We gathered rosesand bright zinniasto crown their heads with flowers,these shining daughterswho we’ve cradled and fedand loved with everythingwe haveand everything we are.We knelt before them and sang,our hands gently washing the feetthat we once carried inside our own bodiesand… Read More ›
Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,500 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost… Read More ›
Imagine this scenario: You agree to meet with some beloved friends or family who are not in your Covid pod. You’re nervous about safety, but you have a detailed discussion beforehand of exactly what Plan you will all follow in… Read More ›
Early in the morning of July 15, 2021, I was sitting amid the chaos of boxes in my new home which I had just closed on a week earlier. I had woken at 5 am to a leak in the… Read More ›
A few of years ago, a video from the Civic Center Bart Station in San Francisco went viral – showing a line of people in the station, shooting up and passed out due to drug use. With the tagline on… Read More ›
Like so many others, I learned this jingle, actually the opening of a lovely poem by Joseph Parry, during a brief stint in the Girl Scouts when I was nine or ten. I’m not sure I understood it then—what was wine, after all? what did it mean for it to “mellow and refine”?—but the words stayed with me, echoing unbidden through the years and shaping many of my choices.
Preface: I am submitting this story for publication because it occurred during the Christian Holy Week and because it involves me, a woman who follows her dreams… That I did so in this instance was important in ways that I… Read More ›
Valentine’s Day was never about romantic love in my family. Mom always gave us Snoopy Valentines. Dad would write hilarious rhymes. My stepmom created gorgeous tea parties with chocolates and flowers, and we even gave red treats to our dogs…. Read More ›
Yesterday I learned (NPR) that a third of the oak trees in this country will be dead within 50 years; I also read that our sugary harbingers of spring, the Maples, are dying confirming my own observations. I try to… Read More ›
Though I have not been Christian for many years, I love to decorate my house for the holidays. I have many decorations that I have collected over the years, including a Hummel angel gazing at the Christ child that was… Read More ›
As we strive to create a better future, we can look to our rich heritage of global goddess and heroine tales for insight into peaceful, creative, and effective means to achieve our goals. Let me introduce you to the delightful… Read More ›
Four years ago I made a trip to New Mexico to spend the winter and returned for three more winters in a row. A true Night Journey through the Desert. I hadn’t been there three weeks before a Great Horned… Read More ›
It is the weekend before Thanksgiving, in the ominous year of 2020. The CDC urges people not to gather with others outside of the household on Thursday. COVID infections rise exponentially. Schools are closing, and in the much of the… Read More ›
In Part One of this article, I described dancing Jewish, Romani, and Armenian dances for forgiveness and reconciliation with groups in Germany and all over the world. I also offered danced rituals of remembrance at former concentration camps and other places… Read More ›
When I first began researching traditional circle dances in the mid-1980s, I was amazed to find that the peoples who have suffered the worst of human experience – oppression, exile, genocide, war – also produce the most vibrant and joyful… Read More ›
Hello FAR friends, I hope you are each doing well – that you are holding up ok during these trying times. It’s Xochitl here. I’m the behind-the-scenes co-weaver keeping things afloat (to varying degrees!) on this collaborative endeavor we call… Read More ›
In the midst of recent events and protests, a social media campaign entitled #sharethemicnow has emerged. The campaign asked white people and people of influence to use their platforms, quiet their voices, and highlight, heighten, and listen to their Black… Read More ›
Maybe beautiful things don’t only grow from peace, maybe they grow from the soil of living, which holds both blood and tears muck and magic. Last week I tried to work on my book while the household debris whirled around… Read More ›
A couple of weekends ago, Nancy, one of my classmates from nursing school, organized what she called a “mini-reunion” at her home in New Jersey. Seven of us gathered together to well, reunite. Our graduating class (Muhlenberg Hospital School of… Read More ›
“She’s doing it again,” Mrs. Cockroach is saying to her friend Old Mrs. Spider. “You know? The giant? She’s been blowing on me and telling me to live somewhere else. Like, I’d leave a good home?” … Read More ›
In my final year of college, my B.A. in Intercultural Studies required me to take a daily accelerated Spanish class. Thus I met Ñacuñán Sáez, the dazzlingly urbane young professor from Argentina who had recently come via Italy and Oxford to our tiny… Read More ›
Root Woman Tree Woman Sky Woman Dear friends Greet, converse with one another on the steely silver edge of Truth and Change. Weaving together roots twigs, leaves, clumps of dirt, the two carve out an underground story. Mythic toads instruct… Read More ›
For many of us, listening to women-loving-women songs is a spiritual experience. That is because somehow it makes us feel seen, puts a sense of hope into our world as well as daydreams of romance. We can understand the challenges… Read More ›
Take time to nourish your caring. It is needed. Last month it was raining heavily on a Saturday morning and I spent time coloring letters to fairies with my younger children and baking a cake. Before I knew it, the… Read More ›
Passover is a holiday of remembrance, of ritual re-enactment: this, we say, is what our ancestors experienced. This is what they felt and knew, what they tasted in their blood. The movement from slavery to liberation, from the soul’s winter to spring. We must never forget, we say, we must always remember, be thankful for our freedom, never take it for granted. “In each generation,” the Haggadah enjoins, “we should feel as if we personally had come out of Egypt.”
“Please prepare me to be a sanctuary. Pure and holy tried and true. With thanksgiving I’ll be a living sanctuary for you.”* —Beautiful Chorus (Hymns of Spirit) In March, my husband drove our daughter into town to work at her… Read More ›
Note: This story was originally posted early in 2016. I’m posting it again because, thanks to the state of UNkindness the Abuser-in-chief has pasted all over the semi-civilized Semi-United States, we need lessons in kindness more than ever before. I… Read More ›
We’ve all been there.
Sitting around the tree watching the kids open presents. Attempting to enjoy a holiday meal with extended and immediate family that you may or may not have traveled thousands of miles to see. Trying with every fiber of your being to not talk about the elephant, or red hat, in the room.
In November 2017 I wrote about pie baking. And in November 2015 I also wrote about pie baking. In November 2016, I was destroyed by the “election” and wrote a post in November of that year “For Strong Women” just… Read More ›
These days I live in a perpetual state of simmering outrage given the popular support of the “goings on” and happenings within our current administration. The lies, the deceit, the xenophobia, the racism, the misogyny, the homophobia, the anti-intellectualism—things that… Read More ›
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