Studio Gaia Edwardsville

04/17/2024

A student led ❤️ Earth Day Celebration at the Fuller Dome this Friday 🌎

Earth Day Celebration

Join us in the Fuller Dome for an early Earth Day Celebration!

08/14/2023

Another set of random photos to celebrate the 13 1/2 years of Studio Gaia. (August was our anniversary month!). Trying to focus today on Lynnie Beaumont and Shannon Woodworth--imagine Gaia and the Gaia community as a gorgeous and extensive web--they are two of the strands that provided strength, beauty, creativity and fun throughout the years!

08/13/2023

08/12/2023

More time today so I've really been digging into the archives! The original dream? Focus on personal training and add some yoga since people seemed to like it. Then Jeanne and I added some dance! Lots of folks don't know that Edwardsville Fitness Studio started with 1/2 the amount of space--then expanded and eventually became Studio Gaia. Turns out that Gaia knew what she wanted to be all along.

08/11/2023

The first thing people would say when visiting Gaia—“it smells so wonderful!” (Nag Champa, lavender and other heavenly scents), and then “this feels like home.” So our mantra became—welcome home! (Even when we were at the market). It was always about the people and the community they created.

04/09/2023

Finding Our Way Home

Do you ever find yourself coming back to something—a painting, a poem, a place in the landscape or an old photograph but not knowing why you continually return? The compulsion is apparently strong but the reasoning escapes you. I feel that way about the poem Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. I discovered it first in college and understood almost none of it, but, for some reason, I kept rereading. Over time, of course, I’ve encountered enough literary criticism and heard so many lectures on Eliot’s famous poem, that I do have a sort of reasoning of what he means. But that isn’t what draws me back, makes me spend time and effort to find the essence that apparently still, to some extent, always alludes me.

Near the very end of this long poem Eliot writes: “What we call the beginning is often the end/ And to make an end is to make a beginning./ The end is where we start from.”

And as we come to the close of this year’s celebration of our Lenten time of introspection and renewal, I once again, find myself, as Eliot would say, making a beginning out of an end. Because I think Eliot hits upon something that isn’t intellectual but visceral, not understood but known. He touches, I believe, on “home”–not a place or a structure or a location or a pinpoint in time—home is always, is now, is seven generations before and beyond this present moment. Here, a bit later, he continues: “We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.”

If we take Eliot’s meaning to be “home” and then apply it to our present Lenten journey, what have we learned about ourselves in this “home”; about our agency, responsibility and contribution during our time on this Earth; about our expansion of gratitude and gifts beyond our own existence here, about our ability to go on?

Can you see, for instance, the Earth and other living souls as more than human? Will your compassion allow you to sit quiet and become one with a RIVER?

Do you know better who you are—where home is for you; do you see yourself as ENOUGH to carry forward?

Are you able to make beginnings out of endings and accept endings when it is time to let old structures and systems die away? Can you see in yourself the wisdom to lead and support, the good humor to allow with compassion and COMEDIC GENIUS?

Is your step lighter, your touch gentler, your impact on our planet kinder? Are you now leaning into BEING A BENIGN PRESENCE?

Do have the tools, strength and perseverance to know where you are headed and how you will succeed in KEEPING YOUR HEAD (AND HEART) ABOVE GROUND as you continue in this work?

And can you see in the end of what “IS” the beginnings of what could and will be? Can you be part of this movement, this current of hope, to lend your hands and heart to a sustainable future where home for all of us truly does include all of us and does no harm? Can you build a CLEAN RENEWABLE CURRENT OF HOPE?

If there was even one yes in your heart, I think you are home. I think we are all swirling in Eliot’s lyrical take on time and space and it is up to us to make our endings into beginnings—not for us but for those who come after. To end our celebration and begin anew, there is one lesson left, one voice left to hear…

Sherri L. Mitchell–Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset–is a Native American lawyer, author, teacher and activist from Maine. Mitchell is the author of Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, a narrative of ‘Indigenous Wisdom’ that provides “a road map for the spirit and a compass of compassion for humanity.” In Sacred Instructions, Mitchell writes:

Every person alive today is part of the dream of the ancestors. We are the fulfillment of prophecy. Now, it is time for us all to step into our role as ancestor of the future and dream the next seven generations into being. In doing so, we must recognize that giving them life is not enough. We must also work to provide them with a world that is capable of sustaining their lives. This is the work of our time, the work of our lives. To succeed in this work, we must reconnect with the thread of life. We must learn the spiritual language spoken by our ancestors and renew the relationship that they long held with the rest of creation. Together we must turn from our stories of domination and destruction and begin to write a new story based on cooperation and conscious co-creation of a more humane and sacred way of being.

