The Seattle sky sparkled that day in its rarest, loveliest hue, a bottomless sapphire blue, a blue that, rather than serving as an unnoticed backdrop for earthly goings-on, grabbed center stage with its intensity. Having a bad day under such a sky seemed like a violation of some immutable law of physics, but a bad day I’d had, nonetheless, one setback after another marching through my life as a single working mom.

And thus, it had come to this. The bookcase-in-a-box, which I had purchased for my ten-year-old daughter Tasha’s bedroom not an hour before, lay in a sad little pile of pressboard rubble at my feet. The murder weapon, a huge rubber mallet, dangled thuggishly from my fingers as I stood straddling my victim, concentrating on slowing my breathing and the shaking of my hands.

Still dressed in my business suit after a difficult day at the office, I’d hurriedly taken the shelf kit out into the front yard to assemble the unfinished boards into proper formation, knowing that I would still need to find time to paint the shelf after assembly. Chips began to flake and fly off corners as I hastily tried to tap piece A into section B, tab C into part D. After the fourth or fifth chip, a large crack opened in one of the boards. Frustration overheated into full-blown rage, seething like lava down through my arms and into my hands. Once commenced, I couldn’t stop the destruction till nothing but chips remained.

“It’s okay, honey,” I had tried to speak gently to Tasha in between muttered curses as I bashed away with all my strength, “I’m so mad at this piece of crap that I spent our money on, that’s all. It’s been a rough day for Mommy. Please don’t worry! I love you.” Tasha watched the process from a safe distance, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. After the deed was done, she hugged me, allowing herself to be reassured that a monster did not actually live inside her normally sweet-tempered mother. She helped me load the evidence into the large green recycle can and rumble it out to the curb. I apologized repeatedly, hugging her and assuring her we’d get a much better shelf for her growing collection of books.

We did get a much better shelf. And we didn’t speak of the incident again till much, much later. Tasha was an adult by then. I had spent the intervening years stuffing guilt about the trauma I knew my violent outburst must have caused my daughter. The fact that she had never brought it up again I took to mean it was too painful for her to talk about. For me, that day, including the liquid blaze of that sapphirine sky, was indelibly burned into my brain, only lightly scabbed over by time and rationalization.

Tasha, however, had completely forgotten the whole thing.

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“Damage” is a dramatization of actual events.  The names have not been changed to protect the innocent; sorry, Tasha, my beloved girl.  The piece was written for a Sun Magazine “Readers Write” themed contest in my Creative Writing class.   “Damage” was chosen the winner by my classmates.  Contest winners and runners up win a little prize, extra credit, and are encouraged to give final polish to their pieces and actually submit them to the magazine for possible publication.

I just might do that.

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The image of Martin Luther nailing a list of criticisms to a church door in 1517 is indelibly burned into the Western Christian mind.  The scene has been exhaustively described in books and film, including a 2003 German production starring Joseph Fiennes as Luther (IMDB).  The film’s details are disputed, including an extensive list of “Historical Inaccuracies” on the film’s Wikipedia page, but the fact that this centuries-old story warranted a modern, big-budget film peopled with well-known actors speaks to our enduring interest in this pivotal historical character and the seismic changes he wrought in the history of Christianity and the world.

Although he was not alone in his views, or even the first to hold many of them (Tillich 228), Luther was the first person who was able to survive actively opposing the all-powerful Catholic Church.  He viewed certain church practices as at best a distraction from faithful adherence to Christian principles and at worst a clear corruption of those principles (Molloy 384-5).  Previous questioners of church practices, such as the author of the first English translation of the Bible, John Wycliff, had aired concerns similar to Luther, but their views were not widely disseminated (Tillich 203-4).  The Catholic Church was unable to suppress the spread of Luther’s ideas and writings, however, thanks in no small part to the invention of the printing press (Shlain 324), and Luther was able to plant some of the first enduring seeds of what we know today as the Protestant movement.

As a highly educated, passionate Catholic priest, Luther was first and foremost a man utterly dedicated to seeking God (Bainton 22).  As a result of a vow made during a lightning storm, in 1505 at the age of 21 he turned his back on the ambitious, lawyerly life his father had planned for him, and instead joined an Augustinian monastery (Bainton 21).  In becoming a monk, Luther “…rebelled out of a more than ordinary devotion.  To the monastery he went like others, and even more than others, in order to make his peace with God” (Bainton 36).  Though at first Luther seems to have found some measure of peace in monastic life, it was not to last.

In 1510, Luther and another monk were selected to travel to Rome to seek a papal settlement in a dispute at the monastery.  Luther considered himself privileged to make the trip.  He spent a month taking in the unique opportunities available in the Holy City, visiting relics and shrines, attending masses and viewing catacombs, all while maintaining his duties as an Augustinian monk.  Any thrall he may have felt in Rome, however, was soon disturbed.  Luther became increasingly dismayed by the lack of proper religious comportment he perceived all around him.  Upon confessing to a Roman priest, he judged his confessor woefully incompetent.  The Italian clergy of Luther’s time lived a life of lush wealth and privilege in an era rich also with scandalous behavior, from the laity on up through the popes themselves.  For a pious young man fresh from the strict, cloistered environment of the Augustinian monastery in the increasingly religiously rigorous north (Tarnas 233), the opulence and frivolity of Vatican life was an unpleasant shock.  Upon completing a ritual of praying on hands and knees and kissing the stones of Pilate’s stairs in the supposed footsteps of Jesus himself, an endeavor prescribed to bring about the release of a soul trapped in purgatory, Luther found himself shaken by doubt of the veracity of such practices.  Some of the seeds of his eventual protestations toward holy relics, rituals, and other Catholic principles were thus sown in the Holy City of Rome itself (Bainton 48-51).

