Gathering Wisdom This month as we seek to gather knowledge and wisdom, may I suggest we examine the power of gathering with others? Such a gathering was our Big Ocean Women Retreat last month. The synergy created by combining women with diverse ideas, knowledge, and talents enriched each participant. In addition to the roughly forty…
I’ve been thinking about tomatoes. Not the uniformly red tomatoes of about the same size and shape that you can buy in the produce aisle at your local grocery store. No, I have been thinking about late summer tomatoes grown in a backyard garden, the gloriously uneven and brilliantly colored globes sheltered from the midmorning…
Twenty years ago, when I started having my babies, I was gifted some very lovely blankets by wonderful women I knew and loved. Some of my favorites had crocheted edges, and I would admire the handiwork when I held my babies wrapped in the beautiful blankets that offered warmth and reminded us of the love…
During the Renaissance, the idea arose that a person could study and become learned in all the knowledge of mankind. Leonardo da Vinci is often listed as a quintessential “Renaissance man” though there have been many other examples, even before the Renaissance era. The current term for someone who is greatly knowledgeable in many fields…
I love puzzles and mysteries. There is such a thrill in the victory of finally figuring out the solution. Last fall our family participated in a tropical island plane crash themed “puzzle room.” In order to escape the imaginary island, we had to solve a series of puzzles with only the items we found in…
There she was on the morning horizon shining! Her bright countenance ablaze with glory. Her heart refined to gold. Her mind sharp with knowledge. Her feet swiftly moving toward her future! She was richly dressed in feminine experience. Upon her flowing tresses she wore a crown of wisdom. Eternal and flaming love were written in…
In an ancient Hindu fable, six blind men encounter an elephant for the first time. Each man touches a different part of the elephant’s body with vastly different conclusions. The version of this story in poetic form was a beloved children’s picture book I remember fondly. As I contemplated our tenet this month on seeking…
https://youtu.be/Lsv47ZuUDzQ
The most beautiful thing in the sterile white classrooms where I teach are the students themselves, full of vibrancy and noise and mess, enthusiastic in both their excitement and confusion, bringing color into the room in the same way that a flung open window brings in light and sound and gently wafting breezes to tease…
Ann Takasaki, executive board member of Big Ocean Women, shared her passion and vision for our work in an interview on Spanish Fork City Television last month. Among the life-changing efforts of our organization are virtual and face-to-face cottage meetings of like-minded women, seeking generative solutions to poverty and abuse, educating women and girls on…