Summer Solstice / Midsummer / Litha

The Wheel turns to Midsummer, the 2ost of June. The longest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere. It is said that the Summer Solstice is the Give-Away time of the Sun. The light of the day has grown and has been expanding into its highest lights during these long, endless summer nights here in the north. Filling up the day and spilling it over. On the Scottish Orkney Islands it hardly gets dark and at Findhorn, with a bright sky, I can photograph outside without flash until midnight.

Breathe in deeply the abundance of fragrances in the air and the earth; light a fire; dance; wear wild flowers and bless the bread and honey and breathe deeply again.

And every Summer Solstice is totally different of course, like every day is different despite the sun rising and setting daily. Like the summers, like the whole immense cosmos, we —as the magnificent beings we are— change all the time. This year brings us an exciting mid June astrological constellation, with both the Sun and the planet Venus travelling together into the sign of Cancer, home of the Moon, home to all feelings, the heart and to the mothering quality in us. A great time to come home to ourselves and to the truth that lives in each of us.

In the Celtic tradition and pre-patriarchal times in which the Divine Feminine was honoured, the Goddess would share her power with the Sun King during Summer Solstice and they would sit side by side on their thrones. Let us honour both their energies in ourselves: the feminine and the masculine, as we are both. On these Midsummer Eves let us rejoice and enjoy the immense, sacred energy of the universe while the Sun touches the mountaintops, the seas and land at dusk and dawn. Happy Summer and Solstice!

Read and see more images about the Celtic Festivals of the year at my web page http://www.adrianasjanbijman.co.uk/celtic.html

Blog 45, text and photos © Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2009/2016 http://www.findhornimages.com

Gardening again

Now we write May again and although snow was forecasted for this coming weekend, the sun is out. The chalet, where I am temporarily staying in The Park has a south-facing terrace and herb bed, both yelling to be tended. The gardener in me can’t wait to respond. Weeding is the first thing that needs to be done. With the physical condition I have at the moment — amongst which vertigo with constant dizziness and distorted eyesight— it seems an overwhelming and Herculean task. I do not know how to begin gardening again! Kneeling to do the job? No! Squatting? No way. OK… sitting and moving on the ground then? That might work….  Oh my goodness! Is this something all less-able people have to go through? I never knew!

I am painfully clumsy, like a drunken sailor. For one and a half hour I try to ‘keep calm and keep on weeding’, puffing and sighing while every move of my head causes everything to swirl around. Until I have to stop from nauseousness. It is the most disappointing and frustrating experience I have had in this last half year here in The Park.

But OK, I pruned the sage. I weeded three meters of terrace tiles. I tackled a big long rooted nettle family. They’ll end up in tonight’s soup. With quite some effort I did fill more than half a brown compost wheelie bin with weeds and old branches. I did it! Now I’m proud to have gardened again.

Blog 44, text & photo © Adriana Sjan Bijman, May 2016

Shifting boundaries

One night, I, once again, dream of death; a repeating theme lately. I am waiting for several people to die, and they seem to take ages to do so.  Slowly, they slowly turn into brownish-grey mud beings. I stand aside, witnessing it, left desolate.

It reminds me of a sentence I once read, “Now, in the middle of the journey of my illness, I am left alone and defenceless.”(1)

A realisation pops up that the dying people are part of me; the old me, from whom I want to detach, release or transform. As I am not totally ready to do so, in the dream I feel an uncomfortable sense of guilt towards them, as if I am betraying them. Letting them die seems as if they were not good enough, as if the old me maybe was not good enough? I have to tell them that they were, at the time, but that now I no longer need what they stand for: qualities of my pre-illness past, like impatience, direct sharp communication, and the multi-tasking workaholism. Let those qualities serve other people now.

Time for some homework it seems, as I then dream I am being forced into a gloomy cellar to clean the incredible filthy steps descending before me; a horrible task I have been given to undertake. Finally, after finishing it, I discover an old squeaking door in the cellar, which brings in fresh air and light. What a relief!

My old organisational skills are well placed to open new doors, I think. I would like to invite and integrate a new me, new personalities, as a gift on this journey of illness. Dissimilar to the old me in many ways. Not only physically older, but also wiser, with more experience on the inner. This physical condition teaches me new boundaries to what I can do, and can no longer. At other times, it forces me even to give up all limits and borders, depending on the shifting sands of my energy. It teaches me compassion, patience and slowing down, in fact a lot of slowing down. Taking this in, I realise I now want to live with an evolved set of boundaries, whether I am ill or healthy.