The Confluence Climate Collaborative welcomes everyone home to begin.

04/05/2023

A Clean Renewable Current of Hope

If there is to be a current of hope, it needs to ride on a renewable wave, a watt that does not harm

A current that runs in both directions to harness the energy of the sun, the force of the wind and the power of the ocean.

A current that does not require scarring the earth, enhanced recovery methods, burning, belching emissions.

A current that honors the health of communities, the quality of our air and water and the integrity of the earth.

A current that doesn’t hatch wars, alter climate patterns, spur famine.

A current that does not discriminate by race, color or creed, income or education level.

A current that the human race honors through conservation, respects by sharing across the globe through a transmission grid that provides and receives.

A current of hope is cursing through Illinois thanks to the passage of the nation leading clean energy policy that is the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. I am proud to be part of the Confluence Climate Collaborative, a small but powerful group of women who not only ponder a current of hope but whose members’ activism aided in the passage of this bill.

So today…how will you harness this current of hope? What action could you take, great or small, to bring us to a brighter future?

https://ilcleanjobs.org/

03/29/2023

Creative Imagination to Combat Climate Change

A restrictive illness during January and February kept me sidelined. When CCC emails started arriving with plans for this year’s “40 days” project, I realized that my situation presented a unique opportunity and decided to spend my un-invited “down time” catching up on stacks of books and old issues of magazines neglected during the second half of ‘22 – almost all of them climate related. The fact that my colleagues had chosen Currents of Hope as this year’s theme brought joy to my reading.

Following their essays each week has helped me realize that though getting on in years, I still have agency, regardless of my situation. Lynn Beaumont’s early contribution “Enough,” reminded me that I am enough as a member of the Family of Earth who cares deeply about it. With Maxine’s lovely description of Thomas Berry’s “benign mode of presence,” I was reminded that my family has pursued a somewhat (though not perfect) benign lifestyle for more than five decades by buying/finding our needs used – refabricating or refurbishing them with new life – and by recycling and composting our kitchen and garden waste. Gratefully, our grown children have followed suit.

I was involved in a Zoom book group discussing Thomas Berry’s Selected Writings on the Earth Community when the “40 Days” project started. The readings and discussions grounded my understanding of the new creation story based on science yet full of sacred mystery. It starts with the great flaring forth of the Universe bringing about the stars in their galaxies, as well as supernovas, the planets, and the development over millennia of all life on Earth, as well as the kinship of all living beings. In this context, Berry proposes that the transformation taking place on Earth in the current era “is not simply another historical change or cultural modification, but a shift of a geobiological order of magnitude” – an overwhelming challenge, indeed!

Brian Swimme, a specialist in mathematical cosmology and a student of Berry’s, wrote a book entitled The Universe is a Green Dragon that clarified for me Berry’s concept that the human species is the reflection of the Universe on itself in its process of dynamic development. As such, we are gifted with the creative powers of the universe such as imagination and ingenuity to work toward a positive direction for this transition.

As I dove further into the stack of reading opportunities before me, common themes from disparate sources came tumbling into my consciousness. Of course, much of the subject matter was very troubling, putting in concrete terms Berry’s concerns about the destruction of the natural world brought about by the industrial age. Yet there were numerous currents of hope throughout.

The End of Night, a book by Paul Bogard, follows his world-wide travels, exploring the history of light pollution and interviewing astronomers, meteorologists, and star gazers of all sorts about various strategies for correcting the way we humans light the night. A prevalent theme was that the opportunity to experience the night skies with all their awe and wonder is gradually disappearing. It’s estimated that “eight out of ten children born in America today” will never have this experience. Echoing Berry, Paul Bogard mourns the idea that future generations will not be able to “feel their place in the universe” and their human role in it. Yet hope was present here, too, in his conversations with many representatives of International Dark Sky Organizations and local communities working to conserve existing dark sky places and actively promote policies and strategies to reduce light pollution.

