Bright sun, cold air, and hungry birds

Yesterday began with clear skies over Casco Bay. The sun spilled across the water and through the window to my office, so bright it almost felt like a different season. Then I opened the door for a midday run.

The cold met me immediately, sharp and bracing. It took me back to my high school ski team days, when part of our sport was learning to respect winter air: grateful for the chill that created and preserved the snow we needed, wary of the same temperatures that could edge us toward frostbite if we ignored our limits.

Passing the feeder on my way, I noticed the birds moving with focused urgency. Chickadees, cardinals, and finches took turns, claiming seed that is much harder to find in fields and forests when so much lies dormant or under snow.

Last week while returning from a run, my husband and I passed a neighbor walking with birding binoculars around his neck; he told us he was watching for the eagle he had spotted the day before. All of us, human and feathered, are paying closer attention to what this season is asking of us.

Inside, many people are also returning to regular rhythms. Work emails wake up. School schedules resume. Gyms fill. Resolutions take their first steps into real days.

It is a beautiful and complicated beginning. Light is increasing. Demands are returning. We stand in the middle of both and feel the pull from each side.

Today (January 6) is known to some as the Feast of the Epiphany. Epiphany, in the Christian tradition, is a feast of manifestation and recognition, the “aha” after a long journey. In the broader sense, it is that moment when something about our life suddenly becomes more visible. This week seems like a fitting time to look more closely at how we are moving through time itself.

Ann Trainor Domingue

The architecture of time

I recently finished reading The Sabbath by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, prompted by listening to Yo-Yo & Friends: In Conversation on Living Creatively, in which cellist Yo-Yo Ma and author/chef Samin Nosrat discussed the importance of regular time together around the table. In their case, they were speaking of the Jewish Sabbath, but the heart of their conversation felt much larger: how we honor time, together.

Heschel, a longtime scholar of ethics and mysticism, suggests that we often treat time only as a measuring device. We notice it when we compare events, the way we hear one note following another in a piece of music. He invites us to see time instead as a realm in which we live, not just a ruler we hold against our days.

I keep returning to that image. We spend so much effort arranging the “things” of our lives: schedules, meetings, projects, possessions. Yet the real movement is happening in the water that carries us.

We speak about “time management,” as if time were something we could bend into shape. Our language suggests we might conquer it with better apps, color-coded calendars, or enough discipline. There is value in planning, of course. But we do not create or destroy time. What we actually shape is our relationship to it.

That relationship is not only personal. It is communal and cultural. Some of us mark time through religious observances like the Sabbath. Others have weekly rituals like Sunday dinners, creative mornings, or Friday walks with a friend. These are all ways of saying: this portion of the voyage matters. We will pay attention here.

In an earlier essay on the lights of winter, we considered how different traditions mark this season with candles, lanterns, and festivals. Different origin stories. Different rituals. Shared human longing to notice light in a dark time of year.

Epiphany asks a related question: what do we want revealed about the way we are spending our days?

Dancing about architecture, painting about time

There is a quote, attributed to various people online, that says, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” It captures the difficulty of translating one form of experience into another.

Reading Heschel, I thought about that line again. Trying to “manage” time can feel like this. We use tools built for space and tasks to tackle something much more fluid.

Artists know this challenge intimately. A painter tries to capture a flash of light on the water, a mood in the sky, the curve of a wave that will be gone in seconds. Translating it to canvas requires craft, patience, and humility. The painting is not the moment. It is a response to the moment.

As clinicians, we encounter a similar translation problem. A patient describes months or years of living in a body. We try to convert that into lab values, diagnoses, and treatment plans. These are important, but they are not the whole story. They are the “shore,” not the voyage.

Our calendars and charts are the same. Necessary. Helpful. Not the full truth.

Epiphany invites us to see the limits of our tools without abandoning them. We can keep using schedules and goals while remembering that time is more than boxes on a page.

