted.  Or alternately, simply send us  the contact name and email and phone, and we will get ahold of them ourselves.  Please try to think of what business, healers, educators and advocacy groups you know of that might value an opportunity to be involved with this conference and promoted as its essential supporter.

Thank you ever so much!  As with all of this work, it is only accomplished with the help of you, the larger Animá tribe.

Click here for more information on the TWH Conference

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We’re Not Here to Accept Reality

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.animacenter.org

Since I was a little kid, people have been telling me to get more practical, tone down my expectations and accept reality.  There is something to be said for such advice, given my impractical and expectant history.

Practical?  It’s true that I repeatedly chose the adventure of life over school, and barely-paying work like art and writing over basically anything that might actually have made me a decent living.  Like the scene in the great “Legends of the Fall” movie, I would sit for hours in front of the gelled oatmeal or waxy canned carrots rather than get it over and eat them like a good boy.  I still can’t fix our Jeeps when they are frequently in need of repair, and sabotage at least one potentially profitable arrangement per month by insisting on putting honesty and honor ahead of civility and income.  I am admittedly far better suited for shooting recalcitrant old appliances than for fixing them, and can’t leave this desk for any outside chore without ending up on a long unplanned walk or spending hours sitting gazing at critters and flowers.

Too high of expectations?  I suppose, though I don’t really “expect” so much as require what some might consider to be too much:  That people be real with me, whether sweet or obnoxious.  That the conversations that take up part of my finite life be either relevant, meaningful or both.  That the fruit in my bowl be bite-able and not literally tasteless plastic decoration.  That my child be protected from all threats, and that I effectively guide her past her own corridors of darkness or doubt more ably than I have ever helped anyone.  That I live up to my ever greater standards for authenticity and responsibility, no matter how high the price.  That the government, if it cannot truly represent me, at least back off enough to give us room to do the right thing.  That I can and will spend the rest of my days in this place that I so love and so deeply learn from, and that with all my unpalatable orneriness and outlaw zeal, I will be loved enough to have my bones interred among the roots growing down into this special land.  Even more than expecting, I ridiculously insist upon freedom, liberty and both nature-given and constitutionally-given rights.  I insist on the existence of undeveloped and ungovernable places that show us what we are made of, and on my taking every opportunity to naturally discern, choose, manifest, improve, heal or create…

But learn to accept the way things are, in a time with so much we think and are told is a lie?  When so much that is beloved is endangered?  When so much that is irreplaceable is vanishing, from crucial fertile soil to quality regionally-produced products, from personal liberties to essential wisdom and values?  When legislation is continuously enacted by both governing parties of this country, increasingly micro managing every aspect of human existence and experience?  When somewhere, every day of the year, little girls are being abused and scarred for life?  When our taxes are used to prop up mismanaged banks, fund bizarre studies, and bankroll wars that are questionable in necessity and inevitably poorly managed?  No way!  In this case, I am unquestionably guilty as charged, guilty of seeing reality as a shifting field that we are each and every one of us responsible for the constant co-creation of.  It’s vital that that we as individuals, Americans and humans, learn to set aside our comforting illusions and state foisted untruths,  be honest with ourselves and deal with what is.  On the other hand, honestly recognizing and dealing with isn’t the same as “accepting” reality as it is.  It is for us as conscious, caring and thinking beings, to make choices and act with the intent of changing what needs changing, resisting what needs resisting, and personally contributing to the goodness and wholeness around us through whatever great or minor means.

When I was a partying-too-hearty youth, an “altered reality” was something brought on by too many hours at the wheel of a car, or from drinking hallucinatory Tequila or even less socially respectable attitude adjusters, and anthropologists still use the term to describe their Native American subjects after a hot sweat lodge or days of dancing skewered to a Sun Dance pole.  To my current way of seeing things, however, all reality is actually “altered reality,” in that it’s affected by both what we do and what we fail to do, as well as by how we perceive and the ways that we’ve been trained to think.  Our lives, our future and our world need not be only a result of fate, outside forces and circumstance, but also a product of our wisdom, intention, will and action.  By whatever divine or otherwise amazing force you think we are here, we are blessed with the awareness of choices and are thereby made responsible for them.  We all help to alter unfolding reality whether we’re conscious of it or not, and whether we like it or not.  The option is for us to make our effects deliberate and informed, purposeful and will-full.

If much we hear on the news shows sound like somebody’s nightmare made real, it’s because it is!  And just as our fears, hatreds and illusions are recreated in day to day events, so can our best intentions, hopes and dreams help in part to create a present and future reality that we all can fully live with.  We’re not here to accept reality, but to each do our individual and collective part to help change it.

