BeautyDialogues

Commitment

The essence of my Summer Solstice celebration, as I have come to know it, is to take a few days every year at this time to be immersed in nature – both inner and outer, to acknowledge the gifts I've received in the last cycle of the sun, and to contemplate what's mine to give back as I go forward into the next cycle.

I do this in community, within a circle held by the good folks at Resonance, supported by those at Pathfinders & Heartland.  A circle with beauty at the center, always - this one an evolving work of art created by the translucent Sue Blondell:

At its core my Summer Solstice ritual is a commitment ceremony, and I want to share these words from Ken Carey's Return of the Bird Tribes that convey the strength a clear commitment can give:

"Creation does not take place
where there is a scattering and dissipation of energies.
Creation requires a gathering together and focusing
of your power within a circle of commitment —
like a seed, an egg, a womb or a marriage.

Consider wisely the ways in which you would
use your power and then around those ways
draw the sacred circle of commitment.

In the warm atmosphere of that circle, the power
of love builds like a storm above the wet summer
prairie until suddenly the circle can hold no more
and explodes in the conception of the new.

This fire is more powerful than any one of you."

And so I speak my commitment for this next year into the circle of this larger community, that holds me too:

In this next cycle of the sun I commit to hold myself lightly and speak my truth with confidence; to joyfully take leaps of faith when they are called for; and to continue to hone and refine the craft that carries our voices out into the world and nurtures connection and love between us.

If you too held the time of Summer Solstice in such a way, what would be your commitment for this next cycle of the sun?

Dreaming

Last week about this time I emerged from a four-day Dreaming ceremony in the Santa Cruz mountains I have been doing every year with FireHawk and Pele of Resonance.

This time has become very important to me, as a way to re-calibrate myself with the natural rhythm of nature and the seasons and give myself a chance to re-align with my own internal pace. Entering this dance with time gives me a rare opportunity to slow down and reflect, to remember who I am beneath the busi-ness of my everyday life.

Co-Creation

The always delightful Barbara Marx Hubbard has an intriguing theory about why we sometimes "click" with each other in such profoundly generative ways ...

I've often experienced the thrill of creative communion she talks about, and I love the provocative twinkle in her eyes when she names it as she sees it. Of course we'd all be feeling pretty good too, if we'd stimulated as much vocational arousal in the world as she has. :-) What a Beauty!

Doing "Nothing"

Out and about on this morning's beauty walk, I happened to ask a neighbor about his holidays, which he said he'd spent pretty much "doing nothing". That sounded like absolute bliss to me.

I've been reading David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, and in it he says it takes up to 4 hours of uninterrupted time, most of it quite literally doing nothing, to produce just one hour's worth of creative output.  His book is a poetic and scientific inquiry into that "nothing" - specifically training ourselves through meditation to "dive deep" for the big ideas that fuel a creative life. He describes the bliss on the other side of meditation as a "thick beauty".

Theory of Everything

Whether or not this intricate pattern of reality ('e8') from new scientist Garrett Lisi is indeed a theory of everything, it is certainly beautiful.

Whooshclang!

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

Neighborhood Beauty

Tonight I took my walk at sunset. I happened to see a neighbor whose lovely garden has been an endless inspiration (you may have seen my photographs of its abundant protea), and stopped to tell her so and thank her. We had a wonderful talk. I told her about my beauty walks and the Beauty Dialogues, and she told me about a walk she’d just been on in Point Reyes, where it was exquisite and she’d noticed patterns everywhere. She seemed enchanted by the idea of writing about beauty, saying she often thought those things, but never imagined writing them.

I invited her to post her thoughts here, which I very much hope she does, and want to take this opportunity to invite anyone else who has thoughts or questions or noticings about beauty, to bring them to this space (use the comments field below each post) so we can all reflect on them.

Equinox in Dorset

Fancy a magical mystery tour of the Dorset hills this weekend, exploring the ancient hill fort of Hambledon Hill?

(photograph by Simon Pascoe)

If so, you're in luck, because RedEarth and their merry band of elemental pranksters are up to their alchemical magic tricks! Music and Art will be loose in the landscape this Sunday starting at 5:30 GMT, echoing in the largest Neolithic enclosure in Europe in celebration of the Equinox.

Have a look and see what they're envisioning for this performance installation - 'Enclosure' - on the RedEarth website and in the Dorset InsideOut pages.

Shumei on Solano

Strolling down Solano for the Solano Stroll last Sunday, I came upon something interesting. In among the craft and jewelery stalls, the art cars, bands and musicians, stands for library outreach and various community projects in Albany and Berkeley, there was a table for what appeared to be a Japanese spiritual organization of some kind.

Einstein's Dreams

I’d heard of Einstein’s Dreams long before I found my own copy at Moe’s (God, I love Moe’s! What a fabulous bookstore!). A quirky little ‘literary’ piece by scientist Alan Lightman, this hauntingly delicate first novel explores the nature of time and how our conceptualizations of it rule the way we experience life.

It’s a quick read – I devoured it whole on the flight between SFO and Denver - 30 short dated prose-poems threaded with ‘interludes” of real-time interaction between the 26-year-old Einstein and his best friend Besso, and framed by a prologue and an epilogue.

30 dreams, recorded between 14 April and 28 June 1905 illustrate the same world, or versions of it, through 30 different views of time. Time stands still, runs backward, is mirrored back and forth, stays frozen in the past and is different in every city and for every person: every possible conceptualization is played out in Einstein’s dreams…

My favorite is the dream of 15 May, 1905:

Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.