Radio Maine: time, process, and overlooked places with James Mattison

This week on Radio Maine, we speak with painter James Mattison, one of the newest artists at the Portland Art Gallery. James grew up in central Maine, studied graphic design, left the state for a while, and then found his way back to painting here.

What stayed with me was his respect for process and for the time it takes to find an honest style. He talked about starting from realism, experimenting for years, and slowly loosening his work until it felt like his own.

For those of us who work in medicine, leadership, or any field that demands patience, James’s story is a reminder that our relationship with time is rarely linear. Breakthroughs often arrive after long, ordinary practice.

Radio Maine Live: Stillness and Renewal

As we explore the architecture of time on the page and in the studio, we are also beginning to gather around these questions in person.

Our next Radio Maine Live evening in February will focus on Stillness and Renewal: what winter teaches us about the quiet between waves of activity, the balance between rest and imagination, and the ways creativity endures even when everything appears still.

I will be joined by a new panel of former Radio Maine guests whose work spans art, design, healing, and place. Together we will look at how intentional pause and shared conversation can help us shape our time more thoughtfully.

Off the Wall: when the sea looks back

Later this week, Off the Wall features Portland Art Gallery artist Joanne Parent, a Maine artist who has spent much of her life with the ocean as both classroom and chapel. From early pencil sketches with her photographer father, to years sailing and surfing around the world, to her current barn studio in Belfast, her work is steeped in movement and light.

Joanne often starts a painting with a plan, then lets intuition and music reshape it.

Her seascapes feel like held moments: the hush between waves, the last light before night. They are not the sea itself, yet they carry its breath.

To me, Joanne’s work is another kind of epiphany. A way of making time visible on canvas, so that we can feel something that would otherwise pass too quickly.

Why this may matter for you

This first full workweek of the year can feel like a fresh start and a returning tide all at once. Your inbox fills. Your clinical schedule, classroom, or studio routine resumes. Resolutions whisper in one ear. Old patterns whisper in the other.

It is tempting to believe that a better app, a tighter calendar, or one more productivity strategy will finally fix our relationship with time. Those tools can help. But Heschel reminds us that time is not a problem to solve. It is an ocean we cross together.

How we mark it, honor it, and move through it will influence the stories we tell later. About our work. About our leadership. About our families. About ourselves.

We do not need to get this perfect. We can begin by noticing, with a little more kindness, how we are already spending our days.

Pause + Reflect

What is one small way you could mark time more intentionally this week, so that the hours you remember later feel closer to the life you hope to live?

Leave a comment

Closing: Epiphany in ordinary hours

As I write this, the sun is once again bright on the water. The air is still cold. The birds still find their way to the feeder, bead-eyed and purposeful.

Epiphany does not always arrive as a blinding revelation. Sometimes it comes as a brief awareness by the window. A painting that makes you feel the Allagash or the Atlantic in a new way. A carefully protected hour of rest, or a shared meal that becomes its own Sabbath.

At the Portland Art Gallery, we are also marking this beginning visually this week with our January group show, Brilliance: Our fresh start to 2026, opening reception Thursday, January 8, 5–7 pm. It is one more way of saying: this time matters. Come stand in the light together.

We cannot hold time in our hands. Yet we can let certain moments matter more. We can choose, in small recurring ways, how we will cross this stretch of the voyage.

May this week bring you at least one moment that feels like recognition. A quiet “aha” in the middle of ordinary hours. A glimpse of the architecture of your time, lit from within.

✨ Thank you for walking this Bountiful Path with me.

Best wishes,
Lisa

Radio Maine Live Series: Stillness and Renewal

An evening of conversation, creativity, and community, brought to you by the Portland Art Gallery

As winter settles in, our focus on Stillness and Renewal invites reflection on what this season teaches us—the quiet between waves of activity, the balance between rest and imagination, and the ways creativity endures even in stillness.

Host Dr. Lisa Belisle welcomes a new panel of former Radio Maine guests whose work spans art, design, healing, and place. Together we’’ll explore how moments of pause and renewal open the way for fresh perspectives and creative growth.

