Global circumstances being what they are today have many of us pondering our life choices and decisions. I remember many years ago standing in the kitchen of my former partner, wondering how my life would roll out once I made my decision to leave. My thought at the time was that I had such a rich psychic life, with untapped skills and capacities for an art practice as well as serving others (being a good neighbour, assisting animals and the elderly, facilitating others’ wellness learning curves, etc). My abilities just weren’t being actualized no matter how hard I tried. As I wasn’t able to share any of those aspirations with my partner (we were on completely different trajectories and never the twain would our goal setting attempts meet), we parted ways.
They say when you meet your teacher your life speeds up. It’s true. Just prior to moving, I met both my primary Yoga teacher, Brenda and my life partner, Joseph. Things were finally ticking along in my life when all of a sudden, things weren’t. I experienced a severe smoke fire in the house (which serendipitously occurred while I was delivering homemade soup and receiving an impromptu pipe teaching from a knowledge keeper relation!) This situation necessitated my move to a hotel for three months while my three cats lived in the garage. I was working full time so juggling everything including the house renovation and a distance relationship was definitely challenging. I also went through four laptops in a year and a half due to a varied circumstances, experienced theft, and was undergoing immense work related stress due to insufficient resources. To top it off I broke an ankle. By then, the eczema condition I’d developed had escalated to crisis proportions. Why share all this detail? To many of us the world today seems like a vortex of increasing velocity. We are made of energy and so is everything around us.This reality requires our respect and skillful means. Our numinous life force provides us with signposts and we must pay attention, see reality clearly and act in timely fashion with discernment or life will happen anyway and sometimes in not so pleasant ways.
Around this time my partner and I took a drive to hike in the hills. Just as I’d decided to end this distance relationship my foot dropped into a badger hole. I heard a perfect corkscrew fracture of my fibula. Needless to say we discontinued the walk and concentrated on getting me to the hospital for x-rays. Discussion of a relationship break was never revisited by either of us! This incident motivated me to look at myself in the mirror and determine that I might actually die if I didn’t act in accordance with what I’d been putting into the universe for some time. I consequently put the house on the market and, as it sold within 11 days, I knew I was on the right track.When I initially walked into the house I presently live in I recognized it from a dream I’d had a year and a half prior though I hadn’t even been thinking of living in Val Marie. The rounded archways, burgundy tile and those sunshine yellow walls…it was all there.
Fast forward again to early August 2024. Joseph and I hosted a rare and beautiful Walk in Grasslands for a small group of individuals who, like me, are moved deeply by the land, water and its sacred sentience. We’d offered such Walks in the past but not for awhile and never with a creative interpretive component. Though each Walk is special and unique, a colleague had offered to film this one as part of his Back Roads series. It will be viewable this autumn on SaskTel Max and will live on his website: Overtime Communications.
The land is what sustains us. All of us.
I’m an artist who attends to the spiritual and practical aspects of energy; the misuse of which causes horrendous devastation for sentients and their home, mother earth. As part of my creative and meditative practices I examine the interdependencies and astonishing disconnect between nature and our human mindset (specifically, colonial worldview). Our health is interlinked with the planet’s health. We know that our decisions about the land directly impact our own survival.
Why do we compartmentalize when, where, and how we include Nature in our lives? We only seem to want certain forms of Nature, at certain times and with the capacity to turn it off if it doesn’t suit our lifestyle.
What can our fears and aversions teach us? How can we exercise compassion, and discernment without sinking more deeply into grief? In some ways we are all afraid of this darkness. The Cactus & Lotus Wellness Retreat sheds a light so we might look at our fears, develop a witness lens and hone our compassionate action capacities.
What is possible when we view the land as a relation? As a mother? Can we live in a way that allows us and the Earth to thrive? What kinds of connections and changes do we need to make?
The darkness, both, physically and metaphorically, can inspire and provide profound teaching moments. Grasslands, with its darkest Dark Sky Preserve in Canada is the perfect place to develop our ‘night vision’! If you’re feeling the pull to explore your own relationship with the land and/or need some joy and deep, creative inspiration please consider registering for Cactus & Lotus 2024! It’s a small group of like-minded people who support each other on their weekend journey of discoveries.We’ll enjoy delicious food, laugh, cry, ponder, acquire personal insights for home practices, explore earth friendly actions and creatively nurture our inner landscapes. Visit skystory.ca/events for more information. Early bird rate ends August 23rd!
Leesa Streifler is one of my favourite painters, (very intuitive), and a former professor of mine. Her work is currently showing at the Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina Public Library).
Listen to her artist talk here: https://www.reginalibrary.ca/attend/programs/10397554
If you’ve never tried intuitive painting, here is an example of an unfinished painting going through the intuitive process… four different stages with more transformation to come! We use humble materials of paper and high grade tempera paint. No experience necessary. Must be over 18 years of age. All genders welcome!
Additional participant painting examples shared with permission…
Cactus & Lotus Wellness Retreat
Do you feel controlled by life’s uncontrollable? Habitually ignore those mental and physical nudges to express your creative side? Long to decode those messages that surface in your dreams? Slow down, dive deeply and tune inward for a profoundly transformational weekend of land, self and compassionate wisdom. Organic, nutritious meals, like-minded seekers, unique cultural worldview explorations. Rediscover your natural relationship with land and all beings; discover what wellness means to you. All materials supplied. No art or meditation experience required.
Visit skystory.ca/events/ for more details.
Take Rest – astisini