As you may have seen, the cover of the new upcoming book has been posted. The book will go to my fabulous lay-out friend in December. Printing will occur in January and the completed book will arrive back in early February. This is a completion of what I had felt would be a trilogy for children.

It seems each of these books has added a year onto the age of the child who would be its audience, putting this book in the kingdom of ‘Middle Childhood’. This phase of life is delineated in Bill Plotkin’s amazing comprehensive book, Nature and the Human Soul, wherein all stages of life from ‘The Innocent in the Nest’ to ‘The Sage in the Mountain Cave’ are imbued with great guiding insights, tasks and understanding. The stage relevant to Little Star and Eliore, is thumbnailed as ‘The Explorers in the Garden’, with a task of ‘Learning the givens of the world and our place in it (discovering the enchantment of the natural world and learning cultural ways’. This would be quite lovely and easy if the state of the world and the current of mass consciousness and mass media was bent on creating wholesomeness and nourishment for growing children (which would have to include all humanity and the planet!). But this is clearly not the case. The tasks of this stage parallels my own lifelong underwritten goal of returning children to nature (however we can manage to do that) and articulating some of the timeless and eternal collective human values of love, gratitude, mindfulness, and loving connectedness to all life.

Also introduced in Little Star and Eliore is the life-affirming knowledge that there is a plan for each and every life. It is already planted in us, we need only to connect to it and help it unfold. We do not have to invent it.

Some more illustrations will posted in December.

Close your mouth in the presence of trees. Just think. Stand there and think to yourself: “There you are, tree. Growing, developing, enjoying rain and sunshine and soil. I don’t know what your life is like, standing out here all night in the snow, owls scraping your bark; or standing there soaking up tons of sunlight. I don’t even know what it’s like to hope for sunshine or stand helpless with a forest fire blazing your way. I can’t even imagine the joy you might feel when the sun shines and all your vast processes of life churn forward, throwing out tons of water, producing such complex seeds. But whatever destiny you are to live, I want you to go on living it. Whatever relationship you enjoy with the Earth’s vitality, I want you to go on enjoying them. I don’t know what my own destiny is, nor what relationships I will enjoy in the future, but together we make part of this vast mystery of Earth’s life, and that is enough fort now.”

Remember that a tree doesn’t need to be addressed. It is you that needs to address the tree.

                        p. 132 from The Universe is a Green Dragon by Brian Swimme

Such a very large and interesting thought. It enhances and expands our awareness. It augments our own transformative process. It gives a tiny nudge toward the process of remediating the frightening modern urban/industrial/technology obsessed world’s disconnect from the sacredness of the inhabitants of our planet Earth.

Brian Swimme (a mathematical cosmologist) says in The Universe is a Green Dragon, “ We must address the tree, we must address all things, confronting them in the awareness that we are in the presence of numinous mystery.” And then he goes on with this : “…I’m not worried about the tree here. I’m worried about humans. We need to address trees and all things. We are the ones who forget awe, mystery and the astonishment of being. …We have convinced ourselves that [the trees] are just inert stuff, standing there for twenty years until we get around to cutting them down. We’re deluded.”

Some of the views or realizations I wrote about last time, are of humanity’s tremendous separations from nature in modern times. This separation is not only physical, not only that we have become more than 80% urban, but that in our consciousness, in our value system, there is nothing relational about how we live and what we do to the natural world, how we assault and plunder the earth for our own gain – for profit and consumption. In our entire value system and belief system and understanding, WE DO NOT FIT OURSELVES IN as respectful members of the ecosystem. This is some of what is thought about as being BEHIND our climate change crisis.

This relates to my intentions for writing my books. Stories that show children in nature, but also children exploring and enjoying nature, benefitting from nature and giving benefit (reciprocity) to the natural world. Children’s emotional nature’s are entirely open to and yearning for this love and reciprocity. It is not the time in their life to ‘address their heads’ with facts and information, especially the dangers of our crises. It is time to develop love and connection. Head learning will find its right place later.

When we talk to a tree, it is WE who benefit and are changed. We extend our awareness of living things around us, and we become part of the tapestry of livingness.

