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I took a seat at my Soul's Council Active Prayer #6 I took a seat at my soul's council last night… at the thin hours of 3am… when the veils lift to reveal... The council gathered, listened and spoke: "You are the only life you can birth here on earth The only life you can en-soil en-lighten and compost Know the spiralling of life and death Of Death birthing Life of Life becoming Death Stay with the seasons Stay….and make beauty... Stay Be-come a GiveAway…" I am in good company! Photo of River Dart and Words - Azul-Valerie Thome  GRIEF COMPOSTING CIRCLES They are supportive space for Women and Men who experience grief. Grief can be experienced as anger, fear, sadness or numbness for what/who we love and have lost, for what we long for but never had, for our World’s catastrophic suffering and for what we have inherited from past generations. Grief can be shared like it has been done for 1000s of years for the mending, the health and well being of our communities. " Grief is not a feeling, but a skill and the twin to grief in life, is our ability to praise life". Stephen Jenkinson “Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves. Through validation, acknowledgement and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing.” Sobonfu “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Rilke ‘Wherever there is Love there is Grief’ All held in gratitude for the preciousness of Life Thank you to our teachers: Seasons, Joanna Macy, Stephen Jenkinson, Sobonfu, Francis Weller, Mary Oliver, scribes, poets, artists, Gaia, Mother Earth, Pachamama… What I would like to add is that the vision for these circles is to become an ongoing deepening and transformative circle happening on a monthly basis. It is not a one off workshop…it is an active prayer for participating in the mending of our communities AND our first Circle on 29th Dec will have 2 parts: 1- dressing The LISTENING TENT, alter, Intro and sharing circles will end at 9pm . 2- After 9pm the people who would like to take a role, responsibility and be of service to these circles will gather and explore what is needed to create a strong and sacred container. We will start exploring what and who are the Core Circle dreaming, planning, making and protecting an ongoing offering to our community. If you do not want to be part of this you will be invited to leave at 9pm with our blessing! in Beauty. Azul and Freddy  My Ceremony with Winter Solstice! 3:30am I wake up naturally on 22nd Dec 2015 few hours before dawn. I had work to do before our sun's return. Time to make my offerings for the emerging ceremony of such an important event: The sun...Our Sun is returning after 6 months of descent! Delicious pancakes were wished and cooked for the beings of Fire, of Earth, of Water and of Air, as offerings. 7 pancakes ready at 4:30am. Time to gather all need for ceremony, leave the house and meet the river Dart. She is one of my greatest love, a friend, a guide, a teacher…since 2000….when I had a magical gallery in Dartmouth called river d'ART (an other story for an other time) and then in 2002 when we initiated a community project called River d"ART Project when we planted 1000 oak trees by Blackness Point near the water of the river - to creatively respond to the deforestation, the runoff from farms waste and the impact on the beings living in the water. Anyhow let's come back to the Winter Solstice that started by the same beautiful river Dart (where oaks grow!).  alter making to welcome Solstice dawn... As I made the pancakes I wrote down all beliefs, fears, illusions that did not serve my becoming a GiveAway, a disciple…of service to Life and all Beings on Earth. I kept writing….fears…lots of fears appeared on the paper. A sense of lightness entered me as I transferred the inner invisible world to one of lines... making sense. The sheet would be burnt before the sun appeared. I drove to the river at 5:30am, walked in the deep darkness…widening my capacity to feel the land, touch the trees, slowed down my foot steps…becoming the forest so not to be catapulted…such a sensual and almost erotic experience :-) As I reached the water, I asked permission to touch her, to wash my face in her... to be her. I fed, praised and called my ancestors. I prayed for them to show up, to be by my side…'there is work to do' I said. Time to show up! I keep feeding you on my alter so you stop eating me. I call you to life, we need you!! I tried to burn all that I wanted to let go off but rain was so strong, fire could not come. I shredded the paper in 1000 stars that landed on the flowing water on her way to the sea, transforming all that was not serving life into fertiliser. Light was slowly arriving I had to arrive to the closest sea shore going East: Paignton! I parked by the Harbour
East I am coming to greet you! I was energised by being part of an event happening all over the UK and one we have creatively participated in for 1000's of years as human nation: to reflect, to burn what is of no use for the well being of Life and to greet the sun's return on Winter Solstice. It was a strong ceremony…part of my daily Active Prayers and living Life as a Ceremony. Much love to you all xx Azul  When I hand make for someone, I hold them in my mind and heart when I enter the woods to harvest the raw material. There are many thresholds presenting themselves before I can make anything at all. Many gateways need to open to me before I have permission to create, to enter the wood, cut the piece and finish the piece. North Wood, where I often go to communicate and harvest, holds both the beauty and the wound of our time and our relationship with these plant beings. There aren't many Spindle trees where I live so I hesitated quite a while before taking what felt quite a lot. I asked the tree if I could take a 60cms stick and if she wanted something from me in return. I heard: Talk about me, I am not very present in your human's heart. These sticks now carved and ready will be offered to a very important woman in my life so she can eat in a way that brings balance to her life. The green wood is wet to carve, very smooth and almost slippery to work with. The bark and the wood are of extreme qualities, one being so rough and unruly and the other so very smooth, almost sensual. I have felt alert working with Spindle