One of the profound things a Maine winter can teach us is the power, the meaning, and the beauty of silence. Waking after a snowfall, I am stirred by a quietness in the light that seeks a way into my bedroom around the wooden slats of my window blinds. I vaguely hear the sounds of […]
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, friends of Oranbega! You will see immediately that there have been some changes around here, but we are still “the quiet place between the rapids” and still very well equipped to offer you the peaceful space for working, meditating, and growing creatively you have always longed for, and fully deserve. First of […]
On Writing Poetry
I wrote a poem on my birthday, which was at the beginning of May. Poetry writing is a mystery. It is a mystery to me why sometimes a poem just seems to pop out of my subconscious up to the page before me. At other times only a germ or a seed emerges and then […]
August Dog Days
Sirius, or Alpha Canis Majoris, the dog star, in the constellation Canis Majoris, rises at dawn in late July and continues to do so in these northern latitudes into the middle of August. The brightest star in the sky, it gives its name to the hot, sticky and uncomfortably heavy weather such as we have […]
WE RAISED $600 for Ukraine!
At our Fund Raising Concert on April 17, featuring Danie Ocean singing songs from her recent compilation ALIVE!, backed by our own hot band, Spence & Co., our generous patrons kicked $575 in cash and checks into our blue and yellow Ukrainian Relief bucket. Our Director rounded up the sum to a full $600 so […]
Alive, again!
“Do you think Jesus gets tired of being resurrected every year?” It was the evening of Easter Sunday, and my friend and I, both long time lovers of church liturgy, had each spent an exhilarating but exhausting weekend celebrating versions of the Christian “triduum,” the three days when each year the church re-tells the story […]
Otter Bliss
Yesterday morning, Iooking out the window at breakfast, I gave a happy cry. “The otters are back!” This Maine winter has seemed really long to me, but at last the Narramissic is ice-free and flowing swiftly down to the Penobscot bay, and the banks are proving good pecking ground for Canada geese and several types […]
Structure Your Vision
I recently finished a short course taught online through the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. It was a fiction workshop with an eyecatching title (“Structure Your Vision,”) which I found on the MWPA site (https://www.mainewriters.org/). So I signed up, and for five weeks ten of us met under the incisive and graceful leadership of Judson […]
The Well of Hospitality
I think about water a lot, living here on the banks of the Narramissic. We live on the river bank where for hundreds of years the Wabanaki people lived and fished, giving thanks for the bounty of “the river of many fish” and for this “quiet place between the rapids”. Rivers, waterways, springs and wells […]
2nd Annual Burns’ Night Supper
You’re invited to our Second Annual Burns Night Supper! Robert Burns’ birthday, January 25, this year falls on a Tuesday: tomorrow! Here at Oranbega Retreat Center we will be “piping in” the haggis at 6:30 p.m. A very few people will be on site here at 36 Narramissic Drive, Orland, Maine, (masked and distanced!). Many […]