Something rather stupendous has been happening lately. What is being learned and written about has the possibility to evoke something beautiful to be born from humanity – all of us together!

Science has been operating since the 1600’s totally in a mechanistic void, eschewing anything that has to do with the affective domain. The human domain. which includes the spiritual interests of the world has wanted nothing to do with that. Those two very large entities have been totally at odds with each other for several hundred years now. It seems that science has come to such a refined understanding of how the world works and how it came to be that they – the spiritual and scientific interests – really are only a stone’s throw away from each other, and are, incredibly, sometimes congruent in their understanding and knowledge.

At the same time as this is happening, it seems that everywhere, and in different ways, many people are looking at the disaster of climate change, (and including even the covid pandemic), and saying actually that there is something more BEHIND these overpowering planetary challenges. It is not a matter of us just trying to find solutions within technology and science to fix it so we can get back to our status quo lovely lives! There is a malaise in humanity’s way of living that has caused these unprecedented challenges. Our beliefs, our goals, our values or lack thereof, our drives and actions, make it impossible for us to continue the way we have been. The way we have been going is the very root of the problem. And so, if we look BEHIND the general news, and search behind things, we discover that there is a confluence of new thoughts and perspectives being called forth by the very crisis of the planet.

I will end here for the day. My guidepost is to not write long blogs that no one will read and already it will take more than 3 seconds to read this! More to come on this very subject soon…like what is the outcome?

Or maybe I should say Artistic Property! In the past when I had a book on the go, I posted many illustrations as the book progressed. Although I have a gorgeous book very well on the way, I have avoided posting illustrations because of what the statistics on my website show. The stats show that my site is visited very frequently from a certain country – more visits from this country than all other countries put together! This country does not seem to respect intellectual property, as I have discovered that other artists have had their work stolen and flogged on the net without reference or respect. There’s not much I can do about what is already posted, but at this time I am keeping a lid on more pics. So instead I am resorting to writing about what is behind my impulse to write these books. More soon.

 

I started writing in 2011, and for 9 years I have experienced an aloneness in the lack of participating in a writer’s community. Despite much local community support and interest, as far as being part of a writers’ community, I have felt like one small voice speaking into the wind of modern industrial society, the powerful wind that blows the opposite way. This aloneness pertains to many missing elements, the peer group of writers for children, the peer group that is concerned with the more-than-human dimension, and even the technical dilemma of not having an editor (a children’s book editor) and a consistent graphic artist. This slowly has come into place with the generous appearance of Lisa P Allen, my editor, and subsequently Christina Wightman, my graphic designer. I am very grateful for their glowing participation.

Further, to my great joy, through a certain collection of books that I have been immersed in reading this spring, I have found that I DO belong to a writer’s community of thought and soul perceptions. I was first led into this by Bill Plotkin’s Nature and the Human Soul – Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World. Through his writings I was introduced to Thomas Berry’s, Evening Thoughts – Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community. And further, Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry’s The Universe Story – From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era – A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos (Whew! Long titles, but inspirational and illustrative).

Finding my writer’s community, the stream of thoughts and perceptions held by other writer’s has given me a tremendous boost and confidence, as you can imagine! I feel like I have arrived at the train platform, after walking through a wild and pathless land for 9 years!

I can only say to the Conscious Universe, “Thank you, thank you!” And also thank all my friends and local community for their support and interest all these years!

 

 

My Father Oct.4, 1923 – Feb. 24, 2020

Two months ago he passed, and every day I am grateful that he was spared the sorrow of the covid19 isolation…and I was spared being anguished about it.He demonstrated so much love and gratitude as he aged. And forgiveness. Transformation worked on him, that is a gift of his deepest essence (otherwise known as soul). He became the father he had never been.

I now sit and enjoy his creative output – especially his words in his many books – never edited! But so beautiful, despite the warts (as we all are!) He had a good go, and poured forth his life’s essence and artistic talents.

Sharing in his passing has been more beautiful than I could imagine! I feel he has poured the gifts of his ancestral line into me. Thank you for our travel on the road together, Dad.

With my enduring love,

Lila