For many years I watched the dawn of the Winter Solstice over an 18th century cemetery that was on my way to work. No one else was around at that hour and I always felt a sense of awe seeing the mystery of the coming of the light over the granite reminders of death. It… Continue reading Winter Solstice with Our Ancestors
Category: In the Past
Songs to Aphrodite
I’d love to share a short piece of music I just made titled “Songs of Aphrodite.” You are welcome to just enjoy it, or if you would like an excruciatingly detailed explanation, including how it relates to Sappho and some music theory, read on! It is written in the Locrian mode, also known as the… Continue reading Songs to Aphrodite
FROM THE HANDS OF OUR ANCESTORS TO OURS
Yesterday I visited the magnificent new Harvard Art Museums. I saw hundreds of objects but the one that has stayed with me is not a Cassatt, Matisse, the Monet, or monumental Greek or Roman statue of a deity and ruler, or piece of provocative modern art but a simple tiny female torso. This object is… Continue reading FROM THE HANDS OF OUR ANCESTORS TO OURS
Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint Whose Spirit Soared Free
The Medieval world was full of powerful queens and saints, both real and mythical. Second perhaps only to Joan of Arc, Hildegard of Bingen reigns as the woman who, after a thousand years, still moves us most with her life and work. Thirty years ago she was still an obscure saint from Germany little known outside her home… Continue reading Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint Whose Spirit Soared Free
Revering Forgotten Dreams of Our Earliest Mothers
I begin the New Year with a post about our earliest art and spirituality… As we enter into winter’s deepest weeks here in the northern hemisphere, when the light is growing but the cold and snow drive us inside, it is a good time to enter into the “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” as Werner Herzog… Continue reading Revering Forgotten Dreams of Our Earliest Mothers
The Winter Queen of the Soul
In order to make articles and columns available to readers here, I am reprinting them as posts. This first appeared in Moondance, December, 2008. Where I live in New England winter’s snow cover makes the land seem frozen into eternal barrenness. Yet, during this cold season, nature labors below the surface to recreate the earth;… Continue reading The Winter Queen of the Soul
Celebrating Our Birthdays and Changing the World
In order to make articles and columns available to readers here, I am reprinting them as posts. This first appeared in Moondance, December, 2008. I have now lived fifty years on the one planet in the universe that we know has life on it. In that time, the sun has dawned and set 18,262 times;… Continue reading Celebrating Our Birthdays and Changing the World
Hand to Hand Across Time
The older I get, the sparer my spiritual universe becomes, and the more I wonder if I would have felt more comfortable in a Paleolithic world. There is something essential– self-confidently spiritual, as star-bright and as earthy as a diamond–about the cave paintings and other artifacts our most ancient ancestors left behind. I especially love… Continue reading Hand to Hand Across Time
Mary Moody Emerson: Independent Spirit
If you would like to read a blog post I wrote for Her Circle Ezine’s Inner Circle blog about Mary Moody Emerson, an initiator of American Transcendentalism and a woman who found her own way despite the constrictions of Victorian life, click on the link below! Mary Moody Emerson ~ Carolyn Lee Boyd
This Old House, Part Two
As I mentioned in the last post, I often think of the women who lived and worked in my house 150 years ago. Though I know nothing about them, I do sometimes wonder what their lives were like and what they thought about the world they lived in. Occasionally, when I am feeling as if… Continue reading This Old House, Part Two