Tuesday 23 December 2014

Get to know the real Stars…



There is more to this Christmas Star flower than it looks like at first sight. You might know the Poinsettia —Euphorbia pulcherrima — as a cheery, easy houseplant which is flowering around Christmas and reaches around 30-40 cm. But the plant comes from a tropical climate, originally Mexico, where it is a shrub and can grow up to four meters.

What a presence it is! I was surprised and in joy to meet some of these tree-like beauties earlier this month when I was visiting La Gomera, one of the Canary islands. Its large green leaves slowly, wonderfully change into an overwhelming feast of bright red and orange flowers. It receives the light. It allows the light. This reminds me of Winter Solstice, when we, after some dark months here up in the north, are quite ready for the turning of the sun and receiving its light again; the rebirth of the Sun. Like the Poinsettia we dance to the Light. The Mother (of Auroville in India) received the following, as guidance from the over-lighting being of the Poinsettia: “Opening of the vital to the Divine love- little by little it is no longer the ego that governs, but the Divine.” Read it again. I need some practise to bring this into my life, how about you?
What stays with me, except the plant’s beautiful colours, is this ‘allowing the light in’. Allowing ourselves to be as big and beautiful and bold as we are.  Let us.  
Happy Solstice, Christmas and New Year.

Blog 32 - © photo and text: Adriana Sjan Bijman PhotoArt

Friday 21 November 2014

Horses, cows and the healing power of animals


With their flowing manes they come to us through our myths and fairytales. Descends from the Przewalksi wild horses from the steppes of central Asia were domesticated and when the human was welcome on the back of this wild mammal, it made a huge difference. It changed history.  A horse is seen as nobler than any other animal. A beautiful animal, true, as well as intelligent and faithful. Different, but for me not necessarily worth more than a panther, elephant or cow.

In my youth on a Dutch farm we had a heavy Belgian draught horse, before the tractors were introduced. We had sheep, chickens, sometimes goats, but most of all we had cows. Many cows with calves, young bulls and heifers. When my parents started their dairy farm at the beginning of the II World War, my father had bought one cow. A cow is not just a cow; there are many kinds. And they’re not as stupid as their reputation tells us. 
Anyway, our farm started with Hoekstra 5, one of those world famous black and white cattle breeds for milk production called Fries-Hollands. Generations of Hoekstras lived on the farm, until recently, when my retiring brother and sister-in-law ended the farm. Only after leaving home, did I get to know other cattle breeds, like the Dutch Lakenvelder and the Groninger Blaarkop  (Groningen white headed cow) and then, in the 70s, as soon as the quota on milk production was introduced, foreign breeds for dual purpose (milk and beef production) were imported. Larger Holstein-Friesians, Italian meaty Piedmontese calves, the Limousin and beautiful white Blonde d’Aquitaine, both at home on French plains, and the Jersey cow. I like cows. Like cows, chickens or pigs, there are many horse breeds too. I ‘m just not so familiar with them.

We hunt animals, eat them or have them as pets and companions near the home or farmstead. It makes me believe these animals committed themselves to be with us humans, even if we think we are the boss and owner.
The native American Indians as well as the Celtic druids said every person has a power or totem animal. Animals as symbols of healing power. Each animal shows us behaviour patterns in which we can discover healing messages; free for us to use. You don’t ‘horse around’ with these powers. The white stallion brings the shield and power of wisdom and teaches that misuse of power never leads to wisdom.

 On my photo I show you one of the beautiful horses and Shetland ponies (horses of a small breed) while grazing at Cullerne Gardens of Findhorn.
Blog 31- Photo & text: © Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2014

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Time, just time?


Time is an odd phenomenon don’t you think so too?  I give my example, but you’ll have yours. Last week I went to the isle of Iona on the Scottish west coast. Cannot remember how long I had not been there, surely calendar years! How could it be, that arriving there, I felt as if I had only left it last month, or even last week? Everything felt so familiar: its sea of the ‘Sound of Iona’, its colourful rocks, its 'Traigh Bhan nam Manach’ the White Beach of the Monks; with the house Traigh Bhan and Robbie, the warm Rayburn, which invites us to bake our own bread and spend lots of time in its cosy kitchen… On Iona time runs differently.

Time slips, time loss or a déjà vu, it’s all so much easier to happen during these days at the end of October and the beginning of November; around Halloween or Samhain, as we call the Celtic festival celebrating the Celtic New Year in the Wheel of the Year; in the Wheel of Time. It is said that the veil between the dimensions is thinner. This would make it easier to connect from our world to the invisible world, the ‘other side’. In many cultures this has been practised: by the Native Americans, by the Celtic druids and even the Christians copied it from the Celts and called it All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  Time to honour the beloved ones who aren’t in a human body anymore.

