Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands

Jul 26, 2024

Powerful Reflections During These Changing Times

Dear Friends,

I signed up with members of Plum Village in the Bordeaux Region of France where beautiful practices are shared with the outer world through retreats and emails. This is an email I just received today. It is so beautiful and so very powerful.

"I’m writing at the end of a retreat at the Plum Village monastery in France.

This place of peace has given me much to reflect on as I’ve watched our world this past week.

This is the place Thich Nhat Hanh came in exile as war raged in his country, Vietnam, in 1966. His book The Miracle of Mindfulness, which has such a tender practicality to it, reads differently when you know that it was written as a manual for monks and nuns seeking to be healing forces for people caught on every side of terrible violence.

The origin story of the Plum Village is one of the images that have touched me, and will continue to nourish and challenge me. This plot of land in a village in the French countryside was, during World War II, a site of bitter controversy and bloody reckoning. It is said that here, members of the local community who had participated in the Nazi occupation were executed. This ground was thereafter considered haunted, ruined for habitation or building. But Thay, upon visiting the site and hearing this story, decided that this was precisely where his community should settle. They were called, as he understood, to move towards and attend to the ruptures of this world.

And on the first morning of this retreat, the monk offering a Dharma talk invited each of us to clench a fist with one of our hands. Try this, if you will: move to force that fist open with your other hand. The fist only clenches tighter — as if by its own will, a natural reaction to force. And I invite you to try, then, a counterintuitive approach: cradle the fist with your other hand. With the same naturalness, but a wholly other quality of feeling and response, the fist releases. It softens.

A sea of clenched fists is a metaphor for our world right now. This exercise brings me back to a conviction I’ve long held, but can find hard to sustain in the tormented adolescence of this century: one of the most powerful ways we can be present to our world’s pain is with a countercultural tenderness.

I like that word “calling” above, as you may know about me. So many of us are asking how we can be healing forces, what we are called to in this moment. And as instinctive and right as it is that we creatively and imaginatively ponder how we can be actively present to our world’s pain and its promise, there is a quieter calling that each of us can pick up in the places we know and live: to be a calmer of fear. To soften the fist that so many of our bodies and hearts have clenched into. Like it or not — for an action plan feels stronger — this is slow, relational, essential groundwork that we must lay if we are to find our way to our belonging to each other and our shared callings to create a transformed world we want all of our children to inhabit.

Nourishing and activating that belonging is our deepest calling at On Being. Our Wisdom Season just concluded — which you can listen to and share as a whole with this playlist — was one quiet offering. (And we’d love to hear how it landed with you.) We will be spending the next few months engaging complex conversations in the Netherlands and the UK, while preparing to produce a special short season towards healing after the U.S. election in the fall.

One thing is certain: whoever wins, my country will be as fractured as before. And so, in 2025, we are going to hit the road with a national On Being conversation we hope to build, convening as well as conversing in live events, around the U.S.

In the months ahead, you'll get the Pause in your inbox monthly. This will continue to be the place to hear all of our news and future adventures as they unfold.

I wish so fervently for you, for all of us, some respite and restoration in the months ahead — invite you, indeed, to know your need of these things precisely because of your love for this world, and your desire to be of service.

I send you my blessings, and my love – until soon!"

Krista Tippetts

The early days of Plum Village

You may enjoy reading this transcript of a Dharma Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh:

“I Have Arrived, I’m Home: Celebrating twenty years of Plum Village Life”

Plum Village Retreat in Bordeaux France

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, from my heart and with my hands

Jun 25, 2024

Summer Days

I have watched in absolute and utter awe at the ever present and yet ever changing beauty of our summer days. Day after day a new surprise, a new yard guest or sweet visitor or two.

The absolute enchantment of my five little grandchildren delighting in the arrival of a beautiful peacock friend or the amazing gentle presence of a pair of bonded deer, a precious little doe and a handsome little buck with emerging velvety softness of his spike horns.

They grazed in our yard and fields and even all went into our chickens coop to check out their hanging feeder.

Precious earth beings and such blessings that the joy of home and yard work came to a total stop/pause as we sat in our back yard chairs and just delighted in the watching for hours each and every day!

