i get it now. how i can hold darkness and also share my own oxygen with the flames. i have favored the clouds and the watery places. it has always felt easier to go to the intense and the weighted. the levity seemed intangible and shallow. i placed value on my ability to be with the hard, the heavy, the disparate. and secretly, I was curiously envious of the light and the buoyant. the ones who seemed to float.

this solstice, this birthday, the past two months, i have been mining a new language. crumbling away at words and ways that felt rigid, blaming, and fierce. hacksaws and fighting parables just don’t work for me anymore. i don’t want to kick ass or WORK on my spirit. i don’t want to suffer for my freedom. i am not afraid of the dark– i have spent most of my life there. it’s that now i realize that i am one of those that may be more afraid of maintaining the light.

i think i have confused depth with despair. i know how to talk about shadows and twisted feelings and pain. i’m really good at being with these things, and i am grateful that i have this to offer the world, for clearly there is no shortage of suffering among us.  but how to speak of the depth of rightness and ease? how to speak about ok?

where i am at right now is trying to translate and embody this new place of gratitude, wellness and peace, that is still capable of being with the darkness that i know so well. i want to create a language that is gentle and easeful. for so long, perhaps always,  i wanted to have the shadow lifted off–the weight and the inner chaos. and now that i am experiencing this, i kind of don’t know how to be. i don’t know how to talk about this. it hasn’t been my way to speak of rapture and glory. i know much better how to speak to insecurity and involution.

and so i am once again in uncharted waters. and letting go of the fear of doing it wrong–especially when it comes to matters of love and the alchemy of grace and god. i am writing my own mantras, building my own fires, praying in my car and on my knees. i get the ecstasy of the simplest things now. and i appreciate the many offerings i see toward the cultivation of joy in the world. i am allowing myself to be loved. and offering my smile more readily. i’m curious about how the next year will unfold, excited and not concerned.

this is new territory as i move another year into my fourth decade. it feels like this is where faith and fear meet, with kindness, embodied and whole.

Vague as this definition may be, I believe most people are aware of periods in their lives when they seem to be “in grace” and other periods when they feel “out of grace,” even though they may use different words to describe these states. ~ Anne Morrow Lindberg,  from Gift from the Sea

photo: solo sunrise mission. 41st birthday, winter solstice. december 2011.

On December 2nd, I participated in the first annual evening of “The Enlightened Heart: A Tribal Trust Artisan Collective.” This was an event organized among several artists to both have an opportunity to support the incredible efforts of the Tribal Trust Foundation and to share our creative endeavors. The Tribal Trust Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to preserving the living arts and culture of indigenous people around the world. I have had the pleasure of cultivating a friendship with Tribal Trust founder Barbara Savage over the past year and am so grateful and inspired by her presence in my life and on this earth. She has traveled extensively throughout Africa and Asia, and other parts of the world, following her own personal and spiritual calling to connect with and help indigenous people. She is a shining example of the force for good that happens when we follow the voices and messages deep within us.

The Enlightened Heart event was a lovely evening and I was honored to share in it. For my offering, I set up a mini-studio and invited people to hold, or wear, different tribal artifacts that Barbara has been gifted on her journeys. I believe that sacred items contain the energy of the hands that created them, and my intention was to create a representation of our connection to all people and traditions. I chose to process and crop them in the style of old world tribal portraits. Some are cheeky, some serious. I love them all! I also created greeting cards from nostalgia inspired iPhone images, that are now on sale in my temporarily re-opened Etsy store. The very talented John Balkwill at Lumino Press did the layout.  Check them out. I think you will find them quite beautiful.

It felt so wonderful to create again, after such an introspective period in my life. Thank you to the beautiful people who allowed me to photograph them! Enjoy the sampling below.

Barbara Savage and her husband, Bob Ornstein.

fire. wine. my cashmere sweater that goes all the way to my knees. the right soundtrack, mercury glass, my children’s art. avocados still on their branches and clementines in a hand-thrown bowl with a blue patina at the center of our well-worn table. thick lentil soup that sticks to the inside, a friend on the way over. the stuff of my life. my home.

it was a fall of inversion. of hermiting and long mornings spent trying to breathe more freely. of asking for help, opening my fist, and resting my head on the floor. i paid attention to the birds, to the rain, to the bright reds and purples of the latest sunsets. i threw a few tantrums and we tangled ourselves under the down comforter at the end of each day and i learned to rest. to really rest.

this is the longest gap between entries since i first began blogging. as you know, the more time passes, the more it feels like there is just too much to say. or not enough.

and so i offer a few images of the past month. the time wherein i emerged from the dark, after going all the way in, and simply began to love my life.

the boy is now 12.

breakfasts have mattered. a lot.

the beast and i have been hiking. often.

the girl is behind the wheel. enough said.

time on the mountain top with my love.

sunrises with community.

and sunsets, too.

sigh.

and you, friends? how are you wrapping up the season?

it is not unfamiliar, this place.

though i have grown weary of it.

noisy and sharp, inhibiting rest. ego on alert, fables and accusations running rampant.

i only want to feel at ease. elemental. not wondering if i lit the right candle, said the right prayer, or missed the portal.

it might be hormones, or darker shades of what i have always known.

(fear, unexpressed pain, hunger, loneliness, grief, anger, shame–whatever)

only now, i refuse to consider that i haven’t “worked” hard enough. or that i haven’t sat in the fire long enough. or that i am lazy, inconsistent, uncommitted, or indulgent. that i am faint of heart.

i am none of those things.

though there are plenty of arrow wounds that suggest i have believed otherwise.

this is the day that i begin to understand. that i challenge the separation that bores canyons in me.

separation from source. from love. from beauty. from you.

i think that salvation is in the letting out. the letting go. the letting in.

the allowing.

and the help.

(the tree, the camera, the nourishment, the time, the forgiveness, the care, the now, the us)

photo: shelter. 11.11.11. butterfly beach, santa barbara. iphone.