In our physical world a lot of us believe in the separation: ‘here’ are the living, ‘there’ are the dead.  But maybe we all are living souls and we are not that much separated?  Maybe there are more dimensional shifts. I like to believe that.  My birthday is always in this Samhain time, and I’m interested in this ‘twilight zone’ in which time and sometimes even spaces overlap. Time only seems to exist for observers inside our universe. It is said that even physicists, although having trouble with this ‘problem of time’ or conundrum, cannot ignore it. Who would want to? It’s fascinating! 


I show you here a favourite photo I made of the colourful rocks at the north side of Iona. There is a deep pool or hole inside, maybe to disappear and swim to the ‘other side’?

photo & text © Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2014

Friday 3 October 2014

Being young and visible, my ‘Youth @ Findhorn’ project.

Youth. Young people. Gosh, it’s easy to forget we’ve all been young ourselves, as every generation seems to express this period in life in its own, new way, don’t we?  Before last year, when I saw youngsters at the bus stop, hidden under their hoods, it sometimes made me feel uncomfortable. It is easy to imagine some people even being scared of them. Then I remembered my own teenage years, which were the worst of my life. I was a girl living in the countryside, going to school in a small village. I was so unhappy, so insecure, so damaged and I tried to hide it by acting the opposite way. I remember a photo made when I was 15, and now I feel a lot of compassion for the girl I was then. Without judgement or rejection. When you have children, you often relive these years during their adolescence, but I don’t have nor live with young people myself here.

So this all made me want to get to know more about the young people of nowadays. The modern youth around me is living in a rural area like I do. I felt curious (and courageous at times) to photograph and interview them and make a project of it: ‘Youth @ Findhorn’.

Many people around me in Findhorn know my photographic work of landscapes, flowers, seascapes; they know my community event photos and books. Why suddenly people? They ask. But In the past I photographed —in waves— nature (non-human part) and people. Activists, female farmers, 50+ women, habitants of a rural village, and some of these projects have become books. Working with people can be intense, satisfying as well as demanding, I tell you; a flower does not commend or resist being portrayed. Humans or nature, in either situation I have to connect from my heart with them to get the best results.


The young people I contacted I then interviewed with questions about their situation at the moment, at home, education or work; their hopes and aspirations for their future; how it is to live in a village, especially in Findhorn? I had to have the written agreement of their parents, who also, like the portrayed themselves, read back the interview, and together we made corrections if needed. They were involved in the choice of the end result photograph and they saw the edited summary of the text. In most cases this was a graceful process. Some people did not want to be part of the project and some others withdrew during, alas.

Looking back I think the young people shown in the series were very brave. The series shows their hopes, their sometimes insecurity but often their strength and wisdom. It felt like an honour to make them visible and to help other people to get to know this group better. As some visitors at the exhibition at the Moray Art Centre wrote as feedback  “Extraordinary & deeply inspiring work. Mesmerising” or “Thank you for giving a very interesting insight into this unusual and privileged group of children.”

I indeed wanted to allow these wonderful young people to be seen and heard. Last September (2013) I showed a small part of the series in the Universal Hall, these two last weeks I exhibited an extended series in the Moray Art Centre (24 September – 5 October 2014); which was part of the 1st Findhorn Bay Art festival last weekend. In the Scottish newspaper Press & Journal there is an interview (Monday 29 September).

October 2014, photos & text © Adriana Sjan Bijman

Saturday 30 August 2014

Being independent or being inter-dependent?

http://www.adrianasjanbijman.co.uk

It might be that coming month Scotland, ‘my’ country — as I live here— goes independent. And maybe not. With joy I received my poll card for The Scottish Independence Referendum
It feels as such an honour to vote for this on the 18th of September: the choice of independence for a country, without any war needing to be fought first. Having the choice of voting ‘Yes’ or voting ‘No’. The Referendum brings up lots of discussion, also in our Findhorn Foundation Community and I think this to be very positively, whatever the outcome will be. A neighbour’s window, which says: “Hope not fear, Dare to vote Yes”, makes me smile every time I pass it.
I just learned that it is not Scotland’s first attempt to be independent; the oldest surviving document about this fact is from 1320 when the Scots issued a ‘declaration of independence’ to be freed from English aggression and its dominating power and become its own sovereignty. Not far away from Findhorn lies Culloden Battlefield, which is an old wound in the country’s history. But personally I feel this independence moves away from the past and has all to do with wishing to decide its own future, more than Hollyrood (where the Scottish government resides) can do now.

