Hello dear friends,

Happy New Moon, another auspicious time to notice what energies need to be let go of, and which new energies can be allowed to grow, as the moon will be growing in the night sky over the next two weeks.

I have this new painting and 2 new poems to offer for this month. As I contemplated my “Word of the Year 2020” I was thinking about how much over the years I’ve learned to reference and trust my inner sight rather than only taking into account the dominant view of reality as told by others. The above painting started out as my wanting to do a kind of self-portrait: I often think of myself as a blooming sunflower (at least it’s who I want to be), and wanted the painting to be a time-lapsed portrait of myself, all juxtaposed. The seed in the ground and its sprout being my young childhood, then the leaves growing larger over the years. A budding flower, still not opened up, then that growing larger as I grew into myself more, and then finally myself fully blossomed as I feel now. And also, now, how I often see the world, as roses falling from the heavens, with the mess of our groundedness becoming compost for something more precious: compost of roses.

My painting skills not keeping pace with my inner visions, this is the painting I got. I still like it! 🙂

Oh, and my Word for the Year: Inner Spaciousness!

To See the Roses
Cat Charissage, January 2020


Keeping on keeping on through grey days
trying to shine
wanting to be of use
yearning to be swallowed up into Mystery . . . 
underneath me
dirt, mud, cast offs.

One day, many days now
I see the roses
gifted freely
impossible to believe
composted earth 
nourishing all.

The Rose
Cat Charissage, January 2020

I was born curious, as we all are,
longing to understand
the All, the Infinite, the Big “G”,
looking for Reality, for the Metaphors to carry me across the annoyances of
computer glitches and dirty dishes
to the Otherworld here amongst us.

One day I saw the rose blooming 
one petal after another opening up as I watched.
Mystery wasn’t unknowable or ineffably Beyond,
but as the rose, opening more and more 
to our vision.
The more we know, the more we can know.
The more we see, the more opens up to be seen.
In my vision I was a little smaller than the rose,
scampering from one recently opened petal to the next,
following  beauty step by glorious step to the Center, 
where I saw the roiling boiling liquid fire, 
the inner core of an active volcano.
Every few minutes, the power of the volcanic core
would shoot fire into the sky,
beacon to all that here, now, was light, power, beauty.

Here at the heart of Mystery progressively revealing itself
was a bridge to the Other amongst us,
an Other infinitely at home,
infinitely gathering us into its Mystery.