More hope was found in unexpected places, among others Yes! magazine, a publication about solving society’s problems with creative, positive solutions. An article describing new strategies bringing success to union organizing among service workers at Amazon and Starbucks recalled Swimm’s words about our creative powers from the universe. Aren’t these the same kind of corporate adversaries that climate activists face? Is that hopeful? Yes! because the same powers of creative thinking and ingenuity are the source of progress in the climate struggle.

A brief article titled, “The Sacred Supply Chain” found in Sojourners, a faith-based publication, references Robin Wall Kimmerer’s explication of the Native peoples’ tradition of an “allegiance to gratitude” recited by school children at the beginning of each day. The children thank Mother Earth for the provision to the community of “every food and water source, through every plant, every creature and even the land itself.” A very “Sacred Supply Chane.” This offers hope that the message of working with our planet rather than against it is reaching ever wider audiences. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Haudenosaunee Nation of North American natives and the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants.

Finally, I’d like to introduce a poem called “Above Ground” found toward the end of the Winter ’22 issue of Sierra Magazine. It’s written by a father about introducing his two young children to a swarm of Cicadoidea. I was so moved by his reverence toward these creatures, who are often considered nothing but a gross annoyance, that I feel compelled to share. It is truly beautiful and brings with it a palpable current of HOPE!

Full essay here:

by Betsy Slosar A restrictive illness during January and February kept me sidelined. When CCC emails started arriving with plans for this year’s “40 days” project, I realized that my situation presented a unique opportunity and decided to spend my un-invited “down time” catching up on stac...

03/15/2023

Benign Presence

Every civilization has its Great Work to do depending on the circumstances in which it is embedded, according to cultural historian Thomas Berry, and he names our present task as, “moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on Earth to a more benign mode of presence”.

What an appropriate and urgent challenge, contributing to the transition from devastating presence to benign. The Confluence Climate Collaborative took this calling to heart when we organized ourselves to educate about climate change. These Lenten reflections are an effort to contribute to this transition.

On Ash Wednesday, Toni Oplt called us to align with River, lifeblood of the Mother, to reclaim our inner wild nature, to remember who we really are. It is in our human nature to be a benign presence, extending the blessing of our lives to all beings with whom we share our rare and precious planet. May each of us be a current of hope.

During the first week of Lent Lynn Beaumont gently reminded us that we are enough, worthy and whole. We can choose love and goodness and bring it to others. Our enoughness is a gift to our consumer society, a relief to our stretched planet. It is a way to be a benign presence on this lovely Earth. May each of us be a current of hope and sufficiency.

Last week, the second week of Lent, Sally Burgess reminded us that choosing joy, appreciating beauty and expressing humor are also important parts of the transition. Although the statistics concerning the status of our planet are grim – we don’t have to be! We can align ourselves with activist groups like the Sierra Club and have an impact on the devastation to Earth. May we enjoy the ride on our current of hope!

Read the full essay here: greengalmidwest.com/benign-presence/

Photo by Lenka Dzurendova on Unsplash

03/09/2023

Comedic Genius

My friend Max and I share a love of Rob Brezny’s work. His nearly 400-page tome called PRONOIA is filled with zany optimism, which teeters between nonsensical and brilliant. For instance: “In the future we will wear magic underwear made from eagle feathers, spider webs, and 100-year-old moss…and conjure up bigger, better, more original sins, and wilder, more interesting problems.” Also, “we will research the distinctions between stupid, boring pain and smart, fascinating pain until we finally get it right.”

My personal examples of “stupid, boring pain” include worrying about being a few pounds overweight rather than dancing with joy every morning that I wake up able to dance with joy! Or spending precious time scrolling through Facebook and Twitter and feeling a twinge of regret that maybe I’m not having as much fun as my contemporaries.