Back at home in Germany, Luther was transferred from the monastery in Erfurt to Wittenberg, where he continued his scholarly pursuits and eventually earned a doctorate in theology.  He was assigned a university professorship, which included teaching Bible classes with a focus on the epistles of Paul.  Luther’s heart, however, was not at home.  He was increasingly agitated, becoming overwhelmed with his sense of his own sinfulness and unable to find peace or release in any of the methods or advisements offered by the church or his mentors, painfully doubting even the just nature of God (Bainton 57-8).

In sending him to teach the Bible and thus wrestle for himself with its message, Luther’s advisors placed him on a path that allowed him to discover in Paul’s words what he saw as a key to the nature of right relationship with God.  This insight, known as justification by faith, filled Luther with a newfound sense of love and understanding (Bainton 65).  This and other insights were among the foundations of his thinking, but did not inspire him to oppose Catholicism as a whole.  Rather, as a devout priest and teacher, he sought to improve the quality of Catholic teaching and practices (Bainton 68).  It was another matter entirely that placed him on a collision course with the leaders of the Catholic Church.

Luther’s troubled but devout conscience would not allow him to rest easy with the practice of selling indulgences in order to raise money, which at the time was increasingly common—and increasingly fraudulent—as the church sought to finance ventures such as the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome (Molloy 385).  Indulgences were remittances of punishment granted to an absolved sinner in return for prayer and good works to shorten their time in purgatory, the temporary state that prepared a soul for heaven.  Luther objected to the practice, which in his view amounted to the sale of salvation, even though the proceeds were a source of support for his own institution (Bainton 73).

Luther’s objections to and criticisms of what he saw as corrupt and impious practices within the church grew into his “Ninety-Five Theses,” a document detailing his protestations and demands for reform, which he nailed to the door of the Wittenberg castle church.  Luther had purposely thus made his objections quite public.  During the resulting furor he staunchly refused to abandon his principles.  His struggle with church authorities over the following years culminated in his excommunication.  Had he not enjoyed the support of the local prince, who allowed him to live in hiding in his castle, Luther would likely have joined legions of preceding dissenters and been burned at the stake for his insubordination (Molloy 385).

Unlike so many before him who suffered death for opposing the mighty Catholic Church, Luther did survive.  Under the protection of the prince, he continued to refine his ideas as well as author the first German translation of the Bible, which became a deeply influential part of German culture and literature (Molloy 386).  Luther’s work took hold, hand-in-hand with the rapid spread of literacy and the increasing availability of printed Bibles and other materials.  Luther’s writings, including his assertion that salvation is not gained through ritual or through the intercession of earthly representatives, but by each individual through “faith alone,” (Dunstan 9), were one of the most potent sparks in the growing opposition to the Catholic Church’s dominance.  That spark joined with others in firing a new idea of man’s relationship to God, one that cherished the notion of man as a “free, autonomous person before his God.  Protestantism insists that man’s dependence for his eternal welfare is on God Almighty alone; nothing can come between God and man…” (Dunstan 35).

The conflagration of opposition to the Catholic Church grew inexorably, including within Martin Luther himself.  Although he did not initially set out to destroy the Catholic Church, nor found a new church (Kent 118), but rather reform and rehabilitate it, Luther eventually came to vehemently condemn it, equating the Catholic institution as the “seat of the Antichrist” (Tarnas 234).  His work did ultimately help spur the formation of a new, vigorous third branch of Christianity, alongside the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.  Complete acceptance of Luther’s ideas was not universal even within the Protestant movement, however, and as a result the new branch itself blossomed into the cornucopia of denominations that we see encompassed within Protestant Christianity today (Molloy 386).

Luther’s work led to much-needed reforms and helped free religious writing and scholarship from archaic language and behind locked church doors, where scripture was sometimes even chained up to prevent anyone unqualified from gaining access.  However, while he thus helped the common man connect directly with Christian teachings, some of Luther’s thinking invites criticism by modern standards.  He opposed the use of reason to counter his own arguments, which he had himself so carefully reasoned, saying, “Reason is the greatest enemy faith has” (Shlain 327).  He spoke in a terribly disparaging manner toward women, as well, and banished devotion to Mary and her image holding the infant Jesus, in spite of the apparently warm and loving relationship he enjoyed with the young woman he married and had six children with after leaving the Catholic Church.  Later in his life, Luther’s early pronouncements of respect and tolerance for diverse religious ideas changed to an extreme intolerance and bigotry (Shlain 328-9).

