What are we harvesting this season?

What are we harvesting this season? The full moon in September has traditionally been known as the Harvest Moon, which always marks a powerful turning of the year inward. Why inward? For one, this is a great time for us to express gratitude for all that we have harvested this year. By any measure, this has been a challenging year, so our harvest includes new lessons learned and new changes that we need to make in all aspects of our lives. Helping and healing is vibrantly alive in our harvest in ways both big and small. In celebrating our harvests, we express gratitude and make note of what we will do to increase future harvests.

In our household, we are helping the farmers who have been affected by all the shutdowns by purchasing produce and flowers directly from them since many of their regular customers such as restaurants and schools have not been buying as usual, and the rules for going to the farmers markets are cumbersome. Wherever you live, you can find some farmers that you can support in this way too. This is just one more simple way we can help each other.

Second, a powerful thing to do is to express gratitude every day for all that we have received. I express gratitude for my health, for the clients that spirit sends my way, and all the other positive developments in my life, and especially for all the love in all of our connections.

Third, as the sunsets are showing up in beautiful orange colors because of all the forest fires that raging throughout the west, hopefully we will have some rains coming our way to help all the firefighters and perhaps a deep snow season to follow.

The full moon comes on September 2, and the Fall Equinox on September 22 this year. When I refer to turning inward, this is the quarter of the year when everything begins to get darker and the weather turns colder, as there is a decreasing amount of daylight from the Fall Equinox to the Winter Solstice. During this season we naturally spend more time indoors, reading, studying, practicing those things we want to improve our skills in, writing and making notes about all this.

Of course, because of the current restrictions we have been doing a lot of this all year now, and it remains to be seen how that will affect this holiday season.

This quarter of the year is packed full of our most sentimental and emotional holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas/Winter Solstice, New Year's. People love to get together at this time of the year and bring the light inside our home or business to celebrate love, friendship and connection with food, drink, dance song, stories, humor, joy and seasonal decorations.

Usually that means lots of parties, and every year, my schedule is full doing readings at these special events and parties.

For the past several years, I have been booked for these big holidays by summer, but not this year so far. Traditionally, I have read at company parties with hundreds of guests, even some with thousands of guests, but with all the social distancing rules, it is unlikely all that will happen this year. Like all of you, I have to wait and see what happens.

So my calendar is still open. In the spirit of these holidays in this year, small home parties can be a really refreshing and welcome antidote to everything else that has been shut down. At least you can get together with smaller gatherings of your best friends, clients or family and celebrate your connections.

It is in keeping with the guidelines to do small parties in private homes, and so I have had a few inquiries along those lines. I am available for these kinds of events and look forward to working with those of you who are planning some sort of holiday party or event.

So if you have any thoughts along those lines, please contact me as soon as you are thinking about it because I always commit to whoever makes arrangements with me first.

My heart and the doors to my home office are open to all who need individual appointments, and I thank spirit for the presence of each and every one of you in my life. I have deeply appreciated all the love and connection I have felt from each of you during this year of upheaval and restructuring.

I am here to be of service to those of you who need me. I remove any obstacles to our being able to work together because this is who I am and this is what I do. I love being able to help you.

I always love hearing from you, so feel free to reach out if you are feeling moved to do so. Have a wonderful day!

Peter Kater's music & me

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Over the past 30 years or so, I have been blessed to have been introduced to the music of Peter Kater as well as getting to know him. Peter is a pianist, composer, producer, author and retreat leader. Beginning back in the 90s, I had the opportunity to meet and interview Peter when I was a professional magazine editor and freelance writer. Over the years I have heard him play several times in concert and written about his music. One time he and I were both performing (I was doing tarot readings, and he was playing music), in support of a charity fund raiser. Many of the recordings he has made (60 so far) are composed for use in meditation and healing, good soft music that makes a great background for massage, reiki, meditation and journaling. I use his music frequently when I am working. Recordings he has made with other world class musicians also make for relaxing listening while entertaining at home. Peter has also scored movies and turns up in surprising places. For example, while watching the informational video at a national park, I was pleasantly surprised that he scored that film in addition to things you may have seen elsewhere. Peter won the Grammy for best New Age Album in both 2018 and 2020 after being nominated almost every year since 2004. And I am happy to share that I have also read for Peter. Here is his testimonial about my reading for him. "My reading with Dan was a great experience! He is very genuine and his reading was clear, insightful, informative and very helpful. I've spent a lot more money on readings a lot less intuitive. I highly recommend getting a reading from Dan." ~ Peter Kater Peter leads retreats as well as doing concerts, both in concert halls and in people's homes and he offers unique piano readings. His many brilliant world class collaborators include: R. Carlos Nakai, Nawang Khechog, Paul MCandless, David Darling, Dominic Miller, Tina Guo, Snatam Kaur, Tony Levin, Joseph Firecrow, Trisha Bowden, Richard Hardy to name just some. You can find out more about Peter and his music at http://www.peterkater.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~