The holiday season is beginning and for most of us this time of year invites the opportunity to add festive touches and decorations to the nooks and crannies around the house.  This holiday season is different for me.  I’m in the process of sorting, sifting, and packing for a move in February, from our current home in California to a new home in Texas.

Anyone who has recently transported all their earthly belongings from place to place no doubt appreciates the upheaval that moving a household entails.  The process of touching every item with discernment…. Does it go with me? Is it meant to be passed along to someone else? or Is it time for this thing to go to the trash bin?

While I’ve been carefully sorting and packing I’ve thinking a lot about the meaning of the words, hearth and home.  The word Hearth holds Heart.  The hearth of my home (beyond the little hearth by the fire) is the kitchen.  This is where everyone gathers, where we come to create nourishment, bake and break bread, and share nature’s bounty with our stories of the day.  The kitchen is the heart of our home where the pulse of life is palpable. Home is the sheltering container for the hearth and for the spaces that provide comfort, safety, and rest.

As I prepare to move I’m dismantling the sacred spaces of our home which will soon once again become a house until the new owners arrive to fill it with their spirits, stories, and daily living to make it their home.  Houses need people to nourish the soul of the home into being.

The heartbeat of these stucco walls is syncopated with the rhythm of our days and nights.  Our California home has been a canvas of colors and character unique to this little abode with it’s 30 year old bougainvilla that blooms every June, the hairline cracks in many of the tiles on the floor… caused by the earth tremors we have experienced through the 15 years we’ve lived here, the big black gas stove that warms the kitchen, and the tree out front that I swear has a face. Most of all it’s full of the love that has come through the door in all manner of friend, beloved, and the stranger… the angels that blessed us all.

I will miss this place.  I’m beginning to think in terms of “lasts.”  This will be the last Thanksgiving here, the last Christmas, etc. Thankfully, I love the new house in Texas.  Over time it will find it’s own heart beat and there we’ll discover a new hearth and home.  There are firsts to look forward to….. the first meal around the table, the first family celebration, the first Thanksgiving….

Ahhhh. Thanksgiving.  As I give thanks this holiday I thank God for the luxury of having a home, a roof above our heads, a warm bed and full belly.  I give thanks and pray for all those without… what I so often take for granted….. hearth and home.

Autumn invites me to slow down.  The daylight is waning and evenings are stretching to become a time to journal, sketch, weave, and knit.  The crafts of autumn and winter are welcomed and they inspire me to explore my inner world in the way the summer months inspires outer journeys.

The word “Craft” is a potent word… potent… full of potential.  Creativity expressed through the handcrafts that women have expressed since ancient times informs my personal imagination these days.

Top of mind here’s a list of favorite crafts… each one is unique and contains a world of inspiration for the hands, eye, and spirit:

• Weaving
• Knitting
• Embroidery
• Crochet
• Quilting
• Needlepoint
• Cross-stitch
• Quilling
• Decoupage
• Collage
• Papier Mache
• Basket Weaving

Autumn days like today, when the fog rolls through the woods wrapping around branch and vine like an apparition in a dream, invite me to pick up my pen and open my journal.  It’s time to sketch and doodle and wander the page to see what’s waiting to be discovered. Sometimes a poem appears or a haiku.  My journal is really a portal to the unexpected.  I never know what I might find when my pen touches down and begins its dance into unknown places.

Autumn also calls me to the market for a visual feast of favorite fall foods and offerings:

• Pumpkins… especially the fat terra cotta colored fairy tale variety
• Mission figs
• Pomegranates
• Persimmons
• Honey Crisp Apples
• Sheaves of wheat
• Twisted branches with golden and russet colored leaves
• Cinnamon sticks and jugs of apple cider

Dear God… may this autumn pass slowly.  Help me to keep my eyes and heart open to the wonder of Your hand at work in this blessed season of changing colors as the earth prepares for rest and renewal.  It seems the arrival of autumn is especially poignant this year. Change is palpable, visceral, profound. I pray for the grace to embrace the change that is coming.  Amen.

