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

"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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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

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 1^st 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

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

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

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