Avatar is wonderfully entertaining in all it’s glorious 3D computerized cinemagnificence.  Yet peoples’ responses to the movie are a blow to my gut. Why? Movie critic David Edelstein says “the narrative would be ho-hum without the spectacle.” I have heard people say:  the movie is wildly entertaining but there is nothing to the story.

Nothing to the story???  Avatar tells a very important, timely and compelling story–the most important story of modern times:  how magnificent the biodiverse, healthy natural world–how magnificent our existence when connected and in balance with the sacredness of life all around–and how modern humans destroy life and anything that gets in the way of profit.  It is a tale with a moral and one that is so timely. I urge you to see the movie and do some teaching when you hear the story was meaningless or boring.

Encourage people to see the movie Signs Out of Time about archaeologist Marija Gimbutas who discovered the more complete story of human history Read the rest of this entry »

I am just getting back to writing after a rough Fall. My mom passed away in October. She’d always said that she would love to be buried in a green cemetery or on my land, but knew that she likely wouldn’t still be walking on this Earth by the time I figured out that type of arrangement. And so we chose cremation. When it feels right I will create a memorial garden for her and let her cremains nourish the Earth.

Death is a gateway not only for the one who has crossed through, but also for those of us left behind. Through gateways sometimes come pleasant surprises. One such for me: through a series of events that led her to the website I set up to honor my mother, a high school friend contacted me. It turns out that Diana is also an artist (as was my mother) and someone who loves the Earth. See her post on our Forum entitled Forest Cathedral. Read the rest of this entry »

The Earth had a twin that collided with us billions of years ago and created remnants from which the Moon created itself. The Moon is essential for temperature regulation on Earth. Jupiter protects us by pulling meteors that might otherwise collide with our planet. Under the Mediterranean are massive salt caves from the number of times the Mediterranean dried up. Who knew? Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon our time–and yours as well–there was a tree. The tree looked older than old; ancient and wizened. Its bark was the velvety brown-black of rich compost. The tree was so large around that it would take you eight-and-a-half minutes to walk around its girth. Can you imagine that?

Deep furrows ran from way up the tree to way down and were so deeply grooved that they seemed to hold the secrets of the ages. In fact, they did. You could put your whole hand into most of the furrows in the tree’s bark. In some your whole arm would disappear. And in some, your whole person would disappear . . . and reappear in our world. That is what happened to Melissae. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Yangtze River dolphin, one of the world’s rarest mammals, is no more,” begins a Time article from 2007. I had the honor of attending ritual theatre this weekend honoring and mourning for the extinction of this species in China. Now victims of overfishing (leaving the dolphins no food), pollution and boat propellers, these rare fresh water dolphins once c0-existed with humans and were honored as the goddesses of the Yangtze. We were asked to bring the story of the dolphins to the world so that they are remembered.

How many more species will live only as human stories? Read the rest of this entry »

A long long time ago, even for us, we began to understand that the Earth has her own frequency. We began to see the energetic grid that overlays the planet. It exists in your world and in our world. It is a luminous pattern of nodes and strands–a web that supports life.

Each node exists in a particular time-space point on the Earth. Each node has its own vibration and the vibration or frequency of the Earth is the sum of these vibration patterns. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello! We want to share our stories with you so you might help us restore this land to its vibrant energetic and healthy state. Our realm is parallel to yours and in most areas our realms overlap. What you humans do in your world affects ours.

Forgive us if this sounds harsh: the disrepect that humans over your recent centuries have shown for the natural world has led to Read the rest of this entry »

It is said that one can better tell the truth through fiction. Myth and stories are age-old ways of creating learning experiences for people of all ages and all cultures. Stories of personal and cultural relevance survive through centuries and millennia, still as fresh and pregnant with ideas as when created. Myths build layer upon layer of meaning in a complex web of opportunity–opportunity for the reader or listener to create personal meaning that deepens over time, adding to their personal growth.

While I was walking through the woods the other day, the Faeries spoke to me. They asked that I relay some of their stories to you. And so, I am pleased to announce a new feature of this site: Faery Tales.
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Last week I went to a talk by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. I was impressed with his devotion to the notion of finding ways to connect young people with nature. He mentioned that even in Northern California, a place that is still largely forested, children no longer spend much time outdoors in nature. Young folk, he says, know nature as an abstract: the arctic ice fields, the Amazon river and rainforests—all places they are supposed to protect and be concerned about. But they have no experience of the wild, the patterned, the sacred landscape of nature. They do not have “a landscape of the heart” to ground them and to return to over their lifetimes. Read the rest of this entry »