LIANNE RAYMOND

Don't be afraid

“Don’t be afraid,” the angel says in greeting. This is an important idea, easily passed over. The world would like us to be afraid. Afraid of each other, afraid of life, afraid of doing the wrong thing, afraid of illness, misfortune, and death. How many preachers try to scare you into belief? As a child I was threatened into faith with terrifying images of hellfire. But fear is never a good matrix for religion. The angel says, “Don’t be afraid.” The Greek words could be translated: “Give up your phobias.” Let’s not operate from anxiety, the angels might be saying, but from trust, hope, and a feeling of participation and connection. Let’s live into life rather than shy away from it in fear.

This is an excerpt from an unpublished chapter from Thomas Moore's book Writing in the Sand: Jesus and the Soul of the Gospels.  It's an examination of the story of Jesus' birth. Thomas Moore is one of my favourite authors - get a taste yourself by downloading the whole chapter at his website.

Winner of "Steering by Starlight"

Congratulations, Lauren, you are the lucky one tonight!  I'll be sending you your copy of Martha Beck's Steering by Starlight asap.

Best rush of the year & the next give-away

Easy.

February 2nd, 9am when I call Martha Beck on the phone to coach her as the final step in the Martha Beck Coach Certification process. I do some yoga before the call cause I'm nervous as hell. But, as you would expect, once I actually get on the line and immersed in the process it ceases to be about me, and the coaching flows and the call ends and I am full of love for Martha and full of love for this thing we do which goes by the unfortunate name of life coaching. It was poetic and I'm thinking I might start calling myself a life poet. Except nobody will have a clue what that is.

This whole topic brings me to my next winter potlatch item - which is a copy of Martha's latest book, Steering by Starlight.  There are lots of great reviews on Amazon but my favourite review of this book so far is this one from my friend, Marya.  I'm giving away a copy to someone who comments on this post -no requirements this time - a simple "put me in the draw!" will work but feel free to share your own rush of the year as well. I will draw from the commenters on Friday at 5pm pst.

This post is part of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

Best new food of 2009

I spent a good chunk of time this year (almost every Sunday) in the quest to make a pizza at home that came as close as possible to replicating the pizza from Via Tribunali in Seattle and Pizzeria Prima Strada in Victoria. Both restaurants make authentic Nepalese style pizza - which means it is cooked in a hot (about 800F) wood-fired brick or clay oven, uses of San Marzano plum tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella cheese,  and fine-milled white high-gluten wheat flour. The dough also must be leavened with a sourdough starter or regular brewers’ yeast and should be hand stretched, not rolled out. I can only replicate some of this, but I'm pretty happy with my results so far.

My version of the dough uses Robin Hood flour (sometimes I go crazy & throw in a bit of whole wheat), brewers" yeast (but I plan to start experimenting with sourdough), water and a pinch of salt. I make the dough in my bread machine and then put it in a bowl coated with olive oil for a second rise. I have not yet fully mastered the hand stretching and still need a bit of assistance from my rolling pin. I do use San Marzano tomatoes which I luckily can buy at my local grocery store (and this is good since they come in glass jars and just today I read about the yuckiness of canned tomatoes).  I also happen to live in the same town as the one Canadian Cheesemaker making genuine mozzarella from an imported herd of water buffalo.  It's not cheap, but I consider my pizza a worthwhile splurge.

When it comes to baking I do my best to replicate the wood-fired oven with a pizza stone and putting my oven as high as it goes - which is only 550F, but this works reasonably well. And it took me a few tries (imagine pizzas which became defacto calzones) to get the hang of using a pizza peel to get the pizza onto the stone. In the summer, we use the gas grill outside with the pizza stone.  The (not very good) picture is of a pizza with spinach and chorizo with the buffalo mozzarella.  I love our pizza Sundays.

This post is part of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

Winner of "Wide Awake"

Rachelle, your choice of the word free seems to be having an effect already as you are the lucky winner of Christine Kane's new album, Wide Awake.  You didn't leave an email, so please contact me at lianne.raymond at gmail dot come and I'll get the CD in the mail to you asap.

Yay!!!

Edit: OK, you did leave an email, I just discovered how to find it!

Favourite album of 2009 and Winter Potlatch

Most of the other best of 2009 prompts have been hard decisions, but this one was easy - my best album of 2009 is Christine Kane's Wide Awake

It was fun to watch this CD come together as a participant in Christine's novel approach to production which she called Be My Record Label.

I have played this CD in my psychology classes as the students worked and they loved it. Many of them came up to me after class to find out where they could get a copy (from Christine or on itunes).  I have played it when my friends came over to hang out, drink tea and have girl talk - again, big raves. I have gifted it to some of my clients who couldn't get over how it spoke to them.