(1) from  The Alchemy of Illness,1993, by Kat Duff

Blog 43,  © text and photo: Adriana Sjan Bijman, March 2016

www.findhornimages.com

The joy of flowers and herbs

It has been and it always is a great joy to photograph plants, which I’ve been doing for many years. With an interest in, and love for wild and cultivated flowers since I was a young girl in the Dutch countryside, I now have a large photo-archive full of flowers and plants, made in the areas I lived in or on my travels around the world.

“The wonders of nature are like new every year” author Wendel Berry* writes.   I love gardening and see the daily changes in plants, from seed to bud to blossoming to the releasing of seed again at the end of the cycle. Such a great example of life! The flowers in our gardens are grown in a natural way, without chemicals, just organic compost, manure, love and lots of appreciation. I loved living with them in my own garden at home, at the studio, and in other gardens.

With every herbal greeting card, with every little bag of herbs or seed in it we give you:

The promise of life enfolding

The joy of growing and releasing, all in perfect timing

The blessings of good health

The abundance of colour, form and fragrance

The encouragement to express your love for the Earth

The miracle of Life

—   You are also all that!

Herbal cards:  greeting cards with a herbal gift: seeds or herbs for tea or bath.

The new herbal greeting card series with inside a present from the Findhorn Gardens: Six different herbal greeting cards, (15x15cm/6x6” with coloured envelop) with a cute bag of seed and herbs to grow in your garden or in pot (like nasturtium, calendula and papaver), to make yourself a tea (fennel, lady’s mantle) or to use in the bath (lavender). Wonderfully illustrated with photos and explaining story about the herb. Hand harvested in the Findhorn Gardens. With instructions.  For sale in my online shop http://www.findhornimages.webs.com

·       Life is a miracle, Wendel Berry  (2000)

© text and photo Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2015  blog 41

Beauty and ugliness

Hello everybody

Here some thoughts about health, both in the garden and in my body, and the congruence I see happening between these two. Although my houseplants are thriving, healthy and growing fabulously, so I‘d like to take them as my example.

‘Fear of the unknown is an essential part of the human program', Joseph Dispenza,The Way of the Traveller,(2002)

Beauty and ugliness in the garden

More than 50 strawberry plants, there are black-and redcurrant shrubs, abundant roses, lettuces, calendula, lemon balm for my tea, and many kind of herbs for the picking. I defend my food and plants against the pests who are looking for their next meal. In essence we are all doing the same thing, looking for food to live on. The snails and slugs are enjoying an abundant wet summer in my garden.  They’ve eaten all my zucchini plants (including the yellow flowers); half my beautiful lettuces; they’ve totally destroyed an immense green striped hosta plant, and all of the dahlias; they’re doing their best with my cabbages and broccoli and now the snails are heading for my strawberries.

“No!” I told them. ”You can have the cabbages, but not the strawberries. That’s my limit.” We’re not on speaking terms anymore. So I tried to stop them, using crumbled eggshells, prickly comfrey leaves, with copper anti-slug tape and I even bought them beer. (As a coeliac, I don’t drink beer). I think they’re ugly. I wouldn’t mind seeing them drown themselves drunk in the cans with beer I placed at several strategic places. 

I still have quite some processing to do before I can be at peace with them, before I can see their beauty.

Challenges of beauty and ugliness in the human body

Like my garden, my beautiful, slim, 51 kg, flexible, strong body has its own ugly side to face, invisible to others. For years I’ve been struggling with the untreated consequences of coeliac disease. I now have it quite well under control and am at peace with it, but two months ago the right side of my body went numb. Although it still functioned normally, it is as if it was only partly present. At the same time red spots started to appear on my chest. Neither I, the doctors and nor the hospitals have any idea what is going on. I’m a guinea pig, receiving one cream and test after the other, even antibiotics, all without result; a biopsy, a lumbar puncture, an MRI brain scan; bioresonance sessions, homeopathic and Bach remedies, a thorough clean of my new house after the discovery of the fungus Aspergillus. After two month my illness is still a mystery, as both the spots and the numbness are not only not improving, but getting worse, with severe dizziness, causing me to faint in the street last week.

During good moments I am in peace with it. During other moments, the worry and the fear set in. Then I start imagining, like Don Quixote, my own dragons where there might only just be windmills. Time to face the dragons and maintain the windmills. 