as she seems to hold both positive and negative…re-spect that tree's power I will remember and honour her beauty More info about Spindle and much more in books and internet: Spindle tree is used for making pipe-stems, and an excellent charcoal is made from the young shoots, which artists approve for its smoothness, and the ease with which it can be erased. It is also employed in the making of gunpowder.So the lesson from studying this plant is: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, or things change from positive to negative, and so on. I think that goes with the description of the plant as having hermaphrodite flowers. Meaning- Finish obligations and tasks or your life cannot move forward. Oir / Spindle - The hard wood of the Spindle was used in the making of pegs, bobbins and spindles. It is a small and delicate tree with smooth grey bark and tiny white flowers. Deeply lobed brought crimson fruits appear in Autumn. Spindle indicates honour of tribe, community and the sweetness and delight of a sudden revelation. • Physical: Fulfil your obligations, not for reward but because you must, honour demands it and the greatest happiness will be yours. • Mental: Sudden realization gives you the right and obligation to question authority. • Spiritual: Develop your consciousness of the right relationship with others in the community and tribe. Great journey and Active Prayer with you Spindle, thank you! Azul    from Grandiosity to Gravity - a Collective Soul Journey There is a movement happening in our world and in many individuals I meet which moves us from superiority and separation to deeply feeling our Love of our Earth as we fall pulled by gravity… to listen and rest for a while. We might not always call it Love but so many of us are feeling more intensely! That being sadness, fear, anger, despair woven with creativity and determination to do what we can do. We dare more often now to feel our love for what sustains our lives, for the beauty and sacredness of it all, for the uncertain planet we are giving to our children and the breaking down of our systems. How often are we willing to lay bear on the soil and on the bones of our ancestors to listen…and to feel... We often need to be tripped over by our Soul, who refuses to let us go any further before we feel our grief and sorrow fully. Have you recently felt your cheek touching the Earth and felt her love pulling you towards her. It is like if she wants to remind us that we can re-member who we are if we can remember who this planet is. When was the last time you cried laying down unable to move stuck by the grief of losing so much, for our ancestral grief or the one that so many of us experience for our Planet. I keep experiencing it almost daily. My nervous system needs to be Earthed to make it through these times. While this is going on a new voice is very gently whispering a new way of being. "Experience gravity as the love that the Earth feels for the very Matter that makes up your body, a love that holds you safe and prevents you from floating off into space". Stephen Harding To fully grieve enables us to fully experience our love and our connection. It soothes the soul and releases a new way of seeing and create a world that has coherence and beauty. Collective grieving is returning to our communities to enable us to love together I think. Grandiosity refers to an unrealistic sense of superiority—a sustained view of oneself as better than others that causes the narcissist to view others with disdain or as inferior, my goodness how relevant this is to our time, to the way we treat all sentient beings, all our relations …crumbling the grandiosity into feeling gravity and find ourselves whispering to our Earth our praises and prayers . In Beauty ! Azul  'Awakening Woman' Acrylic paint on canvas - Azul-Valerie Thome  Active Prayer for today: I soulfully support the vision of a DISRUPTIVE DECADE that breaks the illusion of separation while protecting and standing for what is JUST, BEAUTIFUL and SACRED!
From today I will publish an Active Prayer each day for the next 365days - an Active Vision - a prayer and a Vision with Action.   This is a young oak tree we saved in Schumacher College gardens 3 months ago. I just finished knitting the scarf! So what happened that Autumn morning? A chainsaw shredded the bright morning light with their blades of death. The sound came from the garden of the college... As we passed by towards the community task of the day we mumbled how awful to loose more trees. We were upset but carried on walking, we had work to do after all! My whole body shuddered and stopped, I burst into tears…again! That week was a deep time of grief for our earth so my heart was wide open...I had to meet this feeling nervous knowing I had to rock the boat yet again. One of our relations was going to die. Looking at the situation I could not accept that these trees had men with chainsaws in them. The community had not been consulted. Decisions like this must be part of a shared decision making process that allows all voices to be heard. The men in the trees had been commissioned by the head gardener to clear what was creating shade on the polly tunnel. A microcosm of what is happening in our world was happening right here at Schumacher College: If a sentient being is in the way to our progress, of our task of the day, of our plans we must eliminate it. With an eagle view we could see that the tunnel was in the wrong position which perhaps needed moving. How many trees will we kill to accommodate an experimental decision based on yet again a human centered world? After back and forth conversation between a few gardeners it is agreed that the silver birches would die and that the oak tree would stay alive until further meeting. 48 hours later I received an apology to not have consulted with the community and that the oak tree could actually stay in life because it would not create as much shade as they originally thought! We had a ceremony to greet and thanked the tree for its teaching about community and fierce love. A few limbs had been chopped but the tree was young and strong. This is the first scarf I have ever finished for this beautiful young oak tree. The slices are from a fallen hazel tree in North Wood. Azul Beecause WE all MATTER = MOTHER…TIMBER
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