Council of Gnomes Blog

In conjunction with her talks and workshops at East West Bookstore in Mountain View in May and Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Cruz in June, Barbara wrote two articles for Connection Magazine: “Nature Needs Us As Much As We Need Nature” and “Everyone Has a Divine Plan”. This month’s blog combines these two articles. “When I was 60 my husband and I moved to a small cottage in the heart of a redwood forest. I built a studio to explore painting the energies of the land. Jim…

Barbara will be presenting a workshop showing her DVD “Healing Burned Woman” June 26 & 27 in Santa Cruz,  Center for Spiritual LivingReservation 831 335-3145Friday night is free. Showing Burned Woman’s Story, Nature and Barbara’s Story, 7:00-9:30Saturday Workshop: 10:30 – 3:30 $44.00. Day of Workshop $55.00Using movement, chalks, awareness questions ritual, the focus is to: Empower you to recognize and honor your inner guidance and spiritual gifts. Heal scars left from the Burning Times. ___________________________________ The garden in this beautiful spot where I live has 40 rose bushes in it. Last…

On a tip-off from Barbara, I have been listening to the April 1 to 14 talks from the “Guardians of Nature” telesummit (http://guardianspiritsofnature.com). I missed most of them in real time but decided to purchase replay access. So far, each of them has held something quite important for me—a reminder, a coherence with Barbara’s notebooks, a new thought or anecdote that has caught my imagination and thus can serve as a touchstone. The “Choose Love” title comes from Australian Michael Roads, who ends his talk with this encouragement:…

In this time of great change, all attempts to reach toward a new paradigm of unification—joining again the elemental, angelic, and human realms, the right brain with the left, spirit and science, the complex marvels of nature with the human fiddling that is instinctive in our beings—all of these attempts surely have a role to play. They don’t always agree or even get along, and probably none of them, alone, is complete, but we can honor them and strive to reconcile and integrate them. My brother has worked,…

On Friday the 13th, Barbara and I were back at her dining table talking about our respective journeys and how they related to what the blog is to become. We were remembering our first planning conversation at this table, nearly two years ago, and Barbara exclaimed: 30 blogs later! Let’s call Andrea to take another picture. (Andrea Boone lives on Barbara’s land and took a similar picture for the first blog, published April 22, 2013). We are feeling pretty chipper about this endeavor. We have some readers—some “preaching…

In early January I (Mary Jane) heard a two-day presentation—“Where Is the Elemental World?”—by Dennis Klocek, whose biodynamic agriculture work takes its inspiration from Rudolf Steiner. What I’ve always deeply respected about Dennis (I did a seven-month Consciousness Studies course with him some years ago) is that he is always working the indications from Steiner, testing them out, finding new applications, weaving them together by way of Goethe’s observational science. That’s what Steiner said we should do—move the original insights further, rather than simply forming and re-forming them…

 This exploration, this continuing attempt to bridge the long-time divide between humans and nature spirits, is of mutual urgency: humans need the elementals because they carry a living knowledge of the earth that we have lost; they need us, because we embody the great, progressive, experiment of freedom, of conscious collaboration on the planet. Barbara’s work with the elementals is founded on this shared need, and she is so secure in her inner serenity and her task that she can give herself over to their influence, without fear.…

On a recent misty morning, entering the amphitheater with Barbara, we first acknowledged the trees—admirable old friends, even of mine by now. We had just a bit of time to do this ink-stick drawing exercise we had in mind, and Barbara had greeted the Mother Redwood perfunctorily, then turned to set out our materials. “Come back here,” she heard the Mother say, “and greet me with your heart.” She laughed and happily complied, setting the energy right for our meditative task. We began by choosing our “brushes” from the sticks…

One day as Barbara walked to the amphitheater, she heard Mano say,  “You were an exuberant child raised in a household of repressed adults.” “Looking within,” she says, “I could see the truth I had never realized before. I wanted to be free to express that exuberance, that passion for life, the joy and delight in the mysteries Mano was revealing to me. It didn’t happen all at once. I had to deal with the fear of being ‘too much’ for people. This dilemma was solved when, talking with…