Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Crone Mag Retreat, Crones Counsel, Visalia Event, and more!

Nine days later, I'm still alive. No more sudden unexpected rogue attacks by natural forces like ocean waves and dogs. What I take from my two strange near-disasters on northern California beaches is the idea that there is no use looking for "causes" for any phenomenon, that sometimes all I can do is bow to the mystery that presents continuously changing circumstances as food for contemplation. When I contemplate the nature of my experiences, rather than try to understand or figure them out, I open the door to an ever-expanding, ever-deepening field of awareness that shimmers with currents of all kinds and colors. Indeed, more and more, what I distill from this ten-week journey are the twin Buddhist notions of impermanence and interdependency. I dance with others in an ever-shifting ocean of experience that generates a continuous, unceasing flow of meaning and significance.

To bring up to date: After my three day personal retreat at Big Sur Riverside Inn, I met up with eleven women from the staff of the new CRONE magazine at the Big Sur Lodge, and over a 48-hour period enjoyed a group process that felt miraculous in its depth, clarity, insight and cooperativeness. We created a truly Aquarian group process with everyone present utterly herself, free to speak her mind, and open to all others. Next, I drove to Asilomar, near Monterey, a spectacular resort on the beach to attend the fifteenth annual Crones Counsel (see www.cronescounsel.org). 160 women gathered for five days to honor, sort out, make fun of and have fun with our shared process of aging-onto-death, tell stories from our lives, share concerns and interests, buy and trade handmade art and crafts, walk the beach, drum, sing, dance—an annual full-hearted convivium that, as usual, left us refreshed, exhausted and, for some of the "newbies," transformed.

That very evening I was due for a book event in Three Rivers, California, five-hours driving distance, in the hills near Visalia, and was concerned that I would be too wiped out from the Crones Counsel to give my all at this meeting. But once again, just as in Ashland when Janet drove over from the coast to work on me four times in two days, this time the universe gifted me with my niece, Megan, a skilled and highly intuitive body and energy worker. I arrived at her home at 3 p.m., and by 7 p.m. I was ready to go, thanks to her ministrations and her homecooked meal.

That evening, the conversation moved in such deep realms and widened to such abstract and yet palpable dimensions, that after two and a half hours I finally had to cut it off due to my own need for sleep! One man there said that his experince of reading the book helped him to realize that, like Jeff, he needed to open his heart, and thanked me profusely for that recognition. Another woman, whose partner had died "thirty months and nine days ago," and who had driven an hour and a half to be with us, was grateful to be in a group where she could actually talk about her continuing sense of loss without people turning away.

I am now in Oceanside, where I stay with my high school boyfriend (also my second ex-husband), and his "new" wife (30 years together now!), for a week. Judy and Dick's home has always been a welcome stop for travelers, and three other wayfarers here with me—Megan, plus equally old friends Chuck and Ellen, with whom I stayed in the yurts in Jackson at the beginning of this ten week tour. We all attend a wedding of another member of our tribe this Saturday. Three book events also in this area, two of them in Oceanside, the other in San Diego.

Grateful, this morning, for jasmine tea, a quiet corner, sunny sky and lush scarlet flowers bloomong just outside the open window.

1 comment:

London reader said...

Hi again - interested to read about the Crone journal (great remit) and the others you have also set up. I would be grateful if you could give some advice on setting up a magazine - how to get started. Also, how much funding would be needed at the outset? Is a lot of market research necessary to begin with?
Thanks for any hints and tips you can provide.