The portal to autumn is growing closer on the seasonal horizon.  Autumn feels like a time of new beginnings.  This autumn I look forward to making a serious reconnection with one of my passions…. cooking.

I’m writing this while on vacation in Colorado visiting family.  Two weeks ago I was deep in the beautiful woods of Michigan at my sister’s magical cottage at edge of the Great Lake for a family reunion.  During this time, my sister-in-law from Boston who works for Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen introduced me to a new world of culinary wonder through Canal House Cooking. Additionally, the reconnection with a dear friend and her wonderful website, Bearcuisine, has added the extra influence and encouragement I’ve needed to “get cookin” again.

Years ago, cooking and entertaining were my personal form of self-expression. Somehow the winding road of my life’s journey led me to other priorities and my interest for the culinary arts was put on the back burner, so to speak.

The wonderful cookbooks of Canal House Cooking and my sister-in-law’s inspiration stirred my sleeping longing to reconnect with all things pertaining to the sacred art and craft of cooking.

When I return home from vacation I’ll create a new altar in my kitchen, reorganize my cookbooks and cooking utensils, and stock the pantry and spice drawer in preparation for fall.  I’ll revisit my little wooden recipe box that is chock full of family favorites and perhaps I’ll even invent a recipe or two of my own.

The sacred art of cuisine includes; the collection and archiving of recipes and cookbooks, and the process of menu planning, food shopping, organizing the pantry and gathering the necessary tools and accoutrements,  preparing and cooking the food, plating the food, and presenting/serving a meal.  This ancient sacred art can produce an elaborate feast for a large group, or a simple nourishing nibble for a few or even for oneself.  The possibilities are endless.

As autumn approaches, contemplate the sacred art of cuisine.  What kind of nourishment is your body craving at the moment?  Are there favorite family recipes tucked away in a box or drawer waiting to offer nostalgic sustenance for your family?  How might you rearrange your kitchen (your studio for the sacred art of cuisine) to make it more accessible and functional?  Contemplate creating an altar in your kitchen, what touchstones might you include?

As autumn prepares to entice us with the blessing of a bountiful harvest, imagine planning and creating a simple nourishing meal for a circle of family or friends gathered at your table.  Add prayers as you chop the carrots and stir the mushroom soup.  Light the candles on your altar, listen to Madame Butterfly or Miles Davis, place a bouquet of sunflowers on the table, and be sure to add cupfuls of love and gratitude to all you prepare.  Bon Appetit!

Blessing for a Meal

Creator of all, You sustain us… We gather at this table in gratitude for the blessings of life that come from You.  We give thanks for this meal, for those who cultivated and grew the crops, for Your rain and sun, the honeybee, and the hummingbird.  Tonight we pray someone… somewhere on the earth who is without food, whose belly is empty, will feel nourished through Your grace as we share all you have provided.  In gratitude we say Amen.

“Everything is Grace…”

This is a quote by St. Therese of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun who died in 1897 at the age of 24.  St. Therese is a spiritual source of inspiration to me.  Her quote goes on every e-mail I send because I want very much to believe, as she did, that everything that happens to us in life holds the potential to become grace-filled.

Practicing this concept is a spiritual practice.  It’s challenging to imagine how everything in life can be a conduit for grace.  Broken relationships, illness, the loss of a loved one, the loss of home and work…. how can one possibly believe these experiences are imbued with grace.

The only way I can accept the concept that “Everything is grace…” is to take a step back from my life and envision the total landscape of the large and small moments I’ve experienced.  If I focus on any particular moment or event of my life’s journey (especially the most difficult times) I cannot honestly say that I feel those instances were  graced.  However, when I look at the total all encompassing picture of my life like a quilt made of various patches of experience, I see clearly that the thread weaving it all together is Grace.

It is certainly grace that sustains us when we endure suffering or how else would we survive the devastations that life can hurl at us.  Grace is also what fuels our encounters with joy and love, and grace abounds when we find meaningful work and we align with the passions of our hearts.  Surely it is grace, God’s Love for us, that saves us from certain death…. be it physical, spiritual, or emotional.

