Voices of the Earth

Smiling on the Far Side of Despair... 6-5-2008

Hello everyone,
 
This past Friday evening I had an amazing experience, and I’m still in the thick of it, so I thought I’d write about it here. I’ll consider this my “letter from the stone pile,” my contribution to the community of shared experiences so many of you have participated in over the years.
 
What happened Friday night could be called an unraveling, an experience where a complex interweaving of experiences and stories that structured my life -- in this case painfully -- came completely undone. There are books with titles like “Awakening” and ”When Fear Falls Away” written about this kind of thing, and I’ve experienced this before around other issues in other areas of my life -- turning points where a whole complex and pattern of beliefs and attitudes dissolve, never to reappear.  I’m hoping for the same here.
 

Report from Death Valley... 3-22-2007

The line separating sun and shade slowly moves across the valley, as I sit here in the shadow of the Last Chance Range, waiting for the sun to crest the mountains.

I first came to Death Valley twenty years ago to apprentice with Steven Foster and Meredith Little and learn their form of leading vision quests. Coming back this year -- flying out on the very day I did two decades ago, has given me an opportunity to reflect, appreciate, and celebrate this long apprenticeship of listening to, learning from, and serving the earth.

Report from Japan 2... 3-1-2007

Hi again from across the world,

I’m Including my second “Report from Japan” below. Yesterday my daughter, her partner, and I went to Nagasaki to visit the Atomic Peace Museum. Standing fifty feet from the hypocenter of where the second atomic bomb was dropped, viewing large photographs of the before and after, reading victims descriptions, and touching melted bottles with powdered bones in them overwhelmed me with grief and anger… and made all I might describe and share below seem unimportant in comparison.

But this morning I finished up those notes, and I present them for your pleasure and interest.

Sparrow

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Report from Japan... 2-23-2007

I’ve decided to send out a small group email to share some of my experiences being in Japan. As most of you know, my daughter, Prairie now lives there with her partner Hanako.

Getting here was an adventure in itself. My first attempt was on Wednesday the 14th, but the first snowstorm New England received all winter grounded me in the airport for 12 hours and my flight was eventually canceled. Just getting back home was a major struggle, and I couldn’t get another flight out until Sunday. So on Sunday the 18th I again drove down to Hartford and off I went at 9 in the morning, arriving in Fukuoka about 10 pm Monday, their time. I’d never taken such a long flight before -- Detroit to Tokyo was 13.5 hours in itself, but it was entirely tolerable, and it was really sweet having Prairie and Hana jumping up and down when they saw me in the airport. By the time we drove home it was midnight, but they gave me beer and cheese, then sent me into the hot tub, which was a perfect prelude to crawling under the thick covers of the guest bed.