Nor were those who followed in Luther’s footsteps necessarily exemplary models of the loving message of compassion delivered by Jesus of Nazareth himself.  John Calvin, for example, instituted an incredibly harsh regime in Geneva, Switzerland, in the 1520’s.  Calvin’s control was absolute: simply to be found guilty of criticizing him was punishable by death.  And there was much to criticize, in light of the bleak austerity he demanded and the long list of transgressions he deemed punishable by death, including idolatry, blasphemy, adultery, and heresy.  An unmarried woman discovered to be pregnant would be drowned.  Dissenters would be tortured till they confessed and then brutally executed (Shlain 335).  Some of the severe attitudes seen in today’s culture regarding hard work, sexuality, austerity, and punishment echo the dour, humorless, deeply intolerant Calvin.

The Reformation, while not entirely a force for human dignity and well-being, did prove to be the lever required to break the centuries-old chokehold of the corruption-riddled Roman Catholic Church on Western religious thought and life in general.  The rich tapestry of Protestant denominations that we see today encompasses a vast number of people, ideas, and practices that span the globe.  The Protestant branch of the three-limbed Christian tree continues to sprout innovation and fresh inquiry into the nature of Christian faith.  In this continuing quest, much is owed to Martin Luther—a passionate, flawed, and fascinating lynchpin of Christian history.

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Works Cited

Bainton, Roland H. “Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther.” Internet Archive. 24 February 2012 <http://www.archive.org/details/hereistandalifeo005163mbp>.

Dunstan, J. Leslie. Protestantism. New York: George Brazillier, 1961.

IMDB. Luther (2003). 24 February 2012 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309820/>.

Kent, John. “The Protestant Reformation.” The Concise Encylopaedia of Living Faiths. Ed. Robert Charles Zaehner. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959.

Molloy, Michael. Experiencing the World’s Religions: Tradition, Challenge, and Change. Fifth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Shlain, Leonard. The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. New York: The Penguin Group, 1998.

Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.

Tillich, Paul. A History of Christan Thought. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968.

Wikipedia. “Luther (2003 film).” Wikipedia. 20 February 2012. 24 February 2012 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_%282003_film%29>.

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The present-day life of my family in Hawaii, which includes dozens of part-native as well as non-native people I’m related to through my Honolulu-born father, is anchored in the bedrock of an ancient Hawaiian principle: ‘ohana.  In English, ‘ohana is usually translated as roughly equivalent to the word, “family.”  Our typical American usage of the word “family” might bring up images of the traditional family structure, including a mother, a father, children, perhaps some grandparents, uncles and aunts, and cousins.  Blood ties generally define the relationship; members might live far away from one another or rarely even meet.  In Hawaii, however, the word ‘ohana is rooted in the ancient tradition that bonded individuals who were related to each other “by blood, marriage, sentiment, or adoption” (Kalei), and who lived in the same area of land, or “’aina.”  The members of the ‘ohana were deeply interconnected with each other, with their ‘aina, their ancestors, and their deities, sharing food and resources freely in the manner that we know today as “aloha spirit.”

The indigenous culture of Hawaii held this interconnectedness as a fact of life across both the material and immaterial realms.  “Aumakua” was the world of spiritual beings, including gods, ancestral spirits, and totemic creatures such as sharks.  All the beings of aumakua were considered integral to the web of life.  All things in the natural world, including animals, plants, rainbows, and even rocks were held to have an inner spirit, a spark of life force or “mana,” and were also viewed as an integral part of the whole.  “There was no clear division in the Polynesian mind between man, the spirit world, and the natural environment” (Westervelt).  Hawaiians thus felt a deep responsibility and sense of stewardship for the land and its creatures.  The native Hawaiian worldview, called “lokahi,” is of balance and harmony between humans, nature, and the spirit world.  For a person to be happy and healthy, he must be in harmonious balance with all things:  “Aloha ‘aina, aloha ke akua, aloha kekahi a kekahi” (love and respect the land, love and honor God, love and look after one another…)” (McGregor).  Vestiges of this attention to maintaining harmony can be seen today in the offerings of flowers, plants, and food at Hawaii’s ancient “heiau,” or religious temple sites.  Even now, lying largely abandoned and in ruins, the heiau are still held as sacred and are visited regularly by local people giving small offerings to amaukua.

In addition to offerings to the spirit world, cultural taboos, called “kapu,” helped maintain the harmony and balance of the interconnected world of native Hawaiians.  Kapu governed behavior and assured that the sacred life force of all things, their mana, was protected from misdeed or error.  Punishment for trespassing on mana could be severe, even death, for example in the case of a commoner’s shadow falling across an “ali’i,” or person of royalty (Westervelt).

In my Hawaiian family today, and in Hawaiian culture in general, the understanding of “‘ohana” has evolved to include not just one’s local family, but all of one’s extended family—whether related by blood or not—and even the overarching ideal of the human family as a whole.  Guests are honored and treated with respect and astounding generosity, demonstrating the aloha spirit reaching from ancient times into modern life and welcoming the visitor into ‘ohana.  The children, for example, of my Hawaiian friends (and even friends of those friends who I’ve just met), welcome and offer me respectful greetings as “Auntie,” no matter that I’m a virtual stranger.

