It’s been a long time since I’ve posted! Here’s a brief update on other writing I’ve been doing.

I’m finishing a draft of a children’s fantasy novel called Because Of The Red Fox, and am posting chapters of this work-in-progress on my kids blog, FoxTales. Characters from the book speak about what’s happening in the novel, as well as comment on the goings-on in their lives on an island called Yonder. I invite you to check it, and share it with the kids in your life!

My website Wise Child Learning is devoted to herbal learning and nature’s magic adventures for kids of all ages. I’m posting about plants, my own herbal adventures, sharing herbs and nature with kids, and more on the blog there. If you’re at all interested, check that out too!

… And now, Prayer- Book Making:

Another project that’s up are Prayer-Book Making  workshops that I am presenting with book making artist Julie Shannon.

As part of that project, I’ve decided to dive into an experiment in prayer-book making, which I’ve begun right on this blog.   Prayer-book making can look and feel like anything with which you might experiment with creatively, from your heart.  It is an expression of your journey with the Sacred, and how that looks and feels in your life.  Really, (I’ll repeat!) that can be expressed in anyway you like–as a scrapbook, a journal, a collection of quotes, photos of loved ones, some mix of all of those or none of them!

In upcoming posts I’ll share some past prayer-books I’ve created, and glimpses of prayer-books that speak to me.  But today I’ll just start by inviting you to view my new prayer-book, a web-prayer-book,which I’m calling Jane’s Book Of Deer.

Please don’t think that this web-book is any kind of expression of “how” one should create a prayer-book! It absolutely isn’t. But what I hope it does is invite you to view your life, your imagination, your heart,  through the lens of the Sacred–something more than yourself, however you experience that more/beyond/forever-deepening.

I invite you to step into your conversation with the miracle of existence, and begin crafting your own prayer-book, a whirl of that magic, in whatever form flows from your being. A garden can be a prayer-book. So can a dance. Our lives are prayer-books. How do we celebrate and honor this conversation with the Divine, the Universe, the beyond-ourselves that lies within and around us and includes us? Let your prayer-book be that  curious wandering and wondering!

Prayer Book - art by Jane Valencia (c) 2003

Teeny tiny whorls of Cleavers (but they have been teeny tiny all winter)

Child-nettles flinging upward — I swear, growing an inch a day!

Long fingers of yellow-green starred with purple-red catkins, a dangle of worms from — which tree? A nibble reveals that immediate dryness–the complete astringency of Red Alder. A quick check on friend Web confirms what my taste buds and body already know.

Oh, and the resinous Cottonwood buds! The windstorm of a few days ago helps me here. So easy to walk along the road and begin this year’s harvest, walking a harvest with friends that took place four–or is it now five?–years ago.

I’m waking up with the land, stretching my arms after a long sleep punctuated by fevered dreams, restless awakenings, sun-dapple imaginings.

As I drive down the long stretch of Cove Road, as straight and tall and probably in some form, just as old
as the Western Red Cedar I leaned against only minutes before, I feel the strong straight connection,

old home with new

It’s like picking up that book once more, finding my place, taking up the threads of story that have crisscrossed and wandered and played about in the wind. The plants and I make medicine.

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

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

Years later, when I’d begun to celebrate the Winter Solstice, and was performing Celtic Christmas concerts, I discovered the poem below, written by Susan Cooper for (I believe) The Christmas Revels, a magnificent community-based production that celebrates the ancient and mythic roots of many of the season’s folk traditions.   I love this poem, and hope you enjoy it too!

Loom Of Trees - photo by Jane Valencia

The Shortest Day

by Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.

But now in the darkening season, the time of dreaming, and settling into the roots and stones of nature and our collective nature as humans responding to the turning of the year, I’m just filled with the certainty and surrender that I may as well give into my own nature!

Since I was a child I’ve been fascinated by deer.   I read every piece of fiction I could get my hands on about deer, and every bit of fact too.  I read Bambi by Felix Salten (the book that inspired the Disney movie) literally 50 times.  This book was no cartoon depiction of deer–it was a rich tale by a man who clearly spent a great deal of time in nature, observing wildlife and the ways of animals.  The book Bambi became my bible, my threshold into the Ways of Deer.  But it might as well have been about the Ways of We Humans as creatures of nature, a journey into our own original ways  of being.

