sacred pause

Womanrunes Immersion eCourse

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Molly

cropwomanruneslogo

I’m excited to take my work into some new areas over the summer. We’ve launched a new branch for our offerings: the Creative Ceremony Academy. A Womanrunes Immersion is the first e-course!

Womanrunes Immersion 41 Day e-Course Experience

Begins June 21, 2015*

Do you want to create a sacred “time out” in your day to listen to yourself and to explore a deeper relationship with the messages of the world around you? Are you looking for a means of experiencing your inner wisdom as well as accessing the flow of womanspirit truths around you? Do you want to tap into Goddess guidance and Earth-based wisdom? Are you hungering for a pathway to your own “truth-sense”? This immersive experience is designed for you! This 41 day e-course will take you on a deep personal journey, uncovering your inner wisdom and deep guidance using Womanrunes, a powerful system of divination and intuitive guidance for personal growth. Used as a dynamic, hands-on, participatory system, Womanrunes become part of your own language of the Divine, the Goddess, your inner wisdom, and womanspirit truths.

Womanrunes are a unique and powerful divination system that use simple, woman-identified symbols to connect deeply with your own inner wisdom as well as the flow of womanspirit knowledge that surrounds you. Used as a personal oracle, they offer spiritual insight, understanding, and guidance as well as calls to action and discovery. Women who use them are amazed to discover how the symbols and interpretations reach out with exactly what you need in that moment. Women’s experiences with Womanrunes are powerful, magical, inspirational, potent, and mystical. The wisdom within them can be drawn upon again and again, often uncovering new information, understanding, and truth with each reading.

Many women are amazed by how these symbols speak to something deep within them. You may have the experience of feeling heard and answered when you choose a card and read its interpretation. Womanrunes provide a pathway to your own “truth-sense.” They open you up to your own internal guidance or to messages and inspiration from the Goddess, the Earth, or your spiritual guides.

There are two registration options for this course.

Immersion Experience Option 1, $62

Includes:

Womanrunes book and card set
Bonus tree pendant gift
Digital starter kit with how to create your own runes + printable rune set
Printable journal pages for each rune
41 days of guided rune exploration through art, photo, and journal prompts
Full moon and new moon ritual outlines
Access to a private Facebook group for sisterhood, sharing, guidance, and support
$40 discount on our upcoming Listening to the Deep Self professional divination practicum launching in October.

Immersion Experience Option 2, $40 (includes all digital resources above, no book):

Digital starter kit with how to create your own runes + printable rune set
Printable journal pages for each rune
41 days of guided rune exploration through art, photo, and journal prompts
Full moon and new moon ritual outlines
Access to a private Facebook group for sisterhood, sharing, guidance, and support
$40 discount on our upcoming Listening to the Deep Self professional divination practicum launching in October.

To register, visit the course page here: Womanrunes Immersion – Brigid’s Grove.

(*Why June 21st? Because it was on the Summer Solstice in 1987 that Shekhinah Mountainwater experienced her “goddess-lightning strike” of inspiration and the Womanrunes were born!)

Categories: divination, Goddess, priestess, sacred pause, spirituality, Womanrunes, womanspirit, women, women's circle | 4 Comments

Approaching the beautiful (#30DaysofMay)

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Molly

“When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”

― John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (via 30 Days of Bringing in the May)

I’m in the middle of finals week right now. I know finals week is hard on students, but it is seriously hard on professors too. Teaching fits into my life and is very rewarding. Grading is an enormous energetic expenditure that doesn’t feel like it fits (i.e. it “takes from” other important areas). It takes a while to rebound from being thrown off balance like this. I always feel as if I’m “getting home” from being out of town when I resurface after finals week, and just like getting home from a trip, there is a lot to catch up with and it takes time to recover. I literally feel energetically drained, like something has been taken out of me that I didn’t really have available to give. I also notice a pattern of depressive thoughts at this time: not a good mother, not a good friend, not a good wife, not a good daughter, not enough, not enough, not enough, no one likes me, what is the point of anything, why do I try, who do I think I am, what do I have to offer. (Usually accompanied by a headache.) I’m trying to just observe and notice this as a pattern, rather than getting stuck in the thought-ruts. However, even this noticing usually involves a hearty dose of self-beratement: how come I can’t remember this, how come I can’t be more zen, how come I can’t “unclench” and flow, how dare I claim to be a “spiritual” person when this is how I think and feel, and blah, blah, blah.