The evening begins with a reception and refreshments, followed by a 45-minute panel conversation and time to connect with others afterward.

Wednesday, February 18, 2026
5:00–7:00 pm
Portland Art Gallery, Portland, Maine

Open to the public with limited seating. Tickets available on January 11. We look forward to seeing you.

The Bountiful Path: Offering seasonal practices for real connection, rooted in medicine, leadership, and art.

From Seeing to Witnessing: Supermoon Reflections

Last week the brilliance of the November supermoon caused me to pause on the bridge from the mainland to Cousins Island. I was alone in that moment: no cars, people or boats anywhere in sight. My eyes registered the light, my heart responded, and my mind asked how to carry this forward: how to bear witness.

Seeing collects impressions; bearing witness directs attention toward care, truth, and proportionate action.

The moon appears white because it reflects the sun’s light; our eyes read it that way. What can look like “empty” sky becomes the room that lets a single subject carry meaning.

The work of this week is similar: choose the subject, give it room, and let the rest recede.

Jane Dahmen

Color as Space, Space as Color

During his artist remarks at the November Portland Art Gallery opening, abstract landscape painter William (Bill) Crosby referred to our recent piece, White Space, Whole Light.

Bill pointed out that white can act as positive space (the focal point) as well as negative space (the room around the subject). Empty is not automatically void, and white is not automatically background. Colors can be used the same way.

The painter’s determination of color placement reflects a leadership question: what is the subject, what is the support, and how will you bring it into focus?

Bearing witness, plain and simple

Artists, by virtue of their work, bear witness and amplify their experience of life’s truths. Each of us may have the opportunity to bear witness in our own contexts.

In When the Gray Teaches Us to See Differently, we touched upon what it means to be a bystander. A bystander watches and stays detached. Bearing witness is different. It is engaged presence that meets reality as it is, names what is true without rushing to fix, and, when invited, stands alongside. Witnessing honors consent and proportion, and may become a valuable part of empowered relationships.

Witnessing means being humble enough to listen, clear enough to speak, and steady enough to stay. The point is not to perform a role; the point is to bring the right thing into focus with the smallest helpful move.

Ensemble Craft: Make Others Look Good

At a recent presentation on bringing improvisational skills into human interactions, author and former Radio Maine guest Chip Brewer offered a simple essential truth: sometimes we are in a supporting role, and not the main character. Our goal is to make others look good. When we bring the right thing into focus through our movements (or by chosing not to move), we cede the floor to the appropriate individual.

In performance, that is the ensemble’s quiet brilliance. In leadership, it looks like framing the scene, placing the lights, and giving colleagues room to carry the melody. In community, it looks like amplifying a voice and then stepping back. Bearing witness is ensemble work. When we get the spacing and the attention right, the subject becomes clear.

Emily Blaschke: Re-seeing and Re-ordering

This week on Radio Maine, Portland Art Gallery artist Emily Blaschke shared how her mixed-media assemblages transform found objects—Barbie dolls, jewelry, house paint, even nail polish—into vibrant, layered narratives. She forages at antique shops and the local dump, then gives discarded materials new life. With roots that stretch to Down East magazine, founded by her grandfather, Emily now helps foster Maine’s creative community through Yarmouth Arts and the Portland Museum of Art.

Emily’s work is a model of witnessing as practice: re-seeing what others overlook, re-ordering what seems random, and bringing meaning into focus.

Last week we recorded five new Radio Maine conversations that continue the work of amplifying voices: Sean Thomas (Portland Art Gallery Manager), Brett Aldrich (Ayurvedic practitioner), Megan Rosenberg (Special Olympian), Dr. Jana Mohr Lone (Executive Director of PLATO), and artist Grant Auber.

Our intention on Radio Maine is to make room for stories of creativity and the human spirit, and in doing so embrace the shift from bystanding to witnessing.

