This the season!

 

The Christmas Coach by Norman Rockwell

Sharing with Thankful Thursday

Today's quote:

Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.

RACHEL NAOMI REMEN

The Grinch at the old Ole's Guacamole's Restaurant 2023

Today's art

.Andrew Loomis, Magazine illustration, 1931

Today on Open Yesterday's Pages: Jamestown Wives

Summer Solstice celebration, completed!

 A picnic by a stream in the woods of Montreat NC. I'm bringing my own salad, and will share a nice hunk of stilton cheese...with crackers if others wish.

That's the reason I'm not posting until this afternoon. Here is my place of memories saved.

A site for a wonderful shady lunch! It was 89 when we came back down the mountain into town. I dare say it's hotter in Asheville.

Some of us wanted to check out the path along the stream...

I love this quiet little picnic area...it's near the campgrounds, but only one other family was nearby behind some trees.

One of us is a vegan, but finally had just a taste of my Stilton cheese with mango and ginger.

We shared parts of our lunches with each other.

The Rhododendron are about to bloom...here's a bud!

As we were chatting after lunch, a young man came walking up the stream, with a fly fishing outfit, and proceeded to catch a little fish right near us. He fortunately took its picture then threw it back in, and continued flicking out his bait.

Celtic Symbols

Do any of the roots on your family tree reach back to Ireland and the land of the Celts?  The day of Winter Solstice is upon us.

In the dawn of civilization, way before Christianity came to the Emerald Isle, Newgrange Mound was built, which on Winter Solstice, has an avenue for the sun to shine, and only on that date will it happen.  Another site with this alignment might be better known, namely Stonehenge, which was built much later than Newgrange.

But Newgrange has more than the light streaming down a passageway to a particular wall only on Solstice.  Remember well the skills of a culture before the working of metals, and the dedication of man-hours to erect this structure.

Wikipedia tells us: "The complex of Newgrange was originally built between c. 3200 and 3100 BC, meaning that it is approximately 5,000 years old. According to carbon-14 dates, it is about five hundred years older than the current form of Stonehenge, and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, as well as predating the Mycenaean culture of ancient Greece."

Newgrange has triple spirals.  Inside...(as above)

And most famously outside.

Patricia Monaghan wrote in her book Red Haired Girl from the Blog, and other books like The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, about women's spirituality in early Celtic Ireland.

And another woman, Marija Gimbutus, wrote of The Language of the Goddess, giving an archeologist's view on symbols like the spirals at Newgrange.

Just thought I'd mention how women and goddesses were probably part of early cultures that remembered the Solstices.

Happy Winter Solstice 2012

OK, the world hasn't ended (yet) if you're reading this. (as many more people than usual expect to happen on Dec. 21, 2012)
I loved my grandson's FaceBook postings where he asked people to send their valuables to him before the end of the world happened.  Smart guy.

Lake Tomahawk, Spring 2012

Here are a few of my favorite places, which remind me of all my friends with whom I've shared each place.  It's a time of remembering on the darkest day of the year.

Pear Tree blooming by UU Congregation of the Swannanoa Valley, Black Mountain, 2012

A community of people come together every Sunday, year in and year out, here at this small brown church.  I especially enjoy being a choir member, and recently started volunteering as secretary for the Board of Trustees.

Flat Creek, Montreat, NC, Summer 2012

Nature is my source, everyone's source.  This creek is just there.  I like to go walking along it, or sit beside it, listening to its voice in the silence of the woods.

Blue Ridge Parkway, Fall 2012

The Blue Ridge is a place set aside from the areas it passes through, and provides vistas of the mountains around it.  I'm a sucker for vistas.  Just let me get my camera.

The Clay Studio of Black Mountain Center for the Arts

The community studio of which I'm a part, as well as a volunteer once a week.  Here many people have spent time shaping mud into artifacts of one kind or another, while the actual process of creativity has changed them.  A place of exploration, a place of healing, a place of sharing, a place of sometimes hurting.

A place in which I can make my home, watching seasons change, slowly building my own space.

I'm preparing for a new blog in the new year.  One which only shows one photo a day of Black Mountain and the Western North Carolina sites.  Hope you'll visit it (and I'll include a link here when I start it).

Whatever you do this Solstice-time, enjoy being around those you love.  Make the effort to reach out to those you think might be short on human contact.  It is appreciated a thousand-fold.

I now post on this blog every other day, and on my pottery blog the other days of the week.  After all, I have a life.  Well, I want to have one, anyway.

Self-sabotage

When it seems something pulls the rug out from beneath my feet, it just may be myself doing it, a self-sabotage has happened again.

If you're one of those perfectly balanced people who just have some clear-cut enemies who cause all your problems, then don't read about this.

Christmas 2010

Self-sabotage happens unconsciously, which is why it’s so difficult to see that we are doing it. The important thing to realize is that this very part of us that resists our healing is the part that most needs our attention and love. Even as it appears to be working against us, if we can simply bring it into the light of our consciousness, it can become our greatest ally. It carries the information we need to move to the next level in our healing process.

When we recognize that we are not making healthy choices, we might even say out loud, “I am not taking care of myself.” 

Sometimes this is the jolt we need to wake up to what is actually happening. Next we can sit ourselves down in meditation, with a journal, or with a trusted friend to explore the matter more thoroughly. Just shining the light of our awareness on the source of our resistance is sometimes enough to dispel its power. At other times, further effort is required. Asking a counselor for help is nothing to be ashamed of.

Either way, we need not fear these parts that do not want to heal. We only need to take them under our wing and bring them with us into the light.

Spring 2010

Gratitude can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.  Melody Beattie

Lighting the Yule Log, 2005 Festival of Lights

This Friday is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.  Long nights are great times for dreams.  Coming together with friends to share warmth is also a fun thing to do on long nights.

 

Remembering Green-ness

Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
--Kahlil Gibran

When the other side of the earth hosts springtime, our side (northern hemisphere) hosts the grey days of the year.  In 2 weeks we'll have Winter Solstice with  the longest night of the year.

This picture was a springtime joy and the water doesn't reflect sky so much as the green-ness all around it.  And look at that gorgeous color of the moss at the foot of the tree!

I share this with all of us looking forward to the changes mother earth brings, no matter what they may feel like.  I read a blog from Japan who just experienced another earthquake yesterday, and how his family is trying to live a normal life after they had to move from the area where the big one hit last year. 

I love reading blogs from people in the Southern Hemisphere where they share gorgeous plants and flowers.  For me, right now, it's a memory.

I share this as my Weekend Reflections contribution.