Hello dear ones - This picture is from last November (2024) just outside of Oban, Scotland. A view from the daily walk the dogs I was caring for and I went on. A few days a ago, I sent an email beginning to make a case for restoring more beauty and meaning in our holiday celebrations. But I’m aware that “beauty” is a word that comes with a lot of baggage for many of us. I wrote a Substack post addressing this (you can read the whole thing here), but I'll recap it a bit here: I was in a...
4 days ago • 5 min read
Hello, dear ones - Who else’s inbox has them feeling like a spinning piñata, sales and ads left right and center, all hoping if they hit you enough, money will start falling out of you? Well… I’ll be honest, this is also sort of a sales email. But it’s not selling you stuff so much as offering some opportunities to engage with the season in what might feel like a more meaningful and nourishing way. I’ll explain: See, I actually kind of grew to hate the holidays. I’ve yet to encounter one...
10 days ago • 5 min read
Hello, dear ones - Happy Samhain! May you be protected in this time when the wheel is turning, and we shift from the light half of the year into the dark depths. In Old Ireland and Scotland, where Samhain was first celebrated, this marks when all the cows and sheep have been brought back from summer pastures, the last of the harvest has been brought in, and the hunkering down begins. Long before Christianity overlayed the idea of Ancestor and Saint worship on top of and alongside Samhain, it...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Hello, dear ones - We're in the "Samhain" portal now until some time in early November, depending on whether you observe the Gregorian calendar date or other, earlier, calendars and ways of marking the passage of time and the turning of the seasons. This moment in the year marks the wrapping of the harvest season and the retreat indoors to dream, rest, and perform indoor labor (mendings, weavings, etc) around the fire - fed with stories and songs, as well as whatever food and drink was able...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Friends, This has been quite the Autumn so far. I'm out of the rhythm of writing but hoping to carve out enough space for it to come back again. Reflections on Initiations In the old stories and practices of initiations, it’s usually a plant, animal, or representative of the land itself that initiates you, that calls you to the Journey and prompts your Descent. But once on the Journey, it’s not enough to find the treasure. We have to find it, then leave it - the castle in the clouds, the...
2 months ago • 6 min read
Hello, friends - How was your autumn equinox/ final eclipse of the year? How is your body marking the shift in the seasons, the pause in the balance point on our way into the darkness? I spent Saturday with a few lovely humans in our virtual round house for our Autumn Equinox Sun, Moon, Fire, Soil gathering. We reflected on the season, through our own experiences, discussion of ancestral practices, a energy attunement, and an old English folk tale about an elderly couple, worried how they...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hello, my dears - It's funny how we can tell ourselves astrology and things like it aren't real... and yet.... the more I sink into the rhythm of "life as pilgrimage," a rhythm of aliveness that listens to my heart, my gut, and spirit - and then moves accordingly; the more I find threshold moments in my life just seem to magically coincide with astrological threshold moments. And so here we are - in the red light of a total lunar eclipse; stirring up feelings, and inviting karmic closures and...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Welcome to August, dear ones - Here’s our beginning-of-the-month update! The Wheel of the Year: a field I pass on my daily walks here in the Northeast of Scotland In terms of the solar and lunar holidays marking the turning of the Wheel of the Year (solstices, equinoxes, and cross quarter days), we’re in the moment of Lughnasadh or Lammas. It’s a first harvest celebration, marking the beginning of the harvest of grains and berries and connected in the Celtic lands with the God and mythic...
5 months ago • 7 min read
Hello, dear ones - I write to you from a garden in Aberdeenshire in the NE of Scotland. It’s been about 10 months since I left the US for this most recent time of reflection, pilgrimage, exploration, and living here in these northern islands. A new record for me in terms of time on the road, outside of my country of birth. I recently met up with a friend in Edinburgh for a walk and sweet treat and she said something along the lines of: “you must feel so expanded after all this! do you?” I...
5 months ago • 4 min read