So, one foggy-white November morning, I emailed Max that I was going to spend the day being open and curious. It was an assignment from Brezny’s book– “Pray to be granted a healing sample of her comedic genius—a funny, unexpected miracle that will free you of any tendencies you have to believe the age-old lies about her.” Comedic Genius is one of Brezny’s monikers for a Supreme Being.

So, my dog Maizy and I headed off for our morning walk and right away were in the company of a small flock of Snow Geese. I love Snow Geese! But I always expect to hear their rowdy honking—on this day they blended with the color of the sky and were so quiet, I would have missed them entirely had I been perseverating inside my boring problems and stupid pain. I laughed out loud and shouted, “Thank you—that WAS genius!”

Weeks later, feeling worn down by work and frazzled that the weather was swinging wildly from clear to rain, to big winds, warm (too warm for the season!) then the temperature plummeted—all in a few hours. By early evening though it was calm and there was time to get some fresh air before dark. At that hour of the day the western sky should have been the main event but no—the action was happening toward the east. Filling the horizon was a gorgeous bank of clouds— stop-you-in-your-tracks gorgeous! A chaotic tumble of peach, pink, gray, white, wide and ragged, tall and plump, with dusky blue providing a brilliant background. Also, little diamond-like glimmers in front of it all. Seagulls! Flitting and calling out.

No camera could have captured the wild and colorful magnificence of that moment though a talented artist could render it in a painting. My heart yearned to be the painter even as I was filled to the brim with gratitude that once again, my boring problems and stupid pain were cleansed by that gift of comedic genius.

One last example. I was looking out the back door recently, toward the south, marveling that it was sunny AND rainy which meant if I went out to tend to the goats, chickens, and duck, I would get soaked. My phone beeped. It was my friend Toni–“Look at this!” as she texted a picture of a big, beautiful rainbow. WOW! If Toni had a rainbow, maybe we did too! There it was–out the front door and to the north—a band of color that seemed to explode out of the farm fields and extend all the way into town. George, my husband came out and we stood in the middle of our little dirt road, mouth’s agape, marveling at the distinct colors—ROYGBIV! And it lasted for the longest time. How do you thank someone, (I’m looking at you Toni) for a gift so grand?

Minutes earlier I was taken by the phenomenon of simultaneous sunshine and rain but also irritated that the rain was interfering with my routine. Yet at that very moment in the same sky a “funny, unexpected miracle” was in full dazzle. Comedic Genius. Humbling for sure.

The Confluence Climate Collaborative exists because of the climate crisis. We carry a collective ache to say the right thing, make salient and convincing observations, help get things going in a more hopeful direction. Which is why our 40-day celebration this year is called “Current of Hope”.

Emily Dickinson tells us that “hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul”. Elin Kelsey tells us in her book “Hope Matters” that evidence proves that hope, not fear, is our most powerful tool for change. And Jane Goodall reminds us that hope requires effort. Real hope she says, requires “action and engagement”.

If you are reading our weekly offerings, you are probably aware of the pickle we are in. Carbon emissions continue to increase though we have scientific proof that they are driving dangerous and expensive weather events. At the same time, entire counties in Illinois are being convinced to resist renewable energy—pushing back against new solar and wind installations. Letting go of what we have always known—and let’s be honest—every one of us has fossil fuels to thank for our quality of life—is really challenging. But powering our homes and cars and much of our economy through renewable energy IS possible! And it is far past time to make the transition.

Do you know that every time a coal-fired power plant goes offline it is the equivalent of taking half a million cars off the highways in terms of lowered emissions? And do you know that advances in wind and solar make them not only a cleaner alternative but much more affordable? I have been in more than one public meeting where Ameren officials extolled the cost effectiveness of renewable energy!

The climate crisis is huge but so is the impact of thousands of people determined to engage. So, how can YOU engage? I’m going to make a shameless pitch for you to join us at Sierra Club. Become a member and a volunteer—activities range from participating in pollinator gardens to joining live actions to jumping on a bus and heading to Springfield for Lobby Day. You’ll get support and training, and you will be with like-minded others. You can do as little or as much as your energy and time allow. Each and every action will matter and will make a difference. It is but one way to give hope feathers! Feel free to email me at Sally.Burgess@sierraclub.org for more information.

