Blog Posts

Virtual Chorus post 23

4/30/2020

Celebrating Beltane - A Passionate Burning

Dear Earth-Loving Friends,

I hope that you are all healthy and able to get outside to enjoy this most delicious spring.

May 1st is May Day and Beltane. Since we are unable to meet in person to celebrate, I thought you might like to see some colorful photos and read a compilation of past Beltane Celebrations. It's a sort of "Best of Beltane" with Pilgrimage to the Sacred Spring, Maypole Dance, Fire Ceremony, and lots of exuberant creativity. It's to lift our spirits a bit and remind us of the pleasure of dancing, singing and creating ceremony together with nature and spirit, in community, which we will do together again at some point!

Above all it's about holding hope and igniting the passion of our heart's desire for loving communion and creative solutions to the challenges that face us, so that we people, animals, trees and all of the natural world can thrive, woven together in one circle of being.

Celebrating Beltane: A Passionate Burning is here: https://earthsanctuaries.net/the-beltane-celebration-a-passionate-burning/

Warm virtual hugs,
Betty Lou

Virtual Chorus post 22

4/30/2020

I was so sad not to visit my great niece and nephew
in San Francisco that I started writing for them.
It all just fell out, whole cloth!
I was inspired by a book about adults improvising and
story telling to kids including events from their own lives.
So these are stories from these children's lives!
I hope to tell them many more! Meggan

In the Western Woodlands
For Fairies Everywhere
1
Once upon a time in the heart of the Western Woodlands on the side of Wise Mountain two fairy infants fell newborn from their very own green leaf. They arrived a touch soon and a bit early.

2
Mama and Papa picked them up and cleaned them off and wrapped them in fairy dust and placed them tenderly upon the healing dirt in the Fairy Forest.

They covered them with branches and plants and moss and the scent of wild blossoming flowers.

3
Mama and Papa kept them hidden there from fairy friends and fairy foes until they were fully formed.

One fine day the two crawled out together laughing and shrieking! They came home to the Fairy Tree House in the Welcoming Tree where there were rainbows and stars and sunshine and clouds and rain, just enough to make everything twinkle!

4
The children tumbled and flew with their lightning-colored wings. They hugged as they fairy sparkled. And they practiced their blessings and the old fairy ways and they kept growing stronger and stronger.

                                  *********************

5
One sad day Momma Fairy got sick. Poppa Fairy scooped her up in his arms and placed her oh so tenderly down onto the healing dirt right there in the Western Woodlands.

The elder fairies brought green plant potions and secret healing poisons to help her get better and better.

6
While Mama was healing Grandma and Granddad, Oma and Opa and pretty Auntie and gentle brother all played with their wands and read fairy books and practiced flying with the fairy children.

7
Slowly, Mama Fairy got brighter and brighter and gradually all bright again! She fluttered gracefully from the fairy mound and came back to the Fairy Tree House in the Welcoming Tree where there were rainbows and stars and sunshine and clouds and rain, just enough to make everything twinkle!

Here she held her fairy babies to her heart and cried with golden fairy tears of joy and wonder!
                               *************************
8
After some time, and time is very different in the Woodlands, there came the strange word that at the edge of the Fairy Forest a new kind of bug had appeared.

This bug was slippery silver. It was not green like the bugs they knew and understood.

9
But Mama Fairy and Papa Fairy knew exactly what to do! They gathered the children and lay down on the healing dirt. And, they covered themselves over with branches and plants and moss and the scent of wild blossoming flowers.

10
The fairy elders decreed that all fairies stay quietly in their places so that the slippery silver bug could not get to them. The elders searched for the spells and blessings to turn the bugs green like the other bugs they knew and could handle.

11
One day the elders learned to use soap and taught all the fairies to use soap so the slippery silver bug would dissolve and not hurt them. They warded off the silver and turned the bugs green so they could not bother the fairies ever again.

12
And Mama and Papa and the little fairy children, Granddad and Grandma, Oma and Opa, and pretty Auntie and gentle brother gathered in the Western Woodlands with their fairy friends. They danced and ate fairy cakes and began to think of new fairy mischief!
The children cuddled and read and they hugged and they sang as they flew and they fairy sparkled. And they practiced their blessings and the old fairy ways and they kept growing stronger and stronger.

P.S. Meggan's friend Joy Brown, sculptor and illustrator,
is working on pictures for this story!

Virtual Chorus post 21

4/30/2020

STAYING POWER: Practice gratitude, the full-body kind. Find beauty. Settle into the self-love you have within you, and then enjoy being there, moment to moment. Complete your work and offer what you can, but never leave yourself out of the gift. Honor the cycle of slowing and retreating, one of nature's prime wisdoms for a balanced life. Relearn the meaning of home. Let something be born in the interim, that place where creativity takes root. Staying can be an opportunity for whatever might have been missing in the day to day. I am lighting a candle for all of us and sending a prayer for peace, health and Love. Diantha

Virtual Chorus post 20

4/27/2020

I love this time of year so very very much, as I bet you do too.
I am mesmerized by the beauty of the many different grasses that are flowering now, including this purple one. (My camera does not do justice to the gorgeous heather color.)

What I wanted to show you though, is that when I took this picture of the grass and the beautiful cow vetch flower, I did not notice the ladybug. I discovered it later, when I put the photo on my computer.
I love when that happens! Happy Spring Dear Choristas!
Love, Kathleen

Virtual Chorus post 19

4/27/2020

Gayle wrote this for her newsletter and I asked her if she'd share it here. She said yes! KH

"There are more positive things and true miracles going on
than you are told by the news.
Beautiful babies are being born.
Families, children, parents, grandparents, pets,
and neighbors are uniting and supporting one another.
Mother Nature is rebuilding and blossoming.

