More Updates
3.10.25
Trump Cabinet – Not a Happy Meeting
Trump Loves Russia
Trudeau and Trump – Tariffs Smackdown
America Loves Trump – NOT!
Author: Orenda Healing International
FWJ Supplement Winter-Spring 2025: News Bytes –
Please follow the down arrow on our website’s navigation bar to read specific stories from our daily news reports.
As the famous San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen used to say, “Yesterday’s news is fish wrap!” But we’ll do our best to provide you with interesting and inspiring content that we hope you’ll enjoy. Comments may be sent to Letters to the Editor or to Valentine’s Substack.
FWJ Winter 2025 The Others is here!
February 1, 2025
We hope you enjoy reading our latest issue:
Four Winds Journal Winter 2025 – Collateral Damage 3 – The Others
In this second issue of the Collateral Damage series, we begin to explore the experiences of those subjected to othering in several populations: LGBTQ+ and Transgender individuals, Indigenous Americans, immigrants (documented and undocumented), and American seniors. Othering is a far-reaching, many-faceted issue, and with new pronouncements coming daily from the Little Shop of Horrors on Capitol Hill, we expect more developments. We will publish supplements online throughout the Spring and Summer, and we invite our readers to share their own views on any of these topics.
Please visit Letters to the Editor to share your comments. We will respond whenever possible, and meanwhile we hope that you will engage with each other, as this helps to build a strong community of concerned citizens.
That said, however, we suggest that you share specifically political commentary here:
FWJ Winter 2025 – The Others is here!
February 1, 2025
We hope you enjoy reading our latest issue:
Starfriends The Alyssa Chronicles Book 2 is here!
The first book in this series, The River Goddess & Other Stories, introduces us to Alyssa, a young girl living in northern New Mexico who comes into her power with the aid of a mysterious River Goddess, whom she encounters in the arroyo near her home.
In Starfriends, several years have passed, during which Alyssa’s friendships have deepened and matured. Now a little bit older, a little bit wiser, she embarks on a new adventure with friends and family. But this time the stakes are higher. It’s not just trees or animals at risk but the planet itself!
Join Alyssa and her companions in Starfriends, this latest adventure of The Alyssa Chronicles!
FWJ Spring/Summer 2024 MiniWebinar – Eye of the Storm
The first issue of Four Winds Journal, released in 2016, was titled, “Facing North: Navigating Turbulent Times.” Back then we didn’t think things could get more chaotic—until now. Politics, war, climate change, and personal health issues are only a few of the stressors we’re currently facing.
Yet there are ways to deal with all this!
In conjunction with the release of Four Winds Journal’s Winter 2024 issue, Orenda Healing International (OHI) is hosting a MiniWebinar:
Eye of the Storm: Finding Calm in Chaos
Date & Time to be announced
For webinar link, please RSVP to
orenda@orenda-arts.org
Join our distinguished guests in conversation as we explore how to manage the volatile energies of these times.
Sufi Universal Fraternal Institute Founder
Poet, Peace Ambassador & Publisher of Inner Child Press
Professor Emeritus & First Poet Laureate of Berkeley
OHI Founder & Publisher of Winds of Change Press
Dr. Valentine McKay-Riddell PhD
There’s still time!
New Submissions Deadline February 15, 2024
FWJ Winter 2024 – Eye of the Storm:
Finding Calm in Chaos
When we began publishing Four Winds Journal, back in 2016, the first issue was titled, “Facing North: Navigating Turbulent Times.” At the time we didn’t think things could get more chaotic—until now. Politics, war, climate change, and personal health issues are only a few of the stressors we’re currently facing.
The Winter issue of Four Winds Journal explores ways of managing the energy of these times. If you’ve ever experienced a hurricane, you’ll know that at the center of the action there is a place of calm, an “eye,” where the howling winds and torrential rains, the threat of imminent annihilation, do not exist. Often the sky is blue, the sun warm, the birds singing. This is where we want to be. It’s where we need to be if we’re going to make it through this storm.
