Snow Moon Teachings

Snowfall. A time of peace and stillness. Snowfall changes time and space. There is more room, more space for silence to expand. It cloaks and hides the details. Your eye is allowed to range further and there are less distractions as they are hidden under a blanket of white. Your horizon is swept away, flake upon flake until the edges of where you are and where you came from are lost in white.

My best advice is to seek out where woods meet a field, in the country or a city park, it doesn't matter because when you walk out you will be changed by the snowfall.

The trees of the forests will be your guardians.

So.

Walk to the center of that field and listen.

Really

listen.

You won't be the same after.

Welcome to January- The Month of Firelight

Keyword -  Introspection

For everyone in the northern hemisphere, we are in the month of dark stillness. Night is partnered with Winter in that eternal marriage of the North. Air is icy and starlight flickers. Our sun, that white star, is pale on the horizon, and makes a low sweep before settling into another night. It is the time of fires, woodsmoke, dreaming and conceiving. We all turn inward with deepening reflection.

How we use this valuable time is up to us. Even in our busy days we need to work with the energy of winter. In the upcoming week, take one moment to light a candle in the evening and check in where you are. Call yourself back, turn inward and reflect. All things have their place in nature and so do you.

I begin next year with "Luminous".

Morning Light

If that isn't worth waking up for in the morning, then I don't know what is.

On The Teachings of Winter Trees

I promise that if you bundle up this winter and walk your daily walk, the winter trees will teach you more in this season than in any other season.

A winter tree has presence. Those of you who walk your winter walk, know this. Gone is the soft green dress of leaves and instead there is the starkness of limb and branch. The winter tree has character. This one, a double trunk, this one, a broken leader, and that one and undulating bend that brushes the ground.

Winter trees draw you closer in an intimate relationship. As your eye gazes at their texture and colour, the winter trees become familiar. Pearly greys, hazy greens, slick and smooth, textured and lichened. We come to know these trees, and we come to a knowing of trees and how they move in this world.

And we come to know where we stand, how we walk, and how we move through our small corner of the Earth. Our daily walk with winter trees rehabilitates us to our sense of place. We become engaged to the world around us.

So before deciding that this winter will be like every winter, a time of curling up and waiting for spring, bundle up and greet your winter trees andwalk with them. They have many teachings to share.

On the Topic of Seaweed

 I do love seaweed. I like eating it. I like watching it. I like painting it. When it gets windy around here and the trees bend back and forth in a rhythmic sway, I often feel like a tiny fish in a kelp forest. The light falling through the trees is green and blue and the sound of the wind, when it gets determined, has the crash of breakers in it.

There is nothing I like more than painting seaweed paintings, and bringing that swaying movement into the house. A reminder too, that though we live on soil, our planet is a watery world. It is good to bring that element into the home. So although I say good-bye to my lovely painting, "The Salish Sea", I know it has gone to a good home where the denizens feel the same way.

On the Flight of Eagles

Gazing at birds in flight is always a good reminder to let your spirit soar. Watching ravens dip and wheel off the edge of a cliff face is time well spent in reviving the soul. The sunlight gleams off their superb feathers and they shine like obsidian shards in the blue sky.

High above, so very high above, on the edges of seeing are two eagles. Their large wingspan at one with the air, they turn overlapping circles and ovals. And suddenly, they have passed from sight. The business of eagles, at such lofty hights, one can only imagine. It raises questions, questions that explore the vast expanse of blue within ourselves, why do we soar so very high?

A Golden Reminder

A friend who was staying over remarked that the golden leaves of the deciduous trees kept making him think that the sun was out and shining. When he glanced out of the window, he would again be tricked into thinking the day was blue and sunny despite the unceasing rain.

And of course, in one way, he wasn't being tricked with sunlight having been once used to make the leaves to begin with. Preserved Sunlight. A wonderous thing.

The weeping birch tree in my yard, with its fine, delicate leaves is like a spire of dappled sunlight against the grey sky. It is a fifty foot lightning rod, though in this case,  a sunlight rod, that is channeling the gold energy of sunlight back into the earth.

How fitting for the coming of winter and the darker days ahead. When the last gold leaf falls, I shall imagine the earth below storing and holding the golden energy for the greeness of spring.

In this way, my weeping birch is a reminder of the continuous flow of energy, energy that changes, transforms and transmutes.