Today I went outside after finishing my stack of final exams. We were supposed to get family pictures taken this afternoon and I’d finally come to the conclusion that it didn’t make sense to do pictures today and I should reschedule. Right then, my photographer-friend messaged me to suggest the exact same thing! Sweet relief! It is interesting how a fairly small adjustment to a day can relieve some of the drain and restore some of the energy. Just then my four-year-old brought a clover flower over to me and said, “I picked this for you, Mama, to help you have a happy day!” I smelled it and realized I may never have truly smelled a clover flower before. It was beautiful. I sniffed and sniffed the flower. My husband and daughter picked more flowers and we all inhaled the smell of them deeply. Indescribably lovely. And, then I realized…this is “approaching the beautiful.”

Categories: #30Daysof May, family, nature, sacred pause, self-care, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Experiencing Aphrodite (#30DaysofMay)

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Molly

Love notes from nature.

Kissed by sun

Kissed by rain

Kissed by breeze.

This might be my favorite photo from this month of posts so far.

My baby has a cold and is in a crabby mood. I took him with me to the woods this afternoon for a sacred pause together. He was instantly happier and delighted into standing while holding onto the rocks. On our way back to the house, I stopped to check the raspberries, one of my favorite messengers of summer, and took the picture for today. Then, I turned and saw our first daisies of the season…

Categories: #30Daysof May, nature, sacred pause | Leave a comment

Coming home to beauty (#30DaysofMay)

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Molly

“…In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. We find that we slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us.”

— John O’Donahue

Today I had a thoroughly beauty-full day in its own simple, every-day way–it was my approach and mindset that really made a difference. I spent time today working on my art journal and doing the meditations and projects for my Sacred Year class. I had things spread around my bed while I was nursing my baby to sleep for nap and I felt a moment of distress to be piling books and projects on my bed instead of being in “sacred space.” It wasn’t “perfect” enough or pretty enough or organized enough or altary enough. But, then I realized, very clearly that this cluttered bed IS my sacred space right now. Having books spread out around me that enrich my life, my purple bag of art supplies by me, sharpening colored pencils with one hand, sleeping baby on my arm. This is sacred space.

What peace it was to realize this.

Categories: #30Daysof May, family, parenting, sacred pause | Leave a comment

An offering for the Fae (#30DaysofMay)

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Molly

Something that keeps coming up for me lately is the concept of creating a container for an experience. I feel like this is what I do with my women’s circle and Red Tents and also what I do with my students. And, this is what taking the 30 Days and my Sacred Year class does for me. Today, it was taking an “offering for the Fae” down to the woods. This is not something I would have done on my own, but I’ve made a commitment to responding to the prompts, so by golly, I did it! It was a very sweet experience. My little girl and I went out and searched out some tiny flowers and put them in a blue glass bottle. She was so cute talking about the fairies and picking flowers:

We took our little offering down to the woods and placed it on the rock and then said a blessing together.

When I was a little girl myself, I remember often feeling like I could see glimpses of or feel the presence of fairies in the woods—like if I could just be still enough and look hard enough, I would be able to interact with them. It was fun to bring a little bit of that magic back into our lives together today.

