New Year Planning

I love planning. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Which is why I spend the whole month of January figuring out my goals for the new year. This year I’ll be doing it along with the students in my online class called New Year Dreams. I’ve been seeing an upswelling of posts on the Internet with great ideas for New Year planning and thought I’d point out a few of them. There’s the one word approach. Christine Kane is known for this method and proposes a list of good words at her site. (My word isn’t on it though) My friend Christine Valters Paintner has a lovely blog about this one word concept too. My word for 2010 (which I got from... (more...)

Holidays

Happy Chinese New Year

I love all the opportunities the year offers for a new year, and here is one of the first: Chinese New Year! The observation of this lunar festival (which occurs on the second new moon following the winter solstice) begins two weeks ahead of time (during the waning moon) as people pay debts, clean homes, return borrowed items, and make offerings to the household gods. Children are given little red envelopes containing money. Tangerines are also gifts of good luck. Firecrackers and lion dances scare off evil spirits. People give each other special... [Read more]

Nature in Place

Sweet Woodruff

There are many plants and flowers associated with May Day: lilies of the valley (especially in France), hawthorn (especially in England), lilacs (especially in Ireland). All three bloom on or shortly after May Day but my favorite is another plant that flowers just in time for May Day: sweet woodruff. Sweet woodruff (galium odoratum) is a low-lying ground cover with narrow dark-green leaves that grow in whorls around a central stem. It blooms around... [Read more]

Seasons

A Seasonal Pilgrimage

This idea for attuning with a season comes from William Whittmann, a Seattle therapist, who sponsored pilgrimages on the equinoxes and solstices to sacred sites in the city. He chose to align himself with the solar markers of the seasons, those days when the season shifts (or reaches its peak): the equinoxes and the solstices. During the six weeks before the pilgrimage date, he meditated on the season and its metaphors (such as the element (earth... [Read more]

CRAFTS

The Year End Book

My collage for 2009 One of my favorite rituals of the year is my ritual of review. I reserve the time between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve as a time of reflection on the year past. (I share this ritual through my 12 Days of Christmas class and also a book I’ve put together that contains the ideas below and much more.) I go over my records of the past year (my journals, my planners, the photos I’ve taken, my financial records) to get a sense of the year. My journals contain dreams, writing logs, kvetches, reviews of books read, and new... [Read more]