BeautyDialogues

Happy Solstice!

It's Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere today, the sun comes full circle and begins its cycle anew. I'm off celebrating among redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains, enjoying my yearly ritual with friends old and new.

I'll no doubt have lots of stories to share when I return, but I wanted to have something here to greet you on this day. So I found this great photo on Flickr (God, I love Flickr!), taken by "Simon & Vicki": Greeting the dawn at last year's Solstice celebration in the great circles of Stonehenge.

Lovely, isn't it?

Desert Beauty

The desert is a delicate animal at this time of year. Like a snake shedding its skin it’s fragile, vulnerable, in a state of emergence.

If I were making a list of the 100 things I want to do before I die, visiting the desert in bloom would certainly be among them. 

So when my friend Bridget mentioned that she goes to Anza Borrego every year around this time and suggested I might want to come with her and photograph the beauty, I jumped at the chance (Bridget is an exceptionally talented green architect and landscape designer and also a client of mine – look for an announcement of her site and blog at bridgetbrewer.com soon)!

Second Life and the Imaginal Realm

David Sibbet's intriguing Second Life Retrospective catalyzed a response that I posted as a comment on his blog, but the ideas were so engaging to me that I thought I'd write a bit here as well.

One part of David's retrospective that particularly interested me was his exploration of how what I understand as the Jungian idea of active imagination might effect psychological healing and spiritual development within Second Life ...

I've heard that experiencing something in one's imagination is neurologically almost identical to having experienced it in reality. If this is true, it has huge implications for consciously using Second Life to work with all sorts of issues - emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, philosophical and environmental. Second Life could be (and already is) a playground to test and seed all kinds of positive change.*

Lastly, another area I found fascinating was David's recounting of his experiences with Light in Second Life. You have to read his paper to get the fullness of his thinking on this subject, but I wanted to give you all some idea. So this is my SL avatar, Pipi Tinlegs, standing near the rays of the healing light table in David's inworld Story Studio:

* (speaking of seeding positive change, I recently hosted a World Café in Second Life for the Rockridge Institute with the fabulous SingingHeart Amat, aka in 'real' life as Michelle Paradis. I'll write up a proper report on it soon and link to it from this blog)

Solstice Light

My friends at Resonance will be starting the Solstice fire at Coyote Ridge this afternoon for those who would sit in circle around it this night, completing this last cycle of the sun and ritually welcoming the return of light at dawn.

I love the ceremonies and celebrations of this season, which in my hemisphere all seem to gather us around light in one form or another - warmed by both the external lights of electricity and fire and the internal sun of family and friends. This is a good time; a time of gratitude and reflection, and today I give thanks for all the circles that hold me, and for all those I am privileged to hold.

May this next season bring the light of love ever more fully into our lives and hearts; may it give us the capacity to hold ever widening circles until we can hold all of humanity and the earth that sustains us as dearly as our own beloveds.

Ode to Light

If you were reading the Beauty Dialogues last year, you might remember I have a ‘thing’ for the lights of this season, and as the cycle returns I find the love affair has lost one of its brilliance.

Every night I turn on the LED lights that frame my front window and sit happily looking at my twinkling, forest-smelling tree. I faithfully lit the Hanukkah candles each night for the ritual 8 nights even though my mother isn’t Jewish and I don’t know the music or words for the proper prayers.

As deeply as I enjoy these personal pleasures of lucidity, something new dawned on me the other day during walk at dusk. I was looking at all the glittering trees and strings of light in my neighbors’ windows and suddenly it stuck me as very profound that we decorate the OUTSIDES of our houses, and place our trees in the window so that others can enjoy them.

On one level, I thought, perhaps these lights are a way to signal and inspire each other with our knowing that the light will return, a collective celebration of gratitude for the beauty and power of light.

Penetrating the Inner Eye

West Marin artist Susan Hall says “to really see beauty means to be receptive and to allow the soul of what is being looked at to penetrate the seer’s inner eye…” (excerpted from “Beauty and Landscape”, Hall, 1992)

Here's a beautiful soul that has penetrated my inner eye lately:

for more...

Rain Tree

Glorious

The word glorious has 'gold' at its root... its luminescence the link back to transcendent 'light'. This photograph, taken by Nancy White, is the epitome of glorious to me (click it for more of her photo beauty):

Whooshclang!

Later on Friday I finally got to meet Thomas Arthur, beloved of my dear friend Ashley Cooper and Artist of the Mystery extraordinaire.

Beauty-Full in Seattle

After the intensity of the last few days, it was a wonderful pleasure to relax a bit and spend time connecting with friends in beautiful Seattle.