I am about to fly off to Australia to present 5 different workshops in 4 wildly different locations in 3 weeks. The web of connections I have tended through my work with Veriditas and the labyrinth has brought this amazing opportunity to encourage new women’s circles on the oldest continent on our planet.
Monday evening I will fly off from LA and land on Wednesday morning(!) in Melbourne. I will leave the dry and verging toward Autumn California landscape and arrive in early Spring. My first days will be spent with new/old friends who will take me to local labyrinths, an Aboriginal dance performance and to an animal sanctuary where I am promised, I will get to hold a koala and see one of the wonders of my childhood imagination…. the duckbilled platypus!
The first workshop will be a daylong Women’s Dream Quest where we will be Dreaming for the Earth. Dear Angela whom I met online through our mutual connection with Veriditas will host this Quest with local healers and dancers.
The next workshop will require a 4 hour trip by air to Kagoorlie in the great western desert. We will be picked up and taken another hour or so to Koora Retreat Center even further into that vast desert. Rev. Anna Killigrew, who with her husband, Peter tend this Anglican retreat center began this whole adventure. She read Circleway and decided that there ought to be a Dream Quest in the outback. Anna is a persuasive woman! This 4 day retreat will include Aboriginal Elders and create a circle around the largest labyrinth I have ever seen!
After the desert, I will board a train and travel 4 hours further west to the Perth foothills. Perth is on the Indian Ocean. I will present a weekend Dream Quest and then a reprise of my Meeting Mary class that I have done at Chartres. Rev Beth Roberton took that class in Chartres and has graciously invited me to her Retreat Center. After a wade in the Indian Ocean, I will fly back to Sydney.
Sydney’s Quest will be a coed weekend in the country, again with the theme of Dreaming for the Earth, held at Nicky Harper’s farm. Nicky came to our San Francisco Quest at least a decade ago and we made a pact to someday work together.
Preparing for all this has sent me to research Aboriginal culture and immerse myself in the Dreamtime as I understand it. I have felt a new kinship with my habitat here in West Marin and especially in Pt. Reyes where I have walked the trails with a deeper listening to the song lines that live in our Earth. The Alder tree has called me, and the raven, and a new depth of belonging to the landscape has taken root in me. I’ll bring gifts from here to there and take my deepened listening skills for a spin on the desert.
Thats the itinerary. I’ll fill in the details with photos on FB and hopefully more writing here.
And to all of you who may read this, I send blessings of beginner’s mind and heart in a new world. Australia_WDQ-7.pdf