I close, unapologetically accepting nothing at face value, filled with the (okay, impractical!) expectation of helping to make things better.

-Best always, JWH

(Above will appear in Jesse’s upcoming book for the general public “The Town that Waves”)

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Turning Over a New Leaf:

Resolution Every Day

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

The first of the Julian calendar year is a time when we in this culture traditionally make resolutions to ”turn over a new leaf” – a remarkably nature based metaphor for doing better in the future.  For some, this may entail changing those habits that fail to serve us or further our aims, or the creation of new ways of being and acting that do nourish and assist.  Resolutions may involve leaving a bad situation or moving towards a more satisfying relationship, job or home, or perhaps providing for ourselves or others what has too long been neglected.  This tradition is founded on a desire to develop and improve that it is as old as life itself, in the end not only making things easier or more bountiful for the one doing the changing, but also often improving things for each being’s family, community, genus, regional ecology and the larger connected planet.  When it comes to humans – and arguably, at least some other species as well – resolutions can be more than a matter of subconscious, bodily and evolutionary resolve.  Indeed, in our case they may include choosing to alter, arrest, develop or otherwise make personal shifts out of a conscious concern for the well being and betterment of self, loved ones, and beloved life and earth.

Judging by a random survey of New Years celebrants in Times Square, however, resolutions are neither always so generous nor always so deep.  When asked to name them this holiday past, recorded responses were more typically to make it to a certain concert they’ve been longing to see or to go skiing more often.  The more self-demanding promises seemed largely limited to ones like “I want to lose 30 pounds” (even if her weight were actually healthy) and “I’m going to phone home to Mom more often” (no doubt whether he enjoys it or not).  And more significant than even their content, is the fact that so many resolutions fall by the wayside and are either only temporarily or never followed up on.

Let us be clear here.  To make a resolution is to make a determination to act.  It is not by definition a suggestion, recommendation, hope or guideline.  It is – at the point that we recognize a problem or need – the best and therefore the sole real option, and deliberate, assertive, proactive action must unfailingly follow.  If it is in the best interest of ourselves, who and what we cherish, our purpose and intentions, then our resolutions need the loving force of our commitment to adjust, remedy, aid, beautify, heal and make make whole.  This is surely true whether the pledge is great or small, particular or encompassing.  If we really do have too little or too much weight for our well being, needs and purposes, then we need to act decisively (though not always continuously or successfully) to keep our dietary commitments.  If the main thing someone can think of to change is to stop dating a certain boyfriend or girlfriend who doesn’t treat them right, then separating becomes essential.  If improving that relationship is the resolution, then it is every day, and in not only large but little ways, that we must fully invest ourselves to that end.  We need not have accomplished a shift or aim in order to have demonstrated resolve, but we need to be actively moving ahead on our intentions through the inevitable periods of difficulty or exhaustion, distraction or mistake, as well as through the times of rapid progress or enhanced results.  What there cannot be and still use the term, is great avoidance and denial, neglecting and qualifying, the compromising of truth and purpose, paralysis or retreat.

I myself don’t make any New Years resolutions and never have, but not for a lack of commitments.  I make additional significant resolutions and pledges nearly every single day.  This is because in the practice of Animá, every moment can be a decisive choice, a commitment at least to the fullest living and realization of each of our finite moments.  As such, each conscious choice by nature requires our attempted implementation or response.  This commitment and investment of caring, time and effort may go into a short-term and readily bettered situation, or into a process that will knowingly take either years or a lifetime.  I, for one, am right now aware of my long-term resolve to always give of myself without denying my truths, but also of my resolve to make this essay as helpful and inspirational as possible in the next little while… to create works like the “I’m a Medicine Woman Too!” book that can encourage self confidence in generations of children I will never meet, but also to commit my investment of self in this very second in time, to the allies, family, offspring and friends that are themselves demonstrating resolve in their connections right now to me.  I can sense my resolve to thoroughly notice, taste and enjoy the honeybush tea with intense presence and focus even as I seek to get this piece written, along with my resolve to do all I can to have a lasting and powerful affect on into the distant and largely unseeable future.

