The theme in my classes this year, inspired by my students, is Deepen Your Art Through Daily Practice. I am developing short exercises for lettering, painting and writing that are both active and contemplative. These classes are for anyone who has an interest in making and contemplation– allowing being to inform your doing. What is important is that it is not only your doing (what you make) that changes, but also what you bring to your doing. The awareness that you carry into to your work is an invisible, unmeasurable, dimensional shift. This is what is required for your work to become your own.

For these classes I have also developed a "Greek inspired alphabet" that can be easily taught to beginners or advanced students.

There is space left in the March 4-6 class in St Louis, as well as my classes this summer and fall in Germany (August) with Sabine Danielzig http://www.briefundsiegel.net/, Italy (September) and Ghost Ranch (October) with Barbara Griek http://www.lauriedoctor.com/new-events/ . 

In 2018 I will teach again in St Louis, St Meinrad, Taos, Sitka and Basalt, as well as Naropa University in Boulder, CO.

Please come if you can! I'd love to hear from you.

The tasks that are entrusted to us are often difficult. Almost everything that matters is difficult, and everything matters. – Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke

I think one of the most difficult tasks is to talk open heartedly to each other– by that I mean not just across race, gender and age, but to each other: Trump supporters, Hillary supporters, Bernie supporters. All these allegiances have their reasons.

I don't write about politics. You have all heard about the march, or perhaps you were in DC (or another city!) this weekend– where more than four million people across the globe, of all ages, races and religions gathered. We had no security checks, no violence and no fear.  It was an extraordinary experience of being in the midst of what is most admirable in human beings. 

We marched in harmony, good humor and kindness, all the way to the Washington Monument. The only policeman we saw along the way was when my friend and I climbed onto the roof behind the Smithsonian in order to see Gloria Steinem. Everyone down from the roof the policeman shouted. Once we were all back on the ground, he ran along the high wall, waving his arms as the crowd clapped and cheered for him.

Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet has advice that is timeless to anyone struggling to find, (and then lose), and find again, his or her voice– or struggling in these troubled times:

...We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This in the end is the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

I didn't know there was a black walnut tree in these woods. I discovered it by stepping on bones and feathers in the mist of leaves and mud below its mantle. Great Horned Owl feathers! Last year at this time– after hearing a pair of these owls bring in the dawn with their mating calls– I found an entire perfect wing. The only predator these owls have are each other. One pair has a mile of territory. If this was a dream, surely it would be about loss and fragility, the season of winter– but also the sense of magic and mystery in the natural world. If I were in a story (which of course I am) I would know that things happen in threes, and this is the third remains of Great Horned Owl I have found.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. 

–Richard Rohr

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

–On Angels, Czeslaw Milosz

The title of the painting above– speak to me from everywhere– comes from a Rilke poem. It awakens the part of me, when I listen with my heart, that knows the slender threads. Robert Johnson, (the Jungian writer and storyteller) says the slender threads are always present:

(Slender threads) are the numinous forces that exist outside our conscious control– sometimes called fate, destiny, god, guardian angel, guiding hand or patron saint.

The slender threads are drowned out in the daily doing, but can be felt when we take the time to be with the inner world, the natural world, and stillness. He pointed out long ago (he's about 95!)– that loneliness is often the result of too much doing. When you feel lonely, it is often a sign to take time out and tend to the inner world of dreams, imagination, and listening to the voice of those slender threads.

This morning before dawn, the owl returned. I wrote this haiku:

Morning draws near–

a barn owl calls from the dark 

to one more sunrise.

How many sunrises have you seen? And how many millions have there been? Or billions? All of our ancestors have seen the same sun. 

When you look back on your life and take the time to see what is important to you, are there images, themes, or ideas that recur?