The Monthly Musing and Rememberings for the Month pages and the Bulletin Board below usually change somewhere between the 15th and the end of each month - unless, sigh, it's not time yet.

Many of the words/images you read here are available, by snail-mailorder, as posters, notecards, postcards and other special treasures. Most orders will be shipped the day they are received. The Catalog of Treasures is a downloadable on-line version of our catalog. The Order Form (which you'll need to download to write an order) also functions as a page of links to each of the treasures on the site. If you'd prefer our hard-copy catalog, please send $1.00 and a business-size SASE with $1.34 in postage on it to Robyn at Box 725w, Ojai CA 93024

To explore the possibility of one time, occasional or ongoing individual consultations (by phone or in person) for coaching/counseling/mentoring/therapy support on the journey, click on The Healing Journey and/or call me at 805 646-4518. (I'm licensed in California as a Clinical Psychologist.)

Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you.

ROBYN'S BULLETIN BOARD:

December 2011

After three weeks of the most extravagant fall color I’ve seen in all my 29 years in Ojai – reds, gold, oranges, yellows and an almost-maroon – a two-day windstorm with gusts up to 45 mph and more denuded most of our deciduous trees and piled leaf debris in every corner and cranny of my garden. I spent the day after raking, sweeping, pulling up expired tomato plants (it was a bust of a year for them in my garden) and, surprisingly, starting with my winter pruning. I’ve so far spared the sages, lavenders, verbena, roses and the profusion of marigolds, gloriosa daisies and ruby nasturtiums still providing splashes of radiant fall color in the garden. For whatever reason, this time around rather than the big deal the annual crew-cutting often feels like, it was just-what-was-up; simply a part of clearing out the mess around the pots on the patio. The wildness pretty much gone now as the winter bare-bones look is emerging: calming and sweet in such a different way. Less than a week later we had several nights of frost that paved the way to yet more easy cutting back to nubbins.

Red mustard, purple and green kales, collards, green leaf lettuce, bok choi arugula, rosemary and oregano are all still going strong. Neon yellow Meyer lemons are full ripe and ready for a new season of lemonade making. This year’s persimmon crop, blazing orange, decorates its almost naked branches looking (as usual this time of year) like elegant Christmas baubles.

The new seed feeders do a fabulous job of keeping away the squirrels, pigeons, blue jays and the largest of the fruit rats. Without all these voracious eaters, the four six-pound containers need refilling only once a month instead of once a week. But, since more than one small bird at a time on the weight-sensitive perches closes off the seed portals, I (alas) no longer have hoards of little birds making their joyful commotion while doing musical chairs at the feeder troughs. I miss that a lot, sigh! I’ve started putting a large pan of seed on the ground to see if that brings back at least the droves of ground feeders. So far it seems just the squirrels have discovered it.

The ant-moats and bee/wasp-discouraging hummingbird feeders are doing a perfect job of leaving the sugar-water feeders teeming only with myriad hummers. And, with a mix of eight 30 and 52 ounce feeders, I now have to refill them only every ten days instead of every four or five. Lots more time to drift!

In the month since last I wrote I’ve had my annual 10-day birthday retreat, a five-day workweek followed by another six-day time-out for my December unplugged week before a two-day workweek that ended a few days ago. In this year-end season of such intense energy out in the world, all this unplugged/quiet time (I’d also taken my regular monthly six-day time-out the first week in November!) is deeply nourishing for my introverted soul. (Even when not on these time-outs, I generally avoid errand trips to Ventura between Thanksgiving and New Year’s: everything out there feels way too hyper for me.)

My birthday retreat brought some challenge in its first couple of days. I think the fact that I call it a retreat is what created the problems. I found my self struggling with/against my notions of what retreat usually looks like in most spiritual traditions: separation from one’s ordinary life: silence, spiritual practices/studies, sitting or walking meditation, dharma talks with/by one’s spiritual advisor. These were not what called to me, except for the silence vis-à-vis other people. Instead, I naturally inclined toward continuing with my day-to-day chores (especially this time around since my first day on retreat involved drying out my tent bed and bedding from the aftermath of an overnight leaking hot-water bottle). My daily chores feel like my version of moving meditation of the chop-wood/carry water sort. My mind is on holiday as I immerse in the doings: filling bird feeders, straining cat litter, feeding and watering cats, static-brushing cat hair from all the kitties’ bunks, vacuuming the tracked-in birdseed, boiling a day’s worth of water for my carafes, setting out my vitamins and herbs, tending to whatever the garden needs. But, in this retreat-time, I realized how often I actually have a book-on-CD playing as I meander through my daily routines. Suddenly, I was caught up in thinking about whether this was okay to do, on my retreat or even in my ordinary every day life.

