goldfinch = joy

Today I was scrubbing and refilling the big water troughs in the paddocks and field. I was intent on scrubbing for awhile and then completely attuned to rinsing the tub in the dirt paddock when I felt something looking at me.

It was a goldfinch, sitting on the fence post about five feet away. He looked at me and waited, then hopped down to a lower piece of the fence, still waiting, obviously trying to tell me something. I was charmed. (it's easy to see why a group of goldfinches is called a charm of goldfinches!)

He went to the top of the H dressage marker and suddenly I realized what he wanted. A pool! 

I found a spot where the ground dipped and made him a nice puddle and he flew to it immediately and began dipping his beak in and out. 

I love goldfinches and haven't seen many this summer, so today's visit and conversation was pure joy. 

end of an era and renewal of another one - sandplay!

With my daughter's graduation from high school, this fall marks the end of our homeschooling journey. Both my children (now 18 and 20) homeschooled from the time they were old enough to engage with the world around them until graduation.

My son is a rising junior in college this year, pursuing a double major in physics and pure mathematics. My daughter will begin in the spring semester studying computer science and physics. They are amazing young people, both smart, both independent learners, both creative and interesting to talk to. I couldn't be more proud of them!

In anticipation of having more time this fall and onward, I rented additional office space so I could move my sandplay studio into town. It's a fabulous space and good work is already being done there. I'm excited about rebuilding my practice and have been adding new miniatures to my collection. Most recently: a narwhal and an armadillo. 

Local folks - feel free to spread the word. If anyone is interested, I can share more information about Jungian-based sandplay. It's an amazing therapy modality.

may a pleasure of pixies come our way

Gosh,  I love this so much.

I've never seen the collective nouns for all these creatures. Also love the malevolence of trolls. 

Fun for a very hot day.

on Cecil The Lion and activism

This week on social media (Facebook and Twitter) the story of the dentist from Minnesota baiting and killing Cecil, a beloved and protected lion in Zimbabwe, went viral. As people all over the world expressed outrage at the questionably legal "hunt" I noticed another trend.

As the furor over Cecil's death increased, posts and comments began to pop up about other causes that "should be" more important than the death of a lion. Why didn't the story of Sandra Bland go viral? Why were starving children in Africa not getting the same attention as a wild animal? This quickly escalated to posts and comments seeking to shame people for being outraged at Cecil and not at other, more important, issues.

As people linked to more and more petitions seeking to insure justice for Cecil the lion, people naysayed the effectiveness of the outcry, quoting research that indicates that when people click and sign petitions on the internet, no real change happens.

I have a few things to say to all of this.

First, a big bow to each and every person outraged by what was done to Cecil. Killing a cow, dragging its freshly-dead body behind a jeep to lure a protected lion outside his sanctuary so that a dentist from Minnesota can shoot him with a bow and arrow? And then trail the injured lion for 40 hours to behead and skin him, leaving his collar (clear evidence that he was protected) and butchered body to rot? That is not hunting. There is no skill involved in that except happening to have the $50-some thousand dollars to pay for the butchering.

To anyone outraged by that, I say thank you.

Second, caring about Cecil the lion does not preclude caring about Sandra Bland and every other person victimized by police officers. It does not mean we don't care about children who need food. 

What it does mean is that something in Cecil's death struck a nerve and people responded. It's a GOOD thing. Awakening the empathy and outrage against injustice won't stop with caring about Cecil. I bellieve it will expand and have rippling effects that no researcher of the phenomenon of "going viral" can measure or analyze.

And to anyone judging what other humans respond to, what moves them to action, I say go look in the mirror and do some soul-searching about your own self.

We are all unique, the result of our own experiences and personalities and genetics and upbringing. That something strikes me as important enough to participate in a call to action is what makes me who I am. Thankfully we all have our special causes, the ones that move us to action, that get us to stop what we're doing in our lives to speak out, sign a petition, write a letter, vote.

And yes, sometimes social media swarms to create a wave of support. Instead of judging it, ranking the issues as if there is only so much empathy to be had, I believe we should celebrate the undefined thing that pulled so many people into one viral outcry.

That so many people care about Cecil doesn't say they care less about Sandra Bland. It means they still have a heart that can be moved. I believe the ripple effect from that is huge. 

spaces between stars

Sometimes we have to go big in our minds to get a different perspective and to inspire ourselves.

I've been re-reading Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters and he's got me thinking about physics and the universe and, today, Euclidean geometry and how it does not work in a four dimensional world.

There is so much more than we know how to say out loud.

But I think all of us who live with horses and feel the magic that happens when we forget all the dressage instruction, all the talk about aids and correct position and biomechanics, when our bodies relax into the horses' motion and everything is perfect, THAT is the work of riding. And it's impossible, really, to explain how to do it or how it works to anyone else. It involves trust and forgetting and allowing.

Same thing with writing a novel.

Same thing with life stages such as being a mother whose children are growing up, young adults now, and trying to figure out what the new role is.

These are big things to think about. My brain is full. So what better to regain my perspective than to focus on the spaces between stars?

This is what I'm pondering today.