Some would say “Everything is grace…” is a saccharine and simply flippant statement.   But I’m grateful to the young nun, St.Therese, who also said, “I will spend my heaven doing good on earth…” and proceeded to die an early death at 24 and become a saint.  I’m grateful to her because her long ago statement reminds me to be grateful.  To be grateful for not only the moments of joy and ease but (and this is no easy task) also the moments of challenge and despair.  For in each and every moment of life grace is there weaving each breath to the next and the next.  Grace and gratitude…. a spiritual practice…. the work of the soul.

Last Sunday was the Feast of Pentecost, the Christian festival celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus at the time of his ascension.  I was privileged to be part of a circle of co-creators who over several months planned an evening candlelit experiential worship service at the Community Church of the Monterey Peninsula.

The service was originally inspired by the work of Kate Eaton and Mishkhah.  Kate will soon be interviewed for Sacred Life-Arts and her interview will be posted on the Sanctuary page in July.

The thoughtful placement and creation of various prayer stations are central to the Mishkhah philosophy. Extreme beauty is created using imagery, icons, and inspiration for the senses in combination with the offering of symbols and tactile elements of nature.

These sacred components are prayerfully and carefully arranged to create visual prayer tableaus to invite the seeker and pilgrim, access to a personal portal to the Divine.  Music, and the integration of bells, and wind chimes deepen the experience.

Our co-created service included prayer, readings from Scripture and Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century mystic.  The community was invited to make a pilgrimage in silence throughout the sanctuary to experience the unique invitation of each prayer station.  The focus for this particular service was Creation.  The prayer stations represented earth, air, fire, water, and the Spirit.  

One by one, in silence the people reverently approached each prayer station… to light candles for special intentions, to receive Communion, to choose a stone from a basket, or dip their hands into a bowl of water then retrieve a sprig of fresh rosemary and inhale the fragrance.

Mystery was present in the evening’s celebration.  The service was permeated with the ineffable sacred Presence.

There was also wonderment in the way the service came together throughout the planning… effortlessly, as it were.  Each person contributing to the whole, but without regimented adherence to a fixed design other than the intended focus on Creation.  The co-creative process, the melding of everyone’s individual contributions, the sensitivity to the choice of music…. all the various strands came together into one exquisite Spirit-guided sacred tapestry of worship.

This is what is possible when worship is led by the Spirit rather than strictly formed from construct of rote rules and prescriptions. What we experienced in community last Sunday evening felt like a little taste of the first century church…. the pre-church, when people came together to experience the Way, the Mystery, the Presence.

Worship is in need of a Renaissance… a return and rebirth of the ancient spiritual practices that engaged the senses and evoked personal spiritual response in the midst of community.  It is time for a Renaissance of the Spirit where we become pilgrims again… in search of wonder and awe and open to amazement.

Perhaps we are being called to revisit the past to inform the present.  Worship is inviting us to use our sacred imaginations to reawaken our senses and our spirits.  Consider the endless possibilities for community prayer, celebration, and reflection…. for authentic Holy Communion with one another as we seek the Divine within ourselves and one another.  Amen.

Today, as I wrote the date on a letter to a friend I realized that June is just around the corner.  In several days the year will be half over.  This realization causes me to feel disoriented.  Spring will soon become summer and once summer is here, no doubts pumpkins will quickly appear at the market to herald autumn’s arrival.

Time.  As a child, time seemed to stand still.  A year seemed to stretch on forever.  I couldn’t wait to be 10 then 12 then 16 and of course once my teens arrived I wanted to be 21. Twenty-one is a long way from from where I am now.  At the age of sixty-three days pass by in a blink and the turning of the earth is nearly palpable. Everything seems transient, disposable, and to be moving at jet speed.  Immediacy and speed seem to be a priority for mainstream culture.

All this causes me to STOP and reflect on how time is evaporating even as I write this…. or is it? When I STOP and reflect… when I get still and move out of my “thinking mind” to shift to the part of me that  witnesses my endless thoughts I discover there is all the the time I need and then some.  The witness part of me… my spirit… my soul… has no sense of time.  Time, it’s been said, is eternal.  Didn’t someone important tell us that?

