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:

January 2010

Bared branches etch delicate patterns in the sky around the meadow. The greens of the citrus and acacia trees and wild grasses (now three feet high in places) are all the more vibrant as counterpoint. My container garden is in its sere, crew cut season after days of serious pruning between Christmas and New Year’s. A brief killer frost that damaged much of what had been flourishing made the cutting back process an easier one than usual this year. Coming to the moment of trimming back the spilling-over wildness always feels sad and challenging. Yet, once I’ve finally gotten into and finished the pruning, I fall in love with the new openness, the quiet spareness of it all. And then, there’s the delight that comes from being able to see, against the now minimalist landscape, the almost immediate tiny signs of new growth emerging in each pot: an annual miracle of rebirth.

The siege of storms we’ve just cycled through has accelerated that rebirth: lots of new shoots and baby red leaves on the roses, tulip and jonquil greens poking up with their chubby buds starting to appear. New flowers are showing up daily on the heavily-laden-with-fruit Meyer lemon along with hints of buds-to-come on the apples trees. My perky winter pansies and primroses add some color to all the greenery. Everywhere after the rains, thunder and lightning, a sense of clarity and calm: brilliant blue skies, enormous white cumulous clouds.

The weeks since last I wrote here have been filled with the, for me, wonderfully nourishing tasks of closing down the old year and opening the new one: in the garden, with my papers, files, desk drawers and with the wiping of every leaf on each of my twenty-two houseplants and the vacuuming of each my eighteen Spirit Mother Totems – the large fiber masks that live on the cottage walls and protect my world. Touching every leaf and every mask with this caring, I honor and give thanks to these beings that provide me with sustenance all through the year. I love that my life is slow enough and simple enough that I can take the time to lovingly tend to them this way.

During the past two months, and even during my otherwise unplugged time, I’ve been having almost daily phone contact with my sister. She’s had to deal with a second surgery for a further complicated break in her already operated on arm and the endless challenges of being one handed as her arm is healing in a splint-cast. It’s been a trying and anxious time in her journey. In addition to the physical difficulties involved, she’s had to navigate the added stress of dealing with needing help and her unease allowing/receiving it. (A struggle with which I’m not unfamiliar; one that has its roots in the kind of mothering to which we were both subject.) I continue, through her troubles, the sometimes incredibly daunting practice staying out of her acre (business) until or unless she asks for input and also the related practice of having no expectations for how she’ll use (or not) whatever I offer in response to her request. I slip off this track more frequently than I’d wish, but there it is: I’m practicing!

After a hiatus for the holidays, I’ve restarted the series of free monthly talk/sharings that I’ll be doing through June. The January gathering (last week) – Aging and Outrageous in the Youth Culture: Growing into Our Deepest, Wisest, Wildest Selves – was exciting and delightful. Despite intense weather, seventeen juicy women ranging in age from 54 to 73 arrived for the hour and a half of circle and most stayed another forty-five minutes or so for informal knots of getting to know each other better. The textured, very personal sharing the women are open to doing in these gatherings is a knock out. The talking wove between the facing and embracing of the losses and uncertainties in eldering and the celebrating of this stage’s increasing self-acceptance that allows for throwing off outmoded role constraints. The evening was filled with irreverence, humor, wisdom and inspiring tales of vibrantly eldering women role models as we gave lie to the demeaning aging-as-a-deficiency disease context of our culture. The easy flow of truth-telling-from-the-heart was reminiscent of the consciousness raising circles of the sixties and seventies and of the sacred circle/council gatherings of the nineties. The profound and special magic that blossoms when women come together in circle always astonishes me. And, many of the women, feeling that magic, are talking eagerly about coming back month after month to keep nurturing and being nurtured by this community based on sharing life experiences.

I begin each gathering with a relaxation and guided visualization process that’s related to the topic for the evening. Everyone’s reflections on what that imaginary journey stirs in them becomes our jumping off place and then the circle takes on a life and direction particular to the women who are there that evening. I trust that process implicitly and don’t try to direct the flow. Each of the three times I’ve facilitated this particular talk/sharing over the past 10 years, the groups have gone in very different directions. (I listened to the old tapes before this latest meeting). I love not having a clue where we’ll be heading once I’ve set the evening in motion. The joy for me is in creating a safe container and then becoming a participant (rather than a leader) simply adding my two-cents whenever I have something to put into the mix from my own life experiences. (And, since I typically speak of my beliefs and ways of seeing things so adamantly, it always feels important to warn everyone at the start of the gathering not to take my fervor as implying that I‘m speaking about anything more than what’s absolutely so for me.)

I love that the evenings emerge as a true collaboration among all of us with each of us weaving our own wisdom and experience in to its fabric. This way of sharing knowledge horizontally is, I believe, the way of the feminine. It’s much more empowering for all of us (it seems to me) than the top-down way of the masculine model of imparting knowledge. It’s always more comfortable for me to share what I know as a participant in the circle rather than from the set apart place of leader. It’s worrisome to me that when I’m in the position of being seen as the leader, my way of looking at things can too easily be invested with more relevance/meaning than it should be especially when it may conflict with a person’s own experience/reality. It’s these concerns that have moved me to sharing what I’ve learned in the form of stories from along the way of my journey.

As I consider the possible shape this year’s unfolding may take, these talk/sharings and returning to working on the book manuscript seem likely to be at the heart of things. But, as I learn over and over and over again, Spirit will take me wherever it is I need to go and it may not be anything like what I, from this moment, imagine as being possible. I just keep listening, clearing away any obstacles, preparing the space and waiting to see where I’m taken. There’s a magical, nourishing feeling in this readiness to be led by the energy that’s quite similar to what happens for me with the talk/sharings. I love to surrender into the process, to be simply present in the moment, available and open.

While I was going through files and papers this month, I came across this very special piece written in 1998 by my dear friend Kathryn Kaplan. It seems so timely to share it here, so I will, with her permission:

MANIFESTO

Kathryn Kaplan
June 24, 1998

Here’s what I stand for:

Deepening the relationship to ourselves –
to look inside for meaning to one’s life
to reach and stretch for that which the soul longs for
to get all the help your precious being needs
to realize that to be vulnerable is a strength
that to be real is a risk worth taking.

Carefully developing relationships with others –
to surround yourself with people who care
who see who you really are and embrace all of it
who can help you heal and are on their own journey
who encourage and stimulate your creativity
who appreciate and require your gifts

Listening soulfully and expressing artfully
to trust the universe and yourself as a vessel
to be willing to speak the truth
to be open to new forms of creation
to remember the possibility for magic and grace
that it is all about being present in the moment.

As we all pray for the millions of displaced and devastated Haitians and those extraordinary teams of people from all over the world that are there on the ground helping people to find safety, medical care, food, shelter and some sort of comfort, please choose carefully where you donate your contributions. After Katrina, the skinny was to forget about the Red Cross since it was neither effective nor timely. Instead, please consider Direct Relief International out of Santa Barbara, California (which donates heavily to Doctors without Borders). It’s doing an amazing job of getting medical help and supplies to where they’re needed now in Haiti. (www.directrelief.org) 100% of your donations can be earmarked for Haiti.

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