Grandma Camp in May

May brings more outdoor activities with the boys: Park time, wading pool, chalk, clay, hopscotch, bike rides, and so on. With just a little thought, I can plan activities that also teach new skills, new ideas, and new emotional competence. 

Drawing chalk flowers and balloons

In May my themes are flowers and monsters. 

Agenda:

1. Flower projects

2. Monster projects

3. May Nature Table

Hearth-Keeping

Keeping the hearth is a spiritual practice, and a wonderful balance to the activist work I do. The important practices related to caretaking, community building, and tending of hearth and home are often undervalued, and we hearth-keepers often work quietly behind the scenes.

"That fire that burns in the center of collective identity and lineage and culture is the mythic hearth, and those who protect, embody, and maintain that center for the community are our hearth-keepers. ... We simply wouldn’t have a sense of identity or belonging without the essential work of hearth-keepers, the essential mysteries of the hearth itself, and the love and oversight of those deities whose central mysteries are the hearth." ~Riverdevora, The Revolutionary Art of Hearth-Keeping

Agenda:

1. Root reading
2. Deep kitchen cleaning

3. Home sensations

4. Pockets

Autumn Equinox

The autumn equinox occurs today at 6:04 p.m. in the Pacific Northwest. Summer is over and darkness will again catch up to the light.

Now the rains have begun (hallelujah!), Canadian geese are on the move south, the leaves are turning and beginning to drop, and night temperatures are cooler. Everything in nature is paring down, and moving energy to the roots and into the earth.

This is the second balancing point in the year; in the fall we might gently shift our attention from the physical side of life to the spiritual and mental, to indoor projects and thoughtful pursuits. As the nights lengthen, we have more dark time available, to be alone and to think; to become clear about our intentions; to nurture inner seeds that may not sprout until spring.

Mark the Start of Autumn:

1. Journal queries

2. Fall possibilities list

3. Wise Medicine Collecting

4. Autumn nature tray

5. Make a straw doll

6. Fall cleaning

Alban Arthan, and Christmas Novena - Day Seven

I continue my solstice celebration today with Alban Arthan, the Celtic and Druidic name for the Winter Solstice; it's Welsh for Light of Winter.

The Winter Solstice was never a one day festival - three days seems to be the minimum. The sun appears to stand still for three days, then days begin to noticeably increase in length (and we all sigh in relief). 

Alban Arthan is a celebration of the strengthening sun, and the central theme is renewal; we leave the past behind and greet the new. The world is undergoing constant change and we must change and adjust, too, in order to be able to survive.

"All things which come into being must first be born. Even as creation was borne by the great Mother of the universe, so too must we be born of the spirit to become spirit. The winter solstice is a celebration of being ‘born again’—not of flesh, but of the spirit. It’s a celebration of the birth of the spiritual Son, the Christ, within a person’s consciousness in the process of awakening.” 

From The Path of the Spiritual Sun: Celebrating the Solstices & Equinoxes by Belsebuub (Mark Pritchard)

Agenda today:

1. Druid peace prayer 

2. Prayer journal queries

3. Read a novena

4. Winter nature tray

5. Write a mission haiku