I just heard a program on NPR about a little girl, Maya Chamberlin, who needs a bone Marrow transplant. She is bi-racial, as am I. I have just joined the Be The Match Marrow donation site. If I have a chance to save a life, guess it's time... Here is the link to the story, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121910707

And a link to the donation site: http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/index.html?src=Ijoined

The best way to appreciate the snow is to play in it!! This morning I opened my eyes to see a wonderful new snow!

Snow shoes on and out into the woods just up the road from my home I go with faithful dog, Princes Lola. It's the morning light on new snow that is so inspiring.

Lola waiting for the 2 legged to catch up as usual.

New Work: Morning Star

This piece is called Morning Star. 24"x48".
I created it for Theresa (tmsr@tmsrdesign.com), who helped me create such a wonderful website. Sunrise and sunset were the inspirations for this work. Just after or before the sun sets or rises the sky is layers of blues from the sweetest periwinkle to deepest cobalt as you look up towards the heavens. And in this neck of the woods, there is most likely a silhouette of a Ponderosa. And then there is the moon, ah, Luna my love! Sometimes when she is in her new phase, she is cradling a planet. This was the first piece I have done using lead came in such an organic manner. My past works in lead have been geometric, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. I loved the construction process, the flow of shapes. I used a sheet of copper to cut out the tree shape, then textured it with solder and added black patina. It sits on top of the lead came so there is a shadow box feel to the piece. It was quite fun and a great learning experience!

Welcome. This blog will be about the evolution of art and the art of seeing and taking what I see and how it makes my feel and transforming it into art and love and energy.
Blessings,
Christina

So this is my first post and it is from my friend Deb O'Connor. A very gifted artist and astrologer. What she has to say needs to be read and reread. Please share this with everyone!

More to come!

So many of you have written to ask why all around us continues to feel so difficult, that I've re-written what began as notes about Tuesday night's full moon.

lf I were to try to summarize the wild cosmic ride we're all taking together, I'd say that every single being--every human, every yellow warbler, every ponderosa pine, every drop of water in the Clark Fork/Columbia/Pacific, every stone and aquifer--is being completely re-configured at the level of consciousness. We are part of a magnificent weaving of Divine energy and all of this energy is undergoing a radical shift in awareness.

All that is underway might be easiest to understand if you imagine you are participating in great theatre, and that the planets are Players mirroring back to you cosmic secrets which will lead you through these Interesting Times.

On stage we see intensely life-altering relationships between Saturn, Uranus & Pluto, and also between Neptune, Jupiter & Chiron. These players are sending us extraordinary opportunities to facilitate the kinds of changes we've longed for all our lives. The key, of course, is to pay attention, to keep our minds and hearts wide open, and to be very very brave.

Of course this is not Act One, but Act Million-and-One, because everything which happens astrologically follows upon the energetic cycle which just finished. We have been being tutored all our many lives for this place in Time. So as we watch the stage, and we see Saturn enter on one side and Uranus on the other, we know that they have opposed each other before, but that this time they are more seasoned and have an agenda drawn from eons of experience. Like all of us, they are evolving.

So we come into our drama, here on December 3, 2009, in the middle of a conversation between Saturn and Uranus. Their exact opposition actually began a year ago, on the day Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. And as these two giant planets rock slowly back and forth in space, they will have opposed each other exactly five times between November 4, 2008 and July 26, 2010, working to bring great changes to bear upon the traditions we hold to so dearly.

What we experience with Saturn is everything having to do with the structure of our lives: personally this has to do with our work and our homes and our bank accounts. In the larger picture, Saturn is universally concerned with the monolithic institutions which we have always believed held up the world around us: banks, corporations, universities, the entire industrial/military complex. Imagine everything concerned with the patriarchy on a large scale.

Saturn is also the Master of Time--as we understand it. Saturn would like us to remain grounded in the traditions we have always known. Saturn would like to remain In Control.

And Uranus? As an archetype, Uranus is the revolutionary and the visionary. Uranus takes great delight in radical and unexpected changes which lead to the creation of new paradyms. Uranus is not interested in the conventional and gleefully renders traditions asunder. And Uranus is so closely aligned with Divine Mind (not to be confused with the human brain), that it understands Time to be an illusion.