Similarly undergoing an evolution of understanding, the concept of ‘aina, the ‘ohana’s revered and beloved land, has come to express the Hawaiians’ reverence for their island home as a whole rather than a particular locale (McGregor).  The Kumupilo, a Hawaiian creation chant translated into English by Queen Lili’uokalani while she remained under house arrest in Iolani Palace in Honolulu in the late 1800’s, cries, “The wonder of the land, / Yes! of the land” (Lili’uokalani).  ‘Aina has come to symbolize that passionate sentiment of care and reverence for all Hawaii by her people.

Modern Hawaiians are understandably protective, sometimes fiercely so, of their land and their spiritual and cultural heritage, which was so devastatingly impacted by the arrival of Europeans bent on commerce and religious conversion.  However, if you visit any of my family in Hawaii, don’t worry about getting the cold shoulder.  Just tell them you’re my friend, and I promise you’ll be showered with aloha spirit and warmly welcomed into the ‘ohana.

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Works Cited

Kalei, Kalikiano. “Ohana: The Matrix of Hawaiian Culture.” 24 January 2008. 29 January 2012 <http://www.authorsden.com/categories/article_top.asp?catid=23&id=36264>.

Lili’uokalani, Queen of Hawaii. “The Kumulipo.” 1897. Sacred-Texts.com. 4 February 2012 <http://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/lku/index.htm>.

McGregor, Davianna. Nā Kua’āina: Living Hawaiian Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007.

Westervelt, William D. Hawaiian Historical Legends. Kindle. Rutland: Tuttle Publishing, 15 December 1989.

My favorite author, Tom Robbins, was my favorite author even before he wrote my favorite novel of all time.  My copies of Robbins’ first three books, Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Still Life with Woodpecker (especially the latter) were tattered and dog-eared with repeated readings long before I got my hands on Jitterbug Perfume.  It was 1985, and I was a twenty-one year old single mom, coping with a new baby and a new job and muddling my way through life.  Jitterbug Perfume was my ticket to a fantastical rocket-ride of metaphorical madness, spiritual surmising, and time-skipping adventure, and I loved it utterly.  My rebellious side adored Robbins’ habit of taking liberties with the English language that would undoubtedly be frowned upon in polite society.  While stretching the art of the metaphor to ridiculous lengths at every turn, Robbins coins new words to suit his language-twisting purposes and pursues (seeming) tangents and (apparently) unnecessary asides till the reader is all a-tangle in his fanciful, sermonistic, even cartoonish prose, only to tie up every crazily flapping loose end in a manner that somehow includes both the delicious itch of tantalization and the sweet release of complete satisfaction (this is the most Robbins-esque sentence in this paragraph, by the way).  Upon reaching the end of Jitterbug Perfume, I burst into tears and immediately flipped back to the beginning and started over.  Since those first back-to-back readings, I have read the book over and over, including once aloud, cover to cover, to my sweetheart.  I never tire of the story, which is densely plotted across time (from the days when the earth was flat to nine o’clock tonight, Paris time) and space (from ancient Bohemia and the Far East to present-day Seattle, New Orleans, and the aforementioned Paris).  Lyrical, silly, romantic, epic, lusty, and illuminating, Jitterbug Perfume never fails to delight and inspire me.  The book blew my burdened, restless young mind open to the extreme possibilities of writing, transforming the art of writing and the English language itself into something decidedly un-boring and sexy in my eyes.  I often wonder if another book will ever come along to tickle and twist and educate my mind as much as Jitterbug Perfume.  Perhaps one day the right book will come along at the right time and once again blow my skull delightfully apart, dethroning Mr. Robbins as my favorite author and deepest influence of all time.  I sort of hope so… and sort of not.

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The elfin, middle-aged woman is curled into a fetal ball on the ground, her T-shirt pulled over her head to protect her eyes and face while a ferocious sandstorm painfully scours her slender limbs.  It’s the first hour of Sharon Armstrong’s first time attending Burning Man, the social and artistic experiment held each August in an immense desert valley in Nevada.  The scorching, utterly flat plain of the valley is known as “the playa.” Today, apparently, the playa wants to play rough.

“I’d just arrived,” Sharon Armstrong, local artist, clinical psychologist and community activist remembers.  “I walked out on the playa just to kinda see what in the world is this?  What am I here for?  A terrible sandstorm blew up and it was hotter than hell.  I think I had on some cutoffs and a T-shirt.  I felt like my skin was being sandblasted.”  Her eyes widen behind her silver-rimmed glasses, marveling at the memory,  “I could see nothing.  I could remember reading something in their survival manual that, if you can’t get to a safe place, close your eyes and get down.  So I just hit the ground, put my shirt up over my head and waited.”

The few people passing by in the storm were far more sensibly outfitted than she for life in Black Rock City, the temporary metropolis built by Burning Man attendees.  Wearing protective clothing and eye goggles, a few of them checked on Sharon’s condition before fading into the hammering, sand-saturated gale.  Radical self-reliance is a key principle at Burning Man, but so is interdependence and community.  “One guy stopped, and I knew it was a guy from his voice, and he said, ‘Are you okay?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’  He took off his shirt, put it over me and rode off.  I will never know who it was.”

