A Season of Swans

devotions & offerings in the New Year

Mother swan, father swan & baby cygnet. Photo Credit: Elizabeth Crawford

Dear Readers,

This missive is closer to a traditional newsletter than my usual, but I hope you’ll read through to the end for announcements about some very exciting early spring offerings.

First of all, however, some thoughts about light, and about devotion, to get us there—

I spent the morning and afternoon yesterday in glorious clear sun by the sea. There had been so many days of dark and rain beforehand that I was beginning to slide into a kind of wordless desperation. So when the dawn sky broke utterly crystalline yesterday, I picked the nearest wildest beach I could see on a map, bundled myself and Runa into the car with a small picnic and too many scarves, and zoomed off toward the tide.

I wasn’t expecting the utter radiance I was met with. It took me so by surprise—though I’m not sure why, as everybody praises the beauty of Devon’s south coast, and though something had mostly kept me from it these many months, it wasn’t like I didn’t believe what I heard and read!— that I’m still reeling.

I passed a rough-looking man on my way back up the lane from the cove who summed up the feeling exactly. He was smoking a cigarette as his shiny black lab trotted ahead, ecstatically carrying a red frisbee (one of those people who doesn’t immediately seem to match their dog). “Just about makes the dark worth it, doesn’t it, light like this?” he said with an ecstatic smile that did actually rather match his dog, and they were off.

He was right. The depths of heavy cloud and storm and ceaseless rain that had enveloped Devon of late gave the sky and the sea a beauty that was almost overwhelming, and seemed to dissolve even the possibility of gloom. Somehow I had already forgotten what it felt like, or nearly.

The particular slant of January light made the ocean an intense but soft sapphire, and the hills were so freshly green they resembled close-cropped velvet. There was a kestrel— cinnamon wing stripes— on a pine tree, and then on the cliffs above the slate rocks where Runa and I lounged, barefoot, eating oranges and poking around for special-shaped stones and shells. After so little light for so long, I drank and drank it in. The soft sea and the big low sun and the sweep of cliffs and the watching kestrel and the blooming gorse and the waterbirds leaving white feathers in the marsh were extraordinarily vivid, like seeing them all for the first time.

Light-deprivation, followed by jewel-sweet light in the heart of winter seemed to produce the feeling of epiphany; the feeling of dawn breaking after the longest of the soul’s nights. And the experience reminded me that we all hold an interior light just as bright—the place where we are whole, the place where God’s flame is in our hearts and always has been, by whatever name, and if we can just turn toward it, even when the world is utterly dark, then immense presence and the remembering of love will arrive like sudden bright birds.

Like the purest blue sea, and all the clear rushing springs and waterfalls pouring over green valleys to meet it.

I felt inarticulable devotion come into me. I feel it still. The blue went in, and the green, and the light, and the kestrel’s wings.

The word devotion has been circling of late, before yesterday by the sea, though yesterday brought it forth even more clearly. But it was the swans who brought it to begin with, starting many months ago in late spring, when flocks of them kept passing over friends of mine in far north places at unexpected moments; when they arrived in my dreams; when I stood before them in person and their beauty, as always, was almost unbearable; and when my friend Nao Sims and I started talking about them, and about the soul, and about the Six Swans fairytale, and suddenly knew there was a pathway of white feathers we needed to follow, and follow together.

And so, without further ado, I am very excited to announce two main workshop offerings between between the end of January and early March, to help keep the light strong in the heart as we move through dark northern winters.

First of all, Nao Sims will be offering her next 6-week dance workshop on the Six Swans fairytale itself, with both online and in-person options. If you enjoyed my last post about this story and would like to go deeper, dancing different facets of this extraordinary tale straight into the body and the psyche, I can assure you there is no better guidance than Nao’s.

In addition, halfway through her six-week series I will be offering a morning writing workshop to support the experience of the dance and your engagement with the story.

You can read all about both of these offerings here, on Nao’s website. The class will run from January 22nd through February 26th, with online classes each Monday between 6:30 - 8:00 pm PST.

“Together, for 6 weeks, we will explore the themes of this old tale. We will ask ourselves questions about patience and devotion; faith and transformation; silence and promise; perseverance and courage. With each class we will unravel another thread of story, before weaving it back into the fabric of our own lived experience.”

-from “The Six Swans: Threads of Promise” class description, Nao Sims

Even *more* exciting, however, is the immersion Nao and I are offering on Vancouver Island in Canada in early March. It’s open to any and all participants, whether or not you’ve taken the six-week class, and we are already humming with gladness to finally be offering something in person together.

Announcing….

Swan stories are always love stories, because swan love is the love of pure devotion. The devotion of the swan mate who will not leave the body of her beloved until all that’s left of him is feathers. The devotion of the youngest daughter who spins and weaves six shirts in utter silence to turn her brothers back from swans to men. The devotion of the swan maiden to her stolen swanskin and her wild soul. The devotion of a young lover to the swan woman he will follow to the ends of the earth and be faithful to for the rest of his days. The devotion of the soul to God.

In this two-day dance and mythic writing immersion, we will weave nests with our bodies and our words, gathering strands from different swan stories, as a way to explore our own relationship to devotion. From the Paleolithic bird goddesses of primordial Europe to the swan maidens of Russian folklore, from mother birds who sit on their cygnet-eggs without moving until they hatch, to the silent, weaving daughter in the Six Swans fairytale, all of these will surround us and guide as we explore questions like: what does devotion mean to you? What does devotion feel like in the body? What does devotion feel like in the mind, in the psyche, in the hands that write and create? What is your heart devoted to and what does it mean to follow that devotion?

And so we will create these nests with our whole bodies, our whole creative voices and our whole imaginations, for two immersive days of dance guided by Nao and story and writing by Sylvia. Our location will be a beautiful, bright yurt, warmed by a woodburning fire, that looks out over the sea in Merville, on Vancouver Island, B.C.

We will dance and write together all day on Saturday March 2nd, and for a half day on Sunday March 3rd, with a night of guided dreaming between. A delicious, homemade vegetarian lunch (with gluten free options) will be included on Saturday, and snacks and tea on Sunday.

This class is open to all. You do not need to be a dancer or a writer to participate. Nao and Sylvia use both practices primarily as doorways into a deeper relationship with soul, with heart, with body, and with the creative life.

We so look forward to seeing you there!

Registration is $360 CAD/ $275 USD for the two-day immersion. Please note that travel expenses and accommodation are not included. There are several rooms available on site, and we are also happy to advise about other nearby lodgings.

To register, please contact Nao at naoisobel@gmail.com. Space is limited to 20 participants maximum.

For Canadians, etransfers can be made via Interac directly to the above email.

For all other countries, payments can be made via PayPal to honeygrove@telus.net

WHEN: Saturday March 2nd 2024, 10:00 am- 5:00 pm Sunday March 3rd 2024, 11:00 am- 3:00 pm WHERE: Ohm Centre Ocean Yurt Merville, British Columbia, CANADA

Your devoted guides, in fine weather in another world (aka Cretan summer)

I will leave it there today, dear readers.

As I alluded to in my past post, I have big new things brewing for this Substack space in the coming year, but the dark is still deep and and another fortnight’s dreaming is needed before I reveal what’s next. The upcoming offering was conceived through the research and work I’ve done over the past year for my PhD, so it has been while in the brewing, but it is also its very own wild creature, with a mind entirely its own, and is still taking form….

For now, I very much hope to see some of you among the swan workshops of this upcoming winter-into-spring season.

And I wish you the brightest and softest of inner illuminations at the heart of the turning year.

With love,

Sylvia