A little time away...

Gratitude for Retreat

I’m in my 70th year. My birthday is May 28th.

In the big dance, many star-hearted time keepers tell us it is a time of endings. Still, it’s a shock when something we’ve counted on ends. A relationship. A practice. A community. A dance. A way of governing?

In January, my bodyspirt suddenly informed me that my time was up on gathering groups, something I’ve been privileged to do all my life. But the sensations were strong and unambivalent!!!

I met with a wise healer, wondering how to end my entrepreneurial teaching journey. She suggested I find rituals. Soon after, I found a salmon skeleton in the American River, just down the hill from where I live. Many salmon swim upriver to spawn here near Sacramento and then die, as the next generation prepares for its journey.

Clean remains. A fitting end.

In February, I began removing myself from groups I’ve led or inspired. Last week, I taught my last Art of Ensoulment class and only afterward realized I didn’t give people a chance to thank me, an important ritual for us.

My tendency to join groups in both large and small ways is a pattern as I become increasingly discerning. I live in cohousing, a gentle full-time workshop on collaborative living. I’ve entered an art school phase in groups where I’m learning the elemental languages of visual art making. The Hidden Monastery Dance Chapels are the only groups to which I remain devoted for spiritual practice. My immediate family is my center.

The downshift in identity and practice is proving to be a relief and disorienting. What ritual can help when you are used to leading everything? Following the healer’s ritual advice, I enrolled in the Spring Sacred Art Week at the Grunewald Guild in Washington State, where InterPlaymate Laurie Rudel is a longtime leader. The Guild’s purpose honors visual art, faith, and spirituality and is set alongside the Wenatchee River.

It turned out to be the best ritual space for me imaginable. To be alongside artists. To reduce words. To be accompanied and yet not imposed upon by an external agenda. To see brilliant creative processes at work in others. To rest. To dream. To be held. TO NAP!!! The best! Afternoons were free.

I met Adele Caemmerer, Scott Burnett, Matt Whitney, and a group of artful beings on amazing journeys. Wow. I struggled to release the old teaching role that says I must name soul and beauty everywhere I go. I pray I can put art back at the center of articulation.

Now that week is at play in me. The desire for mark-making. Hunger for solitude. The rising quest for centering kindness. And alongside it all, the urgency of witnessing our agonizing struggle as Americans. I’m grateful for grounding as an artist and to be a young elder. I am grateful to know that doing is not the only way. I am grateful to be an advocate for people and projects that make a difference without starting or joining another group.

Please enjoy a brief slideshow of my time at the Guild. And if you can, give yourself a week of spacious art making at the Grunewald Guild or anywhere. Grace and Earth’s Beauty are our boldest, most unconditionally loving guides. I am sorry I waited so long.