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ahava shira
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- Salt Spring Island, B.C.
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loving inquiry
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- What else do you want us to know?
- I am asking the questions: What does it mean to engage in relationships in loving ways? How do I practice engaging with myself, others and the natural world in ways that move beyond dominant, stereotypical and/ or discriminatory discourses that limit who each of us is and/ or may be? How can we engage in relationships in ways that keep identities open, fluid and flexible, able to adapt to new situations and environments?
Loving Inquiry is a practice of heartful being-in-relationship that is rooted in my commitment to sustaining open-hearted engagement with myself, others and the natural world. Loving Inquiry invites a continuous exploration and conversation on how we can love ourselves and each other within spaces of ambiguity, confusion, and/ or mis(s)understanding.
For example, when we notice that we are engaging in ways that feel unkind, or oppressive, reactive, or self-critical, we can look closer and notice what else emerges when we open to the complexity of the experience, whether through writing, voice, movement, character, photographs or whatever creative process fits the particular situation.
I invite you to read my blog and spend time with my photographs. Feel free to comment and respond to my work. Or send me your experiences of loving engagement across difference or misunderstanding.
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ahava shira's Photos
Ahava shira's Blog
gates 12-15 culmination
a whole valley
echoes
between
proud willows
when throat
singers flirt
with amphibian
feet
gate 13:
hocus crocus
white and purple
pocus, yellow’s
mellow, orange
you are sun
sun you are
orange, mellow
yellow’s, pocus
purple and white
crocus hocus
yellow’s pocus
purple, mellow
orange, and white
you are crocus
hocus sun
gate 14:
for Beverley
on this unsteady beach
each weathered
stone betrays embrace
tide refuses rhythm
horizon swallows step
after step
only driftwood dares… Continue
Posted on March 30, 2009 at 9:30am —
on my being with nature: gates 6-11
everybody wants
to be heard
creek
chinwags
renegade leaves
and stones
share savage
winter highlights
snow melts
and lower than normal
temperatures
threaten (promise)
departure
birds
natter
in the
orchard
discuss
spring plans
my song is only
one of many
gate 7:
on a sunset walk along Cranberry Road we meet the neighbours
jeepload of young men four-wheelin’ over rolling fields black and white cat licks its paws where the old Howard barn recently burned next door pastoral swampl… Continue
Posted on March 26, 2009 at 11:30am — 3 Comments
art-in-nature poems
I hope you are enjoying your experiences in nature. Here is my poem in progress...I have decided to name my days by gates as each day I look for a new way into words via this exploration.
14 gates: on my being with nature
gate 1 :
joy
can’t hide
here
and why would she
want to
though sometimes
she sleeps late
spits out words
without warning
starts pillow fights
we all fall
down
from somewhere
cells let go
gravity pulls
gate 2:
a morning of
bird music
through my b… Continue
Posted on March 19, 2009 at 10:22am — 1 Comment
love notes & self as world
I saw him there while I was sitting at a table by the window of Barb’s Buns, a local bakery and restaurant. I thought he looked disheveled and out of place. There’s an Indonesian word for it, feeling lost, meaning that you cannot see the mounta… Continue
Posted on November 16, 2008 at 12:44pm — 4 Comments
why "gals"
I know there's some derogatory history to the word. I want to reclaim it. In Hebrew the word "gal" means a wave. Each of these characters is a wave of inspiration, and reclamation, taking back strengths and qualities I had lost, or hadn't known were available to me.
I hear myself speak from I here. I hope that by sharing this work others might be inspired to reclaim parts of them.
Indeed la… Continue
Posted on November 8, 2008 at 11:00am —
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Jerry
Neat that you should respond today. Yesterday I edited this poem I wrote in the fall:
sing I must
sing I must
of trees
of larch
and poplar
true cedar and apple
fig and cherry
walnut and plum
sing I must
of grasses
of clover
and chickweed
nasturtium and
tiny tree frogs leaping
across towers of basil
sing I must
of flowering
of oriental lilies
roses dahlias
black-eyed susans
lobelia daisies
and snapdragons
irises and magnolia
who named all these
trees, grasses, flowers?
For I sing not just
of them themselves,
though they are many,
and lovely, in colour
shape and scent
but of their names
too, of the litheness
of language,
its pretty letters
and the paths they
have traveled
to their given
landings,
those they
inhabit and
grow from
and will eventually lose
becoming something
else entirely,
as everything that lives.
I sing of all things named
and unnamed, of the well
of names, how each thing
takes up another and another.
drawing them forth like bees
to nectar.
I sing of the ceaseless game
of naming, its pathos and
thanatos. Of temporary
roosts, and glorious hosts,
each one a different
kind of rhapsody.
Ahava,
It was good to see your post and interest in the 2008 'Art in Nature Challenge'. You'd be a great addition to the Challenge. I will be having another one soon, but, not until we're past the shortest days here in the northeast.
I'll add that while it's great when we are all participating at the same time, I encourage and am also available to support a Challenge anyone may want to take on themself. You can start anytime, if you feel you'd like to. Just put a note on the Challenge page, for what dates your Challenge will be for and send me a letter, as well, so I'm sure to be aware of your 'Challenge'. You may find others joining in with you.
The format will be a bit different than in 2008, because I ask that people enter their posts for the Challenge on their own pages, but notate their posts on the Challenge page. In other words, in a comment box, on the Challenge page, write a brief note that you have made a longer post on your own page
about your Challenge activity. You'll see examples of this from the 2008 Challenge.
Let me know if you need more info on this.
D.
ahava
I'd like to share SEXI, a project I have been working on, which deals with self image, its dangers and cost(s):
www.SexiTheMovie.com
Other websites of interest to your wonderful project might be:
www.MyRightSelf.org
TransgenderTapestry.com
Chroma Journal
I shall write more when I have time, but wanted to share that I could certainly see an art piece reflecting this learning process ... for me my medium is more tactile so I saw a sculpture, for you perhaps a performance piece. I am interested to see the unfolding of that for you too!
Its so great to have you here!
The book I mentioned that may have some valuable pieces for you is called Empathic Education: An ecological perspective on educational knowledge and is written by Laura & Cotton, Falmer press. They're both Australian I believe.
All the best
Lisa