Articles
Featured
I had the honor of presenting a paper titled “Processing Decolonizaiton” at a recent East-West Psychology Student Symposium at the California Institute of Integral Studies where I teach and am also working on my PhD in East-West Psychology.
In July 1994, one hundred women gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a conference titled "The Divine Mother Conference." Three women spiritual teachers led the conference, which took place over three days: Beth Hin, Sondray Ray, and Leslie Temple-Thurston. Leslie Temple-Thurston, a South African woman, living in the United States at the time, is an awakened mystic who was now sitting in public gatherings of meditation and teaching her spiritual psychological methods of transcending the separate ego, teachings she called "The Marriage of Spirit."
A Man by the River
We arrived in Egypt on a Lunar Eclipse at the beginning of Ramadan. Touted by the astrologers as the biggest astrological event of the year, the Harmonic Concordance, this powerful eclipse offered a rare alignment of planets that formed a Star of David in the sky. People all over the world celebrated and prayed for peace at this potent opportunity for transformation.
The email invitation to go to Egypt for the solar eclipse in August 1999 hit me in the belly like a lightning bolt. It was one of those rare times in my life when I just knew I had to drop everything and, come hell or high water, follow that thread that pulled me forward from the future. I had to trust that I would be supported to go there.
It was her meditation and her soul’s calling card. She never had the opportunity for formal piano lessons but maybe my grandparents realized she never needed them, because by the age of 3, my mother sat at the piano and played any song she heard.
It was a crisp sunny autumn day, a bit breezy for sitting outside perhaps but the storied Lawn of the Grounds was the perfect place for the event. It started with a procession of dignitaries from all the top universities, Harvard, Oxford, and 100 others marching two by two in their full regalia of gowns of black red, blue and crimson.. hoods with silk and velvet sashes indicating their achievements, all PhD’s in every imaginable academic discipline.
The second morning on the island I woke before anyone else was up. I put on my bathing suit and headed out the door to the smell of sea salt air blowing across the canal. A yellowbird darted among the hibiscus in the front of the house. The road to Rum Point was quiet and in five minutes I was at the beach.
The exotic tropical birds are what you see first. A large red macaw taking flight from the top of her head, blue tipped wings curled upwards towards the light. A resplendent quetzal with long tail, a green toucan with red tipped large beak, a green brilliant hummingbird, a kingfisher all poised to fly into the green dappled forest behind her.
A radio podcast interview with Kathy Stanley speaking about her work as a energy medicine practitioner.
A presentation made to the biennial conference of the Association of the Study of Women and Mythology in Las Vegas in March 2018.
She first inspired me 25 years ago when I walked into Banyan Books in Vancouver and walked out with her slim volume Thinking Like a Mountain. For so many years, that gem of deep ecology writings inspired my personal journey with the earth…
The last thing I remember was being grief-stricken that I had to leave. After nine days in the bush, the lowveld in South Africa, vast wildlife reserves, on my first safari seeing lion, cheetah…
This essay explores the ways that the identity of an individual is rooted, or can be rooted in the place of their birth and childhood, and that even after they have moved from this place, it still informs their being in myriad ways.
Perhaps it’s the similarity with the landscape of the land of my birth, Jamaica, that caused me to fall in love with another tropical island. Kauai…