Ripples in the River

July Full Buck Moon Edition ❀ 10 July 2025

Hello fellow Traveler,

It’s good to find you on this bend of the moonlit spiral path.

Under this moon, I honor our shared path with reverence and gratitude.

This month, my focus is mastery. We find ourselves in the peak of summer at Riverwood, where the vibrant green wood around me exemplifies the beauty of becoming. The gardens are flourishing with waves of blossoms. Meanwhile, Queen Brigid’s bees demonstrate their own mastery, unlocking the magical nectar of each flower. When I step outside, I am inspired by the evidence of nature’s effortless knowing. Every being at Riverwood has, in just a few short weeks of growing season, become a master of its purpose.

This moon also marks two years of writing through this newsletter. Two years ago, I lit a lantern and sent it into the dark—unsure if anyone would follow its glow. I called it Luminaria, not yet knowing it would become a sanctuary, an altar, a mirror, and a wayfinder.

As I reflect on these two years, I ask with both humility and wonder: What have I mastered in this season of my life? Not mastery in the language of arrival or achievement, but in the quieter truths of rhythm, return, and reverent listening.

I began writing in 2023, following an inner call that had been echoing for some time: Find your voice. It repeated like a mantra. Even so, I didn’t yet know what I was meant to say. But once I began, it didn’t take long for my voice to come through.

At first, it was just an experiment. I thought I might share insights from the wellbeing path I was walking and guiding others along during retreat workshops I was co-leading. I chose the rhythm of the Moon cycles to pace my writing—a schedule that felt nourishing rather than demanding. I didn’t expect Luminaria to become as constant in my life as the Moon herself. But it has.

Now, I know: creating in rhythm with the moon and seasons nourishes me in ways no calendar ever could.

Most often, when I sit down to write, I have no idea what I’ll say—only the monthly theme and the tarot card I drew at the year’s beginning as guides. Yet I carry the lantern and follow the path into the creative wood anyway—with tenderness and self-compassion for whatever may or may not come. And every time, something within me—and perhaps beyond—leads the way.

I've come to recognize that my themes arrive like messages carried on the wind. They come through conversations, books, classes, signs, and quotes found in unexpected and disconnected places. They shimmer in the natural world just outside my door: in plants, animals, weather, and chance encounters that mirror the story wanting to be told. I've come to call this gathering practice gleaning.

Writing feels like weaving a rainbow tapestry—loose threads that somehow know how to pattern themselves.

In each edition, I begin with a compost heap of thoughts and distill them into a single word. This word becomes the anchor for a luminous pebble card I share with you. Sometimes the image is from my own canvas or journal, sometimes from the outer world—captured through a lens or a leaf. I no longer ask beauty to justify itself. I let it guide me.

When the anchor is placed, I can trust the spiral of becoming to do the rest. The story will unfurl in its own time. And by each New or Full Moon, it finishes itself.

Over time, Luminaria has become a tender devotion to process. A place to hold my communion with the world—not a performance, not content, but a kind of living altar. A reflection of my conversation with my soul’s whisper and the vast, living universe.

It has taught me that beauty offered for its own sake is enough.

That you, dear traveler, have paused to read these words is a blessing. A reminder that words and images have a power all their own. They ripple outward.

As I’ve danced along the spiral path of my healing, I’ve come to believe: if I tend sincerely to the dailiness of life and share from the heart—even with little response—my words still echo. I drop luminous pebbles as cairns and remembrances: I was here. You were, too. You may return again.

Each pebble whispers: Imagine. Dream. Forgive. Balance. Let go. You are enough.

Like seeds beneath the earth’s soft blanket, words may rest a long time before blooming in another’s heart. But I hope mine have worn a place in your pocket, taken root in your soul, and rippled into your life and beyond.

What I Continue to Dance With

The tarot card I drew for this moon cycle, back in January, was the Two of Pentacles—a card of balance, adaptability, and grace in the midst of motion. The lemniscate looping through the juggled spheres reminds me of a drive belt on an engine: I am the difference engine in my life. I choose how I dance. What I create ripples outward.

This year, my dance is focused on balance—finding a third way between too much and not enough. During this Buck Moon, I’m learning to balance sharing with silence.

Like the vibrant Spring woods surrounding me, I was filled with a creative surge this season: I nurtured my memoir and its paintings, wrote poems and stories, crafted new art in Nurturing Baby Dragons. I painted large canvases to weave symbols of peace and patience into my home. I created Inkroots—a New Moon writing journey for those who seek a way through the creative thicket.

Now, as Spring bows to Summer, I turn inward once more—not to finish, but to tend what is still alive and becoming.

Glean + Growing Threads

From Luminaria’s lantern-lit path, something new has begun to root and grow a web of mycelial threads: a book called Glean: The Ways of the Everyday Alchemist. A Devotional Almanac of Gathering and Becoming.

It follows the seasons and moons, drawing from the heart of Luminaria to offer ritual, reflection, and sacred presence. It’s not a summary. It’s a composting and a blooming—an invitation to live more attuned to earth, season, and soul.

Glean is a vessel of gathered light. A flame for tending sacred dailiness.

It offers grounding practices, reflective prompts, and seasonal presence. It is spacious, soulful, and deeply rooted.

Writing Pebbles in the Moonlight gave me the power to alchemize my past. Glean is giving me the power to alchemize my present.

Together, they are my living spell.

A New Whisper

As this young Buck Moon grows and Luminaria drops another luminous pebble into the river of becoming, I notice a new whisper rising: the word analog.

A return to the non-digital. The handmade. The slower, wilder way.

Increasingly, I’m becoming aware of the unseen costs of our digital and AI-infused lives—not just to our creativity and mental health, but to our communities, ecosystems, and future.

Massive data centers are appearing, replacing green space, consuming vast resources of water and energy, and threatening to reverse hard-won progress toward clean energy. Their needs—diesel generator backups, cooling water, relentless power—displace the very world they claim to improve.

Even this platform uses AI. I did not ask for it. But it arrived.

And just as this awareness settled in me this week, I stepped outside my door yesterday to find a large turtle—still damp, moss-draped—on the stone steps to my front door. He seemed to be trying to reach me. And like me, he seemed stuck.

I gently returned him to the riverbank. Before I released him, he looked into my eyes.

Turtle brought a message: Slow your juggle. Shift your path. Let the moss grow on your back.

And, as I have learned to do, I have listened to it.

Going forward, I’ll write here less often.
Not by obligation, but by devotion.
Not for production, but for presence.

Luminaria and Nurturing Baby Dragons will remain sacred spaces—places where I share a glimmer, a moment, a blessing, a seed—where I offer invitations to the creative thicket.

It will be simple. Sacred. Enough.

Luminaria remains a quiet offering, rippling outward—unseen, perhaps, but still felt.
Small offerings matter.
So do analog ones.

I’m not leaving the path.
I’m stepping off the paved road into the dappled, leaf-laced spiral—following Turtle to where my next medicine awaits.

“Your most radical act is staying human.”—Thomas Oppong

Thank you for walking with me.
Thank you for witnessing the seasons of my becoming.
May what I’ve shared light something in you.

May we continue—together, but gently.

I leave you with this luminous pebble,
a reminder that you, too,
are a ripple in the river of life.

With love and blessings from Riverwood,

Carol and Turtle

XOXO

Know someone who could use a luminous pebble?