So here are a few questions I want to explore in my journal today.  Maybe you’ll want to play with these questions too.  If so, share your responses in the comments section here at the bottom of this page.  Today I’m asking myself…

What are some ways I can savor time each day?

How do the seasons remind me of the preciousness of every day, week, month?

How do I perceive I am  ”wasting” time and is this a misconception?  Is it truly possible to “waste” time?

How do I experience Kairos time…. the kind of time when I’m connected to my spirit and immersed in what I’m doing that I don’t experience the passage of time?  What would it take to live in that state perpetually?

So these are my thoughts as I ponder the concept of time… of course as I’m experiencing the swift passage of time I’m aging.  But that’s a topic for another day.  Maybe I’ll write about that when I’m 80…. which at the rate things are going will be sooner than I can imagine.

“You see when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.”  …. Martha Graham

Don’t you love synchronicity?  A few months ago a dear friend shared with me she had been studying a spiritual form of weaving. Weaving has been on my list of crafts to explore for a very long time and when I heard about Susan Barrett Merrill’s amazing work, Weaving a Life, I recognized the call.  Of course, the thought crossed my mind….. How will I create time to learn something new right now?

Fortunately, I listened to my heart rather than my mind and I registered for Susan’s training to become a Circle Facilitator for Weaving a Life Circles. Susan offers guidance and instruction as I’m learning each week by phone. She lives on the opposite edge of the continent in Maine.  Her gentle facilitation is both informative and a blessing.

Weaving has become a spiritual practice for me. Somehow the time to “weave” it into my day has emerged, usually in the evening after my work is done.  My first project was an amulet shown here with it’s little cloth prayer bundle that is now tucked inside.

The second project was a bowl.  Yes, it’s possible to weave a bowl.  When I removed the warps from the loom after the flat woven pattern for the bowl was complete, it took form with a few pulls of the warp threads.  It was as if the bowl came alive in my hands.  After it was shaped I went outside and cut a small ivy vine and sewed it around the rim of the bowl.  It’s my receiving bowl and it’s full to the brim with gratitude for the gifts of craft and the wonderful community that is forming through Sacred Life-Arts.

Currently, I’m weaving a doll.  She’s also coming to life and she has a great deal to teach me about my future self.  As I mentioned, this form of weaving is profound as a spiritual and intentional practice.  When I discovered that Susan teaches 7 Keyforms to “represent seven stages of development of awareness of our inner landscape…” I was struck by the synchronicity with the 7 Facets of Illumination, the practices of Sacred Life-Arts.

Over the summer I’ll be weaving how to teach the 7 Keyforms of Weaving a Life as a tapestry blended with the 7 Facets of Illumination.  Meanwhile, my shuttle goes back and forth over the threads reminding me of how one day binds to the next to create a lifetime… a miracle to infinitely ponder.

“We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.”       —Harriet Beecher Stowe

Last week I spent a wonderful afternoon facilitating a spiritual journal writing group at my church.  As I was leaving, I drove through the parking lot where I approached our chapel, a small round building with thick bushes at the front.  The chapel is a very sacred place where we have a Communion service every Wednesday at noon.  It’s one of my favorite places on the church campus.

I was driving slowly on an ordinary afternoon.  When I made the turn in front of the chapel to continue on towards the main road, something caught my eye.  An enormous bird stepped out of the bushes.  She appeared to be nearly five feet tall.  Her long graceful legs carried her swiftly along towards the lawn adjacent to the chapel.  Her feathers were gray blue in color and her presence was holy.

I was awestruck.  I stopped the car and rolled down the window, not taking my eyes from the bird I fumbled in my purse, on the seat beside me, for my camera.  She stopped and cocked her head in my direction.  For an instant our eyes made contact and then she spread her wings wide and soared low near the ground to the lawn some distance away.  She made her elegant landing at a place where she felt safe.

My camera received two images that afternoon, but my heart and spirit received so much more.  I had never been in the presence of a Great Blue Heron.  For a moment when I first saw her, my mind scrambled to name her.  Crane… Stork… Heron…. Blue Heron!!