Choosing the Help That Fits in Conversation

Bearing witness holds a critical place both in medicine and in life. I once sat with a patient whose spouse had cancer. I could not “solve” their cancer problem, nor did they expect me to. What the patient most wanted was space to speak the fear out loud, and a witness who would stay. I listened, reflected back the feelings I heard, and only then offered a small practical step when they asked. The subject—grief, love, and uncertainty—came into focus because the help matched the hope.

Early in conversations, I try to sense, or simply ask, how I can best match the help with the hope:

• Listen

• Help problem-solve

• Validate what they’re experiencing

• Reflect back what I’m hearing

• Offer my perspective (when invited)

People may want more than one of these, and that can change as the story unfolds. While this approach has been important in my medical and leadership-oriented conversations, it has proven applicable to a broad range of settings. It is a way to maintain focus on what is needed.

Digital Conversations

Your thoughtful notes on Tending the Marks We Make extended the post and help keep the right things in focus. Emily supported the use of voice memos as a way to “trust the intuitive flow” (a first brushstroke that quiets resistance). Elizabeth named Dietlind’s work as a touchstone while making marks (a reminder that supporting space is part of composition). Jenn shared her cue, “What is the Next Right Step?”, which shifts attention from overwhelm to one clear action. This ongoing thread is our shared studio: small acts, seen together.

Why This Week’s Post May Matter for You

When the help meets the hope, tension eases and trust grows. Choosing a subject and giving it room lowers noise, clarifies next steps, and protects dignity. This is how attention becomes care, and how small acts change the tone of a day.

Pause + Reflect

Which form of help might you consider offering in your next conversation: listening, problem-solving, validation, reflection, or perspective? How will you determine whether the “help meets the hope?”

Closing

The supermoon has set, yet the practice remains. When we allow space and choose a role, the world changes quality: water brightens, paths clarify, and voices once hidden return to view. Do not stand aside. Stand with. Let your presence be the white space—and the color—that brings truth into focus.

We will continue exploring different ways to bear witness next week.

✨ Thank you for reading, and for walking this bountiful path with me.

Warmly,

Lisa

We hope you will join us at the launch of Artful Escapes tonight at the Portland Art Gallery. During this inaugural session, Finding Your Ideal Hotel, our special guest will pair beautiful visuals with his process of decision-making that demonstrates how clear attention—what to hold and what to release—shapes experience.

The Bountiful Path: Offering seasonal practices for real connection, rooted in medicine, leadership, and art.

Wind, Winnowing, and Tending

On Littlejohn Island, the wind has work to do this week. It combs the maples and oaks, gathers what’s finished, and carries it toward the ocean. You can hear the branches realign after each gust. Paths appear beneath the trees where there weren’t any the day before.

We call it harvest. It is tending, too. The tide lifts and lowers the island’s edges, threading the seaweed with leaves, and the air smells of woodsmoke.

Last weekend, I ran the Westside Trail with a pocketful of acorns and questions about legacy. The winnowing wind answered with a lesson in discipline, and what it means to leave one’s mark intentionally.

I first learned the language of creative mark-making from encaustic artist Dietlind Vander Schaaf on Radio Maine.

Mark-making is the visible trace of a choice. It can be a brushstroke on a panel, the tone we set in a room, a policy we draft, the cadence of a meeting, the line of a scar, or even the pattern of attention we repeat. Single marks gather into a line; lines gather into a body of work; bodies of work gather into a legacy.

Marks in medicine and leadership

When we picture legacy, we often imagine a ledger: what our children will inherit, what the team will remember, the projects that might outlast us.

Medicine taught me to consider legacy in smaller, embodied terms. I have left physical marks on people through procedures in the family-medicine setting. After trying to leave the kindest lines possible, I’ve subsequently admired how the body met me with its own healing work.

Knowing that the vestiges of my marks remain on people’s bodies is humbling. Knowing my marks may remain on people’s lives as a physician, a leader, or any number of other roles I’ve had is more humbling still.