Since that first experience five years ago, Sharon has returned to Burning Man annually.  Each year, she has made a sculptural installation, one conceived and executed to fit that year’s Burning Man theme.  Normally, Sharon waits till the theme is announced to work on her piece for the event.

This year is different.  Sharon knew what this year’s installation would be before the Burning Man crew made their theme public.  An experience, even more dramatic than her sandblasting on the playa that first year, had taken place in another desert the previous summer.  The experience changed her utterly and, for Sharon, made the subject of her next installation a foregone conclusion.

“It was huge,” Sharon says of the life-altering impact of the thirteen-day, guided workshop held in the heat-shimmering, surreally-sculpted landscape of the Joshua Tree wilderness in Southern California.  For two weeks, with only a short, one-day break, Sharon and the other participants worked through a rigorous program exploring a demanding model of energy work.  She describes the intensity—physical, emotional and spiritual—of her time learning to open blocked energy in the body.

“It’s not massage.  It’s a dance between the practitioner and the receiver,” Sharon explains, but she doesn’t have many words to corral the experience.  And she doesn’t want to.  Asked to describe the experience and its effects more definitively, she answers firmly and unselfconsciously, “I don’t know.”  The experience and its repercussions in her life are only beginning to unfold, and she prefers not to claim she understands.  “Less knowing and more trusting,” she says, then amending, “Trusting isn’t the best word.  Just being alive in the present moment.”

Two weeks before going to Joshua Tree, Sharon had read about the concept of initiation in indigenous cultures, and was deeply moved by the idea’s wisdom and usefulness.  Sharon has identified her experience in the Joshua Tree desert as a powerful initiation, one that, over a year later, she is still processing and integrating into her life and sense of self.

“There are three stages of initiation,” Sharon explains, a silver ring flashing as she counts them off on her fingers.  “Separation, ordeal, and homecoming.”  The series of hoops in her ears is also silver, and join with her silver glasses, a tiny stud glinting in one nostril, and her wild cloud of graying hair to form a pleasing, silvered whole.  “As a psychologist, I see it as such an elegant model for healing.  And not healing in the western sense of take a pill and you’ll feel better, or do this behavioral intervention and you’ll feel better.  It’s really a model for the deep healing that can happen, whatever the modality.”

Sharon notes that western cultures lack a formal set of big, risky rituals to mark important life transitions and nurture our journey to becoming fully conscious human beings—sometimes through brushes with danger and even mortality.  For Sharon, a tiny, wiry woman making art on an enormous scale, going into the creative wilderness to conceive a piece of art, then struggling passionately with all her diminutive might to bring the piece into physical being, and finally completing and sharing the finished art with the world is in itself an initiation process.  Her installation for this year’s Burning Man is a case in point.

The three, six-foot-tall figures of the sculpture barely fit in Sharon’s crowded studio, though as of yet they are only one-third scale models.  The evolutionary stages of the installation are in evidence all around.  On one wall is pinned an enchanting, five-foot-long drawing of one of the “dust dancers,” as Sharon terms the swirling female figures that make up one of the three pieces of the sculpture.  The drawing is expressed in the simplest of curves and with minimal detail, but the overall shape is of swirling, urgent, utterly feminine energy and motion.  On the table is a six-inch, free-standing, three-dimensional construction of several paper dust dancers.  Sharon calls these small, paper test sculptures “three-D drawings.”  They are Sharon’s initial experiment to discover how the flat medium of the sketched figures will function when enlarged and transferred to the curved surfaces of her inventory of huge, industrial paperboard, cylindrical building forms that she will use to fabricate the final sculptures.  The little figure is like a drinking glass stuffed with jubilant paper-dolls curled into semi-cylindrical shapes.  On the studio’s small, open floor space stands the full-color, six-foot version of the dust dancer piece along with its two companion pieces.  On the four-by-ten foot table in the middle of the studio lie sheets of clear, heavy plastic.  Grids at full scale have been marked on on the plastic sheets to facilitate the transfer of the designs onto the industrial cylinders.  A skill saw sits on the table, authoritatively anchoring one of the gridded plastic sheets, on which is sketched the fierce-looking head of a bird.

Sharon, at sixty-six possessed of a vibrant, elf-dancer physicality, slips through the narrow gaps between the six-foot models with practiced, light-footed grace.  She describes the laborious process of creating what will ultimately be a sixteen-foot dust dancer piece in tans and russets, a sixteen-foot-tall dolphin piece, gracefully leaping in bluish ocean hues, and a twenty-foot-tall phoenix, wings exploding up toward flight in a rainbow of fiery colors.  Each piece will sit in the center of one of three conjoined labyrinths she will construct on the playa this August.  Air, water, and fire.  “And the playa will be earth,” she says, “when the installation is in place.”

Sharon calls the piece, born from her Joshua Tree experience, “Initiation.”  She seems tickled but not terribly surprised that, shortly after she conceived the piece and settled on its name, the Burning Man staff announced their theme: Rites of Passage.