This all reminds me of my own and our inter-dependence. I live alone and although I am not depending on a special relationship and as such could be called ‘an independent woman’ in the traditional sense, in the modern sense I am as inter-dependent as anybody else, as a human being. We all are depending, in the first place on nature, on the Earth.  But we are also depending on our friends, in a light —hopefully healthy— way, as they are depending on us. I am inter-dependent of my customers, friends and acquaintances, people who already know my graphic and photo work, who for instance ask me to do some design work for their business or who buy some notebooks from my studio or a photo book from the online web shop…. We serve each other.

So, if it will be a ‘Yes’, may we become neighbours who service each other well, who realise they are inter-dependent, both part of Europe.
The pictures I chose are about the interdependence in nature like between this intertwined group of cactuses in Jujuy in the north of Argentina.

August 2014, photo and text © Adriana Sjan Bijman


Thursday 31 July 2014

El Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela

Over the last weeks I visited Santiago de Compostela for its university. My study Spanish this year included one residential week at this prestigious university, which is known to be one of the best of Spain with over five centuries of history. I imagine it attracted philosophers, searchers and thinkers amongst the peregrinos, the pilgrims on their Camino. Santiago became a ‘highway of knowledge’ a diffuser of the great cultural and artistic movements that emerged in Europe some centuries ago.
Imagine, until the ninth century, this town was all forest, named Libredón. In its middle was a Roman Sepulchre and there, in the ruins of its primitive burial, it is said the remains of one of Jesus’ apostles, Santiago, were discovered. The today majestic Santiago de Compostela Cathedral was build on top of it and the town became one of Europe’s most popular places of Christian pilgrimage.

Not for Christian reasons, but for my own personal and spiritual quest, I walked my one-day stage of the Camino. From Santiago de Compostela through the old oak groves towards Finis terrae ‘the end of the world’, on the Fisterra-Muxía Way. The weather was hot, the landscape mountainous and my untrained body struggled with diarrhoea. 


But it was great! It was quiet on the Camino with twenty-two whole kilometres to contemplate. Then, when I thought I was lost, I met a wonderful woman and helper, as happens on the Camino.

During the sleepless night afterwards I was reminded of another Spanish route I had taken some years ago. With the sweet memories of the relationship that followed, the poem below came up. Just before my travel I read about Cheryl Strayed’s thousand miles hike, and I agree with her when she writes in her book ‘Wild’ “There ‘s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What causes what to flourish or take another course….”
 

I still see her
walking towards me
in the old olive grove
Ripe and juicy like the new green harvest and
mysterious as the wild trees themselves in their
being, coming from another realm
It was somewhere down south

I saw her again
This time she came from the north
walking towards Fisterra (fini-tierra) like I did
A peregrina
Each step of her 800 kilometres carried by her maternal guru
we shared a part of the camino
sparkles on the path of our lives
reaching these green valleys of paradise
‘¡Buena suerte con tu vida!’

(Lots of luck in your life!)
Photos and text: © Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2014


Saturday 28 June 2014

Day and Night, Dark and Light

Tree blossoms at Findhorn - Dark & Light

We’re living the longest days of the year here in the northern hemisphere. The nights feel too short to rest from the at times overwhelming intensity of the light. Some friends have put up extra curtains to be able to sleep in the dark.  A song, well known here in our community, says, “Be still and know that day and night, that dark and light, are one holy circle.”

During these two weeks three community members left their body to rise into the realm of the Light. Well, after a challenging end in the physical, I believe that’s where they’ll be going. To the Light.
For this month’s entry of my Light Scribble I chose an image of young trees still in blossom in my garden against a dark background, a play of dark and light. 

The Mother, in one of her guided messages about white flowers tells us in ‘The Spiritual Significance of Flowers’ that “white light is the light of the Divine Consciousness in its essence. In this white light all other lights are contained and from it they can be manifested, for this reason white also indicates integrality, completeness and totality, especially the integrality of the being in all its parts, from the physical being to the true self.”

So take a deep breath. Inhale the light. Let the white flowers enter our heart and trust their light will shine on the darkness. 
To know this brightens my day.