These ways  include moving silently through the forest, paying attention to the birds and other animals who are letting you know all the time what is actually happening in the landscape. These ways include knowing about herbs and trees and how they might be food or medicine.  These ways are about listening to your intuition, your gut instinct, and the perils of ignoring the information that is available to you in many forms at any time.

This blog is about deepening into your true nature, about following your “original instructions” — the soul design woven within you, guiding your every step. It’s about deepening your perceptions, your awareness of yourself as interwoven with nature’s magic.  It is about learning and relearning life ways that are close to the earth, that restore our spirits and bodies and fuel our hearts, and help us to connect with one another.  It’s about perceiving the wise village, the ancient teachings, the animal ways, and deep song that moves through our lives, even in our confusing and chaotic modern day world.  It is about helping you discover your unique creative healing magic and offering it in practical down-to-earth ways in your daily life, in your homes, and in your communities.

I invite you to join me in the forest.  And if any of what I write resonates with you, or inspires you in your thinking and path or in anything else, please comment or ask questions.   I’ll point out trails and meanders that are interesting to me, but I’m far more likely to head further into the foliage if I know someone else is interested in adventuring there too.

As always, I encourage you to share your story, your medicine ways. Does a particular animal call to you?  How has it whispered or shouted or dreamed through your life?

Deer Watch - photo by Jane Valencia

If you are at all interested in herbal medicine making, and the traditions of Western Herbalism, and what is alive and hopping in the realm of herbalism, you absolutely must check out this stunning journal Plant Healer Magazine.  The full-color quarterly publication is available in pdfs, and for viewing online.  Also, available to subscribers, is the Plant Healer Annual–over 700 pages in black-and-white of the first four issues of this journal.  I’m honored to have my kids herbal comic, Paloma And Wings, plus accompanying essays  included in both the journal and the Annual!

The following is information about Plant Healer Annual.

Do check it out!

~ yours from greenwood and garden,

Jane

“Plant Healer is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, bar none. It’s right up there with National Geographic in its use of color and natural landscapes and plants. A true feast for the eyes!” -Phyllis Light

Presenting: THE PLANT HEALER ANNUAL BOOK

“The first publication I’ve seen in my 38-year career that captures the wild diversity of herbalism in North America while still reflecting excellence and high-level practice… for the practicing herbalist from entry level to advanced, inclusively.” -Paul Bergner

After its introduction at the Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference, the new 700 page long Plant Healer Annual is now available for general distribution… an 8.5×11” softcover book in affordable Black & White, featuring a complete year’s worth of articles from the tree-free, color digital Plant Healer Magazine for herbal students, practitioners and plant lovers.

Plant Healer Annual features in-depth and highly personal columns and articles on subjects of interest to folks at all stages of learning, students and practitioners alike, including plant profiles, therapeutics, foraging, medicine making, botany, herbs in midwifery, articles for and by kids, marketing, whole foods cooking, herbalist art and culture, philosophies of practice and pertinent issues, exclusive book excerpts and interviews.

Contributors to Plant Healer Annual include many of the leading voices in folk herbalism and wildcrafting, such as Paul Bergner, Matthew Wood, Aviva Romm, Kiva Rose, Phyllis Light, Samuel Thayer, 7Song, Rosemary Gladstar, Susun Weed, Jim McDonald, Kristine Brown, Virginia Adi, Todd Caldecott, Sean Donahue, John Gallagher, Rosalee de la Forêt, Robin Rose Bennett, Ananda Wilson, Christa Sinadinos, Margi Flint, Katja Swift, Dale Bellisfield, Susan Belsinger, Jane Valencia and Henriette Kress.

$39 ea. (plus $15 Shipping) to Plant Healer Subscribers
.  If you’re not already a Subscriber, you can pre-order both the Annual ($39) and a 1 year’s Subscription with bonuses ($57) at the combined discount price of only $77 (plus $15 Shipping) To Order, Go To: www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

“It is a huge honor to be a part of the Plant Healer Magazine, and I absolutely treasure the book. The magazine is an absolute treasure for the herbalist world. The breadth of articles is so diverse and the contemporary nature of the publication creates a unique snapshot in time.” -Rosalee de la Forêt

Just What Do I Mean By “A Field Of Grace”?