“Oh, hah!  I love synchronicities,” her head, topped with its cloud of salt-and-pepper curls apparently not subject to the laws of gravity, rocks back with pleasure.  “To me it’s just what we call Spirit playing with us.  It’s a mutual dance.”

Part ageless faerie dancer, herself, and part graying wise-woman, Sharon is a petite package of passion vibrating with intelligent, creative drive.  Though she is only partway through her ordeal of bringing the ambitious “Initiation” installation into being, one is left with little doubt that her vision will be realized, another initiation brought full circle from separation, through ordeal, and finally to homecoming.

For Sharon, the stages of initiation are also embodied in Burning Man itself.  Her mouth stretches into a grin, considering this parallel.  “Oh yeah, it’s that,” her deep chuckle bubbles heartily.  “It’s the separation from ordinary life.  The ordeal is getting there and being there.  And Burning Man itself is also the homecoming.”  Stirred by memory, Sharon’s eyes well, a tear streaking the softness of her cheek.  She doesn’t resist, letting the emotion move through her.  Her eyes narrow, seeming to focus on a distant point, perhaps surveying an immense, faraway desert in her mind’s eye.  “When you come in,” she says softly, “Someone will inevitably say, ‘Hey, welcome home.’”

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More information about my lovely, amazing friend Sharon and her work can be found here.

Conal and I tried sleeping outside once before.  It was a few weeks ago during the last full moon.  Seemed like a good idea at the time, but the experience was rather less than glorious.  The bright moonlight beaming in our eyes made sleep a challenge.  In addition, it ended up getting pretty darn cold that night.  We abandoned our inflatable-bed-ship sometime in the middle of the night and retreated to the house, snuggling under our cozy comforter indoors with great relief.

This time around there was no moon whatsoever, only stars, splashed across the night in exuberant, sparkly abundance.  I watched, fascinated and wide-eyed, trying to take in the whole scene from horizon to horizon, and not really succeeding.  It was a lot of sky.  The night was lovely and warm, a welcome coolness following on the heels of a day that had reached 106 degrees in the shade.

I set up our two large air beds on the north deck, complete with clean sheets and blankets and pillows from my stash of comfies in the hall closet.  We were going all out in the comfort area, I decided.  I made sure I had my eye drops (since I was sleeping in my contacts in order to fully enjoy the starshow), water bottle, and flashlight next to the bed.  I kept my wristwatch on, since I knew I’d be curious about the time if I woke up periodically.  I made sure the guys were comfy, too.  Conal and I cuddled together into our nest of blankets, and Joe laid himself out on top of his mattress a few feet away, choosing to forgo the covers in favor of full-body breeze enjoyment.

Wisps of heat laced the delicate wind, as soft and warm as kitten fur and perfumed with the fragrance of sun-baked forest.  Unseen small creatures rustled here and there on the hillside, accompanying the gentle wind-rustling of the trees.  I fervently hoped the skunk I saw the other evening was not among the nearest rustle-makers, but mostly enjoyed imagining who might be going about their business out there beyond the edge of the deck.

I did not so much enjoy the small bats flip-fluttering about just above our heads.  One kept buzzing us so closely I instinctively pulled the covers up to my eyeballs, keeping a wary eye on him.  I really am glad for the helpful bats, munching away on mosquitos and other bitey bugs, and yet they still give me a chill with their meaty flapping and squeaking.  Thankfully, no leathery face-brushings occurred before the bats moved on.

The three of us, as chatty as we normally are, barely spoke after bedtime beyond the occasional soft exclamations of wonder and sighs of happiness.  I guess we didn’t want to talk over the show.  Conal was soon sleeping peacefully next to me, his hand curled around mine.  I could tell Joe was still awake over on his air bed, but talking didn’t seem very necessary.

Hours went by.  The Milky Way slid westward as the night went on, arched in a majestic, mottled stripe from north to south.  The blinking red and white lights of tiny, distant jets inched along overhead in an eastbound flight path one after another, perhaps from the Bay Area. The faint roar of their engines was almost entirely muted by distance and reached us long after their light.  I saw several falling stars zip across the sky, almost faster than I could track.  Faint specks of light I guessed to be satellites were much harder to spot, and slower.

Sometime around eleven-thirty, a very bright object began to climb in the southeastern sky.  I am terribly lacking in astronomical knowledge, so I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you what it was.  Its unwavering character suggested a planet to me.  Maybe I’ll Google it later.  I did very much enjoy watching its strong, steady light, at first peeking out here and there through the oaks on the horizon, then radiating out in full glow once it made it into clear sky.

The calls of a hundred unknown night things were charmingly underscored by the Murray Creek Cricket Chorus, in fine form as usual on a summer night.  I drifted in and out of a light, pleasant sleep, alternating star-staring with snoozing.  After awhile, I noticed myself getting just slightly chilly in my light pj’s, so I tip-toed indoors and put on a sweater and some warm socks, grabbing extra blankets from inside for everybody.  Joe declined, saying he was perfectly comfortable, but Conal, awakened by my movements, accepted the offer of another layer.  I snuggled back down next to him, much more cozy now and starting to feel a deeper sleep coming on.  As I finally allowed consciousness to glide away, I made a mental note to write about the magnificence of choosing to spend and ordinary night in an extraordinary manner.  Who knows how the universe might shift with the simple act of shifting of one’s bed under the vault of heaven?

