The gorgeous Dusk Liney of Inspirit Creative recently ran a customised (pretty damn special) contemplative birthday for me down at Pipemakers Park. As she as gifted, so are we all. Please be encouraged to use this for your own reflections on 2017.
Wurundjeri Garden
Mosaic
This mosaic depicts Aboriginal life before European settlers arrived. Find a place around the mosaic to reflect on your own life this year. Create your own Mosaic/picture – using illustrations, colours or words – that reflects how you experienced 2017.
Capture the good, the bad, the ugly. What surprised you? What enlivened you? What challenged you? What were the unexpected gifts?
Fireplace
Before you leave the Wurundjeri Garden, if there is any part of this year that you would like to leave behind, make your way to the fireplace.
Take a piece of paper, put that image, word or feeling down on paper, and burn it.
Early Settlers Garden
Footprints
As you walk to the next station, pause and place your feet on the child’s footprints. Take a moment to be still and be present to your inner child.
Whisper to her what your heart yearns for her to hear.
One sided Table
So much of the year is spent preparing food for others. In this moment, come and sit at the table. Think about the hospitality that you show to others and imagine the ways in which you can show that same beautiful hospitality to yourself.
What would it be like for the Divine to prepare a table for you? What would feed your soul? How can you show that hospitality to your soul this year?
Take a walk over to the apple tree and think of an apple dish that captures that imagining. Write it on a sticker and place it on your clothes.
Pipeworkers Garden
Dry Garden
Take in the fig tree, the succulents and the drought resistant plants. Each of these plants have survived dry, hot, tough conditions. It is actually in this landscape of lacking that they grow.
Sit here and acknowledge the dry places in your life. Think about the qualities that have grown in you within the dry parts of this year. Write them on a post it and stick it to the dry plant captures that quality.
Grapevine Colonnade
Then walk under the pipe colonnade shaded by the grapevines. Allow the coolness and shade to wash over those dry places. As you come to the end, sit with the sun mosaic.
Ask God / the Divine / the Sun to shine on you this year, to shine you with light and warmth. Name the desires of your heart and lay them at the Sun as offering.
Picnic Circle
When you’re ready, come and find a place on the blankets and we’ll gather in a circle to reflect together.
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