One last brilliant bit from Brezney. “Thousands of things go right for you every day…made possible by an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which continually detonates nuclear reactions in order to convert its own body into light and heat and energy for your personal use. Is it a happy accident? Or a big, broad hint, from a cosmic intelligence that adores you?”

03/01/2023

A Reminder

Who knew
What a wild liberation awaits
In the simple act
Of choosing
Contentment?

I slow down and see myself
As worthy
And whole,
And all my fellow beings
Whole & worthy in themselves.
Beautiful in their uniqueness,
Loving all we share.

Fear & competition fall away.
They are deceptions.
False heroes in the Fairytale
Of Discontentment
Handed down
By generations
Of those forced
To forget.

Who knew that in this
Imperfect body,
Within this troubled mind,
Deep down to the core
Of this battered soul,

I am enough.

I have the power
To smile at a stranger,
Which might be enough
To brighten their day.

I have the power
To give my attention
To that which nourishes,
Educates or encourages,
And that is enough
To change my perspective.

I have the power
To choose Love,
To believe in Goodness,
To do what I can
In my small way
To bring love & goodness
To others.
To give myself thanks
When I succeed,
Grace when I struggle,
And faith to keep trying.

And that is enough.
Who knew?

We all did, once.

Perhaps we just need reminding.

02/22/2023

Her Name is River
by Toni Oplt

Her name is River.
She runs forever forward, never longing for the past, feeling no fear of the future.
Slipping over stones, trickling between the branches of felled trees,
Rolling along the undertow,
She finds her way beyond barriers.
With nimble fingers, she meanders into fields and meadows,
Stirring up bogs and swamps, stewing pots of life.
She explores with abandon, deplores a straight line,
Never keeps what she no longer needs, she only
Holds the Sky in her gaze, exploding sunlight on her surface,
Wearing moonshine ribbons through her dark wet tresses.
She is the lifeblood of the Mother, the cup of Heaven’s tears.

A river can make her presence known in many ways—as divine feminine energy, as life force, as creator and destroyer in one drop. She is creativity, spirituality, the present moment, the memory road to the muddy depths of our psyches. She is what folklorist and Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls Rio Abajo Rio, the River Beneath the River. She is what we know without learning it.

River is an all-but-lost connection, though, like forests, canyons, prairies and oceans. Her true value has become distant to us in our modern lives. “It’s not by accident,” writes Estés in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, “that the pristine wilderness of our planet disappears as the understanding of our own inner wild natures fades.”

So if we take time to sit at the edge of the water, we might just remember who we really are. And in so doing, we may catch a ride on a current of hope we thought had dried up within ourselves.

Sit here for just a minute, then. Sit still. Quiet. Gaze across the water from right where you are. See? How she is always here, always in this present moment, never thinking back into the past wishing to redo a wave, never getting ahead of herself with worry over a boulder that may or may not exist in her path? She can teach us to focus on the task at hand.

Perhaps you see her in the rain, running over her banks to flood the lowlands, allowing herself the luxury of a stretch beyond her previous limitations. She is not afraid. She knows that the risk of doing something new, going somewhere unexplored, someplace seemingly outside her comfortable reach is what creates change, new life, transformation…the next necessary thing. Perhaps you, too, are ready for the next necessary thing.

Has night fallen? Is there a moon above you or is the sky so low you could bump your head on the clouds? Darkness welcomes new visitors to River’s life flow; thirsty creatures who call the nighttime home gather at her shore. If the moon shines on you, does it shift your vision? Are trees black and white, or maybe they disappear entirely? Do small eyes glow in the empty space on the opposite bank? Is there a howl on the breeze, an owl’s call from the trees? River greets them all, each one in the right place at the right time as the cycle of life-death-life floats on. River balances flood and famine, survival and surrender, knowing enough without excess or sentimentality. Does the past tug at you like a toxic romance, leaving you clinging to what is really long gone? River says, “let go. Be here now with what is.”

Know that you can always return to River until you reach the point when she never leaves you; when she flows in you, alongside you, through your dreams both sleeping and waking. When you find her without looking. When you are wildly flowing on a current of hope.