May your days be Merry and Bright…
Now, as the sun turns from the shortest day of 2017 toward the growing season of 2018, we look back and forward. For a picture to keep from the past year, I pick the beauty and welcome of our pyramid room, finally finished in 2017. I look at it, and think that its healing possibilities are endless. I remember the conversations about creating Intentional Community, in which we participated at one Reclaiming Tradition gathering. Visions discussed kept returning to having a ‘Healing Arts Center’. I suspect the theme of healing has only become more central to people’s dreams of life on the right track. Certainly we are seeing sales at our business, AzureGreen.net, soar on an undefinable yearning for things that speak to alternative ways of being, and offer uplift for spirit, mind, and body. Even the local Adult Education classes given in our small, rural town of Middlefield MA have seen the biggest turn-out be for Aromatherapy, in keeping with this theme of seeking gentle, healing ways of life.
(Pics of finished upstairs meditation room, plus we did the floor of the greenhouse on the pyramid’s lower level.)
Joy, Health, Love & Peace, be all here in this place…
We continue having community meals twice weekly in the previously finished portion of the upstairs –the dining hall and commercial kitchen, as we have since mid-2015. The practice of simply sitting down with neighbors over good food and friendly conversation gives uplift for the self and connection-building for the larger group. About 80 people gather for dinner on Tuesdays, and nearer 40 come to lunch on Thursdays. These meals have been the most frequent expression of the mission of the nonprofit community center: to enhance our community, and the world we share. “Blossom Center” was the name that arose for the community center, since it was meant to be a center, was located near Blossom Corner, and has the purpose of encouraging creativity, stewardship, and initiative to blossom. People are welcome to find us on Facebook: @Blossom-CenterMiddlefield.
Or, visit the website under the name of the umbrella organization at: www.Ezmereld.org (Ezmereld was the name of the school of magical, healing, and bardic arts in the novel Tamarin wrote: Initiation At Beltane. She keeps giving EZMERELD acronym words of explanation. Currently it’s an Epicenter Zone, or an Expansive ‘Zation, –Modeling Explorations Re-imagining Earth-Life Disciplines.**
We do a lot of imagining what could be; exploring how to create it; then becoming a model of life-affirming things, so natural to human aspirations, yet too rarely found elsewhere.
~ 2017 ~ This past year, Adair continued to work the jobs of 3 people, and say: “We need more help.” … Marin got elected to town government again, this time on the Board of Assessors, and went to UMass Amherst for a week of training. … Her parents’ 2 retirement homes in Santa Rosa got through California fires intact, after a forced evacuation. … Former housemate and co-worker at AzureGreen, Cam, died after a long illness, and received a very nice funeral from the Middlefield townspeople who’d known him since their one-room-schoolhouse days together. … The ongoing collaboration with the local Community Service Group produced another great annual block party on the 3rd Sunday in July. …
We got additional solar-electric panels installed. … We welcomed to town a long-time friend from CT, Diann T, who’s now built her dream retirement home in Middlefield. … Daughter Buffie continues to be a key member of our 20-employee family business, and to frequently bring her god-daughter, red-headed Tara, to work and events here. (See pics of the frequent pizza-making events, and video of Halloween congregated trick-or-treating: https://quik.gopr o.com/v/H9wKQNbGsv/ )
~ 2018 ~ In the year to come: We will be completing construction on the remaining 4,800sf unfinished space in the business & community center building (named Beltane Hill). We’ll continue to network with diverse people also engaged in enhancing life in our various communities. We’ll continue to provide spiritual supplies, support other businesses with fulfillment and shipping services, and a great selection of goods. We’ll continue to build the connections of community. The upcoming events, classes, salons, and possibilities will manifest when community members make them happen.
We’ll continue –with others– to discuss and implement the things that aid our practice of living on Earth in harmony with our destiny, and with each other.
–Merry Solstice Greetings 2017 from Adair & Marin (Tamarin), Buffie, and all the folks of AzureGreen & Blossom-Center, at Beltane Hill, Middlefield MA 01243. (That’s POB 48 by mail, 16 Bell Rd by street.)
**[Footnote from Tamarin: I know my acronyms get clunky, but I keep feeling like I need new words to describe what I mean. Our culture lacks a word, despite humans naturally being social creatures, to identify belonging to a larger Tribe/ Clan/ Family, when that ‘belonging’ is not set by DNA; or belonging to a ‘Nation’ not set by geography. So I coined ‘Zation (short for organization) to describe that identification of your self with your larger group. And by “Earth-Life” I mean living in a holistic manner that harmonizes the life of spirit with the incarnate life; keeping or restoring balance between our actions and the wider whole of Earth. I still want a physical-world school of Ezmereld to manifest, as I’d dreamed when writing its fictional counterpart. That’s a project that needs co-creation with fellow Seekers, both teachers and students –a ‘zation of faculty and alumni. … In this past year, at the Four-Freedoms and Women’s Marches, I noted the hosting ability of church congregations, and thought that the ‘Power of Congregation’ should not be limited to those agreeing on a dogma. It is too important for that.]