Love, the symbol of the second week in Advent

Love, the second light,
Joins Hope to renew our lives
In great abundance.







the unconditional Love of God







romantic love...















marital love







reciprocal mother and child love







fraternal love







sisterly love







friendship love







love midst the animal species...







Then there is mother earth herself... We love and support her, abd she loves and supports us. Even in winter she is preparing new life to emerge in spring.
"Anticipation fuels overwintering animals to eat, build dens, and hoard. Molting, morphing, camouflage: adaptations for coming change. First snows come to quiet land." ~from the ECOlogical Calendar











Nature takes us to her breast and says, "nothing can dim the light inside of you!"







If you look closely, you can see her face and the ruby formed from the depths of the earth. And therein lies the nature of our spirits.

waiting in hope

Aslan, the strong and noble lion, waits in anticipation at the gate. Inside, he will meet Father Christmas, and together they help the children of Narnia.




...another metaphor for waiting in hope: lighting the candle for the first week of Advent.

the slippery slope

Flying down that slippery slope from Thanksgiving to Christmas! That hectic, harried time of year!


Nature was just showing us the splendor of autumn, and tomorrow begins the first week of Advent. As we light the purple candle, we think of Hope--hope in the sense of expectation, awaiting the arrival of our hearts' Christ, our spiritual selves.


While we are waiting, we can slow down and allow ourselves to live in the present, a Zen moment of mindfulness.

Happy Thanksgiving

What have we learned from the Native Americans? To live in the present, to be grateful, to be eco-friendly.

the Spirit of Native Americans

The Native American genetic code exists today.


The sound of the flute still reminds us of spring, and the spirit of Kokopelli sings to us.


We then saw the summer moon and the image of the proud, powerful Comanche, Quanah Parker. His mother was a European pioneer who lived among the Native Americans and learned their ways.


There is a hotel in northern California called the Gaia. The rooms are placed in a circle--like Gaia, mother earth--and like a Native American village. The center is green, the color of life, and in it is a firepit to release our prayers and show the way. Each room is named after something in nature: a bird, a mountain, running water.


The turning leaves tell us it is autumn. One of the first Native Americans known to the pioneers was Squanto. He had inherent knowledge about feeding himself and his soul. He believed in showing kindness to others, such as the Pilgrims. Thus, it is to Squanto that we express gratitude this Thanksgiving.

margaretPANpipes

a taste of MargaretPANpipes . . .

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

The blizzard of 2010 was like going back in time to the Wisconsin winter of 1907. It snowed for days. We lost power, heat, water, lights. In A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, this was the life they faced in the grim Wisconsin winter of 1907.


Wisconsin, early 1900's



Northeastern United States, 2010

Is the setting of Wisconsin's bitter winter of unrelenting snow meant to represent "quiet desperation" or the white purity of redemption?

The premise is that a stern, well-to-do businessman (after a wild misspent youth, we discover) has advertised for a wife, and she is on her way to meet him.


Typical dress, early 1900's

Catherine isn't what she seems, either. A St. Louis dissipated demi-mondaine steps off the train a demure, disciplined fiancee.



St. Louis vintage mansion

Goolrick sees his characters as psycholoigal studies: distorted by difficult childhoods or having discarded their moral compasses. Jung had a very different idea in that we aren't so much formed by our childhoods as by our universal archetypes (Memories, Dreams, Reflections) and thier dualty in the mirror. Catherine is the prostitute / reliable wife, Ralph the victim / chief, Anthony the child / profligate.

We can add our will by the choices we make. I love how Catherine was able to change herself into someone creative, artistic: she sewed, played the piano, introduced a red singing bird in a cage. The complete transformation from the frozen tundra was the imagining of an Italian "giardino segreto," "a secret garden, the lemon house, fragrant in the evening and in the day a barrage of color and foliage. She read about the hellebores, which burst with blossom through the late winter snows, the foxgloves and delphinium and the old Bourbon roses. She read about heliotrope and amaranthus and lilies. She read about the hostas that thrived in shade, and the Japanese painted fern, its delicate leaves fringed with indigo brush strokes. She said the names over and over, cataloguing them: calendula, coleus, and coreopsis. She was enchanted."