Looking into her large steely eye was like beholding the Eye of God… of Creation.  Every fiber of my being was momentarily caught in the web of the Great Mystery.  I so easily could have missed the entire encounter if I had glanced in another direction for just a moment.

Life is like that.  Things are Divinely timed. The world of Spirit is always in our midst but sometimes it “shows up” in a way that startles us with Wonder and Amazement.  The heron inspired and reinvigorated my sense of awe with her brief and mysterious visitation.  We shared a momentary encounter. For an instant we were united in a state of mutual reverence and sacred mystery.  We were two of God’s creatures, linked momentarily in time and space, breathing the same air, each of us curious about the other.  I pray my heart will stay open and undistracted to fully witness the Sacred Mystery of Life the next time God reveals the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary.  I pray to stay awake!

What is a Sacred Life-Artisan?  Who is a Sacred Life-Artisan?

She is a woman, like you or me, who is active in the world and contemplative in spirit.  She seeks the sacred in the present moment and prayer is central to her way of being.  Cultivating beauty and sharing her creative and spiritual gifts are important to the Sacred Life-Artisan. Compassionate service pertaining to global and community issues are part of her work.  She is informed, aware, and involved.  Her heart is concerned and often troubled by injustice.  She seeks ways to bring peace, beauty, and hope to balance the darkness.

The Sacred Life-Artisan is connected to her senses as conduits to the Divine, and she is a co-creator with God as she merges her spiritual life with everyday moments.  She recognizes and embraces the extraordinary in the ordinary.  Her dreams inform her day as she makes her earthly pilgrimage.  Her home is her sanctuary and a haven for those who cross the threshold.

Living life as a Sacred Life-Artisan does not require formal art training or artistic abilities in the literal sense.  The Sacred Life-Artisan does not require special skills of any kind.  All that’s required is an open heart and mind, the desire to grow spiritually and creatively and the willingness to share one’s gifts with others.

This new website and blog are born from my passion to inspire women to acknowledge and birth their creative and spiritual gifts.  Through this work I am inviting us to become full co-creators with God to grow a New Creative and Spiritual Renaissance. As Sacred Life-Artisans, our charge is to foster hope, beauty, and inspiration for our weary suffering world.

The invitation of this website and blog is this….  Share!  Share your ideas, prayers, hopes, dreams, and visions for building our online community of Sacred Life-Artisans.  What are you longing for…. creatively and spiritually? Offer your comments here. Visit often. Additional new classes and offerings are in development and coming soon.

Explore the website and begin to contemplate your life as a Sacred Life-Artisan.  Our world needs YOUR special gifts!

I often go to a local favorite restaurant for coffee.  This place is known for it’s artisan breads.  As a Sacred Life-Artisan, I’m naturally captivated by the concept of artisan bread.  Bread making, to my way of thinking, is a sacred art.  Bread…. the most ancient of  foods and a staple of life for most cultures.

Each Wednesday I preside at a mid-week noon Communion service.  A monthly spiritual practice I cherish is bread-making.  Early in the morning I gather the ingredients from the pantry and make  four to six small rounds of bread.  I mix two kinds of flours, honey, water, oil, and salt together then knead it and score it in small pieces and bake it as the sun is coming up.

Early morning is a sacred time, when the veil between the worlds is thin.  A good hour for baking bread and adding prayers to each round as the dough is kneaded and pressed into shape.  Later, after the bread has baked and cooled, each round is wrapped in foil and frozen until needed for Communion.

As I measure the flour and knead the sticky dough I always contemplate the countless monks and nuns throughout history and herstory who baked the bread for their communities.  Bread for the day’s meal… and the bread served for Communion.

Bread, the staple of life.  When we pass the plate of bread around the circle at Communion we offer it to one another with a blessing… Sometimes we say, “Bread for the journey, ” as the plate goes around from one to the next.  Other days we might say, “The Bread of Life” as we share our holy meal.

Blessing the bread we feed to guests on special occasions, or our families on an average evening…. blessing the bread with our prayers is a way to add sacred enrichment to each meal.  Pray over your bread tonight and feed your soul, and the souls of those gathered at your table.  Amen.