Categories: #30Daysof May, family, nature, parenting, sacred pause | Tags: #30DaysofMay | Leave a comment

Waning Dogwood (#30DaysofMay)

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Molly

Each day
offers new gifts
new mysteries
new discoveries
new promises
kissed with rain
and garnished
with dogwood blossoms…

via Woodspriestess: Real Magic

I happily anticipate the dogwoods each year. Today, the 30 Days* photo prompt was to photograph a blooming tree. The dogwoods are already waning, the edges of the flowers browning a little, spots on the petals, the centers yellow instead of green. Looking back at previous years’ posts shows me that this happened earlier this year than the two prior years, with early May sometimes holding the full splendor of the dogwoods. We’ve had a warm spring so far and that must be why.

I spent today at an all-day spring retreat with my women’s circle. It was just what I needed. While I was feeling rushed packing everything up to bring and lamenting about my to-do list and upcoming busy week, I really enjoyed myself and felt like it ended up being really important to have given ourselves this time together.

Art journal project from today.

New mini prayer flags.

Teeny, tiny wish bottle necklace.

“The tools are unimportant; we have all we need to make magic: our bodies, our breath, our voices, each other.”

—Starhawk

“Individually, and in like-spirited groups, we and our culture can be healed; we can come fully alive, and recognize ourselves and others as deeply holy.”

–Seena B. Frost, SoulCollage

(*In case anyone is wondering, the Thirty Days of May class is about ushering in the May, which is why it began prior to May 1st!)

Categories: #30Daysof May, friends, nature, sacred pause, seasons, self-care, spirituality, women's circle | Tags: #30DaysofMay | Leave a comment

Misty Morning

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Molly

This is your wildness
don’t sell it.
Raindrop on plum branch
Leaning oak
Mist rising through branches
Birdsong
Squirrel conversation
Forest song.
Life’s pulse
Weaving you into the world
Patient
Watchful
Wise.

Since welcoming a new baby into my life as well as continuing to develop several other projects (hello, dissertation!!!), I’ve found the hours in the day increasingly short and tight. This morning, I looked out the window of our workroom into the woods and saw the foggy woods and the sun shining through the misty air and I knew I had to drop everything and get to the woods. It was beautiful and even though it “slows me down” to head out there when I was so many other things I want to do and a limited time frame in which to do them (nap times are precious!), it is actually exactly what I need.

When we cut trees in the woods several months ago, one of my favorite rocks on the path disappeared. I knew where it was supposed to be, but surmised someone either kicked it aside or it had gotten pushed underground (or even broken) when some of the wood was dragged out. (This tree cutting, while necessary, still hurts my heart to see the destruction in my sacred little grove.) Today, after watching the fog lift, I stopped on the path and “felt” for the stone that I liked. I brushed some fallen leaves away and there she was!

I am so enjoying the signs of spring and the warming temperatures. I registered for a neat sounding Spring Equinox online free event. I’m also looking forward to hosting a small drum circle at our house this weekend. And, don’t forget to check out all the lovely offerings in the upcoming Red Tent fundraiser auction to be held on the Spring Equinox as well: Auction Special…..see what’s on offer! – Moon Times Moon Blog.

Categories: nature, poems, sacred pause, seasons, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess | Tags: gaian, nature, sacred pause, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Shining Year Meditation & International Women’s Day

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Molly

Our collaborative business planning and progress is so intimately tied to our work with Leonie Dawson’s annual workbooks, that when I saw the theme of this year’s workbook—Create Your Shining Year—the wheels starting turning about how to communicate that in a pendant format. A friend then made the suggesting of making a Shining Year pendant with a sun at her center, so I found a sun stamp and set out to create some Shining Year goddesses. I also wanted to make a connection to the sun symbols used in Womanrunes, which are about laughter, healing, and letting go—all messages I need to receive into my own life this year!

Shining Year Goddess meditation

Take a minute to put down anything else you are carrying, doing, or thinking about. Let your shoulders relax and release. Let the breath move easy down into your belly. Then smile. Smile from your roots up through your branches. Feel joy suffuse you, filling you, bathing you, and laugh. Laugh from your belly. Laugh from your heart. Laugh with the wild abandon of freedom and release.

