Anne Peek - Whisperings

Minnesota November

Halloween/Samhain/All Soul’s Day ushered in the dark time, a reminder of death and ancestors, of mystery and shadow. In November, as bony trees appear, cold deepens and days become shorter and cloudier I sink into that bleakness, become more subdued, sleep more, dream more vividly, move more slowly. I make things in my home warmer and softer. I gather blankets and also thoughts, pondering the past, considering the future. And sometimes I just sit and stare at the brown landscape, or let my thoughts wander as I doodle. At least, I do these things when I can. My body and soul, embedded in the natural world, want me to do these things at this time.read more

Buoyed by the Unexpected

I’ve been marveling at a small miracle this week. I bought a Gerbera daisy, but somehow between the store and home I bent the stem of one of the blooms, bent it at a ninety-degree angle. I apologized profusely to the plant, and I assumed the flower on that stem would die within twenty-four hours. To my astonishment and wonder the blossom remains as lovely as ever a week later, with no signs of fading. I suppose it sounds trite, but the stem has given me hope, buoyed my spirits, when I’ve badly needed it this week.read more

Ants in the Sun

Don’t you love how when you’re really tired, that’s when you slam your hand in the car door, or trip and bruise your knees (or break a bone), or forget to make that important phone call, or burst into tears when your coffee cup dances off the table and smashes on the floor—Or when you roll over onto your glasses (glasses which you virtually NEVER take off), distorting and cracking the frame beyond repair. As I did last night. Every year the days of spring and early summer take me by surprise.read more

On Being Silly

A friend was telling me the other day how delighted she was to have discovered someone new who she could be silly with. I was a bit wistful, realizing I hadn’t been silly in awhile and I miss it. We talked about how fun, and how rare, it is to find a true companion in silliness—not only someone willing to be silly, but whose “brand” of silliness meshes with your own (there are so many different ways to be silly!). Kids are often joyously silly together, but adults less so. Were you discouraged from being silly as a kid?read more

Soul Song

Do you have a soul song? According to singer/teacher Chloe Goodchild in her book The Naked Voice, the Himba people in Namibia believe that every person’s soul resonates with its own unique expression, its own song. A child’s birthdate is the day the child’s mother decides to have a child, the day she goes off alone to sit under a tree to listen until she hears the soul song of the child that wants to be born. In our culture, where we don’t invariably learn our soul song, I wonder if the sounds that deeply move us might be clues.read more

Being Watched

There’s somebody new at our house and she keeps staring at me. I recently fell for a fluffy creature with a big personality that I saw in a catalog. I loved that she was so unusual that I wasn’t sure what she was. I loved that her pink and gray feathers gave her a look both elegant and disheveled. I loved that she seemed insistent on being totally her odd self. She didn’t seem like a child’s toy. And she made me laugh so I decided to buy her. Now that she’s here, though, she makes me uneasy.read more

What Now?

How can we best navigate this difficult time in our country and the world? Yesterday, with that question in mind, I grabbed an old magazine, took a deep breath, and spoke this question aloud. Then I opened the magazine at random and ripped out the page under my hand. Quickly scanning the page I circled words and phrases that jumped out at me. Those words and phrases, arranged into a rough poem, answered the question this way. Amidst the miasma, shall we resolve to shine ever more brightly?read more

A Bolt from the Beyond

The image of fiery destruction did not faze this group of six sitting around my dining room table. For several years my husband and I have had four dear friends over for a turkey dinner potluck the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Usually I ask a question of the group as we are finishing up our feast, after we’ve had time to chat with each other and discuss world events. I like to pose a question that will elicit stories, questions such as “tell us what you harvested this year,” or “tell us a story of a time when---.” This year I decided to let the Universe pose the question.read more

Fish Out of Water

Several days ago, on a cool rainy afternoon up on the north shore of Lake Superior I sat at a cabin table, enjoying the music of the surf and doodling idly. At one point I looked at my drawing in surprise. When my drawing or painting looks like a person or animal, I assume it represents some hidden part of myself. It looked to me like an angry fish, probably a bottom feeder. I had intended to fill the entire page with doodles, but as soon as I saw this creature I gave up that idea. I was almost afraid to mess with him because he seemed so cranky.read more

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Welcome to Whisperings

“There is a place where words are born of silence,
A place where the whispers of the heart arise.”
— Rumi

I will ponder here what whispers to me in the silence. I’d love for you to whisper back; maybe we will all get clearer—or maybe, like in the old kids’ game of “telephone” we will end up somewhere else entirely (which would be fun too)