Send your article, poem, or photos of your artwork:
Editors – FWJ Winter 2024
windsofchangepress@orenda-arts.org
Copyright © 2024 Orenda Healing International. All rights reserved
1868 A Calle Quedo, Santa Fe, NM 87505
orenda@orenda-arts.org
http://www.orenda-arts.org
Welcome in, 2023!
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FWJ Winter 2023 – Exploring Anger
Exploring Anger:
Where It Comes From, What It Does, Where It Goes
After months (and three issues of FWJ) investigating gentler ways of being in the world, we’ve concluded that the biggest elephant in the room now is Anger.
So, since FWJ enjoys confronting rogue elephants, here goes!
Everyone these days expresses anger in various ways. The key difference is that in the past, expressions of anger were largely internal, passive, or even suppressed, but now they’re in your face. The major question we’re asking is what’s the cause of all this ferocity? We’re not just talking politics, though certainly political beliefs and resulting behaviors continue to fuel not just anger but rage. The lack of affordable housing, inflation, homelessness, pandemics, and global unrest are major contributors.
For many years I’ve advised my counseling clients that anger masks fear, and that we fear what we don’t understand or feel we can’t control. Anger in itself is just red energy, a volatile force that can be used for good or evil. Anger can catalyze positive change if people manage to keep their heads and focus on the goal. Righteous anger has fueled many great social movements, here in the US and around the world. But people are not “keeping calm and carrying on,” not here or anywhere else. The danger of this is that like any untreated wound, unexplored anger cannot heal. Instead it causes systemic infection, eventually destroying the entire body.
FWJ Winter 2023 explores anger—its causes, effects, and trajectory. We invite you to share articles, personal stories, poetry, or artwork illustrating your own experiences of anger—how it’s impacting your life and what you are doing about it.
Be sure to read our Submission Guidelines and email your submission (Word doc for text and jpg for images):
Editors, FWJ Winter 2023: journal@orenda-arts.org
Submission Deadline: December 15, 2022
Note: All previous digital issues of Four Winds Journal are available on our website under Journal Archives. Click here to purchase the latest issue (or archived issues) in print.
Photo – Andrea Piacquadio
FWJ Summer Supplement 2022: Rediscovering Kindness – Invitation to Submit
FWJ Spring 2022 introduced the theme of Rematriation—a process of reclaiming the kindness, gentleness, and strength of the Feminine and reintroducing these principles into a world currently driven by toxic masculinity.
Our Summer Supplement takes the process a bit further as we explore some ways in which we can do this. We’ll begin by observing how creatures most in harmony with Nature and the Divine Feminine—plants and animals—treat each other and compare that with how we humans treat them and ourselves.
The lives of plants and animals move at a slower, more measured pace than those of humans. Darwinian theory postulates competition between and even among species, and business-oriented Western culture uses this theory to justify vicious competition in the market place, in school, and at home. But in reality this is not so. Plants, despite a popular paradigm, don’t compete with each other. If a plant isn’t getting the right amount of sun, water, or nutrients in one place, it doesn’t seek to annihilate its neighbors—it simply moves to another spot (Stephen Harrod Buhner, 2014) As for animals, an innate sense of balance governs their lives. During my years in Galisteo, NM, I discovered that when food is plentiful, female cats will have more and larger litters. When less food is available, the birth of kittens declines. The same female who previously gave birth to a litter of eight kits might have only two in leaner times. (This is true for other mammals as well, including raccoons, skunks, and coyotes, to name a few of the animals I’ve fed.)
We can learn a lot from observing the behaviors of the non-human others (Karen J. Warren, 2000) with whom we share this world. What pleases our favorite tomato plant? More sun? More water? How does our indoor-outdoor female tabby react to a spring snowstorm, in comparison with the feral tom who spent the winter in the garage? What, in their loud and lively conversation, are those sparrows talking about?
FWJ Summer Supplement 2022 explores the lifeways of plants, animals, how humans relate to them, and how we can do so more empathically. We invite you to share your stories with us.
Submission Deadline July 16, 2022
Send your article, short story, artwork, or poetry to:
journal@orenda-arts.org
Summer Supplement 2022
Please read our Submission Guidelines before submitting your work!
