The Clearing

Do not try to save

the whole world

or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create

a clearing

in the dense forest

of your life

and wait there

patiently,

until the song

that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know

how to give yourself

to this world

so worthy of rescue. 

~Martha Postlewaite

Still praying for Ukraine and our troubled world

And I am blessed that I can simply walk into our own shaded nook with a small gathering of trees we planted shortly after building our home here in 1978 and hug a tree and say a prayer for our troubled world or when needed for my own troubled or aching heart from man's inhumanity to man.

Definitely time for a forest clearing!

Working on myself first before doing for others. Bring in my early practices of a medical qigong as taught to a small group of us in Salem each summer that the wonderful Dr. Anita Cignolini of Florence and Milan, Italy. 

Dr. Anita came to Salem to teach our small group outside of Dr. Louisa Silva's Salem Acupuncture Clinic in the mid-nineties for 2 weeks each of 3 years. All for free knowing that our increased gifts would further help us to dreely help others. And she was right! What a gift she was!

Simple qigong (chi gong) routine.

Combined with my innate natural healing gifts of my own healing energies and decades of reading and learned the 90s Healing Touch/Reki/ and many other energy techniques and understandings it all became a beautiful exploration through many sunlit clearings in my life. 

I meditate with this simple  loving kindness mediation with a lovely meditation facilitator on a vimeo app and I move my energies for clearance and grounding. As well on being my own symbol of change in all of the ways that I can for the greater good.

A day of rest and endless heartfelt gratitude and beautiful enery clearing and rejuvenation with gratitude and blessings to all. 

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

In Praise of the Earth: Happy Spring Equinox!

In recognition of the Spring Equinox and 

"In Praise of the Earth"

"Let us bless

The imagination of the Earth.

That knew early the patience

To harness the mind of time,

Waited for the seas to warm,

Ready to welcome the emergence

Of things dreaming of voyaging

Among the stillness of land.

 

And how light knew to nurse

The growth until the face of the Earth

Brightened beneath a vision of color.

 

When the ages of ice came

And sealed the Earth inside

An endless coma of cold,

The heart of the Earth held hope,

Storing fragments of memory,

Ready for the return of the sun.

 

Let us thank the Earth

That offers ground for home

And holds our feet firm

To walk in space open

To infinite galaxies.

 

Let us salute the silence

And certainty of mountains:

Their sublime stillness,

Their dream-filled hearts.

 

The wonder of a garden

Trusting the first warmth of spring

Until its black infinity of cells

Becomes charged with dream;

Then the silent, slow nurture

Of the seed's self, coaxing it

To trust the act of death.

 

The humility of the Earth

That transfigures all

That has fallen

Of outlived growth.

 

The kindness of the Earth,

Opening to receive

Our worn forms

Into the final stillness.

 

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth

For all our sins against her:

For our violence and poisonings

Of her beauty.

 

Let us remember within us

The ancient clay,

Holding the memory of seasons,

The passion of the wind,

The fluency of water,

The warmth of fire,

The quiver-touch of the sun

And shadowed sureness of the moon.

 

That we may awaken,

To live to the full

The dream of the Earth

Who chose us to emerge

And incarnate its hidden night

In mind, spirit, and light.

 

~ John O'Donohue ~

 

 John O'Donohue b. Jan 1, 1956 d. Jan. 4, 2008

An Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher.

This section is from "To Bless the Space Between Us"

 

Shown above:

 

"Changing the World"

Designed and quilted by Michele M. Bilyeu

for donation to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative.

AAQI ran from 2006 to 2013 and earned $1,000,000

for Alzheimer's research funding.

 

My small art quilt was purchased at auction by Bill Volkening for his AAQI quilt collection as a small part of his much larger "Volkening Collection", and featured in his book ( which he titled from my little quilt) it was published in Bill's book: Changing the World: Quilts from the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3498527

 Thanks again, Bill, for all you did for AAQI and its quilt makers, like myself.

 

The quotation which is featured on my little quilt is from Margaret Mead and says:

 

 "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

 

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

The Guest House

"This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival.

​A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

by Rumi

(Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī)

Taken from SELECTED POEMS by Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks 

Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path to reach God. It was from these ideas that the practice of whirling dervishes developed into a ritual form. 

In the Mevlevi tradition, worship represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect "One".

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands sharing an imaginative,magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wild-crafting "from my heart and with my hands".