The next thing I knew, I woke to a lightening sky feathered with wispy clouds building up toward the east.  “August clouds,” Conal’s mom Ann called them yesterday, remarking on their early debut this year.  A perfect crescent moon, only just risen, shimmered whitely through the sunrise-pinked clouds.  My watch showed it to be shortly after five.  I felt peaceful and happy.

We’ve got three inflatable beds.  We’re thinking we should have a few more on hand.  We imagine regular group camp outs on the deck.  Everybody ought to get the chance to hang out with this sky, to find out if their universe might shift.  Wanna come?

Recently I attended a drawing workshop at The Mercantile in Angels Camp.  I’ve been drawing my whole life, but no so much recently.  I miss it, and jumped at the chance to get back into that juicy creative flow.  The workshop, hosted by local artist Paul Herek, was great fun and I hope the experience inspires me to do more.

Here is the sketch I did in the one-hour session.  This is Niki Robison, who manages The Merc, and may I say is a lovely human being, inside and out.

Niki sat with perfect stillness and patience while we all stared at her and sketched, even though she got roped into the deal kind of last minute.  Paul hadn’t planned on having a model, but Niki graciously allowed us to use her on a spur of the moment request.  I’m pleased with the likeness, and Niki told me she liked it, too.

The workshop was Paul’s first at The Merc.  He asked those of us in attendance if we’d like him to do more events, suggesting painting, additional drawing in various media, stained glass, and sculpture.  I said, “Yes, yes, yes, YES!”  I’m pretty much thrilled at the prospect of doing some new creative work.  Plus, I think Paul is pretty much the bees knees, so I’m thinkin’ I’ll be doing more of his classes here soon.

Conal, Ann, and I watched the inauguration this morning.  Never in my life have I seen anything like the throngs of celebrating citizens amassed to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office in the freezing temperatures of a Janurary day in Washington D.C.  And rarely before this past year have I felt cause to actually care about anything to do with politics and government.  Well, other than to be grouchy, sad, discouraged or just plain mad—or all that at the same time.  I know I’ve got lots of company, and I’m filled with optimism and hope for our country.

And mischief, as usual.

Make your own Obama poster here.  Be sure to check out the galleries, especially the top rated submissions.

I’ve noticed that my public online writing energy has veered ever further away from blogging and into the developing world of social networking tools.  Blogging for me has usually meant a fairly extended solitary exercise of crafting an article (since I’m kind of picky about what and how I write), perhaps working on an image to include, then posting the article and maybe getting a comment or two.  Or not.  Even if I make the effort to eyeball my site statistics, I don’t really have an intimate sense of who’s visiting.  Now that I think about it, it’s about as enticing as junior high school homework assignment.  Unless there is something I’m hankering to write about just to get it off my chest, blogging has lately become a rare choice.  Apparently, what I’m after is a more lively connection and engagement with the world via online resources.  Hey, it only makes sense, since I live in the middle of nowhere.

Truth is, blogging is simply not as much fun for me as jumping in the chaotic fray of Twitter and Facebook, especially.  FriendFeed is cool, though it hasn’t really grabbed me as of yet.  LinkedIn has been excellent to keep in touch with professional contacts, but again, not quite as enticing on a daily basis.

In my sphere of social networks online I can connect with colleagues, friends, and family (and interesting strangers) all over the world in short order.  I’ve gotten back in touch with many high school classmates, former coworkers, and faraway relatives, and been able to enjoy their updates and pictures and even videos (For free.  Bite me, Classmates.com).

My mom and my daughter are both active on Facebook.  Yep, three generations.  My daughter is also pregnant with her first child, due this summer.  Will we soon have four Facebook generations?  Hah!  Hey, who knows what the brave new world of online socializing has in store for us.  My mom and uncle are also on Twitter now, which I think is totally awesome.

Twitter just got even more fun after I installed the Twitter client twhirl.  twhirl allows me to monitor the twitterverse in a small window on my desktop in close to real time, rather than manually following and refreshing the feed in a Firefox tab.  Just this evening, I read a tweet (the rather charming term for a Twitter entry) by a Seattle journalist announcing that it was snowing again.  I quickly IM’d my daughter, who lives in Seattle, and we had this hilarious exchange:

January 4  6:33:39 PM Holly: you got snow?
January 4  6:33:51 PM Tasha: snow???
January 4  6:33:56 PM Tasha: *looks outside*
January 4  6:34:05 PM Holly: gma’s got snow
January 4  6:34:21 PM Tasha: OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE IT
January 4  6:34:44 PM Holly: IS IT????!!!
January 4  6:35:20 PM Tasha: There’s an inch
January 4  6:35:23 PM Tasha: what the HECK

That kid cracks me up.  To be fair, she had been resting this afternoon, being a very sleepy pregnant person, but still.  I thought it was pretty cute and funny, and also interesting to note how fast news travels in this new world of online information sharing.