Let go. Feel the release and freedom that comes with unclenching your life. Remember to trust yourself and what makes you smile. Are you afraid to laugh? Are you scared to let go? Do you fear the loss of control that comes with hilarity? It is time to shake that off. Don’t be afraid. Laugh, sister, laugh. It is time to have some fun!

Know that you are as free as you allow yourself to be.

Why the twisty legs?

Recently, the same friend who suggested the sun image asked me why some of my pendant sculpts have twisty legs and I realized that sometimes the why I’m trying to communicate through my work isn’t always immediately interpretable! To me, the spiral leg form represents the energy of rising. I think of these goddesses as joyfully dancing, twirling, expressing themselves actively and energetically in the world. Indeed, the sensation of moving energy is so palpable through this design, that as a high-energy person, I have to be careful how and where I wear them, because the sense of being activated is so strong with them, that it can be too much for me! However, if you feel in need of activation and mobilization, however, then these dancing, moving, energetic goddess pendants are the designs for you! Any of my pendants with dancing legs represent Shakti rising in an energetic dance of creativity, freedom, and personal power. She is unapologetically fully inhabiting her own personal power and her being is enlivened by an exuberant flow of passionate, inspired energy.

Other new designs

As you may glimpse in the opening image, we’ve also created two new miscarriage mama goddess pendants, a new dancing moon goddess, and a mastectomy goddess pendant.

We’re excited to have donated several pieces of our work to a Red Tent fundraiser project in the UK. Please check out all the details about the Community Red Tent and join supporters from around the world for the online auction taking place via Facebook on the spring equinox: Community Red Tent Auction & Raffle

In honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, we’re also offering a 10% discount code on any of the items in our shop through March! Use SMALLBIZSATURDAY.

Categories: art, meditations, sacred pause, sculpture, womanspirit | Leave a comment

Day 31: Reflections on 30 Days of Brigid

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Molly

Today, the snow has finally been melting. I walked out at sunset and took a quick picture thinking about how I will miss taking and sharing a daily picture now that 30 Days of Brigid is over. The most powerful part of this experience was the practice. It felt like showing up for myself. It became a discipline. There was no requirement to write a blog post every day, but I made a commitment to doing so and I did it. 30 posts in 30 days! None of my posts were particularly stunning, though I liked my Hands post a lot and fell in love with the snowflakes from “lovely desire,” but it was powerful to commit to doing something and then doing it! I wanted to work through the course with my husband, but while I read a lot of the daily prompts out loud to him, we didn’t sync up and take the daily “sacred pause” together that I had envisioned. It became kind of my thing, rather than a shared experience. I read the daily emails first thing each morning and often reflected on the content for the remainder of the day.

Anyway, my closing thoughts on the ecourse in general are these…

30 Days of Brigid absolutely delivered on the promise of a sacred pause for each day with art, readings, blessings, meditations and inspiring prompts. The course was well-organized and thematically consistent as well as beautifully gentle in tone and thought-provoking in question. I got out of it what I was willing to put in and it was an investment in myself and my spirituality. It created a container for me that was very valuable, both for personal reflection, spiritual development, and for a daily writing practice. I loved challenging myself to really respond to the message of each day and enjoyed how I spent the day looking for the right moment to capture the spirit of that day’s theme. Great fun, great practice, great connection! Also, the personal interaction with Joanna Colbert via Instagram and Facebook was fun. I love her Gaian Tarot so much and I love how the Internet “smallens” the world and allows direct interactions with artists and authors I admire. At the beginning of the year when I did my annual oracle using the Gaian Tarot I had no idea the gifted woman behind it would be commenting on pictures of my cute baby on Instagram just a few weeks later. 🙂

If I was doing it again, I’d stretch myself to dig even deeper and to do art journaling for each prompt as well as move it up in my daily priority list so I could share it with my husband the way I originally planned.