Rites of the Day: Poetry by Wyatt Townley

Centering the House

"All night Kansas
the lungs of the continent
takes a sip of the galaxy

swirling stars and barbed wire
sofabeds and willows
books and doors banging open

signs disappear whole towns
ditch themselves in the countryside
I stir the coffee to center the house

the place our mothers and fathers
and theirs and theirs passed through
their aprons strung on telephone wires

this tunnel of wind this trial
makes trees throw back their heads
and hair on our arms stand up

we’re nothing but breath on its way through the woods"

Wyatt Townley

The Breathing Field


Walking Water
"Between each vertebra
is the through line
of your life’s story,
where the setting sun
has burned all colors
into the cord. Step
over. 

Put on the dark
shirt of stars.
A full moon rises
over the breathing field,
seeps into clover and the brown
lace of its roots
where insects are resting
their legs. 

Take in the view.
So much is still
to be seen. Get back
behind your back, behind
what is behind you."

From The Breathing Field (Little, Brown and Co., 2002). Copyright © 2002 by Wyatt Townle

Walking Water

"Inside us the ocean
sways like a cradle
in which we rock rock

and are drawn like the tide
to the moon twice a day
we carry our water and it carries us

we are a good pail with legs
foot by foot on the turning
mountain of the world

water walking on the prairie
walking water on the road
up the stairs through a door

where the view rushes out of us
through the window to the woods
rushing water in the desert

rushing water in this chair
and that one you’re in
water walking

and what is solid is not at all
what we thought the rock
worn away by the rocking. "


Copyright © 2016 by Wyatt Townley. From Rewriting the Body (Stephen F. Austin Press, 2018). Originally published in Prairie Schooner. 

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

So Let Us Pick Up the Stones

"So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars.

Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears.

Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us.

Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug. Let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up and out and around.

The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning.

Oremus.

Let us pray."

Pádraig Ó Tuama
Irish Poet and Theologian


For the full interview please go here:

https://onbeing.org/programs/padraig-o-tuama-marilyn-nelson-choossep2018/


From the podcast "On Being" by Krista Tippetts

"Where to turn, to find my place of standing, when it feels like the world is on fire? This question surfaced in a public conversation I had just a couple of years ago with two poet/contemplatives, Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson. They have both been quiet, vivid inspirations and teachers, to me and to many — Pádraig bringing social healing, poetry, and theology together; Marilyn, a lyrical excavator of stories that would rather stay hidden, yet as she coaxes them into the light, they lead us to new life."

Still placing at 46th/100 of top quilting blogs 

10 1/2 million viewing visitors!
Boggles my mind but makes me happy.

One of the last things my beloved father said to me was to ask if I was still a teacher or a writer.

 "Oh yes, I said. I've always taught and always written.
I have a blog!"

 

A simple, lovely, and heartfelt craft.

Use your fabric scraps cut into heart shapes and  glue them with modpodge to simple stones.

"Love Rocks"

Read the loving story of a loss that created love one rock at a time all over the world. Make them, leave them for others to find wherever you go.

Details of sharing process here:

https://www.love-rocks.org

Love Rocks

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands sharing an 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".

6

"And the People Stayed Home"

"And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. 

And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal. 

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."

 By Kitty O’Meara March 2020

After Apple Picking: Apple Cider

After Apple-Picking

By Robert Frost 

"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

Phew!  Eight adults. Four grandkids ages 2 to 7 and several granddogs all helping with our continued apple harvesting!

We picked many wheelbarrows of apples from our orchard. Washed them, chunk sliced with knives and cutting boards to make the pieces small enough to fit through the apple grinder one chunk at a time, then pressed them through an apple press to get the juice forced out and reject the mash below.

The juice was funneled into two giant carboys (bottles) with thermal canisters besides for each family to enjoy at home fresh squeezed now. The giant carboy bottles are off with family members to undergo the process of fermentation that will result in home made hard apple cider. 

What a lot of work each year but great, great fun to work together with our 3 grown kids and their partners, 4 little grandkids and all of our apple antics and laughter! 

Another "Autumnal Harvest" family gathering of nature's continuing bounty!

Happy September!

Did you know that September 1st is the official start of our

"Meteorological Autumn"? 

Why Meteorological Fall Starts Before Astronomical Fall | AccuWeather

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/why-meteorological-fall-starts-before-astronomical-fall/344058

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

Where The Mind Is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high 

Where knowledge is free ‐‐ Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.





Where words come out from the depth of truth 

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection 

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit





Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.





Rabindranath Tagore's words from 1910 and his call for peace and freedom for his beloved India resonate in my heart and my own fervent belief in our need to call out for equality and freedom and a better life for all people in our own countries, nations and our much bigger world.





We must simply and complicatedly open our hearts to one another with love for all of man and animal kind and with the deepest of true sentient caring, compassion, and most of all, mercy.

We must direct our minds and our hearts through the energies of this love and compassion to envision, create, and bring forth into reality a new and better world.

