~ September Supplemental ~

Craft Stick Balance Beam                       
by: Amanda Formaro

Difficulty: Very Easy
Age: 5 and up
Average User Rating:

If your child is a gymnast or just loves watching them in action, this is a fun craft to make to celebrate the art.

What you'll need:
• 2 jumbo craft sticks
• 2 regular sized craft sticks
• Glittery stickers
• 2 glittery chenille stems
• Hot glue gun
• Scissors

How to make it:
• Cut the two regular sized craft sticks in half.
• Glue two rounded ends of the cut craft sticks to the end one of the jumbo craft sticks to make the legs of the balance beam. Repeat this process with the other jumbo and cut craft sticks.
• Glue the two jumbo craft sticks together and the open ends to form the balance beam.
• Shape chenille into a stick person with two simple legs, two arms, torso and a head.
• Get an adult to help hot glue the gymnast to the balance beam in whatever position you like, we chose a back bend.
• Attach stickers to the legs of the balance beam.

Tips:
• Be careful with hot glue; always supervise children that are using it.
• There are literally hundreds of different types of stickers available at your local craft store. Check scrapbook aisles, holiday sections and the aisle that contains craft foam. Instead of chenille try cutting a gymnast out of a magazine and glue her to your beam like a paper doll.
 

When One Door Closes . . . Another Opens

by Pythia

Continued . . . This is the time of the year that makes us start thinking about loss, separation, endings, and the heart-pain it causes. Moving into Winter is the time we should be contemplating the stubble of crops in the fields, the cooling air, the promise of rains, perhaps storms. How we handle loss is important for our minds, our souls. If we sit in a darkened room, focusing on the weakened sunshine, listening only to the rain beating down the plants, feeling surrounded by death and loss–we begin to stagnate.

The reason for going inward in the Autumn and Winter is not to escape or avoid, but to examine the work done in the Summertime and to vision and dream the next stage of growth in our lives: new goals, new projects, new relationships. We remember the harvest and how rich it was. The Temple benefitted greatly from having all those intelligent, conscious young adults working to make the rituals especially wonderful for all of us. Even, Goddess forbid, if we never have the opportunity to see or meet with some or all of them again, they, I, we are forever enriched, forever changed by the relationships we shared over the past few years.

The physical presence of those we have loved may not be visible now. Whether they have merely moved on in the world or have crossed over that unknowable, enigmatic boundary called death, know that how you interacted with them does matter. And, how you meditate on their loss matters, too. One must fill the emptiness with hope to see them again, joy in what has been shared, and in the case of a deceased loved one, filling the emptiness with good memories so they will forever live in your heart.

It is true that Nature abhors a vacuum. Holding onto the emptiness only causes more pain. Surrender to the Universe and allow that cold, wintry hole to fill with the promise of next Summer’s sunshine caressing a field of multi-colored flowers.