If you missed 30 Days of Brigid (or even if you didn’t!) you can move into 30 Days of Welcoming Spring and working with Persephone with Joanna’s next ecourse offering:

It’s for those who want to align themselves with the rhythms of nature as we leap into the time of greening and blossoming, and dance with the Maidens of Spring. By the end of the 30 days, you’ll be reconnected to your own creative core, with a daily practice in place for taking in beauty and responding to it in your journal or with your camera or paintbrush. Best of all, you will have taken a divine pause each day to mindfully experience the shift in the seasons as Persephone emerges from the Underworld, and Winter gives way to Spring.

via 30 Days of Welcoming Spring ~ A Daily Sacred Pause of Creative Inspiration.

Categories: #30daysofBrigid, Goddess, sacred pause, spirituality, woodspriestess, writing | 2 Comments

Day 30: Spring (#30DaysofBrigid)

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Molly

Brigid, I accept your flame.
Flame of creativity, poetry, hope, and healing.
Flame of understanding.

I accept your gifts
committing to their expression.
aligning with the workings of word, art, and deed.
Open to that which comes
responsive to that which surrounds me.
Enlivened by the dancing flame
of passionate creation.

Open hands, heart, and mind.
To give and to receive.
To express, to feel, to wonder, to know.
To discover
to uncover
to embrace
to fulfill
to unleash.

Categories: #30daysofBrigid, poems, sacred pause, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Day 28: Threshold (#30DaysofBrigid)

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Molly

“Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in the small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and simple; to feel in the rush of passing the stillness of the eternal.”

–Abraham Joshua Heschel

Today’s lesson was about thresholds. Whether literal and metaphorical, these are the magical, liminal spaces between worlds. Today we had a (mostly) screen-off day and focused our energy on cleaning up some clutter hot-spots and miscellaneous “to do” areas around the house (like pictures waiting to be framed and hung up). It felt really cleansing and the house feels brightened up with prayer flags hanging, rather than lying bundled in a pile! Then, this evening we stood in our front doorway and read the blessing that was included in today’s meditation. We noticed that not only were we standing in the actual doorway–the threshold between the inside and the outside, but we were also “between” both light and dark, warm and cold.

While going through piles of papers today, I found the quote above and the quote below (another “threshold!”) saved in my notes. Both felt appropriate for today, especially the one below, where it served as the inspiration for my picture.

My hand is on our front door.

I have arrived.
I am home.
In the here.
In the now.
I am solid.
I am free.
In the ultimate
I dwell.

–Thich Nhat Hanh

Categories: #30daysofBrigid, blessings, family, quotes, sacred pause | 1 Comment

Day 26: Shield (#30DaysofBrigid)

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Molly

What does a sleeping nursling have to do with a shield? Well, I’m his. When I read the prompt for today, I was thinking literally, like a sword and shield. However, when I sat down to nurse my baby for his nap, I looked down at his face and realized that I am his shield. Not only is my milk his shield against infection, and so forth, but my actual self is his shield—the lens and medium through which his world is interpreted, felt, and experienced. One of my favorite things about having a baby is how they look right into my eyes to assess a situation. Let’s say a loud noise happens: The baby’s eyes come to mine to see how to gauge, interpret, and react to the situation. If I am happy and calm and smile reassuringly, the baby is no longer alarmed by the noise and resumes kicking and looking around. If I was to express horror and shock at the noise, the baby would cry and be distressed. Not only do I hold him and feed him and get him when he needs me, I show him with my eyes and face what the world is like—safe or scary, comforting or isolating. While he will go on to forget what this intense mother-baby symbiosis feels like, it will still be there at some level, forming his basis for understanding the world around him. And, I will never forget what it is was like to have his eyes meet mine in this way. His shield.