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

The blizzard of 2010 was like going back in time to the Wisconsin winter of 1907. It snowed for days. We lost power, heat, water, lights. In A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, this was the life they faced in the grim Wisconsin winter of 1907.


Wisconsin, early 1900's



Northeastern United States, 2010

Is the setting of Wisconsin's bitter winter of unrelenting snow meant to represent "quiet desperation" or the white purity of redemption?

The premise is that a stern, well-to-do businessman (after a wild misspent youth, we discover) has advertised for a wife, and she is on her way to meet him.


Typical dress, early 1900's

Catherine isn't what she seems, either. A St. Louis dissipated demi-mondaine steps off the train a demure, disciplined fiancee.



St. Louis vintage mansion

Goolrick sees his characters as psycholoigal studies: distorted by difficult childhoods or having discarded their moral compasses. Jung had a very different idea in that we aren't so much formed by our childhoods as by our universal archetypes (Memories, Dreams, Reflections) and thier dualty in the mirror. Catherine is the prostitute / reliable wife, Ralph the victim / chief, Anthony the child / profligate.

We can add our will by the choices we make. I love how Catherine was able to change herself into someone creative, artistic: she sewed, played the piano, introduced a red singing bird in a cage. The complete transformation from the frozen tundra was the imagining of an Italian "giardino segreto," "a secret garden, the lemon house, fragrant in the evening and in the day a barrage of color and foliage. She read about the hellebores, which burst with blossom through the late winter snows, the foxgloves and delphinium and the old Bourbon roses. She read about heliotrope and amaranthus and lilies. She read about the hostas that thrived in shade, and the Japanese painted fern, its delicate leaves fringed with indigo brush strokes. She said the names over and over, cataloguing them: calendula, coleus, and coreopsis. She was enchanted."

Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg

Once again, Elizabeth Berg has created a sensory experience that you immediately want to step into. Her protagonists are women who only develop their sense of self, resilience, and independence when they're forced to. You start to think, "I'm artistic, intuitive, and creative, too." The Year of Pleasures made you think of Anthropologie; Home Safe actually takes you there.



Helen discovers she has a gift for teaching writing. She overcomes mean stabs from the publishing world. She tries to anchor herself to her daughter who in turn feels smothered. She has begun the process of pecking her way out of the egg.





Her husband has left her her dream house in Mill Valley, California! She sees it, but questions where her home is really, in her new autonomous life. It seems the blue jay pecks away without disturbing a pretty strong egg.

Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg

Once again, Elizabeth Berg has created a sensory experience that you immediately want to step into. Her protagonists are women who only develop their sense of self, resilience, and independence when they're forced to. You start to think, "I'm artistic, intuitive, and creative, too." The Year of Pleasures made you think of Anthropologie; Home Safe actually takes you there.



Helen discovers she has a gift for teaching writing. She overcomes mean stabs from the publishing world. She tries to anchor herself to her daughter who in turn feels smothered. She has begun the process of pecking her way out of the egg.





Her husband has left her her dream house in Mill Valley, California! She sees it, but questions where her home is really, in her new autonomous life. It seems the blue jay pecks away without disturbing a pretty strong egg.

Bright Star

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; . . . "

wrote John Keats in "Endymion" at the age of 23. He described both the grandeur of nature and the despondency of gloomy days.



"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Beauty is once again the inspiration for Keats in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" written in 1819.




"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart, . . .
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, . . . "

Keats wrote "Bright Star" for his young love, Fanny Brawne. This is also the name and subject of the movie directed by Jane Campion. Living and loving life while desperately ill and poverty-stricken probably contributed to the depth of his writing and upheavals in his relationship with Fanny.





The movie bravely follows Keats to Italy and his subsequent death of tuberculosis in 1821. Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned while sailing a year later and is buried near Keats. You can still visit the studio of Keats in Rome at the top of the Spanish Steps.