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 $1.31in 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:

April 2008

Spring continues unfurling her magnificence. Out the window at my desk, yellow climbing floribunda roses drape themselves around a freshly leafing little red maple. From the fence beyond them at the edge of my patio to the distant foothills in all directions, the deciduous trees and shrubs are filling with new leaves in every shade of green. The two apple trees at the meadow's edge are leafing out and full of delicate blossoms. The Valencia orange and Meyer lemon are both covered with fat buds, some of them already open and releasing their intoxicating fragrance. Brilliant orange poppies erupt in patches throughout the three-foot high wild grasses in the meadow and the lush-leafed volunteer artichokes are almost ready to put forth baby chokes. The pink jasmine climbing my ramada is full of exotically aromatic little flowers. All my roses are bushing out with chubby little buds, abundant new leaves and the first opened blooms of this season. The purple parrot-tulips my godson brought back from Amsterdam in September are starting to unfold. Around the neighborhood, blossoming mock orange hedges and front yard orange trees are filling the air with their intense and delicious perfume. Owls and hawks come a-courting in and above the meadow and the first of this year's crickets arrive to add their songs to the froggy chorus. I breakfast in my garden each morning in the impish company of mischievous-faced pansy-beings. Everywhere new life is awakening, stretching, rising and flagrant. Such delight!

My two little beasties are beside themselves with glee as they romp and stalk in the tall grasses-miniature panthers in the Ojai veldt hunting (unsuccessfully) for gophers and flies. They (somewhat sadly for me) grow more adventuresome and independent these days, disappearing from the meadow to who-knows-where for hours at a time. They come home eventually-still preferring their litter boxes to the outdoor opportunities-but I sorely miss what used to be their more frequent in and out visits for petting and playing during the day. Instead, I content myself with our evening snuggles: Sugar curled on my chest and Handsome draped on the bolster at my shoulder as I lie back in my nap bed reading and petting to their stereo purring or else napping along with them.

On the mend from my uncomfortable-but-amazingly-not-painful bout with shingles, the gradually diminishing post-herpetic neuralgia has been taxing, irritating and tiring but-blessedly-also not painful. The month has been a mix of lots more than usual (also more intense) work with clients and lots of deliciously nourishing stretches of quiet peace: no traveling, no packing or unpacking, nothing to disrupt the days of drifting and puttering or having meals and walks with old friends I haven't seen in some time.

There's lots of time and space opening now. I could certainly choose to use it to revisit and once again re-edit the book manuscript. Three special friends have generously committed to reading/editing it once I've done my next re-edit, all part of a plan to get it into final shape for self-publishing/publishing-on-demand. But, I have no interest in re-immersing myself in the project at this moment. I suspect that, if and when I were to start it up again, I would-as before-be swept into its depth, thoroughly excited by the immersion. Yet, just now, it all feels like too much work. I want only to drift and read and walk and nap and play with kitties and mess in the garden-to be timeless and without commitments. So, I'm giving myself unconditional permission to let the project ride until or unless Spirit moves me back into it. I haven't a clue whether or not that will ever happen and I seem to be fine with however it goes or doesn't, not concerned at this stage of my life with whether I'm “living up to [my] potential.”

For the past three months I've known that the property on which I live was going to be put on the market. Three weeks ago, it finally happened: an open-house caravan of realtors came to view both my house and the other two rentals that sit on this two-thirds of an acre. Despite her strong emotional attachment to this property (she raised her kids here as a post-divorce single mom and lived for a time in each of the three separate dwellings) financial stresses have forced the dear woman realtor from whom I rent to put both this property and the one on which she now lives up for sale. She cried when she told each of us what was happening and she cried again when she called to tell me she was bringing a client to view it last week. That she's yet to put up a for sale sign is further testimony to her pain and ambivalence around the whole issue of letting go of her “security blanket,” as she calls this property.

I've been fairly unconcerned in the middle of all of it. She's committed-if and when it might sell-to a 60-day escrow to give all three of us time to find new homes. It's certainly possible that whoever might buy it might want to keep at least my cottage as a rental. And, of course, it's equally possible that it won't sell at all or that the other property will sell instead. After my several experiences of having to leave my very special rented cottages only to find¬-in the eleventh hours-new homes that have each been even more wonderful than the last, I feel a radical trust that all will work out well in the end.

When I had to leave my last home, while I trusted that Spirit/the Grandmothers would provide for me, I worried that perhaps what they thought I'd need next wouldn't necessarily be what I might have imagined. When they brought me this extraordinary new home, I understood that we were indeed on the same page. That helps me trust more completely this time. I feel no need to worry about any of it at this moment.

As an act of faith, I bought and spread 80 cubic feet of shredded redwood bark on all the paths and byways around the edge of the meadow and patio. After three years, the bark I'd spread when first I moved here had mostly composted into the soil. As I refurbished my lovely outdoor spaces, I offered my prayers for a happy outcome, knowing that either I'd get to stay and enjoy this beauty or it would be my parting gift to the spirits of this place and to the new residents-whoever they might be.

The morning after I wrote these last paragraphs, the woman who owns the property called to thank me for my support and prayers and to ecstatically report that her other property had just sold and entered escrow! Prayers and good thoughts are still in order between now and the 27th of June when escrow closes. But, since there are no contingencies attached to the contract, things look very good. She is so relieved not to have to let go of this property, even more so after she and the realtor caravan came through and saw how devoted all three of us tenants are to cherishing and tending the beauty of our indoor and outdoor spaces here.

This week I'm slowly starting to prepare for my mid-April trip to Maryland. I'll be sharing a Passover Seder (ceremonial dinner) with my parents and blood family for the first time in more than 35 years. It's amazing to realize I'll be sitting amongst the cousins with whom I shared Seders all through my childhood. Our grandparents would host the gatherings each year, our grandpa making his own wines (as well as what my uncle called “that rot-gut schnapps”): thick, dark red for the grown-ups and sweet golden raisin wine for all the kids. I remember being fascinated with the magical process of winemaking the year I lived with those grandparents (when I was four years old).

On one of my altars lives one of the children's glasses from way back then. I'm planning to bring it with me, perhaps for us to use as the ceremonial cup for the prophet Elijah whose spirit is invited to share in every Seder around the world. I'm also busy making ceremonial Matzoh and Afikomen covers for the family table as I did several years ago for the feminist Seder table I've been sharing with a chosen California tribe/family for over 20 years. It's odd to be absenting myself from that table this year. Still, it feels important and meaningful to share the holidays with my extended blood family in these last years of my Dad's life.

Wishing all of you who celebrate this holiday a very sweet Passover!