Two years ago while browsing in a bookstore, a beautiful book caught my eye.
The purposefully faded title in certain places was an invitation to the nuance of loss and change, which I noticed and admired.
I flipped through it, noting the author’s name and appreciating his perspective on bringing ritual back into our lives. Something that’s been absent from our current cultural landscape.
A few weeks later while looking at Esalen workshops to attend that year, my eyes recognized a familiar name. Day Schildkret. I looked his name up, and sure enough, it was the same author of the book I’d seen earlier.
Fast forward one year, he has so generously blurbed my book Food For Thought. And this weekend, I started a 9-month Morning Altars Teaching Training course with him to learn these practices of weaving nature, art/creativity, and ritual together for healing and hope.
I am excited to see what will unfold in the next nine months, and ultimately incorporate these practices into my client work and group retreats. With the epidemic of loneliness and anxiety/depression skyrocketing, now more than ever, we need to reconnect back to nature and to ourselves. People are craving a tangible practice. Using nature allows us to weave together our inner and outer landscapes through wondering, wandering, giving, receiving, and most of all, remembering. Remembering who we are and why we are here.
One exercise today was to find an object in our house that we usually overlook. How can you cherish it again? How can you behold the ordinary and make it new again?
Afterwards, I released it and gave it back to nature.
What is for us will always find us. Stay open to miracles and magic. I would have never guessed that feeling a connection to a certain book in a bookstore would invite me into a journey of discovery and a deeper connection to nature and art that waters the seeds of my life purpose and path.