The word resolution has an illuminating subsidiary meaning, that of returning from a state or period of dissonance to one of consonance, as is in musical compositions… and the return of the parts of our bodies from a condition of dis-ease and imbalance to one of harmonious processes and mutually beneficial relationship.  In the Animá healing tradition we never speak of curing, but rather, of assisting or resolving.  What we are dedicated to do as lifeways counselors and herbalists, is to contribute to the harmonic resolution our clients entire physical, emotional, energetic beings… an alliance of their bodies’ natural tendency towards wholeness and health, and our resolve to find natural ways to help.

I expend so much time writing because I know that changing perceptions is often necessary in order to accelerate positive changes in attitude, behavior, cultural trends and prevailing politics.  I also know that acting to make new and sometimes difficult changes can inspire new ways of seeing and perceiving.  With this dimension of the word, to act resolutely is to make possible a wondrous revealing – and re-revealing – of the limitless aspects and characteristics of what currently is, as well as helping make possible what is yet to be.  In this way, in our hearts and minds all things are made fresh and new.

If you are to make a resolution, let it be not just a singular pledge marking the onset of a year demarcated by the too-influential Roman Empire.  Let us resolve to be wholly committed, instead, to the necessarily personal process of actively bettering and beautifying, aiding and healing, intently turning over a proverbial new leaf untold times each and every awakened day!

Let us resolve there be no incidental, unintentional, frittered or unattended hours.  No feelings unnoticed or needs untended.  No love or purpose neglected.  No calling spurned.  No retreat nor deliberately looking away.  No leaf unturned.

(Photos (c) 2010 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

Animá Online Courses: www.animacenter.org

Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference: www.traditionsinwesternherbalism.org

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The Animá Family, Allies & Friends All Wish You A

WONDROUS NEW YEAR

bringing you insight and adventure, satisfaction and growth!

We’ll look forward to sharing it with you.

This is the time of year when everything seems to turn inward.  The trees retract their sap, bears that don’t hibernate still coil and rest in mountain womb.  You see in the photo above the beaver dam at mid-December dusk, as even the oft eager beavers slow their willow grazing and hole up in earthen dens, no doubt enjoying like us the intimacy of family and home.  Emails have almost completely stopped coming in, giving us a chance to catch up to the hundred or so that have been awaiting our attention.  I am not so readily stilled, though recent difficulties have afforded me my own time in sacred retreat.

Covered outdoor beds like this one, where we sleep much of the year are now tucked in with tarps as nighttime temperatures drop down to near zero.   Several of you have asked for pictures of the canyon in snow, and the way Winters have been lately there aren’t many opportunities like this week’s little storm.

A view of the medicine cliffs, where the ancients held many of their rituals and prayed for understanding, make a good reference shot… since you will find my photos of this view taken at all times of the year, in posts throughout the Blog Archives.  Sometimes draped in mist, often lit up as though from within, they are the first thing we see in the morning as we awaken to our life of gratitude, and the last sight we see before the fall of night.

Rhiannon wanted me to take a photo of some of the local wildlife this snowy morning, starting with her!  She appears here in her new reindeer boots, with fellow otter friends on her bag, the newest in her lap, and others faithfully to the side of her.  She doesn’t yet sense how brief a lifespan is, yet already she treats it as a precious as well as rich resource and expression to which she is every minute fully given… a fine example to all.

For my last shot, I zoomed in on the cliffs, showing the precipitous ascent that the vision questers of old once climbed, on their own journey of going within.  This will be our last post of the year, but we will look forward to sharing lessons and tales with you again when we come back out of Winter’s cave for the first light of the first day of another year here.

Thanks, and love….

-JWH

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Hello Everyone!  How are you??  I sure hope you had a very wonderful holiday week!  I sure have!

We get very little snow here these years, so yesterday for the first time in my life I got to sled! With our little plastic sled me and Mama Loba went over to a mountain I call the hundred acre wood. So we sledded for a while then she left me playing on the sled. I had brought my three stuffed otters Rhiannon, Sabrina, and Mabella so I was able to put them in the sled including my sea otter bag, a kerchief, hat, a silk bandana and me. Then go sledding down the mountain.

When Mama Loba wolf-howled for me ( as she always does when it’s time for me to come back from my play time) I just climbed in to the sled and went down the mountain I was able to sled most of the way home. I did crash twice on the adventure and hurt myself a bit but you can’t have fun if you don’t take a chance on hurting, and you learn important lessons that way.  Sometimes the lesson is just to wake up and pay attention!

