Blog

As I’m learning to address plants, animals and nature spirits directly—speaking, as David Abram (in Becoming Animal) advocates, “not about but to the natural world” and calling myself “into the vital presence of that world,” I often come rather quickly to a point of awkwardness. I acknowledge my progress in remembering to greet the nature spirits and trees each morning, to express my admiration and gratitude, but then what?  The following transcript from one of Barbara’s sessions with the Council of Gnomes gives a good sense of how…

“With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”   –William Wordsworth I recently began reading Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram. In his opening paragraph he talks about “blending our skin with the rain-rippled surface of rivers, mingling our ears with the thunder and the thrumming of frogs, and our eyes with the molten sky. Feeling the polyrhythmic pulse of this place.”  He also says, “the power of language remains, first and…

After reading a few blog entries, one of my brothers (not the scientist) asked, “What is a gnome anyway?”  This struck me as a fine question, and one that gets us closer to the heart of the matter. Mano, Barbara’s gnome mentor, makes clear that the nature beings are of the Earth and are willing to appear in whatever way we need them to in order to make contact. This gives a lot of leeway, though many of us, nonetheless, picture bearded little fellows with red pointed hats…

I wrote the first version of the blog that follows and then sent it to Barbara for feedback. She responded that it didn’t feel quite the same as the others and added this story:  “There was a time Jim was president of CFOI and had many difficult letters to write. When he asked me to read these letters I frequently felt like something intangible was missing. I would ask him, ‘Did you write this from your heart?’ He often went back to the desk and rewrote the letter,…

I have skipped a few weeks of blog entries (our intent is to send one out each Monday) because I’ve been immersed in a moving moving process, slowly and lovingly ending my nearly 7 years in a “hobbit house” apartment in Saratoga. I have lived amid three generations of a wonderful, inspired family that has for years nurtured a magical property. The human relationships and activities (such as Thursday lunch salon and impromptu Sunday afternoon musical soirees in the “great hall”) and the natural ones anchored by giant…

Sometimes, looking back after years, I am startled to see a map that leads to an outcome I would never have dreamed. The route is never the super highway one but is oddly disjointed, with little mapping points popping up here and there and long lapses when the road might seem lost. Perhaps I stopped at an all-consuming job or dallied with divorce, or mixed in a major life map like raising a child. But then I can see how a theme picks its way through the landscape,…

How does one become “The Woman on the Mountain”? I think the important thing to know is that it is a “becoming”—a learning and growing that has brought Barbara over her 85 years to this clear and culminating time in her life. A couple of years ago she broke her leg, and last year she had three operations and pneumonia. These apparent misfortunes had a result that turned out to be beneficial: they kept her tied more closely to home as she recuperated. The other day she was…