Music, Liminality, and Hope

Music, Liminality, and Hope On Saturday, December 5, 2015, the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco will hold an event in Berkeley, Inscape and Landscape: From the Canyons to the Stars, to celebrate the upcoming January performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux Etoiles, Cal Performances, Zellerbach Auditorium.    I will be speaking about the Alchemy of Catastrophe: Climate Change, Spirit,… Read more »

Messiaen’s Music, the Psyche, and Climate Change

Messiaen’s Music, the Psyche, and Climate Change Inscape and Landscape: From the Canyons to the Stars: In Celebration: A Day Long Event at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, CA. 9 am to 5 pm. What do an esoteric symphonic piece composed by French composer Olivier Messiaen and the gathering this week in Paris of our earth’s… Read more »

The First Step to Mitigate Climate Change

The First Step to Mitigate Climate Change “Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose.” This quote from C. G. Jung’s Alchemical Studies (❡229) is engraved on the wall of a subway station at 42nd street and Avenue of the Americas in New York City, an installation termed “Under Bryant Park”. The quote is… Read more »

When People and Land Lose Each Other

When People and Land Lose Each Other These days we in the Napa Valley are spending a great deal of time on the politics of land use. I am running some previous blogs on the relationship of people and land and what happens when they are separated. Migration has torn our relationship to land, leaving deep wounds in the… Read more »

Forest Buddha

The Forest Buddha sits just outside the gate on the western most reach of the vineyard and lavender field (Lot Sophia). Each day I walk the goats, we pass the Buddha. He amplifies a quiet place in my soul, reminding me of why I am on earth. The goats remind me, too, in their much more… Read more »

Liminality… and Hope

Liminality is a word that people ask me to repeat twice when I say it, as if they didn’t hear it quite right the first time. As a Jungian analyst, I recognize the liminal state as that of many entering treatment. The old way no longer works, but the new hasn’t materialized. Our Western-European culture… Read more »

Climate Change and Protecting Valley Oaks

Climate Change and Protecting Valley Oaks We mark the seasonal data in a small notebook that I keep on an altar table in our home: first milkmaid of the year, first Valley oak leaves, the day the upper pond fills, first shooting star wildflower, first blue-eyed grass—and so on. First milkmaid: January 5, 2005; January… Read more »

Mary Pipher’s Answer to “Willful Ignorance”

Mary Pipher, author, psychotherapist, and activist, spoke at the recent Future First Conference in Minneapolis, addressing the most dangerous defense the human race could adopt at this point, that of “willful ignorance”. According to Mary, willful ignorance occurs when we are caught between facing something too dreadful to acknowledge yet too dreadful to ignore. “Yet… Read more »

Supporting Pollinators and Future First!

Supporting Pollinators and Future First! I wish that you could be here with me at this Future First! Women’s Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The conference began with a panel of women experts in bee populations, birds, butterflies–particularly Monarchs– and on our food sources. We are being given an honest appraisal, and the news is not… Read more »

The Drought: Interview with Michael Presley

https://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/comp/nhem/rb.jp             Some years ago I met Michael Presley at a native plant conference held at the Summerfield Waldorf School in Santa Rosa, CA. Michael presented on how to use native medicinals in landscaping, but the talk was ever so much more. It quickly became apparent that this was a… Read more »