It had been Papa’s idea for us to bring the sled, It had only snowed 1-2 inches but he said we could slide around in the sled probably so we went it tried he was definitely right we could speed down the mountain! Also not to long ago Mama Kiva and Papa got me a pair of reindeer boots in a trade from our cool friend Sasha, they have “real” reindeer fur on them its amazing I wear them all the time. In fact I’m wearing them right now and am sitting with my new stuffed otter Mabella with me. I sure love them, they are in wonderful shape for being so old they’re all the way from the 60’s. They should last me a long time !!!
I don’t relate much to the Santa thing I tell you, but I do love all kinds of holidays and celebrations, and chances to give thanks for the blessings of the world. I brought a juniper branch in instead of a tree, and Mama Loba and I made incredible yummy ginger bread fantasy.  See the picture:

And I love presents of course, like the amazing Resolute astromony telescope I will be writing about here later, and the Solstice gifts I got including the hand felted (that’s pressed wool you know) bag with an otter on it, and my newest stuffed river otter Maybella, and a certificat that says I donated to the protection of the otters and have sort of adopted one.  I actually plan to start a campaign to bring river otters back to our river and I will be writing about it here and asking for your ideas and help of course!  Thank you to everybody who has been so good to me and us, you know who you are!

I have lots of things to take care of today, I will write another blog post soon.  Life is very full, and that’s a good thing.

Happy Magical Holidays to you, we love you!

Rhiannon Cadhla Hardin

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Celebrating Solstice: Listening to the Shadows
by Kiva Rose
http://animacenter.org

Darkness is your candle, your boundaries are your quest… You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.
-Rumi

Today the sun begins its return to our hemisphere, and though it will be many weeks before most of us notice the subtle lengthening of days, we celebrate this turning point with a festival of candles symbolic of the growing light. Each day forward from here, the nights will grow slightly shorter, and gift us with a little more illumination through the many cold moons left to come. Especially in the holiday rush and cultural obsession with bright lights and shiny things to keep the dark out, it’s very easy to forget the unique opportunity that winter presents us with. Understandably, most of us feel an urge to rush the seasonal shift, and to focus on the arrival of the greener, warmer days rather than stopping to dwell in the moment and appreciating what this time has to teach us.

In this crux of dark and light, we reside in a world rich in shadow and many shaded colors. For shadows aren’t just some indeterminate grey area between two polarities, but rather the complex subtleties of a wide spectrum. We tend to prefer the light and to cling to the familiar and seeable world – and yet, depth and detail are often best noticed by twilight or the shadows passing storm-clouds. Just as the contrast of light created by shadow often makes for the most striking of images, so does the darkness of these days present us with the ability to see deeper into our own lives.

Winter is the story telling time, a period in which to remember and to ponder. A place in which to dream. It’s in this space that we often begin to understand what the intense experiences we had in warmer months have to tell us. It’s no accident that in folklore, the faery and all things magical are most likely to appear by dusk or at the cusp between seasons. These times of transition hold the secrets and potential of what can be seen or experienced.

In the dark of this season, the weight of memories and past grief can seem heavier without the reassuring guidance of light just ahead. As the sun has waned to a brief  glimmer and the nights grown long and still, it can be difficult to remain sure of our footing and certain that we’re heading in the right direction. In this way, the dark season teaches us to be still, to listen and to practice awareness with each step we take, to feel our way through the sometimes labyrinthian paths of our lives and emotions. By recognizing this, we can experience the time as the gift is.  Instead of fleeing from the onslaught of sensation or trying to take control of the situation by incessantly moving, we would do best to give ourselves to the earthen rest we’re offered.

In half-light and shadows are the reminder of mystery, and the inherent magic of our world. In the cold moons are the opportunity to nourish ourselves and rest, to remember and replenish, knowing that the light will soon be returning and now is the time to give ourselves the space to go within, until the light calls us forward into the next turning.

With that in mind, I offer you my own celebration of the Solstice, a lullaby for the dreaming time.

The Story Telling Moon
by Kiva

tell me a story, love
in the dark down
in this leaf lined log
where we lay together
and dream
root tendrils
into blooming

dressed in fur
your hair wild
and twisted with braids
and dried flowers
you touch my cheek
we curl together
stalking lunar circles
tracing sun spirals
on each other’s skin

the clacking
of small bones
between us
the stories we tell
of green buds
adorning brown sticks
of warm sweet honey
sticky on our lips

in the dark our tree
buried by
a thousand sparkles
by so many feet
of snow we speak
of swimming
to the cold surface
just to taste sunlight

but I breathe your scent
curl against your chest
arrange our blanket of moss
and brown leaves
turn with the moon
drink stars
and go deeper into darkness

———————–

(as always, please post and forward freely… photo of the Animá Sanctuary (c) 2009 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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Gathering Wood at Sunset and other Joys

I was getting ready to clean up after supper yesterday when I remembered an errand I’d wanted to do before dark. I was especially happy to remember it because “glowy time” was just beginning! As many of you know, what I call “glowy time” is that special time of morning or evening when everything looks kind of candlelit from within, if that makes any sense. There is always some degree of glowy time every morning and evening, but sometimes it passes so quickly it can be easy to miss it. I love it when glowy time lights up the sky with colors so amazing that even indoors everyone’s faces suddenly look extra radiant, the walls turn shades of pink and orange, and it becomes completly impossible to stay inside!

By the time I got out to the shed with the wheelbarrow, there were big streaks of rosyness in the sky, with streaks of brightening blue-grey-purple in between.  I got what I needed into the wheelbarrow and felt myself pulled to admire the cliffs on the north side of the dry wash, and found a beautiful fallen oak that I couldn’t believe I’d never stopped to marvel at before. I wandered around for a while enjoying the crisp air and incredible sky and then came upon a fallen tree with many dry limbs that had fallen across a trail. I broke off a number of the limbs and brought them back to near the kitchen, where Wolf took my picture before I broke them up for kitchen wood. I love having a nice pile of biggish kindling for fire tending, to get the fire going well again when it’s died down. And I get so much pleasure out of gathering wood myself, whether it’s for the kitchen, the den, or the bath, or if it’s serious hunting of big pieces of oak for a sweat fire. It’s a special thing to have the chance to connect with the trees, whether they’re fallen over, or I’m leaping up to break off dry limbs. It gets me in my body and fills me with so much gratitude getting to spend time with them in their whole form before they’re in the fire. I love to admire the special ways they’ve grown around rocks or lightning scars, the patterns in the bark, the amazing gesture in each tree that reflects its many years of dancing with the wild canyon winds. It’s very similar to me to the feeling of honoring a wild animal we’ve hunted by petting it and giving it love after its death, though I’m sure that might seem a strange parallel to some folks!

Well, now it’s morning, and I got up very early so now it’s glowy time again! Time to bring my tea outside and give so much thanks for another beautiful day in this land of my dreams-come-true!! So much love and glowyness to you all, hope you all will be sure to catch the glowies coming your way each day, and honor the trees and fires that help bring light to this season of blessed darkness!!

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Intro: The following is a piece that Wolf wrote for his general and rural readerships, and that will appear in his upcoming book The Town That Waves.  In it he suggests we reconsider and redefine the holiday season, utterly rejecting its commercial dimension, purchasing practical gifts made to last or better yet, taking time to make tokens of your love and caring instead.  Santa has been appropriated by big business, and I agree with Wolf that the only solution is to kidnap him back.  -Kiva

Kidnapping Santa:
Reclaiming the Spirit of the Holidays

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.animacenter.org/blog

It’s been said many times and many places, that the health of the American economy is dependent on the institution of Christmas, accounting as it does for some huge percentage of total annual retail sales.  But if you ask me, “institution” is a word better reserved for bloated government bureaucracy, oppressive psychiatric facilities, universities and prisons than what I prefer to think of as the season of good will.  And there’s something disheartening about being subjected to a barrage of tacky ads starting the day after Thanksgiving, or seeing thirty part-time Santas suiting up for a day of taking orders for high dollar toys from TV-addled tots at metropolitan shopping malls.

Not only the American economy is affected, of course, but also countries like China which make the bulk of the geegaws that fill the gift aisles of the big-box stores.  When we cut back spending due to so called economic downturns, it is Chinese and Indian laborers that are put out of work as much or more as Americans, so it seems to be in the entire world’s material interest – allies and opponents alike – that we never run out of novel new things we want to buy and try.  Middle Eastern monarchies pump money into failing U.S. banks and enterprises not so much in a take over bid, as to ensure that the dollars keep being spent, and that a percentage of those dollars end up overseas.  The implication is that being frugal, saving instead of spending, is not only unfashionable but unpatriotic.  Those with savings or assets are accused of being hoarders and part of the problem.  When there’s trouble, both Republican and Democratic Presidents exhort the population, insisting that since shopping spurs growth, it’s downright un-American to limit our spending, or to stockpile food, tools or gold instead of investing in endless disposable appliances.