Now, if we can just upgrade the internet service here in our mountain hideaway from satellite (terrible latency issue and a tight bandwidth limit) to a fast, robust system based on Planet Earth, I’d be all over Skype video-calling and even more connected.  I’m sure my baby nephew in San Diego would enjoy having his auntie read him stories, for example.  Ah well, we’re keeping an eye out for developments in rural internet service, too.

Bottom line, I know I’ve said a couple times I’d blog more, but I think maybe I was lying.  At least for now.  I might get a wild hair and blog about some things, but till then you can catch up with what I’m really up to via my accounts on Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  You’ll need accounts yourself to see the good stuff.

See you in the social internetosphere!

Then there’s the part where I always get a little grouchy around my birthday (December 22nd), which is generally overwhelmed by Christmas.  I usually put on a brave act of not caring, but it actually does bum me out sometimes.  Uh oh, I’ve outed myself!  All you other Christmas kids out there will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Back at home in the evening, I gravitated toward a bit of relative solitude, hanging out with my laptop in the rocking chair in the living room, enjoying the Christmas tree and the warm fire in the woodstove while Conal and Patrick spent time on their computers in the office at the other end of the house.

I’ve been very happy lately, contented and peaceful in my life.  The depth of my reaction to the collision of physical, mental, and emotional upheaval of the day surprised me.  Conal came out and checked in with me at one point, and I shared all this with him.  Oh, except for the birthday thing.  That didn’t occur to me till just now.  He thanked me for letting him know, and went back to the office since I wasn’t at the point of wanting any help.  I enjoyed his asking, and getting a little clearer on what was stirring in me, but I wasn’t ready to exit that introspective space yet.

The evening wore on into night, and I realized I was not getting sleepy.  Rather than toss and turn in bed and disturb Conal’s rest, I stayed up playing with my laptop in the rocking chair.  I caught up on email, read blogs, researched some products.  I listened to my collection of Christmas music and experimented with new software.  I watched part of a movie.  Have I mentioned in the last five minutes how much I love my new Mac?  Sigh.

A Twitter friend tweeted about this being the time of the longest night, and I was struck by the irony of my wakefulness near the turning of the year, when the dark hours stretch their longest.  What a long night to endure without sleep!  Anyway, the hours rolled on by.

I finally started feeling a tiny bit sleepy sometime around 1:30 a.m. and went off to bed.  Getting my eyes to stay shut required a bit of reading with my tiny booklight, but, snuggled into the cozy warmth, finally I fell asleep.

Perhaps an hour later, the discomfort of a developing UTI woke me up.  (Apologies for a tmi violation, but I guess I’m hankering to have the full scope of the night’s weirdness held and heard.  Proceed at your own risk.)  Four quickly successive trips to the bathroom later, I realized I was again rather wide awake, and too uncomfortable to sleep.  Perhaps physical stress and other factors triggered the episode, but whatever, I was desperate for some relief.  Jumping in and out of bed was certainly not going to help Conal get a good night’s rest, either.  Back out to the lappy and the rocking chair.  Surfing the net and rocking, hmm, surely there is some exceptionally clever metaphor in there somewhere…

I searched the Internet for information on home remedies.  Baking soda in water; apple cider vinegar in warm water with honey; cranberry juice; over the course of the next hour or so, I did them all.  Btw, drinking vinegar, even diluted and sweetened with honey, eeeww.  I also took a cranberry tablet and drank tons of water.  Anything, please!  Just make this stop!

Thankfully, I started feeling better pretty quickly, although you don’t want to know about the vinegar-flavored belching and impressive stomach gurgling that the baking soda water caused.  Gross, but totally worth getting some relief!  However, though I was feeling better better physically, I still didn’t think I’d sleep if I went to bed.  Good thing my friend the Mac was happy to stay up and keep me company.

Pat, Mr. Night Owl, was still up, putting together the new office chair we brought home for him.  After he had finished, he rolled it back into the office to give it a test run.  Test apparently successful.  Even he eventually went to bed, while I continued to rock and think and drink cranberry juice and play with the Mac.  Night waned toward early morning, but it was still perfectly dark.  The Christmas tree remained cheerfully on duty, doing its pretty, twinkly thing.  A gentle rain began to fall, water drip, drip, dripping from the eaves and quietly gurgling in the downspouts.  I felt a little better.  A bit sleepy, even.  The time was 4:38 a.m.

I oh-so-carefully slipped into bed, not wanting to wake Conal.  I’d left the heat pad on low, so the covers were already blissfully warm and welcoming.  In a few minutes, I was asleep.

This morning, it is a dark and rainy day, but Conal has the fire roaring again and I don’t mind.  I remember that every drop of rain is a blessing in this dry country.  Not feeling very ambitious, not to mention still a little fragile, I’m back in the rocking chair with the lappy. Writing it all down is such wonderful therapy!

I survived my long night and lived to tell the tale.  Not only that, telling the tale helps shake off the darkness.  Bless you for hearing it.  Tonight, the solstice brings with it the truly longest night of year.  I bet it won’t seem nearly as long as last night.