The journal prompt was about experiencing the protection and companionship of Brigid. While I do not usually encounter Brigid in a literal way, one day last year when I was in the woods, I did a recording that felt too personal to share here. In it, I noted that Brigid is not a goddess that you meet while meditating in the forest, she is in the sweat on your face and the heat of metal. She is the goddess who says, roll up your sleeves and get to work.

This morning though, I awoke from a dream about Brigid in which she said, “don’t worry about me, nurse the baby.” I’m not sure what that means exactly, but reading the lesson for today, I thought of a past dream I’d blogged about:

Categories: #30daysofBrigid, Goddess, parenting, sacred pause, thealogy | 1 Comment

Day 25: Sanctuary (#30DaysofBrigid)

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Molly

May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world
to gather you, mind you, and embrace you in
belonging.

— John O’Donohue

(via 30 Days of Brigid ~ A Daily Sacred Pause of Creative Inspiration.)

My first thought when I think of sanctuary is sitting on the rocks in the woods. However, given the current snow and extreme cold temperatures, I’ve missed my woods visit for two days in a row. I feel the gap, like a longing almost, but as the cold day went on today, I kept feeling like I should be heading out there and yet delaying. Finally, I gave myself permission to not brave the cold in search of a sanctuary photo and as I looked outside at the icicles hanging from the porch roof I realized I had my sanctuary photo after all, because today sanctuary is indoors, not out!

Today’s reading and thinking about the woods also led me to think of one of my own past experiences with the wild beauty of the (nearly) invisible world:

…Like flower growing from rock
the world is full of tiny, perfect mysteries.
Secrets of heart and soul and landscape
guarded tenderly
taking root in hard crevices
stretching forth
in impossible silence.
via Woodspriestess: Stoneflower

Categories: #30daysofBrigid, nature, sacred pause, seasons | Leave a comment

Day 22: Lovely Desire (#30DaysofBrigid)

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Molly

“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”

-Jack Kornfield via Sunday Sabbath: Tiny Desert Flowers

This morning as I stepped outside to gather newly fallen snow to make snow ice cream for my children, the Kornfield quote above kept repeating through my mind. I’ve lived in the woods for almost my entire life. I have seen snow plenty of times, but I cannot ever recall having seen snowflakes like this. In fact, I confess that until a few hours ago I assumed that the only way to take a picture of a real snowflake-shaped-snowflake was with an extreme close up (not an iphone). I’m used to a fine powder snow that is too fine of grain to distinguish separate flakes or a clumpy, wet snow in which no individual flakes are distinguishable either. I am so unfamiliar with the flakes I witnessed today, that when I first saw their starry patterns on my little girl’s hair, I thought, “look, the little grains of snow are clumping together and almost looking like real snowflakes.” When I saw that they were, themselves, real snowflakes, I was exhilarated. I was so excited it was like a genuine miracle to have seen them. Since, I already had my snowboots on, I went down to the woods with my drum and delighted in the snow like I’ve never seen it before. And, in I way, I never have. This is a beauty of taking a sacred pause. We see things that cause our whole lives to change.

Categories: #30daysofBrigid, nature, sacred pause, seasons, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

Day 21: Lighting someone else’s spark (#30DaysofBrigid)

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Molly

Your fire is that which rests within. It is hot, it is holy, and it feeds you.

via Womanrunes: The Flame | WoodsPriestess.

One of the things that is fulfilling about creating art is how to speaks to others. I was brought to tears last week by reading a customer’s review of her cesarean birth goddess pendant and how her husband will be wearing the pendant for her while they welcome their second baby into the world. I am honored to be a small piece of her path and to touch the lives of other families with our work. Today my husband and I had a really great conversation about our business and its direction for the year. We want to create that which is in us to create and to share it with others. That’s the core. We have to move a little slow this year because we’re on baby-time now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to take one step at a time and to continue to build our momentum, to change and grow and dream big.