On the eve of October, the month of my father's birth and his death, I found myself in open-hearted conversation about life, death, and all the grief and healing in between with an artist named Holly Swan.

"Quaker~Raised Farm Girl, Plant Whispering Professional Horticulturist, Extreme Animal Lover, Opportunistic Treasure Hunter, Shamanic De-Clutterer, Energetic Space Clearer, Healer, Writer, Passionate Clay Lover, & Self~Sufficient Sense of Humor Haver" - this is what she makes and how she describes it...

Holly, owner of emerging Portland-based Ash & Earth, creates these memorial stones from the cremated remains of loved ones mixed with clay. Introduced to the world of woodfiring in the fall of 2012, Holly joins seasoned members of the Pacific Northwest woodfiring community to fire the sacred stones for multiple days in anagama style kilns.  

The stones first took shape as Holly searched for a way to honor her grandparents. She says, "I wanted something that I could carry in my pocket like a worry stone, but I also wanted to be able to wear it as a piece of jewelry. The hole in the center became an integral part of the design. It represents the hole left when you lose someone close to you, but it also holds space for their memory."

This weekend, as I enter the season of my father's passage, I will bring my name-twin a teaspoon of my father's ashes. I imagine holding this touchstone when it emerges from the fire. Even in the imagining, a place of sacred recognition within my heart warms and and stretches its arms open.

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A deep thanks to Holly Swan for sharing her images and words, and for the inspired grief medicine I know she will put into my father's stones.

For more information about how Ash & Earth memorial stones are crafted and how to order them, visit Holly's Etsy shop. Orders received by November 18th will be included in a December firing. 

You can sign up for Holly's newsletter on the Ash & Earth web site to be informed about future firing opportunities and stay connected to her work.

Last weekend Amber and I set off for our sixth (and likely last) backpacking adventure of 2013. We knew we wanted to launch our weekend get-away on Friday. We weren't paying attention to the date. Friday the 13th.

Normally we're not terribly supersticious - but an hour into the trip had us wondering if it was ill-fated. 

Amber had loaded the car while I wrapped up work in my home office before heading into the tedium of weekend rush hour traffic (and why is it called rush...?) Finally past the constipation on the Interstate, traveling a reasonable 50 MPH, Amber gasped, "Oh, no!" What? What? "I forgot our sleeping bags!"

Should we head home for the bags and start again the next day? With a relatively open road finally in front of us, we rejected that dismal course. Instead we Googled our way to the nearest sporting goods store and picked up two of the cheapest bags they carried. Would their enormous polyester bulk even fit into our packs? Probably not, but we would deal with that later.

Back on the road, eager to make up for lost time and reach our destination before dark, Friday the 13th again reared its head.

"Oh, no!" What? What?

"Is that cop coming after us?"  Yes, he was - but amazingly he gave us only a cheerful warning. Maybe we weren't doomed after all.

It wasn't until we'd set up camp near our trailhead and settled in for some fireside Scrabble that I asked Amber to grab something from my backpack in the trunk.

This time she skipped the "Oh, no!" The stricken silence on her face when she came back from the car empty-handed said it all.

Our backpacks had never made it into the car. All the contents, we had in bins and stuff sacks. But our homes-away-from-home, the turtle shells we'd carried 100 miles around Mt Rainier two years earlier and since then on every trail we found the time for - they were resting comfortably in our guest bedroom back in Portland.

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Earlier in the summer, a turtle had appeared to me during a guided meditation. I claimed it as a symbol of protection, a reminder that I could draw up into myself and find guidance from within. That when my fires burned too hot, I could put my feet down on earth, slip into water, wag my head in the air.  

Slowing down, pacing yourself, emotional strength and ancient wisdom - these are the characteristics identified with the turtle totem.

I shouldn't have been astonished to arrive at Michigan Womyn's Music Festival to find that she, too, was calling forth the mighty turtle. Each year the Festival opens with a powerful ceremony tapping into timeless themes made relevant for a modern, multi-generational tribe. This year, the ceremony creators found 2013 reflected back to them in the 13 compartments on a turtle's back. The prop artists fashioned a bale of giant turtles (yep, a bale is what you call a bunch of these particular critters). Amazon warriors processed with them to the stage to the cheers of thousands of women and girls, united in that moment in this display of power and persistence. 

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I didn't realize how strongly I've come to identify with the turtle until Friday the 13th, there in the campground, when we realized we wouldn't be hoisting our packs onto our backs the next day.

A three-hour round-trip back to fetch them was out - we felt supersticious about what might befall us on the Interstate. We would have to settle for day hiking, our water bladders and snacks strapped to our bodies with bandanas.

As lovely as a day-hike could be, the draw to carry all I needed for a night in the woods, to be fully self-sufficient out in nature for a 36 hour stretch, continued to assert itself. 

And so, 20 minutes into our day hike, when we found a lakeside campsite with its own private huckeberry patch, we decided we could backpack after all, even without our packs. We left our water bladders to claim our space and returned to the car where we latched tent bag to food bag and slung them over one shoulder, lashed on gear and spare clothes with whatever straps we could find, and wrapped my arms around those ginormous sleeping bags.

Up the hill we trudged with our unwieldy loads, feeling very Beverly Hillbillies - and pretty darn inventive. 

The apparently cursed trip turned out to be one of our very best. The rest of the weekend backpacker crowd bypassed our lovely lake in pursuit of further destinations. Once we had our homey camp set up we took a leisurely unfettered hike through miles of nearby lakes and meadows.