“Okay with whom?” I wonder, as I’m self-consciously questioning what I spontaneously choose to do. Hmmm. Traveling in fantasy into the world of the story I listen to on CD as I putter isn’t exactly empty-mind absorption in the doing.

So, “So what?” I ask my self. Why am I looking at my natural flow with these outside eyes? The answer comes loud and clear: “Because this isn’t how one does retreat!”

I answer the answer, “So, let’s not call this a retreat. Then, I can do whatever I feel like doing with this time! After all, it is MY time-out, my time to do whatever I please, my birthday present to my self.”

It takes a bit of back-and-forthing, but I finally do jettison the frame of retreat and go on (back to) simply following wherever the energy leads me, just as I generally do in my everyday life. And, I go on listening to my stories on CD.

This issue of what and how I ought to do whatever I’m doing continued to weave through the whole of my 10-day birthday time-out (NOT retreat!). Usually my birthday falls somewhere in the middle of the ten days and often Thanksgiving (the only holiday I celebrate) is included in the time. This year, for the first time I can remember, my birthday fell on a Monday that was scheduled as one of my every other week workdays. Thanksgiving coming on the Thursday of the same week made it difficult to move the work forward a day or two. While in past years such a plan would likely have felt like a violation of my sacred time, this time around it felt just fine to both take my time-out before the birthday and to work on the day itself. I was amazed at how matter of fact the decision was.

Over the years, several rituals have become an integral part of this celebration of the anniversary of my birth: Casting my oracles for the year to come with Runes, Sacred Path Cards, Angel Cards, Mother Peace Tarot, my own Rememberings and Celebrations Cards and two other sets of cards whose names I don’t know. Smudging the various cards, the cottage and my self with sage and sweet grass smoke, lighting candles and setting out an altar cloth (that once miraculously survived a fire) upon which to lay the cards. And, on the eve of my birth (at just after midnight, in the first moments of November 21st), ceremoniously arranging flowers and candles, doing ablutions with cornmeal and salt scrub, lotion massage, manicure and pedicure followed by dressing up in one of my collection of beautiful fabric wraps, bedecking my self with magical jewelry then dancing in front of a lively fireplace fire as I imagine my arrival in this world.

Though these had long been vital parts of my celebration, this year none of it felt meaningful or right to do. Some parts of me were feeling sad to let them go. Yet, for more of me, the doing of any of it would have felt contrived, an empty repetition of forms that lacked the authenticity they once had. A good deal of caring dialog and comforting helped the confused, bereft parts cope with their grieving for the loss of meaning.

What did still come through, as it has every year since 1985, were the words for another Solstice/New Year’s card. Some years they’ve come earlier than this but the final polishing, the drawing and the on-paper layout always emerge into the November open space. The miraculous arrival of this annual blessing feels like my birthday gift from Spirit/the Grandmothers; it fills me with exuberant delight.

Once the layout is done, I spend time going through my quote collections (gathered over the years by me or by friends) to find the ones that fit as companions to the message of the card and serve as inspirations for the year ahead. This ritual was as juicy and authentic as it’s always been. So, too, the whole process of updating, decorating and affixing address labels, return address labels, and stamps. The composing of my (odd) version of a holiday update letter, the trip to the copy shop to print all three and then the assembly-line work of creasing and folding the cards, folding the inspiration and letter pages and getting all of it prepared for the after-my-time-out handwriting of personal wishes, stuffing and mailing – all of this feels exciting and nourishing, full of love and joy and celebration.

(Of course, I suspect none of this would qualify as acceptable activity for a so-called real retreat but it’s what delights me and that’s what counts here!)

