A TIME TO HARVEST AND LET GO

Outside of my window is an ancient birch tree – full limbed, graceful, a haven for birds – that I have come to befriend. She is my pulse for the changing of the seasons. Today, I watch her green leafed abundance quietly turn into muted yellows and mustards. The colors of Autumn. Her leaves, beginning to fall. She reminds me that this is now a time of harvesting and letting go.

ART AND SPIRITUALITY

A conversation with Amber Chand by Susie Kaufman on the rich subject of Art and Spirituality.

FLOWERING INTO ELDERHOOD

This Taurus moon is called the Flower Moon and as our thoughts turn to flowering power and the blossoming of the feminine, I ask myself: what does blossoming look like for a 71 year old woman standing at the threshold of her elderhood? What does blossoming look like for a woman going through breast cancer? A woman finding her way into aging.

SEEDING YOUR NEW STORY

Planting seeds for our emergent future is a journey that is always vulnerable and deeply tender. These seeds are silent whispers of prayer, keepsakes of the vision we hold for ourselves and each other. Planted in the fertile dark, they become our secret longings, quiet emissaries of possibility.

SECRECY OF SPRING

As I gaze outside my window, there is a luminescent full moon. She is known as “Sap Moon” – giving expression to the sweet sap rising in the maple and birch trees here where I live in the Northeast - a portent of bird song, warm days, new beginnings.

NEW BEGINNINGS

Evening now descends. Candles glow in alabaster vessels. A Gregorian chant plays in the background. Outside my window, a soft snow falls. I am in my cave. This welcomed quiet arrives as the second full moon of the winter season, the Wolf Moon, soon appears in the skies. She represents new beginnings, and the conquering of light over darkness.

DEEP REST

Sitting here in the living room, shades drawn, I feel calm – the calm before the storm of my next chemo treatment. Perhaps it will be kinder this time and keep me from the edges of joylessness and steel grey fatigue – as it did that first treatment cycle. Perhaps, by surrendering to my cancer and making peace with her, I can be carried by her flow. For I know that the more I resist, the more I fight against this journey, the harder it will be to heal. I must meet it not with averted gaze or even fear, but stare into the eyes of cancer and learn to befriend her.

AN INVOCATION TO MY ANCESTORS

I once awoke from a dream in which my ancestors were sitting by the edge of a river chanting “birth and death, the river flows on, the river flows on…..” Later on that auspicious day, I gave birth to my daughter, Jenna Devi, she who was now part of the rivers ancestral flow.

MY CAVE, MY TEACHER

The shades are drawn. A lone bird calls out. A steel grey morning awakes. I am preparing to go for my second treatment at the cancer infusion center. Perhaps it will not be as intense as it was last month when I felt so unprepared and frightened by the journey, resisting it, imprisoned by it, hating it. Perhaps it will be gentler this time because I have made peace with my situation, because like the river I am being carried by the surprise of the journey, by its flow. We shall see.

WHAT THE CORONAVIRUS HAS COME TO REVEAL

One morning in early March, 2020, just as the virus had arrived at our shores in the United States and we were beginning to reel from its effects, I sat with my journal during my morning meditation and asked this question: Corona, what have you come to reveal to us? The answer came quickly and I scribed each word with no censure or edit. Here is the transmission I received: