Solstice Blessings

Solstice blessings and warm holiday wishes!  Today marks the longest night, the point of absolute dark before the return of the sun. What emerges in the fruitful darkness? We have been experiencing the season contracting, things slowing down, energies withdrawing, going underground. The earth releases and composts the old in order to make way for the new and recharge. We honor the earth’s and our own season by doing the same. There is a reason for the seasons, and it is yet again an opportunity to be present with what is and apprenticeship ourselves to the necessary energies of dark, silence, and slowness. A time to integrate all  the wonderful and difficult and intense experiences of the year and replenish our powers. And also to reconnect to the people, voices, and energies that are truly aligned. In the restful darkness we are able to see-feel our inner light more distinctly. In the silence, should we allow it, we are able to hear our own inner voice more clearly. We know the sun always returns. The light will now grow incrementally, the days becoming fractionally longer, as we begin to unfurl into the next season of our lives. What emerges in the fruitful darkness for you? Thank you for walking with me and Wild Nature Heart. I am so grateful for connecting with you, whether that has been through words, classes, circles of the Great Turning, wilderness ceremony, full moon hikes, or one-on-one sessions. We are all just walking each other home and I am looking forward to continuing the journey with you in the new year! In all the best and wild mysteries, Ryan  Director of Creative Earthiness

Within the Cave Something Pulses  I. Sip the Season Darkly Darkness has arrived wrapping its inky cloak across the season of our lives long shadows and owls stand tall and salute autumn’s bright slow song becoming winter’s march asking us not skip too quickly over the hour with an eager eye grasping towards cherry blossoms awaiting on the other side Drink deeply from the season, they say, from the cup overflowing with the sweetness of the fruitful darkness Sip the season darkly in its slow inward night embrace Wisdom hidden from summer’s glare may yet pass our lips should we have the thirst for it Until finally, the world becomes too much with us: We go to the cave, the secret one in the mountain of ourselves seeking stillness, a retreat an inward looking and listen for it, our own voice amidst The Silence – can you hear it?  II. Within the Cave Something Pulses Within the cave something pulses. We hear it even now feel it even now that which deepest dark cannot smother, and even winter’s hands cannot touch tender tendrils of our very own vine, bearing the wine of our heart A Remembering–Aha! Some secret vial of our heart’s fuel distilled for this very hour to sip the season brightly And the sun too misses its lover earth and cannot too long stay away The sun was meant for this: to shine To not share the big love is a wounding So in this darkest hour the sun knocks on the nearest horizon and announces The Return with a subtle beat: “Dear Love, I’m Here.” Which is exactly what we find written on the walls of our cave “Dear Love, I’m Here.” And we open our new eyes of dawn with a deep breath and though it’s just a whisper now it is enough to start it all again and again…again….again… ________________________________________________ Included in the new collection, Within the Cave Something Pulses, forthcoming 2020. You can get RE-MEMBERING: Poems of Earth & Soul. and High-Cooing Through the Seasons: Haiku From the Forest through your local bookstore, on Amazon or Indiebound. A book of mystery poems, Silence Begins Here, book of love and erotic poetry, Wild Rose Hips, and a celebration of the flow of rivers and souls, Riverever will also be out in 2020.

INTO THE CAVE Courses begin January 8. What emerges in the fruitful darkness?
Two groups—one All/No Genders Cohort and one Men Only Cohort.

DEEP BELONGING Courses begins January 9. Re-Belong yourself to Place and Purpose. Day and evening times.

Take the self-paced WILD NATURE HEART CHALLENGE at anytime, from anywhere.