Mark-making is a practice, not a product. Early on, we believe precision is the point; later we learn that application is. We move from performance to stewardship, from reacting to choosing. Small marks—tone in a meeting, space protected for thinking, credit shared freely—placed intentionally and consistently, become a line others can follow.

Creativity and the yin/yang of making

At our recent Radio Maine Live gathering, we named legacy through creativity. We were joined by Jim Brady (Olympic silver medalist and Portland community builder whose thoughtful design and redevelopment reshapes how people experience this city), Grace DeGennaro (artist exploring balance, time, and spiritual continuity through geometry, myth, and pattern), Dr. Jacey Goddard (osteopathic physician integrating mind, body, and spirit to help patients realign with themselves), and Michael Keighley (veteran and trauma-informed yoga teacher helping others rediscover strength and choice). Each offered a living example of mark-making—and the legacies that gather when practice meets purpose.

In this week’s Radio Maine conversation, artist Emily Sabino and I compared notes on leaving corporate architectures for a studio and a path of one’s own. When I spoke with her in anticipation of the interview, she alluded to a view of creating new paths using a traditional frame familiar from Taoism and Chinese philosophy: yin and yang.

Yin receives, yang acts. In transitions, we may try to skip the listening and processing required by yin because action feels safer. But if we spend all our time acting without intention, our marks turn to noise; if we only ponder without producing, our marks never land. Legacy is the braid: receptivity that listens for the next true line, and bravery that makes it visible.

Intentionality: from noise to signal

How do we act inside the courage of choosing without grand gestures? We shorten the distance between intention and action. Habit and attention science both suggest that small, trigger-based practices are sticky. Pair a desired behavior with an existing cue, and do the smallest version that “counts.” Because we anchor the behavior to something we already do, we reduce decision fatigue so that creative energy goes toward the mark itself.

In leadership, this looks like a two-sentence agenda sent before the meeting. In medicine, it’s a breath at the threshold before entering the room. In the studio, it’s one line on a surface as the kettle warms. None of these will trend on a dashboard. All of them accumulate into a generous line.

Doorway Ritual

What it is: A micro-practice anchored to a literal or figurative threshold—the “doorway”—that turns intention into action in the pause you already have.
Word: GATHER
Ritual: At your next doorway—front door, clinic doorway, studio entrance—pause long enough to feel the handle in your hand. Gather three breaths, then place one small mark that moves your work: jot a title, lay a first brushstroke, record a 15-second voice note with your opening sentence.
Share (self-check): “What single mark did I make today, and what did it gather?”
Creative partner variant: Swap a 10–20 second voice memo with a collaborator naming your mark and its purpose. No critique, just witness.

Why this may matter for you

If “legacy” feels distant or heavy, shrink it to scale. Because you gather before you act, you reduce noise and increase signal, so that your mark is truer and your effort compounds. Because you place one visible line each day, others can find you—and sometimes, join you. The Bountiful Path exists for this: season-guided prompts, leadership-tested practices, and art-informed courage that help you reconnect with your work and with one another when life pulls hard.

Pause + Reflect

What is the smallest honest mark you could make in the next hour that future-you would be grateful to inherit? Consider sharing your response in the comments.

Closing the Circle

Here on the island, autumn clarifies. The wind gathers what is done and reveals what remains. Art reminds us that a single stroke can reorient a whole piece. Medicine teaches us to act with care and let the body do its work. Leadership asks us to choose the next right thing, then to make it visible.

We do not control how the world will carry our marks forward. We do control the intentionality to gather, to place one line, and to keep showing up—together. That is a legacy we can live inside today.

As we make our marks, we’ll return next week to bearing witness and joining in person through Artful Escapes, two small waypoints to help us see—and be seen—with care.

✨ Thank you for reading, and for walking this bountiful path with me.

