Nature Altar - Daughters Home

A walk through the moments I am living through. A new year upon us on this day. The creatures are stirring in the brambles. It has been a year of slow moving and wide wondering. I wonder why we are all trying to make our lives more. More busy - more scheduled - more striving. There is something to a slow way of living. If the opportunity to reflect upon our lives is something we are given - then perhaps we might look into what things matter the most to us. I think for me - it is a self-study of self. This is always present. Will I get it right or understand? More often than not - no, not so much. The everyday of living is such a rich opportunity for reflection and deep study. What will I study this year…

Shaker Firewood Box

Home Ways. Home is my place. A sacred place of becoming each day. I am more myself as the years go by. I am more the brightness that lives inside of me. Is it perfect - there is no such place. I think though - that all of the many imperfections allow a more natural and comfortable way of living at Home. This Shaker Firebox settles in here. The lovely ash floors hold it up - laid down by my husband. Look at all the work there is to do in putting new oil down to protect the floors. It is hard to fit all of it in. Home is not a museum of keeping. It is a tableau of living out the moods and ways of our ever evolving humanity and personal development. Are the floors not finished? It might just mean that I am not finished.

Wood Haus

Helping. Here is Rand helping Pat with building of a Firewood Haus. There are always things to build in our lives. Building a life means the activities are generally the making and creating of things. Projects - structures - repairs - redoing - a life of making is in our own hands. Do we do everything for ourselves or do we help one another? If we build together in all the ways - the Hand Built Ways are stronger on the handmade foundation of togetherness. I am glad filled that we make many of our living ways.

Cultural Emergence Design Deck - Looby Macnamara

Design Ways. As we make our way through the days - designing with intention with our hearts and our minds gives us a creative way of moving through the world. This new Cultural Emergence Design Deck by Looby Macnamara is an offering to help us create in imaginative ways. I like that designing can be interesting and shaped by layers of understanding and openness. It makes our Living Ways feels so much more intentional to focus into Design Ways that have been developed over years of study and exploring. Feeling stuck - in need of a new framework - taking a moment for reflection, joy and creativity - brings about a whole new perspective. It is there for our taking. An offering of beauty and flexible opportunity is a blessing that we can take up - leave behind stale thinking. Designing into the New Year feels like an exciting story to be looking into.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - Oxford World’s Classics

War and Peace Ways. I read War and Peace last year with Benjamin McEvoy and The Hardcore Literature Book Club. There isn’t another Book Club like it. Ben is a wonderful guide and mentor in the works of classic literature. I am joining in again this year with the wide variety of books that will be read. You can find more about it here in The Hardcore Literature Book Club. I am reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - this time with Simon Haisell of Footnotes and Tangents in his slow read with people all around the world. We read just one chapter a day for the entire year. He ran this last year and this is the second time he’s hosting it. If War and Peace feels too big a task to take on all at once then perhaps a chapter a day slow read is the ticket you need. My entire family is reading it this year. I highly recommend this book! Until you discover it you do not know what you are missing out on. It’s all of life in one incredible story.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I am ending this year with Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It is a good mood read with a fascinating cast of characters. Here is Ben McEvoy speaking about it.

Freight Train

Finally - here is a freight train coming through this week while I was out driving. Trains coming through seem filled with significance, romance, hard work, story, travel and mostly the picture of going from here to there. It seems a good final image to share with you as the year is moving into the next calendar year. It can feel suddenly expectant and exciting - like a party inside of a longing for change. To me - this train feels like a moving forward in a solid way. Life feels like it can be similar in the day to day - and yet - wrapped in the continuous journey of walking forward in the best way that we can.

I wish for you the best beginning of this New Year of 2024. The movement holds you in its arms. I hope you feel wrapped and surrounded by a sense of grounded belonging. We need you here in all the ways. I am sending you tender care. May all good things find you.

Sending All the Love Your Way…

A River Enchanted

I am currently listening to A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross. It is lush and beautiful! The narrator is Ruth Urquhart a Scottish Voice Actor. The beautiful voice of Ruth Urquhart makes this story come so alive. I can’t imagine reading this another way. I am carried away and on the Isle of Cadence. So far - this book is simply a wonderful journey into a magical land.

There is a second book in this Elements of Cadence Duology called A Fire Endless. A continuation of the story…

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House of Earth and Blood meets The Witch’s Heart in Rebecca Ross’s brilliant first adult fantasy, set on the magical isle of Cadence where two childhood enemies must team up to discover why girls are going missing from their clan.

Jack Tamerlaine hasn’t stepped foot on Cadence in ten long years, content to study music at the mainland university. But when young girls start disappearing from the isle, Jack is summoned home to help find them. Enchantments run deep on Cadence: gossip is carried by the wind, plaid shawls can be as strong as armor, and the smallest cut of a knife can instill fathomless fear. The capricious spirits that rule the isle by fire, water, earth, and wind find mirth in the lives of the humans who call the land home. Adaira, heiress of the east and Jack’s childhood enemy, knows the spirits only answer to a bard’s music, and she hopes Jack can draw them forth by song, enticing them to return the missing girls.

As Jack and Adaira reluctantly work together, they find they make better allies than rivals as their partnership turns into something more. But with each passing song, it becomes apparent the trouble with the spirits is far more sinister than they first expected, and an older, darker secret about Cadence lurks beneath the surface, threatening to undo them all.

With unforgettable characters, a fast-paced plot, and compelling world building, A River Enchanted is a stirring story of duty, love, and the power of true partnership, and marks Rebecca Ross’s brilliant entry on the adult fantasy stage.
From Rebecca Ross’s Website

A River Enchanted Playlist On Spotify