Reflections on the Autumnal Equinox

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Reflections on the Autumnal Equinox

As darkness descends earlier and earlier each day, I find myself reluctant to embrace shorter days and long nights. The chill in the air has me reaching for sweaters and snuggles. I want to slow down even as the work-pace quickens in the compressed schedule of pre-holiday season. Getting back to school and down to business rules the day.  

Jane Austen called autumn “that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness.” It is the season of crimson, saffron, pumpkin, and gold…a season to savor hard-won harvests, colorful feasts, and warm nests amidst darkness and decay...

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Why You Should Say Yes to Red Umbrella Days

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Why You Should Say Yes to Red Umbrella Days

When local photographer, Pete Saloutos, invited me to model for a yoga shoot a few years ago, I had no idea that it would lead to a dear friendship and a regular gig moonlighting as a model. 

In fact, I was pretty sure that it would lead to a polite and potentially embarrassing encounter with a photographer who would figure out in short order that I was not really worth his time and talent.

Not because I’m insecure about my self-worth or my appearance. I’m actually surprisingly comfortable and content in my own skin. I just didn’t think of myself as a model, a word I grew up associating with the youthful, long, lean, leggy, unattainably attractive other-than-me-ness of those paid to influence cosmetic and fashion trends usually irrelevant to my personal brand of quirkiness...

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Funny Cussin' for Sucky Days

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Funny Cussin' for Sucky Days

Just in case you're having one of those days...

This little number from Katie Goodman won't solve anything, but it just might make you smile. Oh, and this is an adult song (a tame adult song, but still...), so use your discretion about where and when you listen. Enjoy!

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Growing Seeds of Compassion

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Growing Seeds of Compassion

Recently, I was fortunate to be one of the many thousands of people gathered together in Seattle for Seeds of Compassion with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and other noted speakers. For five remarkable days, faces beamed, hearts bloomed, and commitments sprouted in response to a simple, yet profound theme of growing compassion in and for the world...

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The Art of Self-Expression: 5 Good Reasons to Doodle Away Your Day

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Throughout history, we humans have used art to express ourselves.  We create art not only to represent and beautify our world, but also as a means of understanding and sharing who we are in our world. Through creative self-expression, we grow in self-awareness, generate insights, resolve problems, and enhance our overall well-being.

However, if you're like many adults, somewhere along the way you may have decided, perhaps without even realizing it, that art-making is not for grown-ups, or at least not for grown-ups like you. As much as you may like art on the walls and (especially if you share your home with children) the refrigerator, it seems the art-making is best left to artists and children. After all, when it comes to art, isn't patronage the appropriate role for productive members of society? 

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Stillness in Motion

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Training began with children who were taught to sit still and enjoy it. They were taught to use their organs of smell, to look when there was apparently nothing to see, and to listen intently when all seemingly was quiet. A child that cannot sit still is a half-developed child.

Standing Bear, Lakota Indian Chief

I read this quote years ago, and have recalled it often in idle moments, sometimes as a reminder to quell mindless doing...sometimes as an invitation to rejoice in endless being. Sometimes, I just wonder what Standing Bear would say about a world filled with so many half-developed adults...

 

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