Things will not get 'back to normal' because Life is about
learning, growth, change, and moving forward.
Acccept what is.
Allow yourself to be guided by Spirit in each moment.
We will miss some things from theold and yet wonderful,
beautiful new expriences and opportunities await us!
Stay hopeful, empowered, rested, balanced and positive!

As a Soul, prior to birth, you choose to come here at this special time to help make the world a better place for all and to personally grow and heal by deepening your connection with Spirit.
Your Soul needs you to rise up to the challenge and to grow into a new way of creating and a higher way of living.
The World needs you to live, move and be in a highter state of consciousness to cocreate a world of love, peace, unity, equality, respect, beauty, interdependence, and harmony for ourselves, each other, our companions in the Universe, and God/Source.

We are being loved, guided and supported always!
Allow the feeling of peace and love to fill you and carry you
by being still and quiet througout the day.
Use this time to reconnect with the Spirit within you.
Be patient, quiet, still, and feel the love, peace, balance,
and power within you.
Discover your priorities, gifts, talents and desires
for yourself and the world.

Have gratitude for the good in your life.
As you focus on acceptance of what is and seeing the positive,
you allow more good to come.
Stay connected to your Soul and guided by Spirit.
Be in this world, but not of it.
Develop compassion for those in need.
Help others when and however you can.

Use this time wisely.
Choose what you focus on.
You can move through this with Grace."

© 2020 Gayle Kirk
Please share.
Spirit and I would be happy to help you.
Psychic guidance
Healing
Channeled Wisdom from Spirit
Connections with Loved Ones & Pets in Heaven
www.GayleKirk.com

Virtual Chorus post 18

4/16/2020

As part of a month long practice of singing to trees, I sent an email to choristas and asked them to send a photo of their favorite tree. Libby responded with humor and passion, beautifully expressing a love for trees and all our relations that so many of us share.
Thank you Libby!

A favorite tree?

Completely impossible! Like picking a favorite child.

So many beloved ones - whole species and individual trees themselves, full of memories and spanning long relationships.

The photo I sent you is the mulberry at our farm. Its form is so beautiful and it’s a focal point right now since its shade is making a wonderful shady space for eating during the pandemic. It is covered in thousands of small, green fruits that will begin ripening in a few weeks. The lower branches will entertain and feed us as we stand under it chatting, picking and snacking. The upper reaches we don't even bother to climb or pick since they feed a dozen different species of birds we get to share with and watch. So, a current favorite for sure.

But the apples were blooming last week - subtly fragrant and blush pink. The huge poplars in our creekbed make me feel very young and ephemeral. There's a split sweet gum in the woods behind our house that has a tongue of wood that has healed since it originally split. I have discovered that you can pound on this wooden drumhead and make a wonderful resonant multi-toned drumming sound, though it’s hard on the hands. Then there's the persimmon tree that is the largest 'buck rub' I have ever seen. Bucks use their antlers to scrape the bark off trees marking their territories. The size of the tree corresponds to the size of the buck, and this tree is unusually large - maybe 5 inches in diameter, which means the buck is huge. It is stripped bare for more than a foot - a lasting testimony to the buck we never see. The persimmon's inner bark is brilliant orange, so this winter when we found it, the tree almost glowed with its inner secrets laid bare, a bright spot in the winter woods. There are the tiny dogwoods I have been transplanting to the edges of our woods to make a lacy collar around our clearing. The bunnies have been nibbling, so I've had to build little cages to give them a chance and they are rewarding me with little green sprouts this spring. Serviceberries, blooming before any green appears in the woods, their white blossoms floating deep in the forest, glowing in late winter, an early sign to remind us that winter will break and spring will come. A little later there are sassafras flowers - greenish yellow and unremarkable unless you know that they mean spring has settled in. And there’s the magnificent, now-huge sweetgum behind my parents house, perhaps the most enduring and constant arboreal presence in my life. The knothole that is placed perfectly for viewing from the living room window has been home to beehives and squirrels and woodpeckers over the 50 years I have been watching it.

And that's just off the top of my head! Favorite? How?
Love,
Libby

Virtual Chorus post 17

4/16/2020

This beautiful photo is from Debbie. The hawk feather is from one of two hawk families in the trees near her house. The blue vase was made by Debbie's husband Bruce. And the parrot flower is from their garden. I like the shadow behind the tulip flower; it looks kind of like a heart to me.

And below is another view from Debbie's house. Plants growing, the hawk feather, and a package that Debbie wrapped two years ago for her husband Bruce's valentine's gift. She told him at that time that the wrapping she'd done on the package was actually more beautiful than the gift, so Bruce has never opened the package! There is a hawk on that package, and now there is a hawk feather nearby!

Virtual Chorus post 16

4/16/2020

Theresa told us that she lived in California for many years and then moved to Ohio for many years. When she would travel back to California to visit, she would be singing this song to the Redwoods all the way out there. And when she got to the woods she heard the Redwood trees singing the second verse to her. The third and fourth verse alternate...human and ancient trees so glad to be together again. And now Theresa and her partner Jon have moved back to California and are living in Eureka with redwoods growing right next to their home! This beautiful song takes a very direct route to our hearts. Thanks so much Theresa, for sharing it with us!

I'm Coming Home
© Theresa Sapunar

I'm coming home, I'm coming home
I'm coming home, where I belong

Come on home, come on home
Come on home, where you belong

I am home, I am home
I am home, where I belong

Welcome home, welcome home
Welcome home, where you belong

Virtual Chorus post 15

4/15/2020

Meet Bunny BunBun, delivering Easter love and gratitude.
Happy Easter from Koren!

Virtual Chorus post 14

4/10/2020

Jude's been working on a mask.