The peacock was probably about 2 years old not yet sporting his soon to be even more fabulous colors of a fancy "eyeful" tail fan at age 3 and with some signs of predator attack in that back under tail area by most likely a hawk.

Feathers all over on our back property line separating us from the singing of the nursery workers in the neighboring property. Their marachi music took turns with soulful ballads filling the summer air with a happy unity of sounds.

Our oldest grand-daughter age 9 named "our" peacock "Razzle Dazzle" because he was "bejeweled" with shimmery colors and a crown befitting the royalty of his already iridescent peacock blue,turquoise and green head ‐ a totally magnificent presence and gift of a surprise present in all ways.

Dazzle was just learning his beginning peacock fan dance, a kind of shimmy of his tail- end accompanied by his first hooting-honk sounds. His peacock mate calling honk sounded like a birthday party blow out horn and he made us laugh. He slept on the sloped roof of our house at night and explored our acreage during the day. I set out the suggested cat kibble. bird grains with sunflower seeds, salad greens, bits of tomato and his favorite treat - bits of bread!

Then apparently healed enough to continue his journey and feeling well fed and loved he flew off in the early morning light after a full 7 days with us. From a very social species he needed another of his kind.

We miss him, but we thanked him for the blessings of his visit and wished him god speed and protection.

The little deer have returned seven days in a row so far and are so trusting of the peacefulness to rest so close to us and our movements. They are so deeply sweet and precious.

It is truly all feeling like summer now and a changing of the energies of the planetary and celestial heavens with "as above and so below" and the power and beauty of summer solstice mesh and are moving forward as are all else into greater times of trans-formation.

I feel so surrounded and enmeshed in the full energies of Mary Oliver poetry and bright summer beauty in all ways. I am filled up and so sun and nature blessed. 😊

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon and back again.

Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, from my heart and with my hands

Jun 16, 2024

Land, Sea and Sky: There is Love

June 17, 1972

This year on June 17, 2024 my husband, Larry Bilyeu and I celebrate our 52nd Wedding Anniversary.

Larry growing up in the small town of Mehama, Oregon and myself in the small town of Douglas on Douglas Island in Alaska. Larry and I were married at the "Shrine of St. Therese"a tiny forested island, past Auke Bay, about 25 miles north of Juneau.

This beautiful little Shrine was originally built by visiting Jesuit priests who came to the Diocese of Juneau to serve in territorial Alaska.

They found such beauty and so great the need for their services that several stayed and with the help of volunteers they completely built the tiny shrine out of the local beach stones on this tiny bit of land now known as "Shrine Island".

The Shrine is lovely, inside and out.

When the tide is in, the entire island is surrounded by beautiful blue water, except for the narrow 'walking-only' causeway.

We walked out from our wedding ceremony to the sight of eagles soaring above, whales spouting, and sea lions barking their congratulations. It was incredibly beautiful.

Now, there is this labyrinth walk etched in the sand where we once walked to the log cabin rectory on the mainland to sign our marriage certificate. And yes, we've been back and it's still lovely and weddings are still held there.

During our ceremony "The Wedding Song" by Peter, Paul, and Mary was sung and played on a folk guitar by a high school friend and at our reception a lot of Simon and Garfield and similar songs from that era. Somehow those beautiful songs filled hearts and souls as they were after all, new to many back then!

And yes, I made my own wedding dress! And each of my bridesmaids made theirs from fabric I bought and sent each of them in three different states as I gathered best friends from High School and College and included my youngest cousin who was so happy to be a bridesmaid!

Our dresses were all in different colors and were beautiful laces over satin, I even made my veil, covered my Bible with the same fabrics and carried a hand carved rose wood rosary.

Ah, the memories of a time, a place, the sounds, and the people. So many have passed on now, most of our guests, many of my own family even several who are younger than I am now.

You never know what paths and causeways you may walk in your life time. Who you will love and who you will remember.

I have since lost both of my parents, a sister in law who was there, and my dearest uncle who died a few months after he attended our wedding. Uncle Bobby's two sons were teenagers and his 12 year old daughter was my Junior Bridesmaid.

Love and pride filled his face and his heart that day. His one and only chance to see her all grown up in a long bridesmaid dress. It was a glorious day and a memorable wedding. And that day, that date, has only grown with memories ever since that beautiful day 50 years ago.