Along with all the excitement and joy there’s been lots of deep tiredness as I teeter on the edge of finessing this winter cold that everyone seems to be plagued by. I’ve been taking herbs (Defense Plus with its magical combination of grapefruit seed extract, astragalus, Echinacea, goldenseal, reishi, shitake and maitake mushroom extracts, ginger root an vitamin C) and homeopathics (Boiron Coldcalm). I’ve been forgoing sleeping out in my tent and skipping my usual nightly hot tub floats to avoid chilling my vulnerable body on the recent very cold nights as I keep trying to avoid a full-fledged cold when I’m about to head to Florida for a weekend celebration of my last (and favorite) aunt’s 90th birthday. So far I’ve not been overtaken by the cold though it hovers quite nearby.

The new series of both the free and for donation women’s talk/sharing wisdom circles began juicily in November (we break for December and resume every other week in January and on through June). The first four-session cycle of the Transforming the Legacy of Mean Mothers group ended after a good bit of insight-rich dialog and practice framing. Three of the original eight members are continuing on in a sort of semi-private process group and I’m setting up to start a new four-session cycle for women who didn’t get into to the first one. It’s all quite fascinating since I never cared much for doing group work. The fact that they’re discussion rather than therapy groups seems to change the playing field for me and I’m loving the process.

Some special things to know about:

Sonia Connolly, whose TraumaHealed.com website has long been included in my links page, has recently published an amazing book: Wellspring of Compassion – Self-Care for Sensitive People Healing from Trauma. The tenderness of her approach and of the experiential processes she offers are gentle manna for vulnerable selves working on healing. Definitely worth a read.

SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) has recently had her delicious website (PlanetSark.com) redesigned and it’s full of her special joyful, creative and succulent wisdom. A delight-filled meander awaits you.

And, keep an eye out for the late March arrival of Anne Lamott’s newest non-fiction: Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son, it’s full of her inimitable wisdom in the midst of naked vulnerability and nuttiness.

Check out my 2011-2012 Solstice/New Year’s Card here: Between Woman

So! That’s the scoop at year’s end. I send you warm blessings for a sweet, gentle and magical year of adventuring in both inner and outer worlds. And here’s this year’s quote collection:

Some Inspirations for the Year Ahead 2012

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
-Joseph Campbell

Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are.
-Rachel Naomi Remen

Crisis, suffering, loss, the unexpected encounter with the unknown – all of this has the potential to initiate a shift in perspective. A way of seeing the familiar with new eyes, a way of seeing the self in a completely new way. The experience that I have in watching people with cancer is that the more overwhelmed someone is at the beginning, the more profound the transformation that they undergo. There’s a moment when the individual steps away from the former life and the former identity and is completely out of control and completely surrenders, and then is reborn with a larger, expanded identity.
- Rachel Naomi Remen

There is in us an innate given, a thrust toward individuation, which seems to continue during the entire life cycle.
-Margaret Mahler

An inner wholeness presses its still unfulfilled claims upon us.
- Emma Jung

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
- Anais Nin

When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.
- Tuli Kupferberg

People have a fundamental need for transformation. We are wired for growth and healing, and we’re wired for self-righting and resuming impeded growth. We have a need for the expansion and liberation of the self, the letting down of defensive barriers, and the dismantling of the false self. Transformance strives toward maximal vitality, authenticity, and genuine contact. In the process of radical change we become more ourselves than ever before, and recognize ourselves to be so.
- Diana Fosha

The being, by its very nature, moves always in the direction of growth, evolving moment by moment even when the process is feeling invisible and the steps are microscopic. Growth and forward motion continue whether we are vigilant or not. Pushing ourselves often slows the process: it stirs resistance in the healthy parts of us who are protecting the natural flow from being overthrown or interfered with. When things feel really hard, slowing way down allows the internal, organic balancing process to work its magic. When you get scared that you'll never come out of this (or any other place in which you find yourself) remember that everything in us moves always toward growth and change–no matter how it looks to our outside eye.
-Robyn Posin

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?
- Tao Te Ching

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.
- A.A. Milne

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
- Confucius

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
- Francis Bacon

Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers, but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.
- Rachel Naomi Remen

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live your questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
- Ranier Maria Rilke

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