Warmly,

Lisa

Join artists and other creative-minded souls at the upcoming Portland Art Gallery November Exhibition, Opening November 6th, 5-7 pm.

The Bountiful Path: Offering seasonal practices for real connection, rooted in medicine, leadership, and art.

Two seasons on one table

These days the light lingers in coming and slips away sooner, yet the hours in between still grow warm enough to feel like summer at noon. Our farmshare mirrors the moment. For a family gathering this weekend, we brought a tomato salad composed of roasted sweet corn, cucumber, tender zucchini ribbons, garden-plucked basil, and a handful of husk cherries, folded with a light vinaigrette. We paired this with an early autumn plate of acorn squash brushed with my daughter’s orchard-fresh apple butter.

Seasons and how we experience them

Lately I’ve been thinking about the ways people experience change and seasons—not only the seasons of the year, but also the seasons in a life. Some friends are already carving pumpkins and planning Halloween costumes. Others are still out on the Casco Bay waters during warm afternoons. We need a shared starting place, yet we rarely arrive at it in the same way or at the same time. If we focus only on differences, we miss our chance to move together.

A seasonal lens across traditions

People from different traditions and backgrounds may be standing in different “seasons,” even as they gather on the same day, in the same place. Modern science continues to glean wisdom from ancient understanding.

Trellises, ladders, and wayfinding the Bountiful Path

Last week we mapped how groups grow, from Forming to Performing, and discussed why beginnings shape outcomes. Staying with the garden image, Norming is the work of setting lattice and trellis so the vines of progress can find their way. We agree on supports, spacing, and how to tie and tend. Structural trellis work isn’t flashy, but it’s essential.

On the Bountiful Path we use waypoints to keep our bearings as we navigate the seasons of life and nature. Trellises and ladders work like waypoints. Ladders help an individual climb, one strong rung at a time. Trellises provide a shared structure so everyone can rise without tangling the growth. Latticework—the cross-hatch—distributes weight and turns many single climbs into one ascent. Wayfinding needs both: your next rung and our next rail.

If we focus on our individual ladders, we gain height but not connection. If we link our ladders into a shared trellis, we create structure that can hold more than any one of us could on our own. In leadership and in life, the question becomes practical: how do we encourage people to build their own strong ladders while reaching across to others so a trellis takes shape and the group can grow together toward the light?

Vertical and horizontal growth

Ladders and latticework have shaped my career. I chose family medicine because I wanted to understand people in context. During residency I rotated through pediatrics, obstetrics, surgery, and other specialties. That horizontal range helped me care for a family across generations. At the same time, every clinic day asked me to build vertical strength with specific patients and problems. Over time I kept learning in both directions. When I completed a second doctorate in leadership studies, I went deep on theory. Then I took roles where I could apply those ideas in practice and widen my view again.

Artists navigate a similar rhythm. Some go deep into a single medium and subject for decades. Others work in series, moving through watercolor, acrylic, encaustic, or mixed media. Both paths have integrity when they match the season of the artist’s life. Years ago I interviewed Lois Lowry, the acclaimed Maine author of The Giver, Number the Stars and numerous other award-winning best-sellers. I reread many of her earlier books before we spoke. When I asked about those works, she said they belonged to a different time in her life and preferred to talk about her recent writing. That clarity made sense to me. When my children were young I spent a decade writing for the Parent & Family Newspaper. When they got older, I became a writer and editor for a regional lifestyle media collective. The season shifted. The subject followed.

Studio notes: two ways of building color

I visited two Portland Art Gallery artists in their studios recently, and learned much about their different processes and tools of the trade. Annie Darling works with wax and oils; Greg Day brings a 3D printer into conversation with metal and epoxy. Both lean into saturated color and thoughtful layering. I found myself noticing how lines meet curves in their work, and asking how past paths shape present practice. Annie’s years as a graphic designer show in her clarity of composition and command of negative space. Greg’s architectural background appears in structure and in the way a gentle arc moves across a piece.