The true world of sacred communion and all encompassing community that in our hearts, minds, and souls we all dream of within our deepest dreams within a dream that we call reality.

We strive to reach across uncertainties to our own basic truths and desires for a happy, healthy cohesive family, country, nation, and most of all world.

And we have really good days filled with really good fun while still working towards our individual goals and desires manifested for all. And for one not limited by and not just through and for our own selfish egos.


And that my dear friends is not always easy to do. This is the hardest lesson, learning and truth





And for me it's always starts with hope, faith, and charity--and always, always begins with love for family.





And we all have really good days filled with really good fun while still working towards our individual goals and desires with an immediate goal of being as happy and healthy and productive in living our days and weeks and months, and lives as we can.





With all of these wishes, all of these dreams and all of the otherworldly pains and challenges we can still celebrate each blessing of a new day.

On one such lovely day, we collected apples from our apple trees in our back orchard and using nature's bounty and our eldest daughter's creative  gifting a handmade by her cider press, we made homemade apple cider!

But don't worry, my chickens there's lots more where these apples came from and more again to come from other apple and fruit trees!












Our trial run with 8 adults and 3 preschoolers (plus all 7 chickens wondering where their apples were going!)


All helping, each at their own ability, interest, and energy level. The littlest ones (with occasional supervision from their parents and grandma) used their hands to clean the apples as they bobbed around in a big plastic storage bin of clean well water.


The Littles removed them when clean and placed them withing reach of a dad, granddad or uncle, or the moms and dads or grandparents and up onto a sawhorse and planks table.





The rest of us worked at this first station where we took turns feeding the grandkids' washed apples into the hand wheel cranked scratter part of the  apple cider pressing process #1 as son and son-in-law took turns turning the hand crank "steering wheel".


Note: In less than a week we now have an old motor (recycled by my husband)  as our new and improved motorized scrabber for our next apple cider day! Hand cranking is not easy especially with little ones wanting to help 😊





At station #2 my daughter fed that mixture into her apple pressing unit where pure clean juice poured down into clean pails. Transfered into pitchers, decanters and thermal hydro flasks with the help of all but grandma and grandkids who were now playing and trying very hard not to jump on beds with cider glasses in hand!The proceesed cider was from our own trees, organiclly grown, fresh, and quite delicious!


And now, this weekend, we are gathering one again. More apple pressing into cider, more mashing into canned appleauce or mixed with our plums or wild blackberries and dried in our homemade food drier into fruit leather. We have pears out back and even some Asian pears out to our neighbor's orchards to try in pear cider if we so choose.

It's all a lot of work, but working together and sharing our hard times along with our good brings forth far more laughter than tears. The gifts of Mother Nature's bounty along with our own labors of love!





Making memories to record and to treasure by doing what you can, when you can and working and having fun trying something new makes for a very good day and a very nice break from the rest of our lives of work, worry, and challenges, for all of us.


And with meaningful thoughts and words and best thoughts that others may also be blessed and free from anxiety, fear, pain and suffering and one day be free to have even one day of love and happiness¡





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

Bread and Jam: The Last Days of August

August

"When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, crammingthe black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue."

By Mary Oliver

“August,” another wonderful poem from the collection American Primitive (1983), is about a speaker savoring the rich taste of blackberries, in the brambles not owned by anyone.

We love our wild blackberries creeping over the old field fences and even over our own boundaries and into my outdoor laundry drying areas!

"I wish I was a poet like the men that write in books
The poems that we have to learn on valleys, hills an' brooks;

I'd write of things that children like an' know an' understand,
An' when the kids recited them the folks would call them grand.

If I'd been born a Whittier, instead of what I am,
I'd write a poem now about a piece of bread an' jam.

I'd tell how hungry children get all afternoon in school,
An' sittin' at attention just because it is the rule,

An' lookin' every now an' then up to the clock to see
If that big hand an' little hand would ever get to three.

I'd tell how children hurry home an' give the door a slam
An' ask their mothers can they have a piece of bread an' jam.

Some poets write of things to eat an' sing of dinners fine,
An' praise the dishes they enjoy, an' some folks sing of wine,

But they've forgotten, I suppose, the days when they were small
An' hurried home from school to get the finest food of all;

They don't remember any more how good it was to cram
Inside their hungry little selves a piece of bread an' jam.

I wish I was a Whittier, a Stevenson or Burns,
I wouldn't write of hills an' brooks, or mossy banks or ferns,

I wouldn't write of rolling seas or mountains towering high,
But I would sing of chocolate cake an' good old apple pie,

An' best of all the food there is, beyond the slightest doubt,
Is bread an' jam we always get as soon as school is out."

By Edgar Albert Guest
4/12/2015

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