April Dreamzines Art Journaling Workshop---and Hope

 

Dear Dreamers,

In these dire times of illegal war and an insane Nero-type regime in the USofA, what is it to “hold hope in the face of fear” as Bruce Springsteen put it in his recent Los Angeles opening concert? What are your dreams pointing toward or uncovering? My dreams have been both unsettled and soothing, on alternating nights it seems. A lot for psyche to hold.

In this month’s Make Your Own Dreamzine art journaling workshop we will look at Jungian analyst James Hillman’s ideas on hope: not always upward growth but also deepening, staying in the mess, and shedding (in Kinds of Power, 1995).

 You are invited to  join me for art journaling on Sunday April 26^th in Santa Fe, New Mexico at 12noon-3pm. This will likely be the last Dreamzines in-person workshop for a while! The studio space is shifting, summer is on the way with some personal travels and social justice work ahead. HOPE is the theme for this spring dreaming.

 Email to reserve your place or for more information:

mexrebe@yahoo.com

 I am available for individual dreamwork online, as always.

In dreaming,

Rebecca 

 

 

Dreamzines for Winter: Art Journaling Workshops

 

As the winter solstice approaches—just over a month to go!—we have passed samhein, the cross-quarter time between equinox/solstice, and dip into the moments when the seeds are dropping into the soil. Some seeds need the coming cold, a freezing process the oddly (in my mind) leads to viability when the soil warms with spring rains.

I am ever hopeful for these seasons despite looming drought in this southwest area of Turtle Island/the USA. Our snows are late at this writing and predictions are for a dry winter.

Still, I want to trust in the seeds, and I feel such love for the birds that are now arriving into the land around my casita, feasting on the dried seed that has formed from the brightly colored flowers, pollinated/fertilized into this state by so many bees, both native and non-native, and by all kinds of butterflies, throughout the summer months.

            I am in awe of these seasons and the complexity of the ecologies around me.

            As I have typed I keep mistaking “soil” for “soul”. Just a skip of a vowel leads me to the deeper meaning I want to explore: an ecology of the soul, our dreams as seeds, now ripened, needing perhaps a rest time, an encapsulation of cold and snow and freeze.

I’m wanting to explore this idea of dreams as seeds, and feel into what is contained in the psyche when seen as an imaginal ecology. A time of varying seasons depending of course on where we are on the planet.  What happens if we let our dreams rest for a while? I imagine the dna concentrating into its future form. The root, and sprout, and leaf and flower contained in a tiny vessel of sorts underneath the earth.

            This idea will lead the next “Make Your Own Dreamzines” art journaling workshop on November 23rd:  a nod to the approaching winter here in Santa Fe, Dreams perhaps held in the soil/soul/ dreams of ancestors, even dreams of other beings who live and have lived here. Pinon tree and its companion blue pinon jay, the grasses and aster with their nutrient dense seed now dropping to the earth. May they, my dreams, feed my being, produce new images. The year closes soon and a new cycle of dreaming will begin anew.

      Sunday November 23^rd, noon-3pm. Enjoy hot tea and yummy snacks along with a contemplation of a dream of memory, and creative work with the hands, cutting and pasting and drawing and painting into the pages of your accordion journal. All materials provided. Email me with questions or to reserve your place! Directions provided on registration. mexrebe@yahoo.com

            2nd Winter workshop December 28^th, same time; usher in and out the (Gregorian calendar) years….

            And as always individual dreamwork is available virtually. Want to incubate a creative project? Embodied Imagination® is well suited for this. Look for a workshop series in spring!

 

 

Dreams of Yellow/Dreams of Seeds. October 26th Dreamzines art journaling workshop

 

Dreams of Yellow, Dreams as Seeds, Dreams as Beloved Departed  

 

This month the Aspen in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above  Santa Fe are a brilliant yellow, brighter than I’ve seen in the six years since I moved back to my hometown, brighter even than I remember growing up here, as a child, teen, and young adult. They are just glowing!  Perhaps a few days or week is left before the leaves begin to drop, as winter approaches (but not yet here!) …. Not quite yet…

 

In this dreaming time as Samhein, Dia de Muertos, Halloween approach (I know, they are not the same, but I believe related, to this cross-quarter time on our Planet Earth home, halfway between equinoxes and solstices. Here in the North, a time of thinning veils between worlds. Perhaps your dreaming psyche is hosting visits from beloved departeds. Family, or animal companions, or ancestors long gone. This is not always an easy group of images to relate to. Yet there is a richness there—treasures in that Underworld, realm of Persephone the Queen…

 Seeds are ripening here on the hillsides, in the arroyos’ edges, purple aster and yellow chamisa of last month, so attractive to bees and other pollinators, now muted and forming seeds, browning, food for the birds, and genetic storage for next spring’s green sprouts. Amazing.

 In this month’s Make Your Own DreamZines art journaling class, we will explore this seed process, a concentration of the dreams’ complexity into potentiality, like the imaginal cells of a butterfly chrysalis remembering our core being, the essence of our selves/ancestors.

 And we will also have fun! Snacks and hot tea! And art supplies, collage and colorful markers and ribbons and thread, weave and glue, paint and enjoy.

 Hope to see you October 26^th in Santa Fe in person, or if far away, contact me for online 1:1 dreamwork, and save the date for November Dreamzines, Sunday November 23^rd; we will start at noon-3pm in consideration of early dark and the return to standard time. mexrebe@yahoo.com