Archive for the ‘Four Directions’ Category
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
Before I leave for California I need to make formal recognition that the wheel of the year has turned once more... another fall is here.
This is the time when the child of summer grows into the self-reflective adolescent. Where the child is pure emotion, the adolescent is more hesitant to ...
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Sunday, August 30th, 2009
As I mentioned previously, I just returned from the Diamond Approach 10-day summer retreat in California, and I’d like to share some of the learnings from that, because they tie in with the summer part of the wheel. Summer is the time of childhood innocence. In fact, Bill Plotkin writes ...
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Monday, August 3rd, 2009
Summer is here and it's a hot one. At least in BC and the Pacific Northwestern states. I've previously written about the Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters of the wheel of the year, and now it's time to take a look at summer.
Summer is in the south quarter of the wheel, ...
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Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Continuing with the story of the sweat lodge, one of the elements that was very moving was the praying. As a person who doesn't follow a Christian tradition, prayer has often seemed impossible for me to do. If I don't have a god I believe in, how can I pray?
In ...
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Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
As I mentioned earlier, there were four rounds in the sweat lodge: The first round was for calling in the ancestors and spirits. The second round was for praying. The third round was for healing. And the final round was the “going home” round. At the beginning of each round, ...
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Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Meeting in Circle with the Wilderness Guides Council
Fire is the element of the east, the direction of springtime. When I first sat in circle at the Wilderness Guides Council, on Monday, April 13, I deliberately sat in the east. This is a part of the wheel that I am least ...
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Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Friday was the first day of spring: the tipping point when day and night are equal, and now the days are getting longer. More light brings warmth to the earth, helping new life to grow.
I went up into the mountains to check out the snow on my favourite running trail, ...
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Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Winter is coming to an end. We've already begun Daylight Savings. The first day of spring is March 20. But there's still a stinging bite of cold in the air in Vancouver, and we had snow a few days ago, which is still clinging to my back deck. At my ...
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
As I have mentioned before, I am spending this winter in Vancouver. I wanted to stay at Monkey Valley, to enjoy the incredible stillness that comes when the entire landscape is blanketed in white. But it was not to be; the snow plow company was unable to commit to plowing ...
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Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
The wheel of the earth keeps turning. This is the wheel of the seasons, of the day, of a human lifetime, or of a year. Today I want to tell you about the turning of the wheel from the black of the west to the white of the north, from ...
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