Truth is, it wasn’t that long ago in historical terms that frugality was considered a cultural value, with everyone from children to seniors encouraged to save as much money as possible for possible future hard times.  And poor Santa Claus, first drafted to be the materialist usurper of this preeminent Christian holiday, has now himself been slighted, turned by advertising executives into a shameless salesman for some entirely unnecessary and disappointing products, a red suited boulevard pimp of the most de-natured commodities, a shrill and common carney barker using sentimentality as well as sensationalism to draw in the unsuspecting fair goers and relieve them of their hard earned money.  Rather than being an active agent of material desires run amok, the original Santa archetypes include a fur-trousered Sami wildman and the not terribly material minded Odin.  St. Nicholas, “Ol’ St. Nick,” was actually a Middle-Eastern Turk who gave away his entire inheritance to benefit impoverished children.  He dressed more like a holy man, a beggar, a bearded biker or that unkempt mountain man Ben Lilly than the cash booster in the crimson pajamas appropriated from myth and history by the marketing engineers of Madison Avenue and West L.A.   He’d surely be mortified to find himself recast as a poster boy for consumer excess, his censored and polished image plastered on freeway billboards and plastic Slurpee cups.  I far prefer to imagine him as he was, wandering from town to town, freaking-out the stodgy and narrow-minded with his ragged clothes and beatific grin, intent on social justice, handing out sweet fruits and blessings to the good hearted kids he meets along the way.

This isn’t to say that owning nice things or buying nice gifts is a bad thing.  Like all warm blooded critters, it matters to us to have what we need to survive and even thrive, we appreciate artsy stuff as much as any glitter-gathering grackle or blackbird, and know just how we want to furnish our cave, den or nest.  But next year, you might want to consider doing things just a mite differently.  Instead of buying mostly imported junk from Wally-Mart etc., try buying things made from local materials with labor from the region you live in.  Pick things that are made to last, instead of those designed to entertain for a short while and then break and be replaced.  Or quickly consumed presents that are at least good for you, like natural honey from the state where you live.  Avoid anything battery operated since those are unsustainable and from overseas.  Try to avoid plastic for once, and see what else is out there made of cotton or wool, wood or steel.

Better yet, I’m giving you plenty of lead time if you want to think about making something for those people in your lives that you care most about.  If they really love you, they’ll appreciate the silliest hand drawn card featuring your own sentiments over any purchased one with stock saying.  And they’ll be more touched by every bite of a special treat, if they can sense the time you put into it and them instead of just ordering a fruit and jelly sampler from an online company.  Everyone has skills for making gifts that suit the needs and character of those we want to treat, and gifts that say something about who we are.  Maybe we have some experience carving, and a back room shop that seldom gets used.  A talent for sewing, and a basket of embroidery thread.  A fine stove, and an heirloom recipe for gingerbread.  The hours spent driving to a big city shopping center and milling about with the other bedraggled consumers, might be better utilized whittling an oak walking stick for a dear friend, or bagging up some special medicinal or beverage herbs and adding a personalized label.  Or give one of the best presents of all to your family, the gift of promised time with them in the wild, outside the box, great outdoors.

Not everything about the holiday season has always been easy for me, as I readily admit.  Yet no matter what your experience of the holidays – blissful, stressful or both – surely you’d agree that the best of Christmas lies not in what we’re given or what we buy, but in the love that abides.  In the gathering together of relatives that may live hundreds or even thousands of miles from one another, with Grandmas and Grandpas happily soaking up all the attention, and their wild little grandkids doing their best to get their dress clothes dirty.  In cold noses and warm slippers, hot stoves and steaming puddings.  In a common table with simple decorations, on a day when even those who usually eat out choose to share a lovingly made meal.  In the honoring of our roots, telling revealing stories about distant and not so distant ancestors, breaking out the photo albums, then breaking out in smiles.  In honoring the start of Winter but also the return to lengthening days.  In joyfully stirring a campfire of memories, whose flames might otherwise die out and shine on the planet no more.

It is a time when some of the least enchanted among us can, for awhile at least, retire the sober attitude and suspend their disbelief.  It’s the season when a larger than usual number genuinely open up to the possibility of miracles, like children keeping an eye on the sky for a glimpse of flying reindeer.  Maybe it’s time we kidnap Santa back from the hacks and return him to blissful bedraggled form, bravely odd and thread-worn.

Bring it on, holidays!  With our minds enchanted and hearts unfurled… we may yet remember we reside in a sacred and magical world.

-JWH

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(Please link to this post, forward to your list and quote freely… spread it wide and far!)

(Note: The excellent St. Nick sculpture at bottom is made by Maureen Carlson)

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