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.

there are those times when we have no choice but to retreat. when it is energy and not words. when the oldest, most foundational, primal cell stuff is calling. when the whispers become shouts and the knees find their way to the floor.

it is uncomfortable and necessary and simple and expected. it is every workshop and retreat and therapy session. it is every poet and guru and mystic and shaman. it is the heart that pauses and then fires too fast, and the burning between the eyes.

this is waking up in a sweat, floating above the surface, and too deep for story.

this is about embodiment, alignment, integration. but even this language does not address the grey veil and the terrifying vacuum that precedes it.

i suppose this is the beginning of awakening. of healing. of really becoming.

but all i can presence is now. the now that feels chills between my shoulder blades. the now that seeks solace in the woods, wants pasta, looks to spider webs for guidance, and sleeps better with his hand on my chest.

there are those times when we have no choice but to retreat. when the senses are amplified, when it feels like a choice between light and dark. between static and flow. between love and fear.

and so i have gone in. to be with all of it.

photo: where the shadows meet the light. october 2011.