© photo and text: © Adriana Sjan Bijman, June 2014


Friday 23 May 2014

The divine and devil in ‘El Pico del Teide’



For the third time I visited ‘el Teide’, the most important volcano on the ocean island Tenerife. This May I came from the south of the island, which is said to have  been a desert for millennia.  Again El Pico del Teide —the Teide Peak— impressed me with its bare moon-like landscape. The soil seems fresh erupted ‘black lava’ of hard rock fragments; on other places it is covered with gentle hills of cream coloured sand dust, which actually is volcanic ash.  Like what came down from Iceland some years ago, remember? Nothing grows on it. Its earth seems as dead as the native aboriginal people the Guanches, who lived on the islands until the Spanish conquerors arrived at the end of the 15th century. The Guanches believed in the mythology of the Teide and many legends survived, telling us of its divine legacy. It was thought the Teide held the most devilish forces in its crater. Personally I can understand some of that, as a decade ago our suspicious German workshop leader felt drawn to jump into the crater, believing we all would be saved by extraterrestrials. Tenerife is known for its UFO connection. So glad the jump was prevented by the local police!

Nowadays the island lives off the more attractive energies of tourism and the banana export. You see their polytunnels everywhere. Like the native Canary Pine tree the residents have adapted to live off what the land can offer — or they moved away. The abundantly growing pine tree is fire resistant, from blackened trunks they simply rise again into the green. They possess an amazing water-collecting system in their leaves to survive the long periods of drought. It only rains 14 days a year. What a difference with Scotland! We enjoyed the sunshine and warm breezes that cooled down the island. Thank you,  beautiful island of Tenerife!

© text and photo: Adriana Sjan Bijman 

Tuesday 20 May 2014

Tulpomania


The famous Dutch painter Judith Leyster lived in Haarlem in the Dutch Golden Age, the 17th century. She became the first female ‘Master painter’ and had, like her colleague Frans Hals, a studio and students. To my surprise I once found myself in tears in front of the original oil painting of her self-portrait, hanging in the Frans Hals Museum, in the picturesque ancient street Klein Heiligland in Haarlem. Since I ‘discovered’ her during my art education in the early eighties, I always loved her work. It radiates self-confidence and “joie de vivre”. She inspires me four centuries later. 

Next to her famous oil portraits, she painted tulips, lots of tulips on paper. Her tulip books became very popular and became the first visual catalogues for tulip traders during the ‘Tulpomania’ and its speculation that hit the Netherlands and made the bourse crash in 1635.
Haarlem still lies in the middle of a tulip area. I have great memories of living in that town at the river Spaarne during several episodes of my live. Think of the Netherlands and many people automatically think of tulips, so the famous Keukenhof flower show made ‘Holland’ their theme this year. 

Amidst all flowers I have photographed, tulips have their own unique place, as I always loved them. I created this image to honour the tulip and Judith Leyster.

© text and photo: Adriana sjan Bijman

Saturday 29 March 2014

Moving, dancing, swirling around


This month’s favourite is a dance image. Look at those odd movements made during Scottish Ceilidh dances! What is it all about?

We’re fortunate to have lots of dance performances, shows and workshops here at Findhorn. Since the start of our community creative expression has been important. In 1975 Bernard Wosien brought the sacred circle dances to Findhorn. Here they received a home, developed and later on circled outwards using the Findhorn’s way of attunement, sharing and blessing into the rest of the world. In the 90s the Celtic Festivals with Peter Vallance brought a new kind of dances. Nowadays there are a huge variety of dance practices, from Biodanze, 5 Rhythms to Astroshamanic Trance Dance.

It’s all about moving, dancing, swirling around and around…. And this is how my life feels at the moment. Spring has arrived, securing new beginnings. But where did the idea spring from that those beginnings only would bring positive change? Every tiny fragile new tree bud knows it will magically blossom in the spring sunshine, accompanied by a gentle rain now and then. But while opening into a delicate blossom it might be surprised by a spring shower or even by an all-destructive wind and hail storm. It’s taking a huge risk in showing itself. It will be moved, danced and swirled around and its strength will be severely tested. It must be in for a bit of a blow. 

And so must we! As for the blossoms, our own ‘new beginnings’ are not guaranteed to start positively. Don’t tell me! As here I am, shifted, switched and swirled around by life. Some roughly opened old scars about love and trust reveal ‘the mess I made’ (free to Amy Winehouse’s song): loss, disappointment and grief under the anger. It can be a long lasting dance into the exhaustion of resist. Or until a fresh wind brings the insight that actually a good thing is happening: old challenged perceptions and pains need to be released first, gently or by force. Is this all present from a deeper need to heal and grow? Is that its main reason for materializing in our lives? As long as I engage with, submit and surrender myself to the movements of this dance, while seeing it as a kind of spring clean before I myself can spring into the new beginnings of my own inner springtide, I know somehow it will be fine. I will be fine.   
So, let’s dance, “let’s dance the feelings, the tears and the passion”. Come on, I found some beautiful blossoms for in your hair.

© photo and text: Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2014