Last year’s sermon of animals was a flow coming from multiple places of animals in the life of family and field, forest and farm, and it was very broad spectrum — all the species, all the roles, all the interaction between creatures and family and land. But there is always more about animals.  So this year, it’s not the macro, but the micro — three short portraits.  I want to tell you of a sheep.  And two puppies.  And an eagle. Portrait #1: I have a sheep, May Snow, that lov

GAMES BEYOND ESCAPISM… Play. RADICAL COMPASSION: Compash-Imagination TOOLS: field notebook and good pen, a timer, other humans, and a supple imagination TIME: ten minutes DIFFICULTY: [It’s going to be just fine.] RISK: low, but you will come back changed. ORIENTATION: Compassion is often perceived as an experience, something that we feel or that can come upon us. By the strategically resilient, it is to be treated more as a skill, a commitment, a practice, and a source of usa

luminations noun, plural.  1. Gleams, glimmers, perspectives, clarity.  See also, dawn, morning, simplicity, resilience, work, love, home.  2.  A series of short videos by Lorca Smetana… Inspiration for when all the little things are weighing you down… Don’t leave your resilience growth to chance and luck.  Feed being the flame starting this new year by signing up now for one of our online classes to be the parent and health practitioner you want to be: Resilient Practitioner

luminations noun, plural.  1. Gleams, glimmers, perspectives, clarity.  See also, dawn, morning, simplicity, resilience, love, home.  2.  A series of short videos by Lorca Smetana… Are you going to be a resilient and creative parent in the coming year?  Well, yeah! Amazing Parents — Awesome Kids Online Resilience Course #resilience #awareness #education #mindfulness #family #leadership

I was invited to share today in part because my life and my work has become embedded in so very many animals.  Our river farm is and has been home to homing pigeons, white doves, Icelandic sheep, pigs, dogs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, honeybees, rabbits.  It is also home to great horned owls who called as I wrote this, nesting kestrels and red-tailed hawks, eagles, magpies and snipe, woodpeckers and Eastern kingbirds, snakes and mice, porcupine, foxes, coyotes, raccoons

We are all together on this ship and some of us will die sooner.  Some young.  I will grieve again, and comfort.  It may be me.  Those of us who are lucky will know ahead of time and not be incapacitated by pain and exhaustion and messes we have not cleaned up.  If we are luckier this heightened awareness that is the gift of death may be seized  by us periodically and good and great things and moments will be brought into the world as a result. What do I want to have been in

But this is where I want to be clear.  I am not asking that my engagement with my own particular demons be clean.  That I stay fully functional and productive while in the midst of it.  I am not asking that it be without mess, that it have dignity, that it display only admirable qualities, or even that it be without ugliness or pain.  I can be in pain.  It is part of the game, and cannot be gotten around, true experience of felt pain, grief, loss, anger.  They will only retur

Sometimes I feel I must be an alien, because I really, really love to talk about death, and about burnout. But this is really why. When I start from death, and burnout, we skip over the trite, and the hiding places, and the escape hatches, and go deep into the real. And then I can speak into survival, vulnerability, leadership, and of recovery and resilience into a listening of reawakening, because over and over, if we do it right, the deepest parts of ourselves become our ne

“I just wanted myself back, and then to create something more. After what I’ve been through, I am not going to settle for an average life. I want to have created and lived an extraordinary life.” — Lorca Smetana Some of us are hard-wired to help and to serve, to make a difference in someone else’s life at exactly the minute that it’s most needed. No one goes into any of the giving professions with the belief that they will be one to burn out. But while in our country we are

#astonishment #doverelease #homingpigeons #ceremony #whitedoves #beauty #awareness #education #mindfulness #thetenthousandthings

It’s time again! If you don’t know about it yet, you should because you’ll LOVE IT! Such a great Bozeman evening, repeated twice. Tickets sell out each time, so go online at theellentheatre.com to get yours! Homing pigeons, dancing prisoners and the Hawaiian hula highlight Pecha Kucha nights at the Ellen Sept. 11 and Sept. 12 Homing pigeon aficionado Lorca Smetana, former Santa Rosa deputy police chief Scott Swanson and hula scholar Caroline Klarr are among the 11 eclectic

It doesn’t matter what it shows, though I believe there is a pond, a distant house and some small horses. The silk colors were lovely. I may never finish it. But its value lies in its planarity, in the fact that you can hold it in your hands, and then turn it over. On one side, the image of the half-landscape is clear, fine, detailed. The image on the other side, with the same fabric, the same silks, is indistinct, criss-crossed with vagrant threads, tying off, some tang

We are all together on this ship and some of us will die sooner. Some young. I will grieve again, and comfort. It may be me. Those of us who are lucky will know ahead of time and not be incapacitated by pain and exhaustion and messes we have not cleaned up. If we are luckier this heightened awareness that is the gift of death may be seized by us periodically and good and great things and moments will be brought into the world as a result. What do I want to have been in my lif