No beauty without learning about ugliness, no love without getting to tackle fear.

Blog 39, July 2015, © text and photos: Adriana Sjan Bijman

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"How far is’t called to Forres?” "

Castlehill, Forres

“How far is’t called to Forres?” was Shakespeare’s Macbeth’s famous question to the three Weird Sisters, or witches. Later, like many, the women probably were tried for witchcraft in Cluny Hills Hollow or burned at the stake. Macbeth is now the name of the local prize-winning game and venison butcher. 

Seen from The Park, the nearest town, Forres, always looked quite far away to me, emotionally at least. But actually, now that I have moved to Forres, and commute everyday by bike or bus between my studio in the Park and my new home, I realise this is not true. Forres is home to Cluny Hill, to Newbold, to Transition Town and other familiar Findhorn Foundation Community organisations, businesses and people I know.

Spring, while the soil puts forth new beginnings, is a good time to move house. Blossoms smile along the streets, and in the many parks that enrich this little town and now enrich me. At Castehill Park, I feel feasted under the arch of pastel pink, ivory white and rose red Japanese cherry trees. Forres has more green to discover in depth. Grant Park, Sanquhar Woodlands, Bogton Park, Rose Garden, and Cluny Hills, with its winding paths around the four or five hills filled with woods of Scots pine and larch. 
Despite its surroundings being clothed with trees since early times, probably the name Forres neither derives from forest, as I always thought, nor from the gaelic Far-uís (near the water) but is a heritage from the time of the Roman Invasion. (My goodness, did they come this far north? What were they looking for in this rough climate and remote land, when they could indulge in sunny palaces with Roman baths with bronzed gladiators were queuing up to massage them?) Anyway, one of those Romans marked this place on the map as Varis, from which Forres derived. As said, probably. Earlier it was also probably, the Picts who erected the esteemed but mysterious Sueno’s Stone, which still stands as guardian to the north entrance of the town. More than 500 years ago, Forres was granted a charter by the king to become a Royal Burgh, although another king, oops, was murdered in its castle. Once the whole town of wooden buildings was completely destroyed by fire, once half flooded.  Alongside all this drama, there also is the glorious history of once being a chief town in Moray. I like to fantasize about all that happened here in the past, but I did not invent most of this information.  I found it in a delicate little book, written in 1894. The local library let me take it home to read. We’ll never know what was really true and what not…..

After living a decade at the seaside, with carpets of yellow gorse, broom and purple heather, with the sounds of yelling seagulls, I notice the differences in my new residence. So many other bird songs, a dawn chorus! Such different vegetation, and even different water. The Mosset Burn meanders through town before joining ‘our’ river Findhorn towards Findhorn Bay; there we are on familiar ground. As new I walk through streets with ancient buildings on soil that remembers the passions of the past. 

It is not very far, that’s for sure. Aye!

Blog 37, text and photo © Adriana Sjan Bijman, May 2015

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A massive fire

Thinking of the Paasvuren, the bonfires they still make in spring in the fields in Drente, the east part of the Netherlands, I decided to make my own Paasvuur and, with the upcoming house move in mind, to burn my diaries. it's a great thing to do! So  at the edge of the sea and dunes of Findhorn, with a friend together we sang, shouted it out and danced around the fire. I did a ritual to bless our past with all its experiences of joy and pain and release it together with the old books while we threw them and threw them in the fire. Our memories will stay with us, they are enough.

Deep down inside me, an even bigger fire is burning. A huge fire of anger, outrage, grief, and also of compassion for the suffering. Its flames, spitting out tentacles, trying to claw at my energy, feed on me and overwhelm me.

It has been said that you can only mourn if you can love.

Once, during the preparation for a ritual at Findhorn to shed our tears for the suffering of the Earth, environmental activist Joanna Macy said: “It takes courage to fully live in a fear-phobic culture. The dominant system cannot tolerate the raw feelings of grief and anger about what has been done to our Earth”.  I’m sure it means the anger and fire in me, in you, cannot be seen as only our private pain − to deal with in hidden one to one therapeutic sessions − but as part of the collective (un)consciousness.  The fire in me is for the ancient forests they’ve put to the flame to clear soil for cattle grazing. The fire in me is for the memory of being burned at the stake for the knowledge we had as women about the healing properties of plants, trees and stones; for the rituals we held to honour Mother Earth.