Visiting people in their spaces

Understanding context has been foundational to every role I’ve held. As a physician, teacher, mentor, and coach, I joined medical students and early-career physicians during patient visits and team meetings. As leader on a healthcare system executive team, I shadowed in the emergency department, on the hospital floor, and in surgical clinics. My goal was to better understand people’s version of the world, as part of Norming and trellis-building. When we meet people in their space, we agree on a truer starting point. Then ladders and trellises make sense.

Returning and returning

Seasonality reminds us that returns are rarely repeats. Birds follow familiar routes, yet the sky is different each year. Our personal seasons move in the same way. We keep expanding and contracting, vertically and horizontally, learning where focus is needed and where range brings wisdom. If we cling to a single season or a single way of working, we drift out of alignment with what the moment asks. If we keep a soft grip, we can meet the day as it is.

Closing reflection

Two seasons can share one table. We can fold together tomatoes, corn, and husk cherries while acorn squash roasts nearby. We can mark waypoints, set latticework, and link ladders into trellises. We can visit people in their spaces and see how they are growing—vertically and horizontally. In leadership, in medicine, in art, and in life, this is how we move together: begin where we are, build what connects, and give the work room to grow.

Reflection prompt

Where is your work in its season right now?

What one rung will you finish as you build your own ladder, and where might you link ladders so a trellis can grow?

✨ Thanks for reading, and for walking this bountiful path with me.

Warmly,

Lisa

As the pace of summer settles into something steadier, I’ve been thinking about how we shape the seasons—and how the seasons shape us.

In last week’s post, I shared how I build waypoints into my calendar—spaces for presence, focus, and creative return. But this week, what’s felt most alive is not just how I build them—but why.

Because summer isn’t only a time of light and bloom. It’s also a time of transition. Of movement beneath the surface.

This is the work we do on The Bountiful Path—noticing where we are, and intentionally choosing where we want to go.

We’re growing a community here—one rooted in reflection and reconnection. And in the weeks ahead, I’ll be sharing our first invitations to gather:

• A virtual book circle, where we’ll read and reflect in good company

• A live version of our Radio Maine program, reimagined to include conversation, creativity, and connection

⸻

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), summer is aligned with the Heart, the Fire element, and the emotion of Joy. It’s considered a time of Yang—of outward expression, connection, and growth. The color is red, the flavor is bitter, and the season asks us to nourish the heart by seeking not just stimulation, but balance.

Joy in TCM isn’t about relentless cheerfulness. It’s about spirit connection—alignment between our inner and outer worlds. In times of too much activity or intensity, the fire element can burn too hot. Summer invites us to feel more deeply, connect more fully, and protect the sparks that give our lives meaning.

This week, I’ve been tending to those sparks by listening and reflecting.

In our most recent Radio Maine conversation, photographer Sean Alonzo Harris spoke about the shift in his creative rhythm—a pivot toward slower, more meditative work rooted in place and presence.

Séan’s words echo something I’ve heard from Portland Art Gallery artist Willa Vennema, who also finds depth in layered expression and intuitive flow as she creates her encaustic works.

We also re-connect with ourselves by re-connecting with others. Years ago while visiting Quisisana (the name means a “place of healing”), a music and theater-oriented family camp located on Maine’s Kezar Lake, I witnessed how seasonal return can build community.

Different disciplines. Different lives. Yet all are attuned to a deeper rhythm—one that allows creativity, connection, and care to take root.

⸻

Reflection Prompts
Share your thoughts in the comments:

• What season are you in—energetically, creatively, or emotionally?

• What does joy mean to you right now?

• What practice is helping you build toward what’s next?

⸻

Next week, I’ll explore how I walk alongside the arc of the year through both practice and planning—co-creating with the seasons to build a more grounded life.

If you haven’t yet, I invite you to subscribe and walk with us on The Bountiful Path—a weekly space for remembering who we are and what we’re here to create.

Let’s keep the path bountiful.
Warmly,
Lisa