After a little hiatus this fall to heal my back, I'm ready to bring dance back into my life in the new year. I've jumped back in to my dance blog, and I'm looking forward to building my spring teaching schedule, including another sacred dance retreat with Gillian. Yay! Dance brings me so much joy, as does the rich community of women I've been honoured to dance with over the years. The physical limitations imposed by my injured back have forced me to take a break from all of this over the last half year or so - I know from experience that these "breaks," however unwanted and unexpected, are usually important times of incubation and hidden growth, so I am excited to see what comes to light as I invite dance back into my life! I'd love to hear about your physical practices and how they feed your life/spirit. And how will you renew them in the new year?

My sweetie and I have a special New Year's ritual. Every Christmas/Solstice time we decorate the house with greens; cedar, spruce and holly gathered from our own woods. We clear out these decorations, along with the Christmas tree, on New Year's Eve, and light a fire in the meadow with them. Into the fire, along with the greens, go symbols of anything we want/need to let go of in the New Year. We watch the fire until it burns out, toast with some single-malt scotch, and talk about what we want to bring in to our lives for the new year.

Here is one of my favourite poems, by William Carlos Williams. To hear the poet himself reading it, go here.

Burning the Christmas Greens

Their time past, pulled down
cracked and flung to the fire
--go up in a roar

All recognition lost, burnt clean
clean in the flame, the green
dispersed, a living red,
flame red, red as blood wakes
on the ash--

and ebbs to a steady burning
the rekindled bed become
a landscape of flame

At the winter's midnight
we went to the trees, the coarse
holly, the balsam and
the hemlock for their green

At the thick of the dark
the moment of the cold's
deepest plunge we brought branches
cut from the green trees

to fill our need, and over
doorways, about paper Christmas
bells covered with tinfoil
and fastened by red ribbons

we stuck the green prongs
in the windows hung
woven wreaths and above pictures
the living green. On the

mantle we built a green forest
and among those hemlock
sprays put a herd of small
white deer as if they

were walking there. All this!
and it seemed gentle and good
to us. Their time past,
relief! The room bare. We

stuffed the dead grate
with them upon the half burnt out
log's smouldering eye, opening
red and closing under them

and we stood there looking down.
Green is a solace
a promise of peace, a fort
against the cold (though we

did not say so) a challenge
above the snow's
hard shell. Green (we might
have said) that, where

small birds hide and dodge
and lift their plaintive
rallying cries, blocks for them
and knocks down

the unseeing bullets of
the storm. Green spruce boughs
pulled down by a weight of
snow--Transformed!

Violence leaped and appeared.
Recreant! roared to life
as the flame rose through and
our eyes recoiled from it.

In the jagged flames green
to red, instant and alive. Green!
those sure abutments . . . Gone!
lost to mind

and quick in the contracting
tunnel of the grate
appeared a world! Black
mountains, black and red--as

yet uncolored--and ash white,
an infant landscape of shimmering
ash and flame and we, in
that instant, lost,

breathless to be witnesses,
as if we stood
ourselves refreshed among
the shining fauna of that fire.

1944

fresh start

10 ways I am marking the turning of the year:

cleaning out cobwebs, nooks and crannys

organizing drawers and closets

paying as many old debts as possible

creating feng shui cures in my home

taking 15 minutes every morning for mindfulness meditation

renewing my commitment to my sweetie

thoughtfully writing my goals for the winter quarter
in my new goals journal

burning the yule greens
(an ancient ritual of renewal)

resting

going to a New Year's Eve dance!

Diwali Lamps in India

Votive Candles in Italy

Butter Lamps in Tibet

Warmest love and blessings to all as the light returns! Happy Holidays. Peace on Earth.

a few of our favourite things

Cassy (my daughter) and I were inspired by this post on Kimberly Wilson's blog, and decided to do lists of our own. We had fun comparing notes and researching images. Can you guess which favs are the mother's and which are the daughter's choices in each category (some are both!)??

fav magazines:
.

entertainment we love:


fav way to spend a free hour: (that's a brand new journal on the right)


fav tea:


creatures we adore:


we find comfort here:


best places:


our favourite scents:


fav drinks:



desert island music:




just yum....

I Love:

the magical world between the branches of the christmas tree

smell of pine and woodsmoke

pomegranate martinis

crab gumbo on christmas eve

SNOW!!!

time to breathe

a good reason to use glitter

Ray Charles and Betty Carter singing "Baby It's Cold Outside"

renewal

The snow is playing with the low winter sunlight and bringing out this delicate up-lit porcelain beauty in the world. It's utterly magical, the feeling of purity, stillness, and renewal. I am feeling the spirit of the season in a whole new way. Have you ever experienced, in the midst of a busy day, an unexpected moment of quiet, where a lull in your busy thoughts coincides with a lull in the world around you and you feel a little space open up for your breath, for your spirit? The delicacy of this season is opening up a space like that in my whole life. I am so grateful. Where are you finding that opening for transformation in your life right now?

snowbound

This is truly unusual for us. West Coast winters are wet and mild and muddy. Snow doesn't happen often or stick around for long... but this one takes me back to my East Coast childhood, with the drifts blowing up to cover the first floor windows!! We woke up the other day to over two feet of this lovely, nostalgic, cushioning, quiet, white, tranquil, beautiful stuff!!!!!! Above is my daughter celebrating. Below is the view from my bathroom window.

Our front walk, above, and driveway, below:

and a view down our road at 4pm!

more winter beauty

Just to give you a sense of the true drama of the season - these photos were taken around three in the afternoon. The light was spectacular and plum coloured, the water was very soft and still, broken only by the meanderings of a few black ducks. I'm just yearning to turn inward and be still, yet life demands my full and busy presence. I participated this weekend in the Denman Island Christmas Craft Faire; it's a wonderful, high quality show that's been going for years, it felt great to be a part of it, and I worked very hard to make a good presentation and have lots of beautiful wares available. I got tons of compliments and lots of positive feedback. I even won the best booth award. (Go here to see what it looked like!) At one point, the wise and kind woman who had been our family doctor for years before her retirement, stopped by and congratulated me on my work. I told her business was going well. She looked at me in her calm, penetrating way, and said, "But how is your life-balance?" Ouch! My mind wandered back over the last few weeks of late nights in the studio, the growing mounds in my laundry room, the frozen pizza that awaited us for dinner that evening, recent conflicts with my sweetie, my absence from yoga class.... life balance? Are you kidding? The more I chase it the more it seems to elude me. This is a theme I want to explore in my life, and a thread I want to weave through my musings here in the months to come. I would love to hear about your struggles and victories in seeking life-balance - please share!