Singing Deer Healing

Deep nature connection, nourishing our true selves and our communities by way of nature, and adventuring in nature with our imaginations, curiosity, and creativity has long been my passion, and has mingled in numerous ways in my harp playing, writing, illustration, healing artistry, and workshops. This Sunday I’ll be offering harp and story at an event that mixes much of the above for me!

Please join me on a little journey ….

In 2007 a group of parents banded together to establish program of deep nature connection for kids. They created a vision and mission for the program — “to ignite relationships between the natural world, self, and community”, hiring some amazing instructors, and aimed to never turn anyone away from any of its offerings due to lack of funds. I was one of these founding parents, and helped craft the vision of what was to become the Vashon Wilderness Program. You can read our full history and legacy here. I resumed membership of the VWP Board last year.

In our program, kids spend their day learning just like our ancestors did – engaging all of their senses to co-create a living ecology for them to love and sustain. With Nature as the living teacher, mentors subtly stretch student’s awareness making learning invisible, effective, fun, healing and empowering.

I’m amazed and delighted that VWP has held to its commitment to support any family who needed assistance in meeting tuition, by awarding almost $50,000 in scholarships to date! This year we saw a dramatic increase in requests for support. As VWP grows, we are holding true to our mission – to give the gift of nature to as many kids as we can.

We are poised to mentor more than 185 youth this year. Will you help us make sure that everyone who wants to participate is given a chance to do so?

Please join us for tales and free delicious treats to delight your senses at our 5th Annual Storytelling Festival. Hear some great local storytellers: Steffon Moody, Mik Kuhlman, Lauretta Hyde, Steve Jones, Jane Valencia, Cyndi O’Brien & more
I’m honored to be offering story and harp at this event!

Here are the details:
February 5th from 4-6pm at the Vashon United Methodist Church. $7 individuals, $20 families. Tickets available at Vashon Bookshop.

If you can’t make the Festival (obviously, many of you reading this can’t possibly get over here!), please consider making a donation to the Vashon Wilderness scholarship fund by way of its website, or by mailing a check to:

Vashon Wilderness Program
PO Box 712
Vashon, Washington 98070

The Vashon Wilderness Program is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Any amount, small or large, is greatly appreciated!

Help us in our mission to leave no child left inside!

~ thank you!
Jane

Vashon Wilderness Program Annual Storytelling Festival

I’m going to be leading a book group starting in Feb.  Here are the details.  If you’re on the island or in the area, please join me!

Nature And The Human Soul ~ Book Group

Jane Valencia of WiseChildLearning.org and your fellow community member
will be your guide!

3rd Wednesday each month – Feb through Oct, 5:30-7:30pm
Location: TBA
First mtg: Feb. 15 – Chapters 1-3
Info/to join in:   Contact Jane

This book, Nature And The Human Soul, by Depth psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin introduces a model that maps how fully and creatively we can mature when soul and wild nature guide us. The SoulCentric Developmental Wheel offers a hopeful understanding of how we as humans best thrive that we can apply to nurturing our children, families, and communities, and to understanding the yearnings that move through our own lives.

This book is quite a tome, and not the easiest read!  If you find yourself going cross-eyed, or just not finding the time to read the section we’ll be discussing, please come anyway.  It is my intent that you won’t actually have to read the book to gain a visceral understanding of its concepts and immediately begin applying its lens to aspects of your life (if you’d like to do so!).

Our time on this journey will include:

~ presenting a “cliff notes” version of the month’s reading (50-70 pages
distilled to a 10 min. telling — woo hoo!)

~ reading aloud passages that speak to us in some way (whether in revelation or confusion!), plus space for silent reflection  (kind of a “leccio divina” approach to book reading!)

~ discussion

~ activities that connect with some of the concepts of the reading, including presenting some particularly appropriate nature-and-community “core” routines to play with at home

~ some questions for reflection at home that you can journal about, muse over, or just have available should you want them

~ and probably more!

Most of all, my hope is that this book group will be exciting, intriguing, and fun! I’m curious to see what happens when we begin sharing a perception of this kind of blueprint for whole human–and community–development.  Where do we feel it resonates powerfully for us (or does it?). Where do we disagree with it?  What are we willing to take of it and live in our own lives (and how might we easefully, naturally do so), and what just doesn’t really make sense to us?  Where is whole nature alive and well (even if hidden) in our extended families, communities, and surrounding world already?

I have no doubt that you’ll have many thoughts, wonderings, and observations of your own!

I hope you’ll join in the journey!

Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World
by Bill Plotkin

Yes, I am an affiliate of Powell’s Books ~ an amazing independent bookshop.  I’m providing these links for convenience.  I do get a small percentage from each book sale through links on this site.  ~ Cheers, Jane

So it’s Christmas Eve, and I have a yearning to attend a midnight mass … but in thinking this urge through I realize that I have no desire to attend a Catholic mass or any other church service. I grew up Catholic, and my medieval mind has a yearning for something like Gregorian chant … but my wild heart yearns for the forest.

Yes, I may head out into the woods at Midnight, light a candle, sing and improvise a few songs under this dark night (it being the New Moon, there will be no moon in the sky; it being cloudy today, stars are not likely to be here either). But what sparked into my heart was an old idea of mine, newly remembered: to create a “Forest Mass” — ignited by Celtic soul and sprinklings of song and poetic word, and the wisdom of the trees, stars, earth, the Light that returns (harp too!).

So this is my quest for the next year (in addition to completing my novel “Because Of The Red Fox”) — to discover and create this Forest Mass, a quiet song and celebration woven of the trees and earth, the stars and true things. Breathed in by dreams.

I’ll share my journey with you here. Please join me.

And merry everything to you, in this Season of Miracles. May you know blessings and beauty, and the holy light that burns in your heart!

Snow Forest - photo by Jane Valencia