Luscious Living

Summer morning dawns sweet on Luscious Lane (that's what we call our wisteria-covered driveway and really our whole home place)...may each of you know your own loveableness today and find something to celebrate...

I love how the traditional Mexican holiday Dia de los Mu***os is growing in popularity here in the US, as evidenced by the soulful shades seen on Alberta Street last night!

I was meditating and a deeper awareness bubbled up about what True Prosperity is. Like all spiritual pursuits, I need to define a path that honors my personal and collective values. Some of the money teachings I've come across don't sit right with me because they don't fit my values. How can we work so devotedly to define spiritual lives and then leave money in its own separate category, with its own rules?

Art for the People, by the Young People!

James and I got to volunteer at Da Vinci Arts Middle School last week helping artist Joe Sneed support the students there in creating a mural full of color and movement. First the students traced each others' overlapping shadows and they filled in the shapes with bright colors chosen by them. I loved seeing them feeling so proud at bringing beauty and more life to their school!

I've been thinking of how there's so much to fight against in this world. And I'm all for the good fight. But it can consume us. We must use our creative energies to collaborate and make manifest solutions so that if dysfunctional elements of our society, our lives, fail, we have strong alternatives to hold us. I say, choose what you love the most and spend some time every day helping that to thrive in the world!

Good Morning, buenos dias! Yesterday James and I were going to volunteer for a mural project at Da Vinci Middle School, but they weren't ready for us, so we went walking and ended up having an impromptu date at Pambiche with cafe con leche and this incredible basket of mini pastries like grapefruit poundcake. It was wonderful to be together and feel like visitors to our own hometown.

So far, it means creative self-expression, caring for our bodies and our communities, cultivating conscious relationships and communication, learning about vibrant local food scenes, showing our deep beauty, developing sustainable solutions to our current problems, and taking pleasure in our lives as we become more aware and responsible.

One year, at City Repair's Village Building Convergence here in Portland, a poet by the name of Eve Ladyapple presented an idea called Sustainable Hedonism--and I've been thinking about it ever since. This is a place to explore and to further "flesh out" what it means.

1. highly pleasing to the taste or smell: luscious peaches.2. richly satisfying to the senses or the mind: the luscious style of his poetry.3. richly adorned; luxurious: luscious furnishings.4. arousing physical, or sexual, desire; voluptuous: a luscious figure.