Our hearts are brimming with creativity and inspiration from retreats held recently at Hallelujah farm. This post is a celebration of both the distinct learning and the collective synergy that grows from the power of gathering in practice together.
Many thanks to our hosts, Leigh and John, and to all who gathered. May this collection of reflections and images invite you in with wonder and welcome! There’s room for you at our next retreat!
Winter Stirrings: Seeds of Courage
A Circle of Trust Retreat (January 19 - 21)
One of the joys I’ve experienced with this collage is closing my eyes and feeling the folds & creases I made when I fit these varied images together. With my eyes closed and my hands feeling each image one by one, I let my mind roam into revisiting the lessons I gleaned when they called to me at the Circle of Trust retreat and also exploring new lessons and new clues I can draw from them in the present. What a gift that retreat was! I feel blessed to have unlocked the door to listening to my inner wisdom and welcoming a bit of remodeling, deconstruction, and reconstruction of this house I’ve built for myself.
Bea
This was the most impactful WholeHeart retreat I’ve experienced since 2017. I’m still actively processing the lessons learned. I continue to keep you all close to my heart. I’ve been dancing in my living room to Resilient like we were at Hallelujah farm!
I asked myself this question when prompted to consider a curious question to myself:
“Kind girl, what additional evidence do you need to feel and know that you are enough?”
Nanci
There are multiple layers from our time together that I continue to reflect on and integrate. One of them is the line “keep going deeper” from the poem “The Cave” by Paul Tran. This line has been coming to me when I want to turn around before something is complete, before I know what is beyond the comfortable place. What a gift that line has been in opening up new space.
Suzanne
Yesterday began with a walk on snow, where sunlight cast dazzling diamonds in all directions. I felt the whisper of the wind, sharing my responsibility for self-love, for what I breathe in I breathe out and share with all around me. My new mantra, in loving myself, I am free. Freeing myself, I open the doorway for others to walk with me.
Jill
“Freedom to create blessings on winter nights. Courage to unfold: dancing, falling, being.”
“Shelter and safety house embers softly glowing; warmth, sacred growth, inner wisdom, and peace-joy forever.”
(co-created blessings)
As the Reverend Kyodo Williams so wisely wrote, love is about space. I don't think I am the only one in our circle who has struggled with the question of what unconditional love could possibly be. Probably, others also had parents too stressed and injured to know how to give or model it, no matter their level of effort to provide for our needs and wants. The healing magic of our group for me was this: We sisters deeper than oceans could bring this negated, innate understanding forth, anyway. No resume, no credentials. There are practices we can maintain to allow love to continue flourishing, through the creation of space. Our weekend together was an immersion in that deep space of understanding, a gift that will be proliferated. How could it not?
The blessing you created for me went like this: "Perhaps I know how to blossom, fully awake, sisters deeper than oceans." How did you guys totally nail it like that?
KJ
Vermont Courage Cohort
Winter Retreat (February 2-5)
We read the opening to Billy Chapata's book, flowers on the moon (inserted below) as an inspiration to explore the magic in each of us and use our creativity to use images and words to help anchor us in our wonder once courage was over. Here are the words and images that arrived.
Ally (Facilitator)
there is nothing ordinary about you.
there is nothing simplistic about you
there is nothing mediocre about you.
look at how far your resilience has brought you. look at how your
being has protected you along the way. look at how you have
managed to get this far through all the mistakes, bad decisions,
and wrong routes you’ve taken. look at where your intuition, or
choice to ignore it, has brought you. look at how all the pain and
heartache you’ve suffered have birthed a new you.
it is no mistake that you are here. your existence is no coincidence,
so that should add more sense to your presence– there is much
more ahead of you.
much more light, much more goodness, much more sweetness.much more laughter much more happiness, much more love
much more peace, much more connection, much more growth
you will grow wherever you are planted because you are deserving
of all these things and more, and if you ever forget, doubt, or need
comfort, may these words aid in your bloom.
– by Billy Chapata, from his book, flowers on the moon