I love it so much I'm giving away a signed copy of this CD as the first item in what I'm calling my Winter Potlatch. Potlatch is a Chinook slang word used on the west coast - it means "give away". I'm a huge gift-giver at heart so this is fun for me. All you have to do to have a chance of getting this CD in your hot little hands is leave a comment with a word that you would like to be your "word of the year" for 2010. Choosing a word of the year is one of Christine's signature practices. I will pick a winner randomly from among the comments at noon pst on Monday, Dec.14.

This post is part of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

Best blog find of 2009

Sometimes I liked to amuse my husband by saying, "Yep, that's it, I'm done. I've read the internet." And we both laugh - 'cause that just isn't ever going to be true, is it? Sometimes it feels like it though, like you've gone down all the streets you can possibly go down and there is nothing left to explore - and then by chance you click on some link and bam! - a whole new rabbit hole to get lost in.

So many of the fun blogs I discovered this year have already gotten lots of love - like Kelly Diels and Danielle Laporte, as have blogs that I've been reading for awhile like Gretchen Rubin and Brene Brown.  So I want to introduce you to a blog that I find consistently intriguing with links that are worthy of the description "rabbit hole": Chris Corrigan's Parking Lot.  I did a workshop this past year with Chris around facilitating conversations through Open Space, World Cafe and Unconferences.  He did some kind of crazy voodoo magic where after listening to everyone introduce themselves and speak a bit, he wove our words into an amazing poem. What you'll find on his blog: deep thinking about community, links to other philosophers/idea people, great writing and always a garnish of some terrific poetry. Totally worth a visit.

This post is part of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

Best conference of 2009

I'm a huge Margaret Wheatley fan - fell in love with her ideas and her books when I was working on my MEd. So I stop by her website semi-regularly to see what she's up to. Last spring I noticed on her schedule that she was going to be keynoting at a conference called Northwest Catholic Women's Convocation and that it was open to the public. It was relatively close by, the price was right and when I checked out the conference website and saw that Riane Eisler (author of The Chalice and the Blade) and Jean Shinoda Bolen were also going to be there, it was a no brainer. I'm not Catholic (anymore), but I was going.

The whole conference rocked, but the absolute best part happened at the end of a workshop with Jungian psychiatrist Jean Shinoda Bolen (author of Goddesses in Everywoman). The room is packed, some people are even sitting on the floor for lack of chairs. The median age in the room is at least 60. About half of them are Sisters (the nun kind). At the end of her workshop on "The Divine Feminine", Jean decides to be a bit mischievous and plays a new song from Portland singer Storm Large, from her one woman show called "Crazy Enough". The song is called My Vagina is Eight Miles Wide* and it is catchy as hell.

I can't tell you how much I love this song, not the least because it will always call to mind that moment when I first heard it. The moment when I saw one of the nuns, probably about 80 years old, white hair, orthopedic shoes and hose, plain jane skirt and blouse with simple crucifix around her neck, get up out of her chair and move into the aisle so she could dance to the song. And after a few minutes others joined her. And then even more women were on their feet, until the whole room was dancing. I can't fully describe the complete and utter joy I felt in that moment. I was laughing and crying and had goosebumps. It was beautiful, to know that such a thing could exist, to be surrounded by all these wonderful progressive, liberal Catholic women and feel the energy of sisterhood. We were all embodying the sister archetype (the not-nun kind). It was fabulous.  

Conincidentally, if you believe in that sort of thing, I was at a workshop on just a couple weeks later that was facilitated by a woman who lives in Seattle and works with Meg Wheatley's Berkana Institute and we got to talking about the conference in Seattle. She was able to fill me in on a bit of the backstory to what I witnessed. Apparently for years Seattle had a very liberal, ecumenical Bishop who fostered the very type of community I saw until he was effectively disempowered by the Vatican. Her comment was, once a people have been empowered, you can take away their leader but they will not be easily silenced. 

*I wish you could have been there. But you can download the song from itunes. It's such a wonderful anthem about how the feminine energy is coming back into the world after having been depressed for so long.

This post is part of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

Best night out 2009

My best night out in 2009 was literally a night spent outside. During the heat wave we had here in BC this summer, there was one night when I was so unbearably hot in the bedroom that I took my duvet and headed out to my hammock. Hanging between two huge old fir trees,gently rocking back and forth, I had the best sleep in living memory. Cocooned in the fold of a Mayan hammock and being awakened by the sun and the brids - it doesn't get any better than that.

This post is part of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

Best Books of 2009

Coming Home to Myself: Reflections for Nurturing a Woman's Body & Soul - Jill Mellick combs through the oeuvre of cool Canadian Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman, and turns it into poetry/prose gems like this:

If you travel far enough,

one day you will recognize yourself

coming down the road to meet you.

And you will say

YES.

This is a book that you read by opening it randomly to any page and finding exactly what you need. It is a book that I will turn to again and again, not read once and put on the shelf.

also in the running:

Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future

Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive 

This post is part of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.