The fire in me is not a cosy barbecue or gas-lit fake wood-burning stove. I want to make a real fire to release my useless old, walk over the hot ashes, and burn away the skin, become raw alive again, renewed.

My fire is huge and it needs attention and to be tended by a real fire-woman.

Blog 36 Photo & text: © Adriana Bijman, April  2015 

Living and Longing — at the waterfront

Not far from my flat, the sea and the endless sandy beach with its pebbles perform an ever-changing seascape. There is my home. It is the water, a home that will stay, even if I am soon to leave the flat here.

You ask me why I so often go to the beach, why I always long for the water. I have lived my whole life close to the water. The lake at Dorregeest, its reed mace waterfront touching our North-Holland polder land, where my nephew drowned. I remember. The canals of the old Dutch town Haarlem, and the long straight canal between old moorland at Kiel-Windeweer in the north. The Italian harbours, expecting the ships to come home with damask from distant foreign shores. The Adriatic sea, in which one hot summer I myself almost drowned, struggling for life while Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls just wanna have fun’ resounded over the entire beach camping. 

Nowadays, for almost two decades, my coastline is Scotland’s Moray Firth on the northern Atlantic edge of Europe, where the Vikings once fought with the Picts.  Our seawater is warmed by the North Atlantic Drift, which we call here the Warm Gulf Stream, maybe just to make it sound warmer. We need that!

I had a free day yesterday, a non-working day. I treated myself to a spa outing with a friend in Nairn, where the air still breathes the traditional seaside resort it was in the 1950s.  I loved it! Each in our own way, we enjoyed the water. As steam in the Hamman, as hot bubbles in the Jacuzzi, in the outdoor hot tub, or flowing free in the pool. Even dipping our feet into the still ice-cold sea.

There it was again; the smell of salt, the taste of water, the touch of cold waves around the feet creeping up the calves, changing the body into a vessel of goose bumps. Standing, looking out over the waves. How often do I ‘see‘ the picture of a woman, standing at the waterside, her eyes longing over the horizon to that unknown not lived life, which could have been?

Water is so emotional.

Blog 35 photo & text: © Adriana Sjan Bijman, March 2015

Moving I- We belong to the Earth

Let me start with the Earth. The song ‘I feel the earth move under my feet’ comes to my mind.  Although Carol King sang it as a love song to another human being, I sing my love to the earth-being, Gaia, and today specifically to this part of the earth at Findhorn village where I live. The ‘castle’ of Culbin Sands Apartments has hosted me for more than eight years. I love the views over the wide dune landscape filled with yellow gorse or purple heather. In bloom they are a colourful tapestry, drawing you in, to be at home in it. And I am. And I have been.

Being touched by the Earth.

I feel touched while I touch the soft sand, the undulations of Gaia’s skin on the beach, and I see I am build like Her, in Her image. I am soft rough uneven broken tough delicate. This soil is calling me again and again. I am hers. In all weather. How the very soil of a place binds us! First it calls us, the next thing it anchors us.

Earth does not seem to go together with ‘change’

Everything connected with the element earth seems to change very, very slowly, like the movement within a rock or a mountain, that seems nothing, doesn’t it? Until it expresses itself in an earthquake, that’s big, overwhelming. But everything is changing continuously. We know that, in theory. Small daily changes are easy to ignore, but they are signs we better keep an eye on to prepare ourselves for the big chances in our life.

Moving house can be such a big change…..

— I do not know yet for this time! — even after I have moved house and country many times. The idea I have to leave my wonderful flat and maybe from here is disturbing and not convenient. I’ll have to un-root, I will be uprooted and maybe even become unsettled for a while, until I find a new home.

Through the process of moving I hope to learn some things,

like about homecoming in myself and improving my adjustment to the changes life gives. To  stay in balance easier, whatever is happening out there. Spiritual teacher William Bloom, a regular visitor to Findhorn, once said: “Some people are not that sensitive to all the stimulus of the world around them, they are very earth-bound and calm.” But like William I am not one of those people! So I’d like to listen more to the Goddess of the Earth, Tellus, Gaia or  call her Terra Mater. To become her daughter. ‘We belong to the Earth’ and even if I might be a wandering daughter, having lived in many places on this planet and travelling for experience and gaining inner wisdom, I belong to this soil, to this part of the earth called Findhorn.

Blog 33 Photo and text © Adriana Sjan Bijman, 31 January 2015

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

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