Dear friends, As Qapel’s birthday approaches this Monday, July 14th—his first since his great crossing—I find myself reflecting on the immense legacy he left us. A teacher, a trickster, a lighthouse keeper for the pathless path—Qapel shaped us with laughter, with love, and with relentless compassion. At our last AGM, I offered this poem in his honour. It poured out of a heart broken open by his passing and lit up by the fire he left burning in all of us. I share it here with deep love and tenderness, as a remembrance, a celebration, and a call. May it touch something in you, as he so often did. With love and gratitude, Karen For Qapel: Our Lighthouse Keeper You laughed and danced us awake, sang the stars down to the kitchen table, trained us in love’s fierce tenderness— a thousand "drive-by" lessons hidden in a glance, a joke, a nudge beyond our limits. You lived ahead of us— blazing trails into the next turning of the Dharma wheel, where evolution is sacred, where kitchen quarrels and quantum fields are one, where emptiness shimmers with pizza and laughter. In your last days, you spoke of the lighthouse: a beacon for seekers bold enough to step into the unknown, a temple for evolutionists of the spirit— not just to sit, but to rise, to dance, to love, to build the new world the old masters glimpsed but dared not enter. You loved us ferociously, training us to suffer less, pushing us past every "I can’t," past every hidden fear of our own brilliance. You taught not just Awakening, but Awakening that can hold a mortgage, cook a chicken dish, plant a seed, change a world. Now, Sensei stands, steady in your wide footprints, her arms full of temples, teachings, thousands of new seedlings— Duncan training and developing leadership, Karen opening the gates to Europe and the integral world, connecting Sensei’s voice with those ready to hear, Mo stirring apples & systems into wisdom, Michele tending the land with Holistic Management bringing her farm girl’s heart, protecting the earth that shelters our dreams, Ava and Erika riding the breath of horses, Dean fencing the edges of our dreams, Dave lightening our footprints on this Earth, Geoff returning to the compost what no longer serves. And Richard Arnfield standing firm in quiet loyalty, steady hands supporting the heart of it all. We are all here, beloved Teacher. You built us for this. Sensei and the onsite community place Black Diamond treasures—meteor, relic, iron, prayer— into mountains and rivers, each a seed of your wish: that the teachings live, that they protect all beings who seek. This September, we walk the Stans without you— or rather, with you in every step. We walk for you. We walk with you. The Great Net you cast across time catches us still, pulls us forward, laughing and crying, into the bright new world you glimpsed. Our hearts are your lighthouse now, lit by the fire you left burning, wide enough for mountains, fierce enough for love, radiant enough for the whole wide sky. Thank you, dear Captain of Awakening. Qapel. We see you dancing just beyond the next horizon. We are coming. We are ready. (fb)

Summer time, and the living is...well if not easy, at least wholesome. Our berry and fruit trees are starting to produce. Here's Karen picking local Saskatoon berries, supporting our healthy eating and our farm status.🌈 (fb)