So when these energies are working in direct opposition to each other we have two choices. We can either cling frantically to our personal and cultural traditions as radical changes leave us feeling as if we've completely lost control of our resources and of our lives. Or we can work to integrate the strengths of these two Players. Certainly some of Saturn's traditions are valuable and worth salvaging--it is a good thing to have a roof over our heads (somewhere) and to know how to work a garden. But any of our traditions which prevent our growth are going to continue to dissolve. Uranus is shaking our cages and shifting us into a new paradym, a New Time and a new sense of time, and there is no turning back.

Enter Pluto. To help facilitate our way forward, we need to pay attention to the subtle nuances of the Lord of the Sub-Conscious. Imagine an upside-down pyramid where Saturn and Uranus oppose each other at the top angles and at the bottom angle stands emotionally transformative Pluto . . . asking us what makes us afraid. Pluto brings our attention to our Fear and helps us to see what an obstacle it presents us as we make our way through these Changes. It's place on stage is exactly in the middle of Saturn and Uranus, blocking us from integrating their strengths until we acknowledge our fear for the old emotional baggage it is and release it. At that point, Pluto empowers us.

Over the course of the next year, Pluto will ask you to let go of things you think you can't survive without. But this is an act of benevolence on its part . . . as we let go of relationships which are no longer serving anyone, as we move out of old emotional patterns, our psyches will feel lighter and lighter and the empty spaces we've created as we let go will be filled with people and experiences coming from an energetic level more in line with our newly-shifted awareness.

None of this is particularly easy. Let me say now, before I take you farther into the story of Planets On A Mission that the human race is being challenged hard and fast to wake up and become flexible and very very creative.

And just as we thought this drama was verging on the impossible . . .

Enter Neptune, Jupiter and Chiron. These three arrive arm-in-arm. They have been traveling together through Aquarius for 9 months. You can look up into the evening sky and see Jupiter to the south, looking for all the world like the beacon it is. How could a planet so beautiful offer us anything but faith in the journey? Jupiter assures us that the risks we're taking now will only enrich our lives. And its partner, Neptune, offers us an extraordinary spiritual deepening. Chiron joins them in this work by helping us heal ancient wounds, both personal and communal.

Of course, there is always a way to veer off course, even with three such luminous Players. Jupiter helps us to see where we might have grown a little too arrogant and where we might feel a tad too entitled. If we try, all of us can find places in our lives where we think we deserve "fill-in-the-blank" . . . regardless of its impact on others or the environment or "fill-in-the-blank."

And Neptune, when we fall asleep, is very capable of adding confusion to our tea party, if only to get our attention so we might rein in our focus.

Chiron . . . Chiron is the wounded healer and his role in this stellar three-some is to guide us through situations which bring up old feelings of woundedness so we can lift our hearts and shake off the tentacles of the past, and go on free of the despair. Chiron then steps in to help us heal others with our newly gained awareness. The beauty of the Chiron work is that to the degree we heal ourselves, we become healers.

Together, Neptune, Jupiter and Chiron ask that each of us trust ourselves to meet the Divine World in our own unique way. Of course, with Saturn at work nailing down everything that hasn't already blown away, there are going to be people clinging with all they have to their Belief Systems. But the Universe is very clearly asking that we recognize that each of us is unique, and therefore, our relationship with the Divine is unique. Gratitude may be the only spiritual common denominator we need.

There is more to this truly Divine Comedy, but I may have already worn you out. Sometime next spring, we'll watch Jupiter and Mars change costumes and enter more powerfully into this dialogue.

If you can only remember one thing from this long play, I hope it will be this line from Neptune: "I Surrender."

Of all the energies afoot, Neptune is the most compassionate. And though our creative, dreamy, cosmic mystic is often maligned as confused, Neptune is, more than anything, unconditionally loving and forgiving. And it counsels us to surrender our desire for control to the all-loving, all-knowing One Love.

Next time, I promise, just three paragraphs about the Sagittarius new moon.

All love and great peace to you.

Deb

Deborah O'Connor

406-531-5129

deb@lovedogdesign.com