I rejoice in the wonderful memories of so many from that day, just as I grieve the loss of those who have since passed on.

For sadly, two of our best friends, mine and my youngest daughter's, passed away on this day, 25 years later in 1997. Terri Oldham was only 46.

We met in college in 1969 as next door dorm mates and later shared acreage to each build our homes on and raise our children together. Terri and Greg's daughter Kelsy was only 12 when their family was in a car accident en route to the 1997 summer Jr. Olympics where Kelsy was a cross country runner expected to win top honors in her division. Terri and Kelsy didn't survive though Greg and their two teen sons did. It was an unbearable loss for all of us.

Kelsy and my daughter were born 6 months apart. I was with Terri the night before Kelsy's birth and we saw her almost every day of her life as our girls were almost inseparable. Our other two children were closely bonded as well. This devastating loss broke our hearts and changed our lives and those of Greg and their sons forever.

While it also changed the memories of June 17th from our 25th anniversary on, it didn't change the love we felt for all who have been parts of our lives for whatever time we had with them. We treasured this family and all of our many shared adventures and experiences.

And now, it's not even surprising to me, that on this day, June 17, 2022 our dear friend, Daryl Stroschine is having his final big send off into the land, sea and sky with a memorial service in the tiny community church of Mehama, Oregon.

Larry and Daryl were best friends from Elementary School in Mehama, on through High School in Stayton, then off to separate colleges.

Larry at Oregon State where we met and Daryl to Warner Pacific on a full athletic "wild and wonderful ride' of an adventure. Larry and Daryl would get together over the summers and as Larry's letters to me in Alaska can attest, he and Daryl got right back into their hiking, fishing and other adventures.

We continued to keep in touch through life's many challenges and Larry and Daryl never forgot phone calls on their shared birthday in November and in these many final years one to as many as three times a day phone calls!

Larry and Daryl shared a deep love of nature, and the outdoors. They hiked, camped, hunted and fished together throughout their younger years with lots of swimming up the North Fork River, or visiting their favorite spot at Shelburg Falls.

We sheltered Daryl (and Doobie his tiny lap dog) during the Santiam Canyon Fires, along with our own Mehama Kids/grandkids/dog/cat and even chickens.

It was a challenging time. The fires came within a 1/4 of a mile or less of their homes. Larry and I did all we could think of to keep spirits lifted and bodies well fed but the fear of losing not only their own homes in Mehama along with almost everything they owned was intense.

Daryl and I had deep talks over coffee about life, loss, and death. We shared a similar innate sense of natural spirituality, a love of the natural world, a love of arts and creativity, family and most of all love and pride in our grandchildren.

Daryl and Larry remembered decades of stories from their shared childhoods. What one had forgotten, the other remembered.

But in the end all was well, just like this rewritten, reused, and now rewritten with inclusions of Daryl's passing and connection to this anniversary post for Larry and I.

For in the end, the lovely and positive sounds, sights, and memories remain above all else and I am filled with gratitude for the good times and the lessons and treasures from even the saddest times.

Somethings never die. Beauty, art, music and love can fill up our our lives and our hearts forever.

Click below to hear this lovely song that was titled 'The Wedding Song' as it was often performed by "Peter, Paul and Mary" and this version by its writer/also solo performer on the folk group's own 25th anniversary.

Peter, Paul and Mary - Wedding Song "There is Love" (25th Anniversary Concert)

The same song that Larry and I had sung by a friend, Geoff Rogers, as he played on his quitar during our wedding 50 years ago during our Catholic Mass Wedding service. Our service was performed by a traveling Jesuit priest in this beautiful place, special time, and never ending symbol of the timelessness of memories.

The song is just as meaningful and beautiful as ever.
The songs of that era are all etched forever in my heart.

Our professional and recessional songs played on his guitar by Geoff Roger's of Juneau Alaska was:

"Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet", also known as "A Time for Us", an instrumental arranged by Henry Mancini (from Nino Rota's music written for Franco Zeffirelli's film of Romeo and Juliet.

Oh the power of music to touch the soul.

The beautiful chords and melodies that make up the songs of our lifetimes.