When we got back to camp at the end of the day, we dipped into the lake. Yes, that's an air mattress, also hand carried from the car - something that never would have made it on a "real" backpacking trip.

At dusk as the moon began rising over the lake, neighbors on the opposite shore brought out mandolin and fiddle and offered sweet lullabies to this charmed day.

The next morning, fresh picked huckleberries for our oatmeal.

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As day and night come into balance and summer yields to fall, may you enjoy the home life you find within, and that which you discover when you find yourself without your shell.

How do you celebrate your marriage when you already consider yourselves wed? 

Holly Blue and her life partner P faced this "unique and wonderful dilemma" after the US Supreme Court lifted California's ban on same-sex couples marrying. They had already sanctified their union in a Jewish wedding ceremony over six years ago. 

Their vows to each other had been recognized by their family, congregation, and community but now - as Holly told friends in an email - "as a result of years of civil rights work and passionate volunteer hours by folks like all of us, we are able to have our marriage recognized and affirmed by the state and federal government."

What to do?  

First: the pragmatic. Concerned that this new legal reality might prove to be fleeting (the freedom to marry had been granted and taken away before), Holly told friends, 'We picked the date carefully as a sort of leaping through what may prove to be a passing window of opportunity.' She likened it to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid "leaping into the legal unknown". 

Next: "How and when to seal this piece in a spiritually authentic manner?" given they had already held a ceremony affirming their spiritual marriage. After weeks of pondering and discussion, often in the company of another couple, good friends in the same situation, the two couples settled on a plan. They would meet at the County Clerk's office and witness each other's legal pronouncement. 

After the simple ceremony, the pairs retreated to a B&B on the coast "to sit back and absorb the personal and historic significance of what has taken place."

Finally: the party. In sharing their news with friends, the couples said, "We want to celebrate with you! And - we've already had weddings and wedding receptions years ago."

They framed their solution within Jewish tradition: "Instead of breaking another glass, we want to repair the world, with you at our side." They proposed a work party and invited suggestions about the beneficiary. The favorite choice was a beach clean up.

On the designated day, their friends and members of their congregations showed up to carry off 150 pounds of rubbish from the shoreline. The local newspaper showed up too, alerted by the sponsoring organization. Apparently celebrating a wedding by mustering a work crew was newsworthy! (Alas, the reporter didn't realize the joint celebration was in honor of two couples; just a little too far outside the norm, perhaps.)

And that, dear readers, is the story - as Holly puts it - of "how two 'old married couples' decided to navigate the changing landscape of the Dominant Paradigm".    

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My deep thanks to Holly Blue Hawkins of Last Respects Consulting for sharing her story.

Recently my long-time friends Susan and Kathy (aka Doodle) legally married in Olympia, Washington. At their celebration (which was a-maz-ing; more on that another time) Susan said, "I didn't grow up planning to marry. I think many women of my generation spent a good many years celebrating the freedom not to marry."

After a year in which the voters of four states and the US Supreme Court decided that love is love - and Oregon United for Marriage formed to add us to the list of states where gays and lesbians can marry - there's incredible excitement about making marriage possible for all committed couples. And also some trepidation. Not just from our opposition. Within the LGBT community there are some who are concerned about narrowing the norms of relationships or narrowing the agenda of social justice pursuits. 

For me, it's all about choices. Those who want to marry should be able to. Those who choose not to should be respected for their choices as well. The movement for the freedom to marry has tapped America's heart and opened it to the humanity of gay and lesbian relationships. And there are many other important fights to fight.

Our nation's current conversation about marriage is inspiring a lot of people to reflect on what they're committed to. In tribute to the many ways we direct our devotion, this week I profile two unique expressions of commitment.

Dr. Bon's Ceremony of Commitment
Many people would hesitate to invite 3,000 guests to their nuptials. Not Dr. Bon, a women's studies professor, now 50, who has attended the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival since she was 20. In celebration of her 30th annual pilgrimage to this legendary event, she posted a call in the program to one and all to witness her marriage to the Festival, her symbolic commitment to its future. 

In front of an eclectic, multi-generational crowd outside the Community Center, beneath a chuppah made of laminated stage production cue sheets, Bonnie declared her vows. 

"Michigan Festival, I commit to you, my longest love, my growing up, my holy place, my sacred space. In offering this simple ceremony of love, I stand in for all who feel as I do, and make myself a bride to my own culture. Some are meant to marry young and others find their partner late in life. I fell in love with all of lesbian culture, and partnered with the movement in my heart."

After a round of symbolic gifts, including a ring Dr. Bon had found and subsequently buried on the land to dig up on each year's return, guests shared blessings and a toast of commitment over ceremonial wine and sweet almonds. After sharing two poems, Bonnie enacted the Jewish tradition of stepping on a glass to remind all of the destruction of the Temple and the need to repair a broken world - consistent, she reminded her guests, of the "Festival values taught and learned here."

Married to the Movement
The organizers of Southerners on New Ground applied this same act of devotion to their vision of a world beyond racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice. In the week following the Supreme Court's conflicting rulings - advancements for gay rights + setbacks for people of color - SONG released this compelling video. In it, an appealing, joyful cast declares their commitment to each other, to the complex identities that are fractured by institutional oppression, and to the work needed "to bring true justice home to the south." 

Their invitation: "Join us in Marrying the Movement until every LGBTQ person has full dignity, safety, and liberation."