A FIELD OF GRACE introduces the concept that our subtle energy field or aura is actually our own personal infusion of divine grace. With prayer,
intention, and techniques that enhance our own innate energy healing abilities, we can serve as conduits for a healing grace.  We can offer a laying on of hands that channels a healing grace that can help another to tune into a balance and harmony of self and of creation.  Results experienced can be:

• reduced pain and anxiety
• accelerated healing
• a deep sense of peace
• clarity of mind
• insights
• deepened connection with the Soul’s voice and with the Divine
• and more

To offer a compassionate touch is a natural human expression.  To offer a laying on of hands — hands that channel a healing energy — is innate
to our humanity.  People have offered hands-on healing in every culture, in every time of human history.  Likely you yourself — knowingly or unknowingly — have offered a healing grace at one time or another to someone else!

Please join me in connecting more intimately with your own “field of grace” — the unique music that is you as a human being, as a citizen of the earth, and an expression of the universe.  As you tune into your own grace, we will open to the infinite grace that is woven in the world around us, and beyond.  Connecting with grace and a healing grace is a prayer, an experience of the sweet and generous miracle and mystery that illuminates our lives and all of reality.  When we serve as conduits for a healing grace we help others — and ourselves — to remember the harmony of which we are at one.  Our bodies, minds, spirits, and souls touch in once again to our own internal harmony and to the larger harmony of all that is — the rightness of who we are.  This is where true healing and restored wholeness begins!

TRY THIS PRACTICE:
Offering A Healing Grace To Whomever And Wherever Needs It Most

1. Step outside, and soak in some aspect of the natural world — the air around you, the sun’s warmth on your skin, the clouds, a tree, birdsong … Just notice the beauty and generosity of the natural world.  Even if you are in an urban area, where plants may be far between, note that the magic of nature surrounds you — is here, no matter where you are (even in a building!).
2. Breathe in, slowly, deeply.  Nature just expresses itself.  A generosity and mystery of giving and receiving, creation and destruction engages with in every layer of nature — from the cosmic, to planetary, to the shifting of the weather, to the life forms and minerals, to microcosmic.  We as human beings are interwoven with this nature.
3. As you breathe in and out, experience the nature’s grace as intermingled with your own breath, your own being.  Experience yourself as an essential part of the weave.  Experience your very cells as intermingled with this larger, more expansive grace that is nature and creation.
4. Now, from this place, engage in prayer.  Start by being thankful — for your life, for the world around you — whatever moves through in the moment.
5. In time, place your hands over your heart.  Take a few breaths, and turn yourself to this prayer:  “Dear God [or however you are comfortable in addressing the Divine or Mystery], May I serve as a channel for your healing grace.  May healing grace flow through me for the greatest healing and the highest good.”
6. Open your arms, let your hands fall open.  Trust that healing grace is moving through you to wherever it will serve the greatest healing and the highest good.  Experience the moment as fully as you can.  Notice anything that comes up for you, or anything in the landscape that happens, or just the feelings within you.  You may feel heat or tingling in your hands, or nothing — there is no right or wrong experience.  Just trust that healing grace is moving through you to wherever it will.
7. When you feel complete, or as if the moment has ended, place your hands on your heart.  Breathe.  Then sweep the air before you from head down to torso in whatever way feels comfortable.  This can be a brief motion or a “dance of the hands” — just whatever feels rightto disperse and clear this intentional connection.
8. Placing your hands back on your heart, thank the Divine for this time, for allowing you to serve as a channel for a healing grace.  End the prayer with a word of closing that is meaningful to you (“Amen”, or a word or phrase of that nature).  I like to place my hands on the ground at this point — just ending the session, grounding myself, and honoring my connection with Mother Earth.
9. Stay quiet for a time, if you can.  Drink some water. Reflect on your experience, perhaps write about it in your journal.
10. Throughout the day, and beyond note any synchronicities, insights, or magical moments you have.  The world is a wondrous place!

I invite you to post your experiences and reflections here!

I hope to see you at the workshop!  Feel free to contact me if you have questions.

A Field Of Grace!