Nature sings praises aloud

 

This week was our last ceremony for our winter festivals of the light that we have been celebrating since November.

I have started following on Facebook, a well known story teller and felt artist: Suzanne Down.  Suzanne is the creator and business owner of Juniper Tree School of Puppetry Arts in Boulder, Colorado. I have found her to be an extraordinary artist and storyteller. I hope to meet Suzanne in person and expand my felting skills by taking one of her many workshops she offers. In her January newsletter she included a story about the blessing cake for the New Year. If you feel to contact Suzanne about the story, she can add your name to her monthly newsletter. This sounded like a wonderful project for our new year celebration at the Living Wisdom School.

I began the night preparing my cake and writing individual Education for Life,skills for living qualities on all the stones. Each one was wrapped in a small piece of foil. Then I made the angel food cake and dropped each one into the cake. 

I spread all the pieces out evenly so when the cake was finished it would be easy to slice a piece that included a wishing stone. I then covered all the stones with the remaining batter and baked the cake as usual. 

We placed our New Year angel, candle and cake at the table.  We sang a short blessing, poured our peppermint tea and I sliced the cake. Each child pulled out their blessing for the year.

They placed their blessing rock into their New Years box. These boxes had been made the day before. These little boxes are very special for young children. They can hide all their magical treasures for the year inside.

After we finished the children and I gathered our coats, hats and boots to celebrate the morning outside our classroom. The sun had just come out and it was a lovely brisk morning. 

Magical events seem to occur after we focus on spiritual natures and today wasn't any different. As we walked outside one of the little girls' looked up and there was a bald eagle floating directly overhead,circling the playground. 

I turned to the little girl who had spotted the eagle and said: "That means good luck to see a eagle right after our spiritual ceremony inside." The eagle was shortly joined by a large group of crows that were following him. That too, was unusual for a band of crows that early in the morning.

Nature sings praises aloud. We were all deeply blessed this morning and for the opportunity to feel the deeper rhythms of nature all around us. I love when four year old children are so keenly aware and can spot eagles in the sky.  This seemed like an topping to our  blessing cake! What joy filled our hearts to see the birds soar.