Rebel - Shadow and Light!

This morning, working with a coaching client, a juicy conversation about the rebel aspect within - something I'm well acquainted with! 

As a teenager, walking in the energy of the rebel archetype was a way for me to feel powerful. I did not question whether there were good or bad times to walk in this energy. It didn't occur to me that I could choose to step into or out of this energy. It simply welled up inside me and spilled out over the situations I found myself in and the people who happened to be around me. Sometimes the effects were disastrous! But there were other times, (enough times to keep me bonded to this energy) where people took me more seriously, when adults backed down on their demands of me, and where my peers sat up and noticed, and maybe even asked themselves, "Who the heck is she!"

credit: EcosocialistsUnite.com

And now that I'm "all grown up"? I've tamed my rebel down a lot, maybe too much. Over the years there were enough times when instead of giving weight to my rebel-thinking, people took me less seriously, or even became alienated to me. So I squashed her down a bit... Yet there are still times now when her energy bubbles up and I simply let her out and savour - at least for a moment or two!


But what if I took her more seriously? What if I asked myself: where could her disturbing energy be used to break stuck places open? What if her job was to make cracks for the Light to shine in?  How do I call on my rebel to help with earth-healing... what could authentic rebel power bring to the world? And how can I choose with awareness the times when I will walk in that energy? 

I see it's all about being awake. And asking myself tons of questions. It calls me to step into the place of the witness within myself where I can simply mull... 
~ how do my rebel and I bring light and healing, within myself, AND to this situation...
~ what's going on with this person in front of me who's encountering my rebel...
~ what other energies can I call up now to collaborate with the creative and life-bringing aspects of my rebel... 


 Not so easy sometimes! Yet in this world of change we all inhabit, I've got a feeling my inner rebel will bring me insights that can make all the difference.

the Joy of Horse-farming

Lise after the morning milking. Early, early in the day! Photo credit: Patrick Barber, 2008

Found a blog which I must have known about 5 years ago - because I'm part of it. It surprised me while I was Googling references to Sweetwell Farm. I was trying to post this there, but didn't quite figure out that part, apparently!

Years ago, several of my dear ones and I lived together on a farm-school run by a Quaker couple in southern Oregon. Lise Hubbe, of Sweetwell Farm in Scio, OR, was one of us. A few years later several of us were re-united at a Quaker school on the north end of the Kootenay Lake in BC.  Life progressed and eventually five of us re-united again for a weekend at Sweetwell Farm in Oregon's Willamette Valley, where Lise has been living her passion - horse-farming.
Now the daughter of another one of us is interested in working with Lise for a university work-experience. Cycles and seasons, coming round once again. It's just like a Wendell Berry poem.

So here you are: Sweetwell Farm, a fine example of horse-farming - people I love doing sustainable farming - an inspiration to so many of us. 

Lise is running a two-row cultivator with two horses 
from her team of four. They are taking out the thistle 
from between rows of corn. Photo by Holly.

Milking at Sweetwell Farm; Painting by Rebecca Waterhouse, November, 2011